SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY

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TORONTO

SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY

LECTURES ON

HAMLET, OTHELLO, KING LEAR

MACBETH

BY

A. C. BRADLEY

LL. D. LITT. D. , FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

_SECOND EDITION_ (_THIRTEENTH IMPRESSION_)

MACMILLAN AND CO. , LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1919

_COPYRIGHT. _

First Edition 1904. 

Second Edition March 1905. 

Reprinted August 1905, 1906, 1908, 1910, 1911, 1912, 1914, 1915, 1916, 1918, 1919. 

GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD. 

TO MY STUDENTS

PREFACE

These lectures are based on a selection from materials used in teachingat Liverpool, Glasgow, and Oxford; and I have for the most partpreserved the lecture form. The point of view taken in them is explainedin the Introduction. I should, of course, wish them to be read in theirorder, and a knowledge of the first two is assumed in the remainder; butreaders who may prefer to enter at once on the discussion of the severalplays can do so by beginning at page 89. 

Any one who writes on Shakespeare must owe much to his predecessors. Where I was conscious of a particular obligation, I have acknowledgedit; but most of my reading of Shakespearean criticism was done manyyears ago, and I can only hope that I have not often reproduced as myown what belongs to another. 

Many of the Notes will be of interest only to scholars, who may find, Ihope, something new in them. 

I have quoted, as a rule, from the Globe edition, and have referredalways to its numeration of acts, scenes, and lines. 

_November, 1904. _

 * * * * *

NOTE TO SECOND AND SUBSEQUENT IMPRESSIONS

In these impressions I have confined myself to making some formalimprovements, correcting indubitable mistakes, and indicating here andthere my desire to modify or develop at some future time statementswhich seem to me doubtful or open to misunderstanding. The changes, where it seemed desirable, are shown by the inclusion of sentences insquare brackets. 

CONTENTS

 PAGEINTRODUCTION 1

LECTURE I. 

THE SUBSTANCE OF SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY 5

LECTURE II. 

CONSTRUCTION IN SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIES 40

LECTURE III. 

SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGIC PERIOD--HAMLET 79

LECTURE IV. 

HAMLET 129

LECTURE V. 

OTHELLO 175

LECTURE VI. 

OTHELLO 207

LECTURE VII. 

KING LEAR 243

LECTURE VIII. 

KING LEAR 280

LECTURE IX. 

MACBETH 331

LECTURE X. 

MACBETH 366

NOTE A. Events before the opening of the action in _Hamlet_ 401

NOTE B. Where was Hamlet at the time of his father's death? 403

NOTE C. Hamlet's age 407

NOTE D. 'My tables--meet it is I set it down' 409

NOTE E. The Ghost in the cellarage 412

NOTE F. The Player's speech in _Hamlet_ 413

NOTE G. Hamlet's apology to Laertes 420

NOTE H. The exchange of rapiers 422

NOTE I. The duration of the action in _Othello_ 423

NOTE J. The 'additions' in the Folio text of _Othello_. The Pontic sea 429

NOTE K. Othello's courtship 432

NOTE L. Othello in the Temptation scene 434

NOTE M. Questions as to _Othello_, IV. I. 435

NOTE N. Two passages in the last scene of _Othello_ 437

NOTE O. Othello on Desdemona's last words 438

NOTE P. Did Emilia suspect Iago? 439

NOTE Q. Iago's suspicion regarding Cassio and Emilia 441

NOTE R. Reminiscences of _Othello_ in _King Lear_ 441

NOTE S. _King Lear_ and _Timon of Athens_ 443

NOTE T. Did Shakespeare shorten _King Lear_? 445

NOTE U. Movements of the _dramatis personæ_ in _King Lear_, II 448

NOTE V. Suspected interpolations in _King Lear_ 450

NOTE W. The staging of the scene of Lear's reunion with Cordelia 453

NOTE X. The Battle in _King Lear_ 456

NOTE Y. Some difficult passages in _King Lear_ 458

NOTE Z. Suspected interpolations in _Macbeth_ 466

NOTE AA. Has _Macbeth_ been abridged? 467

NOTE BB. The date of _Macbeth_. Metrical Tests 470

NOTE CC. When was the murder of Duncan first plotted? 480

NOTE DD. Did Lady Macbeth really faint? 484

NOTE EE. Duration of the action in _Macbeth_. Macbeth's age. 'He has no children' 486

NOTE FF. The Ghost of Banquo 492

INDEX 494

INTRODUCTION

In these lectures I propose to consider the four principal tragedies ofShakespeare from a single point of view. Nothing will be said ofShakespeare's place in the history either of English literature or ofthe drama in general. No attempt will be made to compare him with otherwriters. I shall leave untouched, or merely glanced at, questionsregarding his life and character, the development of his genius and art, the genuineness, sources, texts, inter-relations of his various works. Even what may be called, in a restricted sense, the 'poetry' of the fourtragedies--the beauties of style, diction, versification--I shall passby in silence. Our one object will be what, again in a restricted sense, may be called dramatic appreciation; to increase our understanding andenjoyment of these works as dramas; to learn to apprehend the action andsome of the personages of each with a somewhat greater truth andintensity, so that they may assume in our imaginations a shape a littleless unlike the shape they wore in the imagination of their creator. Forthis end all those studies that were mentioned just now, of literaryhistory and the like, are useful and even in various degrees necessary. But an overt pursuit of them is not necessary here, nor is any one ofthem so indispensable to our object as that close familiarity with theplays, that native strength and justice of perception, and that habit ofreading with an eager mind, which make many an unscholarly lover ofShakespeare a far better critic than many a Shakespeare scholar. 

Such lovers read a play more or less as if they were actors who had tostudy all the parts. They do not need, of course, to imagine whereaboutsthe persons are to stand, or what gestures they ought to use; but theywant to realise fully and exactly the inner movements which producedthese words and no other, these deeds and no other, at each particularmoment. This, carried through a drama, is the right way to read thedramatist Shakespeare; and the prime requisite here is therefore a vividand intent imagination. But this alone will hardly suffice. It isnecessary also, especially to a true conception of the whole, tocompare, to analyse, to dissect. And such readers often shrink from thistask, which seems to them prosaic or even a desecration. Theymisunderstand, I believe. They would not shrink if they remembered twothings. In the first place, in this process of comparison and analysis, it is not requisite, it is on the contrary ruinous, to set imaginationaside and to substitute some supposed 'cold reason'; and it is only wantof practice that makes the concurrent use of analysis and of poeticperception difficult or irksome. And, in the second place, thesedissecting processes, though they are also imaginative, are still, andare meant to be, nothing but means to an end. When they have finishedtheir work (it can only be finished for the time) they give place to theend, which is that same imaginative reading or re-creation of the dramafrom which they set out, but a reading now enriched by the products ofanalysis, and therefore far more adequate and enjoyable. 

This, at any rate, is the faith in the strength of which I venture, withmerely personal misgivings, on the path of analytic interpretation. Andso, before coming to the first of the four tragedies, I propose todiscuss some preliminary matters which concern them all. Though each isindividual through and through, they have, in a sense, one and the samesubstance; for in all of them Shakespeare represents the tragic aspectof life, the tragic fact. They have, again, up to a certain point, acommon form or structure. This substance and this structure, which wouldbe found to distinguish them, for example, from Greek tragedies, may, todiminish repetition, be considered once for all; and in considering themwe shall also be able to observe characteristic differences among thefour plays. And to this may be added the little that it seems necessaryto premise on the position of these dramas in Shakespeare's literarycareer. 

Much that is said on our main preliminary subjects will naturally holdgood, within certain limits, of other dramas of Shakespeare beside_Hamlet_, _Othello_, _King Lear_, and _Macbeth_. But it will often applyto these other works only in part, and to some of them more fully thanto others. _Romeo and Juliet_, for instance, is a pure tragedy, but itis an early work, and in some respects an immature one. _Richard III. _and _Richard II. _, _Julius Caesar_, _Antony and Cleopatra_, and_Coriolanus_ are tragic histories or historical tragedies, in whichShakespeare acknowledged in practice a certain obligation to follow hisauthority, even when that authority offered him an undramatic material. Probably he himself would have met some criticisms to which these playsare open by appealing to their historical character, and by denying thatsuch works are to be judged by the standard of pure tragedy. In anycase, most of these plays, perhaps all, do show, as a matter of fact, considerable deviations from that standard; and, therefore, what is saidof the pure tragedies must be applied to them with qualifications whichI shall often take for granted without mention. There remain _TitusAndronicus_ and _Timon of Athens_. The former I shall leave out ofaccount, because, even if Shakespeare wrote the whole of it, he did sobefore he had either a style of his own or any characteristic tragicconception. _Timon_ stands on a different footing. Parts of it areunquestionably Shakespeare's, and they will be referred to in one of thelater lectures. But much of the writing is evidently not his, and as itseems probable that the conception and construction of the whole tragedyshould also be attributed to some other writer, I shall omit this worktoo from our preliminary discussions. 

LECTURE I

THE SUBSTANCE OF SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY

The question we are to consider in this lecture may be stated in avariety of ways. We may put it thus: What is the substance of aShakespearean tragedy, taken in abstraction both from its form and fromthe differences in point of substance between one tragedy and another?Or thus: What is the nature of the tragic aspect of life as representedby Shakespeare? What is the general fact shown now in this tragedy andnow in that? And we are putting the same question when we ask: What isShakespeare's tragic conception, or conception of tragedy?

These expressions, it should be observed, do not imply that Shakespearehimself ever asked or answered such a question; that he set himself toreflect on the tragic aspects of life, that he framed a tragicconception, and still less that, like Aristotle or Corneille, he had atheory of the kind of poetry called tragedy. These things are allpossible; how far any one of them is probable we need not discuss; butnone of them is presupposed by the question we are going to consider. This question implies only that, as a matter of fact, Shakespeare inwriting tragedy did represent a certain aspect of life in a certain way, and that through examination of his writings we ought to be able, tosome extent, to describe this aspect and way in terms addressed to theunderstanding. Such a description, so far as it is true and adequate, may, after these explanations, be called indifferently an account of thesubstance of Shakespearean tragedy, or an account of Shakespeare'sconception of tragedy or view of the tragic fact. 

Two further warnings may be required. In the first place, we mustremember that the tragic aspect of life is only one aspect. We cannotarrive at Shakespeare's whole dramatic way of looking at the world fromhis tragedies alone, as we can arrive at Milton's way of regardingthings, or at Wordsworth's or at Shelley's, by examining almost any oneof their important works. Speaking very broadly, one may say that thesepoets at their best always look at things in one light; but _Hamlet_ and_Henry IV. _ and _Cymbeline_ reflect things from quite distinctpositions, and Shakespeare's whole dramatic view is not to be identifiedwith any one of these reflections. And, in the second place, I mayrepeat that in these lectures, at any rate for the most part, we are tobe content with his _dramatic_ view, and are not to ask whether itcorresponded exactly with his opinions or creed outside his poetry--theopinions or creed of the being whom we sometimes oddly call 'Shakespearethe man. ' It does not seem likely that outside his poetry he was a verysimple-minded Catholic or Protestant or Atheist, as some havemaintained; but we cannot be sure, as with those other poets we can, that in his works he expressed his deepest and most cherishedconvictions on ultimate questions, or even that he had any. And in hisdramatic conceptions there is enough to occupy us. 

1

In approaching our subject it will be best, without attempting toshorten the path by referring to famous theories of the drama, to startdirectly from the facts, and to collect from them gradually an idea ofShakespearean Tragedy. And first, to begin from the outside, such atragedy brings before us a considerable number of persons (many morethan the persons in a Greek play, unless the members of the Chorus arereckoned among them); but it is pre-eminently the story of one person, the 'hero, '[1] or at most of two, the 'hero' and 'heroine. ' Moreover, itis only in the love-tragedies, _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Antony andCleopatra_, that the heroine is as much the centre of the action as thehero. The rest, including _Macbeth_, are single stars. So that, havingnoticed the peculiarity of these two dramas, we may henceforth, for thesake of brevity, ignore it, and may speak of the tragic story as beingconcerned primarily with one person. 

The story, next, leads up to, and includes, the _death_ of the hero. Onthe one hand (whatever may be true of tragedy elsewhere), no play at theend of which the hero remains alive is, in the full Shakespearean sense, a tragedy; and we no longer class _Troilus and Cressida_ or _Cymbeline_as such, as did the editors of the Folio. On the other hand, the storydepicts also the troubled part of the hero's life which precedes andleads up to his death; and an instantaneous death occurring by'accident' in the midst of prosperity would not suffice for it. It is, in fact, essentially a tale of suffering and calamity conducting todeath. 

The suffering and calamity are, moreover, exceptional. They befall aconspicuous person. They are themselves of some striking kind. They arealso, as a rule, unexpected, and contrasted with previous happiness orglory. A tale, for example, of a man slowly worn to death by disease, poverty, little cares, sordid vices, petty persecutions, however piteousor dreadful it might be, would not be tragic in the Shakespearean sense. 

Such exceptional suffering and calamity, then, affecting the hero, and--we must now add--generally extending far and wide beyond him, so asto make the whole scene a scene of woe, are an essential ingredient intragedy and a chief source of the tragic emotions, and especially ofpity. But the proportions of this ingredient, and the direction taken bytragic pity, will naturally vary greatly. Pity, for example, has a muchlarger part in _King Lear_ than in _Macbeth_, and is directed in the onecase chiefly to the hero, in the other chiefly to minor characters. 

Let us now pause for a moment on the ideas we have so far reached. Theywould more than suffice to describe the whole tragic fact as itpresented itself to the mediaeval mind. To the mediaeval mind a tragedymeant a narrative rather than a play, and its notion of the matter ofthis narrative may readily be gathered from Dante or, still better, fromChaucer. Chaucer's _Monk's Tale_ is a series of what he calls'tragedies'; and this means in fact a series of tales _de CasibusIllustrium Virorum_, --stories of the Falls of Illustrious Men, such asLucifer, Adam, Hercules and Nebuchadnezzar. And the Monk ends the taleof Croesus thus:

 Anhanged was Cresus, the proudè kyng; His roial tronè myghte hym nat availle. Tragédie is noon oother maner thyng, Ne kan in syngyng criè ne biwaille But for that Fortune alwey wole assaile With unwar strook the regnès that been proude; For whan men trusteth hire, thanne wol she faille, And covere hire brighte facè with a clowde. 

A total reverse of fortune, coming unawares upon a man who 'stood inhigh degree, ' happy and apparently secure, --such was the tragic fact tothe mediaeval mind. It appealed strongly to common human sympathy andpity; it startled also another feeling, that of fear. It frightened menand awed them. It made them feel that man is blind and helpless, theplaything of an inscrutable power, called by the name of Fortune or someother name, --a power which appears to smile on him for a little, andthen on a sudden strikes him down in his pride. 

Shakespeare's idea of the tragic fact is larger than this idea and goesbeyond it; but it includes it, and it is worth while to observe theidentity of the two in a certain point which is often ignored. Tragedywith Shakespeare is concerned always with persons of 'high degree';often with kings or princes; if not, with leaders in the state likeCoriolanus, Brutus, Antony; at the least, as in _Romeo and Juliet_, withmembers of great houses, whose quarrels are of public moment. There is adecided difference here between _Othello_ and our three other tragedies, but it is not a difference of kind. Othello himself is no mere privateperson; he is the General of the Republic. At the beginning we see himin the Council-Chamber of the Senate. The consciousness of his highposition never leaves him. At the end, when he is determined to live nolonger, he is as anxious as Hamlet not to be misjudged by the greatworld, and his last speech begins, Soft you; a word or two before you go. I have done the state some service, and they know it. [2]

And this characteristic of Shakespeare's tragedies, though not the mostvital, is neither external nor unimportant. The saying that everydeath-bed is the scene of the fifth act of a tragedy has its meaning, but it would not be true if the word 'tragedy' bore its dramatic sense. The pangs of despised love and the anguish of remorse, we say, are thesame in a peasant and a prince; but, not to insist that they cannot beso when the prince is really a prince, the story of the prince, thetriumvir, or the general, has a greatness and dignity of its own. Hisfate affects the welfare of a whole nation or empire; and when he fallssuddenly from the height of earthly greatness to the dust, his fallproduces a sense of contrast, of the powerlessness of man, and of theomnipotence--perhaps the caprice--of Fortune or Fate, which no tale ofprivate life can possibly rival. 

Such feelings are constantly evoked by Shakespeare's tragedies, --againin varying degrees. Perhaps they are the very strongest of the emotionsawakened by the early tragedy of _Richard II. _, where they receive aconcentrated expression in Richard's famous speech about the anticDeath, who sits in the hollow crown

 That rounds the mortal temples of a king, grinning at his pomp, watching till his vanity and his fancied securityhave wholly encased him round, and then coming and boring with a littlepin through his castle wall. And these feelings, though theirpredominance is subdued in the mightiest tragedies, remain powerfulthere. In the figure of the maddened Lear we see

 A sight most pitiful in the meanest wretch, Past speaking of in a king;

and if we would realise the truth in this matter we cannot do betterthan compare with the effect of _King Lear_ the effect of Tourgénief'sparallel and remarkable tale of peasant life, _A King Lear of theSteppes_. 

2

A Shakespearean tragedy as so far considered may be called a story ofexceptional calamity leading to the death of a man in high estate. Butit is clearly much more than this, and we have now to regard it fromanother side. No amount of calamity which merely befell a man, descending from the clouds like lightning, or stealing from the darknesslike pestilence, could alone provide the substance of its story. Job wasthe greatest of all the children of the east, and his afflictions werewell-nigh more than he could bear; but even if we imagined them wearinghim to death, that would not make his story tragic. Nor yet would itbecome so, in the Shakespearean sense, if the fire, and the great windfrom the wilderness, and the torments of his flesh were conceived assent by a supernatural power, whether just or malignant. The calamitiesof tragedy do not simply happen, nor are they sent; they proceed mainlyfrom actions, and those the actions of men. 

We see a number of human beings placed in certain circumstances; and wesee, arising from the co-operation of their characters in thesecircumstances, certain actions. These actions beget others, and theseothers beget others again, until this series of inter-connected deedsleads by an apparently inevitable sequence to a catastrophe. The effectof such a series on imagination is to make us regard the sufferingswhich accompany it, and the catastrophe in which it ends, not only orchiefly as something which happens to the persons concerned, but equallyas something which is caused by them. This at least may be said of theprincipal persons, and, among them, of the hero, who always contributesin some measure to the disaster in which he perishes. 

This second aspect of tragedy evidently differs greatly from the first. Men, from this point of view, appear to us primarily as agents, 'themselves the authors of their proper woe'; and our fear and pity, though they will not cease or diminish, will be modified accordingly. Weare now to consider this second aspect, remembering that it too is onlyone aspect, and additional to the first, not a substitute for it. 

The 'story' or 'action' of a Shakespearean tragedy does not consist, ofcourse, solely of human actions or deeds; but the deeds are thepredominant factor. And these deeds are, for the most part, actions inthe full sense of the word; not things done ''tween asleep and wake, 'but acts or omissions thoroughly expressive of the doer, --characteristicdeeds. The centre of the tragedy, therefore, may be said with equaltruth to lie in action issuing from character, or in character issuingin action. 

Shakespeare's main interest lay here. To say that it lay in _mere_character, or was a psychological interest, would be a great mistake, for he was dramatic to the tips of his fingers. It is possible to findplaces where he has given a certain indulgence to his love of poetry, and even to his turn for general reflections; but it would be verydifficult, and in his later tragedies perhaps impossible, to detectpassages where he has allowed such freedom to the interest in characterapart from action. But for the opposite extreme, for the abstraction ofmere 'plot' (which is a very different thing from the tragic 'action'), for the kind of interest which predominates in a novel like _The Womanin White_, it is clear that he cared even less. I do not mean that thisinterest is absent from his dramas; but it is subordinate to others, andis so interwoven with them that we are rarely conscious of it apart, andrarely feel in any great strength the half-intellectual, half-nervousexcitement of following an ingenious complication. What we do feelstrongly, as a tragedy advances to its close, is that the calamities andcatastrophe follow inevitably from the deeds of men, and that the mainsource of these deeds is character. The dictum that, with Shakespeare, 'character is destiny' is no doubt an exaggeration, and one that maymislead (for many of his tragic personages, if they had not met withpeculiar circumstances, would have escaped a tragic end, and might evenhave lived fairly untroubled lives); but it is the exaggeration of avital truth. 

This truth, with some of its qualifications, will appear more clearly ifwe now go on to ask what elements are to be found in the 'story' or'action, ' occasionally or frequently, beside the characteristic deeds, and the sufferings and circumstances, of the persons. I will refer tothree of these additional factors. 

(_a_) Shakespeare, occasionally and for reasons which need not bediscussed here, represents abnormal conditions of mind; insanity, forexample, somnambulism, hallucinations. And deeds issuing from these arecertainly not what we called deeds in the fullest sense, deedsexpressive of character. No; but these abnormal conditions are neverintroduced as the origin of deeds of any dramatic moment. Lady Macbeth'ssleep-walking has no influence whatever on the events that follow it. Macbeth did not murder Duncan because he saw a dagger in the air: he sawthe dagger because he was about to murder Duncan. Lear's insanity is notthe cause of a tragic conflict any more than Ophelia's; it is, likeOphelia's, the result of a conflict; and in both cases the effect ismainly pathetic. If Lear were really mad when he divided his kingdom, ifHamlet were really mad at any time in the story, they would cease to betragic characters. 

(_b_) Shakespeare also introduces the supernatural into some of histragedies; he introduces ghosts, and witches who have supernaturalknowledge. This supernatural element certainly cannot in most cases, ifin any, be explained away as an illusion in the mind of one of thecharacters. And further, it does contribute to the action, and is inmore than one instance an indispensable part of it: so that to describehuman character, with circumstances, as always the _sole_ motive forcein this action would be a serious error. But the supernatural is alwaysplaced in the closest relation with character. It gives a confirmationand a distinct form to inward movements already present and exerting aninfluence; to the sense of failure in Brutus, to the stifled workings ofconscience in Richard, to the half-formed thought or the horrifiedmemory of guilt in Macbeth, to suspicion in Hamlet. Moreover, itsinfluence is never of a compulsive kind. It forms no more than anelement, however important, in the problem which the hero has to face;and we are never allowed to feel that it has removed his capacity orresponsibility for dealing with this problem. So far indeed are we fromfeeling this, that many readers run to the opposite extreme, and openlyor privately regard the supernatural as having nothing to do with thereal interest of the play. 

(_c_) Shakespeare, lastly, in most of his tragedies allows to 'chance'or 'accident' an appreciable influence at some point in the action. Chance or accident here will be found, I think, to mean any occurrence(not supernatural, of course) which enters the dramatic sequence neitherfrom the agency of a character, nor from the obvious surroundingcircumstances. [3] It may be called an accident, in this sense, thatRomeo never got the Friar's message about the potion, and that Julietdid not awake from her long sleep a minute sooner; an accident thatEdgar arrived at the prison just too late to save Cordelia's life; anaccident that Desdemona dropped her handkerchief at the most fatal ofmoments; an accident that the pirate ship attacked Hamlet's ship, sothat he was able to return forthwith to Denmark. Now this operation ofaccident is a fact, and a prominent fact, of human life. To exclude it_wholly_ from tragedy, therefore, would be, we may say, to fail intruth. And, besides, it is not merely a fact. That men may start acourse of events but can neither calculate nor control it, is a _tragic_fact. The dramatist may use accident so as to make us feel this; andthere are also other dramatic uses to which it may be put. Shakespeareaccordingly admits it. On the other hand, any _large_ admission ofchance into the tragic sequence[4] would certainly weaken, and mightdestroy, the sense of the causal connection of character, deed, andcatastrophe. And Shakespeare really uses it very sparingly. We seldomfind ourselves exclaiming, 'What an unlucky accident!' I believe mostreaders would have to search painfully for instances. It is, further, frequently easy to see the dramatic intention of an accident; and somethings which look like accidents have really a connection withcharacter, and are therefore not in the full sense accidents. Finally, Ibelieve it will be found that almost all the prominent accidents occurwhen the action is well advanced and the impression of the causalsequence is too firmly fixed to be impaired. 

Thus it appears that these three elements in the 'action' aresubordinate, while the dominant factor consists in deeds which issuefrom character. So that, by way of summary, we may now alter our firststatement, 'A tragedy is a story of exceptional calamity leading to thedeath of a man in high estate, ' and we may say instead (what in its turnis one-sided, though less so), that the story is one of human actionsproducing exceptional calamity and ending in the death of such a man. [5]

 * * * * *

Before we leave the 'action, ' however, there is another question thatmay usefully be asked. Can we define this 'action' further by describingit as a conflict?

The frequent use of this idea in discussions on tragedy is ultimatelydue, I suppose, to the influence of Hegel's theory on the subject, certainly the most important theory since Aristotle's. But Hegel's viewof the tragic conflict is not only unfamiliar to English readers anddifficult to expound shortly, but it had its origin in reflections onGreek tragedy and, as Hegel was well aware, applies only imperfectly tothe works of Shakespeare. [6] I shall, therefore, confine myself to theidea of conflict in its more general form. In this form it is obviouslysuitable to Shakespearean tragedy; but it is vague, and I will try tomake it more precise by putting the question, Who are the combatants inthis conflict?

Not seldom the conflict may quite naturally be conceived as lyingbetween two persons, of whom the hero is one; or, more fully, as lyingbetween two parties or groups, in one of which the hero is the leadingfigure. Or if we prefer to speak (as we may quite well do if we knowwhat we are about) of the passions, tendencies, ideas, principles, forces, which animate these persons or groups, we may say that two ofsuch passions or ideas, regarded as animating two persons or groups, arethe combatants. The love of Romeo and Juliet is in conflict with thehatred of their houses, represented by various other characters. Thecause of Brutus and Cassius struggles with that of Julius, Octavius andAntony. In _Richard II. _ the King stands on one side, Bolingbroke andhis party on the other. In _Macbeth_ the hero and heroine are opposed tothe representatives of Duncan. In all these cases the great majority ofthe _dramatis personae_ fall without difficulty into antagonisticgroups, and the conflict between these groups ends with the defeat ofthe hero. 

Yet one cannot help feeling that in at least one of these cases, _Macbeth_, there is something a little external in this way of lookingat the action. And when we come to some other plays this feelingincreases. No doubt most of the characters in _Hamlet_, _King Lear_, _Othello_, or _Antony and Cleopatra_ can be arranged in opposedgroups;[7] and no doubt there is a conflict; and yet it seems misleadingto describe this conflict as one _between these groups_. It cannot besimply this. For though Hamlet and the King are mortal foes, yet thatwhich engrosses our interest and dwells in our memory at least as muchas the conflict between them, is the conflict _within_ one of them. Andso it is, though not in the same degree, with _Antony and Cleopatra_ andeven with _Othello_; and, in fact, in a certain measure, it is so withnearly all the tragedies. There is an outward conflict of persons andgroups, there is also a conflict of forces in the hero's soul; and evenin _Julius Caesar_ and _Macbeth_ the interest of the former can hardlybe said to exceed that of the latter. 

The truth is, that the type of tragedy in which the hero opposes to ahostile force an undivided soul, is not the Shakespearean type. Thesouls of those who contend with the hero may be thus undivided; theygenerally are; but, as a rule, the hero, though he pursues his fatedway, is, at least at some point in the action, and sometimes at many, torn by an inward struggle; and it is frequently at such points thatShakespeare shows his most extraordinary power. If further we comparethe earlier tragedies with the later, we find that it is in the latter, the maturest works, that this inward struggle is most emphasised. In thelast of them, _Coriolanus_, its interest completely eclipses towards theclose of the play that of the outward conflict. _Romeo and Juliet_, _Richard III. _, _Richard II. _, where the hero contends with an outwardforce, but comparatively little with himself, are all early plays. 

If we are to include the outer and the inner struggle in a conceptionmore definite than that of conflict in general, we must employ some suchphrase as 'spiritual force. ' This will mean whatever forces act in thehuman spirit, whether good or evil, whether personal passion orimpersonal principle; doubts, desires, scruples, ideas--whatever cananimate, shake, possess, and drive a man's soul. In a Shakespeareantragedy some such forces are shown in conflict. They are shown acting inmen and generating strife between them. They are also shown, lessuniversally, but quite as characteristically, generating disturbance andeven conflict in the soul of the hero. Treasonous ambition in Macbethcollides with loyalty and patriotism in Macduff and Malcolm: here is theoutward conflict. But these powers or principles equally collide in thesoul of Macbeth himself: here is the inner. And neither by itself couldmake the tragedy. [8]

We shall see later the importance of this idea. Here we need onlyobserve that the notion of tragedy as a conflict emphasises the factthat action is the centre of the story, while the concentration ofinterest, in the greater plays, on the inward struggle emphasises thefact that this action is essentially the expression of character. 

3

Let us turn now from the 'action' to the central figure in it; and, ignoring the characteristics which distinguish the heroes from oneanother, let us ask whether they have any common qualities which appearto be essential to the tragic effect. 

One they certainly have. They are exceptional beings. We have seenalready that the hero, with Shakespeare, is a person of high degree orof public importance, and that his actions or sufferings are of anunusual kind. But this is not all. His nature also is exceptional, andgenerally raises him in some respect much above the average level ofhumanity. This does not mean that he is an eccentric or a paragon. Shakespeare never drew monstrosities of virtue; some of his heroes arefar from being 'good'; and if he drew eccentrics he gave them asubordinate position in the plot. His tragic characters are made of thestuff we find within ourselves and within the persons who surround them. But, by an intensification of the life which they share with others, they are raised above them; and the greatest are raised so far that, ifwe fully realise all that is implied in their words and actions, webecome conscious that in real life we have known scarcely any oneresembling them. Some, like Hamlet and Cleopatra, have genius. Others, like Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Coriolanus, are built on the grand scale;and desire, passion, or will attains in them a terrible force. In almostall we observe a marked one-sidedness, a predisposition in someparticular direction; a total incapacity, in certain circumstances, ofresisting the force which draws in this direction; a fatal tendency toidentify the whole being with one interest, object, passion, or habit ofmind. This, it would seem, is, for Shakespeare, the fundamental tragictrait. It is present in his early heroes, Romeo and Richard II. , infatuated men, who otherwise rise comparatively little above theordinary level. It is a fatal gift, but it carries with it a touch ofgreatness; and when there is joined to it nobility of mind, or genius, or immense force, we realise the full power and reach of the soul, andthe conflict in which it engages acquires that magnitude which stirs notonly sympathy and pity, but admiration, terror, and awe. 

The easiest way to bring home to oneself the nature of the tragiccharacter is to compare it with a character of another kind. Dramas like_Cymbeline_ and the _Winter's Tale_, which might seem destined to endtragically, but actually end otherwise, owe their happy ending largelyto the fact that the principal characters fail to reach tragicdimensions. And, conversely, if these persons were put in the place ofthe tragic heroes, the dramas in which they appeared would cease to betragedies. Posthumus would never have acted as Othello did; Othello, onhis side, would have met Iachimo's challenge with something more thanwords. If, like Posthumus, he had remained convinced of his wife'sinfidelity, he would not have repented her execution; if, like Leontes, he had come to believe that by an unjust accusation he had caused herdeath, he would never have lived on, like Leontes. In the same way thevillain Iachimo has no touch of tragic greatness. But Iago comes nearerto it, and if Iago had slandered Imogen and had supposed his slanders tohave led to her death, he certainly would not have turned melancholy andwished to die. One reason why the end of the _Merchant of Venice_ failsto satisfy us is that Shylock is a tragic character, and that we cannotbelieve in his accepting his defeat and the conditions imposed on him. This was a case where Shakespeare's imagination ran away with him, sothat he drew a figure with which the destined pleasant ending would notharmonise. 

In the circumstances where we see the hero placed, his tragic trait, which is also his greatness, is fatal to him. To meet thesecircumstances something is required which a smaller man might havegiven, but which the hero cannot give. He errs, by action or omission;and his error, joining with other causes, brings on him ruin. This isalways so with Shakespeare. As we have seen, the idea of the tragic heroas a being destroyed simply and solely by external forces is quite aliento him; and not less so is the idea of the hero as contributing to hisdestruction only by acts in which we see no flaw. But the fatalimperfection or error, which is never absent, is of different kinds anddegrees. At one extreme stands the excess and precipitancy of Romeo, which scarcely, if at all, diminish our regard for him; at the other themurderous ambition of Richard III. In most cases the tragic errorinvolves no conscious breach of right; in some (_e. G. _ that of Brutus orOthello) it is accompanied by a full conviction of right. In Hamletthere is a painful consciousness that duty is being neglected; in Antonya clear knowledge that the worse of two courses is being pursued; butRichard and Macbeth are the only heroes who do what they themselvesrecognise to be villainous. It is important to observe that Shakespearedoes admit such heroes, [9] and also that he appears to feel, and exertshimself to meet, the difficulty that arises from their admission. Thedifficulty is that the spectator must desire their defeat and even theirdestruction; and yet this desire, and the satisfaction of it, are nottragic feelings. Shakespeare gives to Richard therefore a power whichexcites astonishment, and a courage which extorts admiration. He givesto Macbeth a similar, though less extraordinary, greatness, and adds toit a conscience so terrifying in its warnings and so maddening in itsreproaches that the spectacle of inward torment compels a horrifiedsympathy and awe which balance, at the least, the desire for the hero'sruin. 

The tragic hero with Shakespeare, then, need not be 'good, ' thoughgenerally he is 'good' and therefore at once wins sympathy in his error. But it is necessary that he should have so much of greatness that in hiserror and fall we may be vividly conscious of the possibilities of humannature. [10] Hence, in the first place, a Shakespearean tragedy is never, like some miscalled tragedies, depressing. No one ever closes the bookwith the feeling that man is a poor mean creature. He may be wretchedand he may be awful, but he is not small. His lot may be heart-rendingand mysterious, but it is not contemptible. The most confirmed of cynicsceases to be a cynic while he reads these plays. And with this greatnessof the tragic hero (which is not always confined to him) is connected, secondly, what I venture to describe as the centre of the tragicimpression. This central feeling is the impression of waste. WithShakespeare, at any rate, the pity and fear which are stirred by thetragic story seem to unite with, and even to merge in, a profound senseof sadness and mystery, which is due to this impression of waste. 'Whata piece of work is man, ' we cry; 'so much more beautiful and so muchmore terrible than we knew! Why should he be so if this beauty andgreatness only tortures itself and throws itself away?' We seem to havebefore us a type of the mystery of the whole world, the tragic factwhich extends far beyond the limits of tragedy. Everywhere, from thecrushed rocks beneath our feet to the soul of man, we see power, intelligence, life and glory, which astound us and seem to call for ourworship. And everywhere we see them perishing, devouring one another anddestroying themselves, often with dreadful pain, as though they cameinto being for no other end. Tragedy is the typical form of thismystery, because that greatness of soul which it exhibits oppressed, conflicting and destroyed, is the highest existence in our view. Itforces the mystery upon us, and it makes us realise so vividly the worthof that which is wasted that we cannot possibly seek comfort in thereflection that all is vanity. 

4

In this tragic world, then, where individuals, however great they may beand however decisive their actions may appear, are so evidently not theultimate power, what is this power? What account can we give of it whichwill correspond with the imaginative impressions we receive? This willbe our final question. 

The variety of the answers given to this question shows how difficult itis. And the difficulty has many sources. Most people, even among thosewho know Shakespeare well and come into real contact with his mind, areinclined to isolate and exaggerate some one aspect of the tragic fact. Some are so much influenced by their own habitual beliefs that theyimport them more or less into their interpretation of every author whois 'sympathetic' to them. And even where neither of these causes oferror appears to operate, another is present from which it is probablyimpossible wholly to escape. What I mean is this. Any answer we give tothe question proposed ought to correspond with, or to represent in termsof the understanding, our imaginative and emotional experience inreading the tragedies. We have, of course, to do our best by study andeffort to make this experience true to Shakespeare; but, that done tothe best of our ability, the experience is the matter to be interpreted, and the test by which the interpretation must be tried. But it isextremely hard to make out exactly what this experience is, because, inthe very effort to make it out, our reflecting mind, full of everydayideas, is always tending to transform it by the application of theseideas, and so to elicit a result which, instead of representing thefact, conventionalises it. And the consequence is not only mistakentheories; it is that many a man will declare that he feels in reading atragedy what he never really felt, while he fails to recognise what heactually did feel. It is not likely that we shall escape all thesedangers in our effort to find an answer to the question regarding thetragic world and the ultimate power in it. 

It will be agreed, however, first, that this question must not beanswered in 'religious' language. For although this or that _dramatispersona_ may speak of gods or of God, of evil spirits or of Satan, ofheaven and of hell, and although the poet may show us ghosts fromanother world, these ideas do not materially influence hisrepresentation of life, nor are they used to throw light on the mysteryof its tragedy. The Elizabethan drama was almost wholly secular; andwhile Shakespeare was writing he practically confined his view to theworld of non-theological observation and thought, so that he representsit substantially in one and the same way whether the period of the storyis pre-Christian or Christian. [11] He looked at this 'secular' worldmost intently and seriously; and he painted it, we cannot but conclude, with entire fidelity, without the wish to enforce an opinion of his own, and, in essentials, without regard to anyone's hopes, fears, or beliefs. His greatness is largely due to this fidelity in a mind of extraordinarypower; and if, as a private person, he had a religious faith, his tragicview can hardly have been in contradiction with this faith, but musthave been included in it, and supplemented, not abolished, by additionalideas. 

Two statements, next, may at once be made regarding the tragic fact ashe represents it: one, that it is and remains to us something piteous, fearful and mysterious; the other, that the representation of it doesnot leave us crushed, rebellious or desperate. These statements will beaccepted, I believe, by any reader who is in touch with Shakespeare'smind and can observe his own. Indeed such a reader is rather likely tocomplain that they are painfully obvious. But if they are true as wellas obvious, something follows from them in regard to our presentquestion. 

From the first it follows that the ultimate power in the tragic world isnot adequately described as a law or order which we can see to be justand benevolent, --as, in that sense, a 'moral order': for in that casethe spectacle of suffering and waste could not seem to us so fearful andmysterious as it does. And from the second it follows that this ultimatepower is not adequately described as a fate, whether malicious andcruel, or blind and indifferent to human happiness and goodness: for inthat case the spectacle would leave us desperate or rebellious. Yet oneor other of these two ideas will be found to govern most accounts ofShakespeare's tragic view or world. These accounts isolate andexaggerate single aspects, either the aspect of action or that ofsuffering; either the close and unbroken connection of character, will, deed and catastrophe, which, taken alone, shows the individual simply assinning against, or failing to conform to, the moral order and drawinghis just doom on his own head; or else that pressure of outward forces, that sway of accident, and those blind and agonised struggles, which, taken alone, show him as the mere victim of some power which caresneither for his sins nor for his pain. Such views contradict oneanother, and no third view can unite them; but the several aspects fromwhose isolation and exaggeration they spring are both present in thefact, and a view which would be true to the fact and to the whole of ourimaginative experience must in some way combine these aspects. 

Let us begin, then, with the idea of fatality and glance at some of theimpressions which give rise to it, without asking at present whetherthis idea is their natural or fitting expression. There can be no doubtthat they do arise and that they ought to arise. If we do not feel attimes that the hero is, in some sense, a doomed man; that he and othersdrift struggling to destruction like helpless creatures borne on anirresistible flood towards a cataract; that, faulty as they may be, their fault is far from being the sole or sufficient cause of all theysuffer; and that the power from which they cannot escape is relentlessand immovable, we have failed to receive an essential part of the fulltragic effect. 

The sources of these impressions are various, and I will refer only to afew. One of them is put into words by Shakespeare himself when he makesthe player-king in _Hamlet_ say:

 Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own;

'their ends' are the issues or outcomes of our thoughts, and these, saysthe speaker, are not our own. The tragic world is a world of action, andaction is the translation of thought into reality. We see men and womenconfidently attempting it. They strike into the existing order of thingsin pursuance of their ideas. But what they achieve is not what theyintended; it is terribly unlike it. They understand nothing, we say toourselves, of the world on which they operate. They fight blindly in thedark, and the power that works through them makes them the instrument ofa design which is not theirs. They act freely, and yet their actionbinds them hand and foot. And it makes no difference whether they meantwell or ill. No one could mean better than Brutus, but he contrivesmisery for his country and death for himself. No one could mean worsethan Iago, and he too is caught in the web he spins for others. Hamlet, recoiling from the rough duty of revenge, is pushed intoblood-guiltiness he never dreamed of, and forced at last on the revengehe could not will. His adversary's murders, and no less his adversary'sremorse, bring about the opposite of what they sought. Lear follows anold man's whim, half generous, half selfish; and in a moment it loosesall the powers of darkness upon him. Othello agonises over an emptyfiction, and, meaning to execute solemn justice, butchers innocence andstrangles love. They understand themselves no better than the worldabout them. Coriolanus thinks that his heart is iron, and it melts likesnow before a fire. Lady Macbeth, who thought she could dash out her ownchild's brains, finds herself hounded to death by the smell of astranger's blood. Her husband thinks that to gain a crown he would jumpthe life to come, and finds that the crown has brought him all thehorrors of that life. Everywhere, in this tragic world, man's thought, translated into act, is transformed into the opposite of itself. Hisact, the movement of a few ounces of matter in a moment of time, becomesa monstrous flood which spreads over a kingdom. And whatsoever he dreamsof doing, he achieves that which he least dreamed of, his owndestruction. 

All this makes us feel the blindness and helplessness of man. Yet byitself it would hardly suggest the idea of fate, because it shows man asin some degree, however slight, the cause of his own undoing. But otherimpressions come to aid it. It is aided by everything which makes usfeel that a man is, as we say, terribly unlucky; and of this there is, even in Shakespeare, not a little. Here come in some of the accidentsalready considered, Juliet's waking from her trance a minute too late, Desdemona's loss of her handkerchief at the only moment when the losswould have mattered, that insignificant delay which cost Cordelia'slife. Again, men act, no doubt, in accordance with their characters; butwhat is it that brings them just the one problem which is fatal to themand would be easy to another, and sometimes brings it to them just whenthey are least fitted to face it? How is it that Othello comes to be thecompanion of the one man in the world who is at once able enough, braveenough, and vile enough to ensnare him? By what strange fatality does ithappen that Lear has such daughters and Cordelia such sisters? Evencharacter itself contributes to these feelings of fatality. How couldmen escape, we cry, such vehement propensities as drive Romeo, Antony, Coriolanus, to their doom? And why is it that a man's virtues help todestroy him, and that his weakness or defect is so intertwined witheverything that is admirable in him that we can hardly separate themeven in imagination?

If we find in Shakespeare's tragedies the source of impressions likethese, it is important, on the other hand, to notice what we do _not_find there. We find practically no trace of fatalism in its moreprimitive, crude and obvious forms. Nothing, again, makes us think ofthe actions and sufferings of the persons as somehow arbitrarily fixedbeforehand without regard to their feelings, thoughts and resolutions. Nor, I believe, are the facts ever so presented that it seems to us asif the supreme power, whatever it may be, had a special spite against afamily or an individual. Neither, lastly, do we receive the impression(which, it must be observed, is not purely fatalistic) that a family, owing to some hideous crime or impiety in early days, is doomed in laterdays to continue a career of portentous calamities and sins. Shakespeare, indeed, does not appear to have taken much interest inheredity, or to have attached much importance to it. (See, however, 'heredity' in the Index. )

What, then, is this 'fate' which the impressions already considered leadus to describe as the ultimate power in the tragic world? It appears tobe a mythological expression for the whole system or order, of which theindividual characters form an inconsiderable and feeble part; whichseems to determine, far more than they, their native dispositions andtheir circumstances, and, through these, their action; which is so vastand complex that they can scarcely at all understand it or control itsworkings; and which has a nature so definite and fixed that whateverchanges take place in it produce other changes inevitably and withoutregard to men's desires and regrets. And whether this system or order isbest called by the name of fate or no, [12] it can hardly be denied thatit does appear as the ultimate power in the tragic world, and that ithas such characteristics as these. But the name 'fate' may be intendedto imply something more--to imply that this order is a blank necessity, totally regardless alike of human weal and of the difference betweengood and evil or right and wrong. And such an implication many readerswould at once reject. They would maintain, on the contrary, that thisorder shows characteristics of quite another kind from those which madeus give it the name of fate, characteristics which certainly should notinduce us to forget those others, but which would lead us to describe itas a moral order and its necessity as a moral necessity. 

5

Let us turn, then, to this idea. It brings into the light those aspectsof the tragic fact which the idea of fate throws into the shade. And theargument which leads to it in its simplest form may be stated brieflythus: 'Whatever may be said of accidents, circumstances and the like, human action is, after all, presented to us as the central fact intragedy, and also as the main cause of the catastrophe. That necessitywhich so much impresses us is, after all, chiefly the necessaryconnection of actions and consequences. For these actions we, withouteven raising a question on the subject, hold the agents responsible; andthe tragedy would disappear for us if we did not. The critical actionis, in greater or less degree, wrong or bad. The catastrophe is, in themain, the return of this action on the head of the agent. It is anexample of justice; and that order which, present alike within theagents and outside them, infallibly brings it about, is therefore just. The rigour of its justice is terrible, no doubt, for a tragedy is aterrible story; but, in spite of fear and pity, we acquiesce, becauseour sense of justice is satisfied. '

Now, if this view is to hold good, the 'justice' of which it speaks mustbe at once distinguished from what is called 'poetic justice. ' 'Poeticjustice' means that prosperity and adversity are distributed inproportion to the merits of the agents. Such 'poetic justice' is inflagrant contradiction with the facts of life, and it is absent fromShakespeare's tragic picture of life; indeed, this very absence is aground of constant complaint on the part of Dr. Johnson. [Greek:Drasanti pathein], 'the doer must suffer'--this we find in Shakespeare. We also find that villainy never remains victorious and prosperous atthe last. But an assignment of amounts of happiness and misery, anassignment even of life and death, in proportion to merit, we do notfind. No one who thinks of Desdemona and Cordelia; or who remembers thatone end awaits Richard III. And Brutus, Macbeth and Hamlet; or who askshimself which suffered most, Othello or Iago; will ever accuseShakespeare of representing the ultimate power as 'poetically' just. 

And we must go further. I venture to say that it is a mistake to use atall these terms of justice and merit or desert. And this for tworeasons. In the first place, essential as it is to recognise theconnection between act and consequence, and natural as it may seem insome cases (_e. G. _ Macbeth's) to say that the doer only gets what hedeserves, yet in very many cases to say this would be quite unnatural. We might not object to the statement that Lear deserved to suffer forhis folly, selfishness and tyranny; but to assert that he deserved tosuffer what he did suffer is to do violence not merely to language butto any healthy moral sense. It is, moreover, to obscure the tragic factthat the consequences of action cannot be limited to that which wouldappear to us to follow 'justly' from them. And, this being so, when wecall the order of the tragic world just, we are either using the word insome vague and unexplained sense, or we are going beyond what is shownus of this order, and are appealing to faith. 

But, in the second place, the ideas of justice and desert are, it seemsto me, in _all_ cases--even those of Richard III. And of Macbeth andLady Macbeth--untrue to our imaginative experience. When we are immersedin a tragedy, we feel towards dispositions, actions, and persons suchemotions as attraction and repulsion, pity, wonder, fear, horror, perhaps hatred; but we do not _judge_. This is a point of view whichemerges only when, in reading a play, we slip, by our own fault or thedramatist's, from the tragic position, or when, in thinking about theplay afterwards, we fall back on our everyday legal and moral notions. But tragedy does not belong, any more than religion belongs, to thesphere of these notions; neither does the imaginative attitude inpresence of it. While we are in its world we watch what is, seeing thatso it happened and must have happened, feeling that it is piteous, dreadful, awful, mysterious, but neither passing sentence on the agents, nor asking whether the behaviour of the ultimate power towards them isjust. And, therefore, the use of such language in attempts to render ourimaginative experience in terms of the understanding is, to say theleast, full of danger. [13]

Let us attempt then to re-state the idea that the ultimate power in thetragic world is a moral order. Let us put aside the ideas of justice andmerit, and speak simply of good and evil. Let us understand by thesewords, primarily, moral good and evil, but also everything else in humanbeings which we take to be excellent or the reverse. Let us understandthe statement that the ultimate power or order is 'moral' to mean thatit does not show itself indifferent to good and evil, or equallyfavourable or unfavourable to both, but shows itself akin to good andalien from evil. And, understanding the statement thus, let us ask whatgrounds it has in the tragic fact as presented by Shakespeare. 

Here, as in dealing with the grounds on which the idea of fate rests, Ichoose only two or three out of many. And the most important is this. InShakespearean tragedy the main source of the convulsion which producessuffering and death is never good: good contributes to this convulsiononly from its tragic implication with its opposite in one and the samecharacter. The main source, on the contrary, is in every case evil; and, what is more (though this seems to have been little noticed), it is inalmost every case evil in the fullest sense, not mere imperfection butplain moral evil. The love of Romeo and Juliet conducts them to deathonly because of the senseless hatred of their houses. Guilty ambition, seconded by diabolic malice and issuing in murder, opens the action in_Macbeth_. Iago is the main source of the convulsion in _Othello_;Goneril, Regan and Edmund in _King Lear_. Even when this plain moralevil is not the obviously prime source within the play, it lies behindit: the situation with which Hamlet has to deal has been formed byadultery and murder. _Julius Caesar_ is the only tragedy in which one iseven tempted to find an exception to this rule. And the inference isobvious. If it is chiefly evil that violently disturbs the order of theworld, this order cannot be friendly to evil or indifferent between eviland good, any more than a body which is convulsed by poison is friendlyto it or indifferent to the distinction between poison and food. 

Again, if we confine our attention to the hero, and to those cases wherethe gross and palpable evil is not in him but elsewhere, we find thatthe comparatively innocent hero still shows some marked imperfection ordefect, --irresolution, precipitancy, pride, credulousness, excessivesimplicity, excessive susceptibility to sexual emotions, and the like. These defects or imperfections are certainly, in the wide sense of theword, evil, and they contribute decisively to the conflict andcatastrophe. And the inference is again obvious. The ultimate powerwhich shows itself disturbed by this evil and reacts against it, musthave a nature alien to it. Indeed its reaction is so vehement and'relentless' that it would seem to be bent on nothing short of good inperfection, and to be ruthless in its demand for it. 

To this must be added another fact, or another aspect of the same fact. Evil exhibits itself everywhere as something negative, barren, weakening, destructive, a principle of death. It isolates, disunites, and tends to annihilate not only its opposite but itself. That whichkeeps the evil man[14] prosperous, makes him succeed, even permits himto exist, is the good in him (I do not mean only the obviously 'moral'good). When the evil in him masters the good and has its way, itdestroys other people through him, but it also destroys _him_. At theclose of the struggle he has vanished, and has left behind him nothingthat can stand. What remains is a family, a city, a country, exhausted, pale and feeble, but alive through the principle of good which animatesit; and, within it, individuals who, if they have not the brilliance orgreatness of the tragic character, still have won our respect andconfidence. And the inference would seem clear. If existence in an orderdepends on good, and if the presence of evil is hostile to suchexistence, the inner being or soul of this order must be akin to good. 

These are aspects of the tragic world at least as clearly marked asthose which, taken alone, suggest the idea of fate. And the idea whichthey in their turn, when taken alone, may suggest, is that of an orderwhich does not indeed award 'poetic justice, ' but which reacts throughthe necessity of its own 'moral' nature both against attacks made uponit and against failure to conform to it. Tragedy, on this view, is theexhibition of that convulsive reaction; and the fact that the spectacledoes not leave us rebellious or desperate is due to a more or lessdistinct perception that the tragic suffering and death arise fromcollision, not with a fate or blank power, but with a moral power, apower akin to all that we admire and revere in the charactersthemselves. This perception produces something like a feeling ofacquiescence in the catastrophe, though it neither leads us to passjudgment on the characters nor diminishes the pity, the fear, and thesense of waste, which their struggle, suffering and fall evoke. And, finally, this view seems quite able to do justice to those aspects ofthe tragic fact which give rise to the idea of fate. They would appearas various expressions of the fact that the moral order acts notcapriciously or like a human being, but from the necessity of itsnature, or, if we prefer the phrase, by general laws, --a necessity orlaw which of course knows no exception and is as 'ruthless' as fate. 

It is impossible to deny to this view a large measure of truth. And yetwithout some amendment it can hardly satisfy. For it does not includethe whole of the facts, and therefore does not wholly correspond withthe impressions they produce. Let it be granted that the system or orderwhich shows itself omnipotent against individuals is, in the senseexplained, moral. Still--at any rate for the eye of sight--the evilagainst which it asserts itself, and the persons whom this evilinhabits, are not really something outside the order, so that they canattack it or fail to conform to it; they are within it and a part of it. It itself produces them, --produces Iago as well as Desdemona, Iago'scruelty as well as Iago's courage. It is not poisoned, it poisonsitself. Doubtless it shows by its violent reaction that the poison _is_poison, and that its health lies in good. But one significant factcannot remove another, and the spectacle we witness scarcely warrantsthe assertion that the order is responsible for the good in Desdemona, but Iago for the evil in Iago. If we make this assertion we make it ongrounds other than the facts as presented in Shakespeare's tragedies. 

Nor does the idea of a moral order asserting itself against attack orwant of conformity answer in full to our feelings regarding the tragiccharacter. We do not think of Hamlet merely as failing to meet itsdemand, of Antony as merely sinning against it, or even of Macbeth assimply attacking it. What we feel corresponds quite as much to the ideathat they are _its_ parts, expressions, products; that in their defector evil _it_ is untrue to its soul of goodness, and falls into conflictand collision with itself; that, in making them suffer and wastethemselves, _it_ suffers and wastes itself; and that when, to save itslife and regain peace from this intestinal struggle, it casts them out, it has lost a part of its own substance, --a part more dangerous andunquiet, but far more valuable and nearer to its heart, than that whichremains, --a Fortinbras, a Malcolm, an Octavius. There is no tragedy inits expulsion of evil: the tragedy is that this involves the waste ofgood. 

Thus we are left at last with an idea showing two sides or aspects whichwe can neither separate nor reconcile. The whole or order against whichthe individual part shows itself powerless seems to be animated by apassion for perfection: we cannot otherwise explain its behaviourtowards evil. Yet it appears to engender this evil within itself, and inits effort to overcome and expel it it is agonised with pain, and drivento mutilate its own substance and to lose not only evil but pricelessgood. That this idea, though very different from the idea of a blankfate, is no solution of the riddle of life is obvious; but why should weexpect it to be such a solution? Shakespeare was not attempting tojustify the ways of God to men, or to show the universe as a DivineComedy. He was writing tragedy, and tragedy would not be tragedy if itwere not a painful mystery. Nor can he be said even to point distinctly, like some writers of tragedy, in any direction where a solution mightlie. We find a few references to gods or God, to the influence of thestars, to another life: some of them certainly, all of them perhaps, merely dramatic--appropriate to the person from whose lips they fall. Aghost comes from Purgatory to impart a secret out of the reach of itshearer--who presently meditates on the question whether the sleep ofdeath is dreamless. Accidents once or twice remind us strangely of thewords, 'There's a divinity that shapes our ends. ' More important areother impressions. Sometimes from the very furnace of affliction aconviction seems borne to us that somehow, if we could see it, thisagony counts as nothing against the heroism and love which appear in itand thrill our hearts. Sometimes we are driven to cry out that thesemighty or heavenly spirits who perish are too great for the little spacein which they move, and that they vanish not into nothingness but intofreedom. Sometimes from these sources and from others comes apresentiment, formless but haunting and even profound, that all the furyof conflict, with its waste and woe, is less than half the truth, evenan illusion, 'such stuff as dreams are made on. ' But these faint andscattered intimations that the tragic world, being but a fragment of awhole beyond our vision, must needs be a contradiction and no ultimatetruth, avail nothing to interpret the mystery. We remain confronted withthe inexplicable fact, or the no less inexplicable appearance, of aworld travailing for perfection, but bringing to birth, together withglorious good, an evil which it is able to overcome only by self-tortureand self-waste. And this fact or appearance is tragedy. [15]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: _Julius Caesar_ is not an exception to this rule. Caesar, whose murder comes in the Third Act, is in a sense the dominating figurein the story, but Brutus is the 'hero. ']

[Footnote 2: _Timon of Athens_, we have seen, was probably not designedby Shakespeare, but even _Timon_ is no exception to the rule. Thesub-plot is concerned with Alcibiades and his army, and Timon himself istreated by the Senate as a man of great importance. _Arden of Feversham_and _A Yorkshire Tragedy_ would certainly be exceptions to the rule; butI assume that neither of them is Shakespeare's; and if either is, itbelongs to a different species from his admitted tragedies. See, on thisspecies, Symonds, _Shakspere's Predecessors_, ch. Xi. ]

[Footnote 3: Even a deed would, I think, be counted an 'accident, ' if itwere the deed of a very minor person whose character had not beenindicated; because such a deed would not issue from the little world towhich the dramatist had confined our attention. ]

[Footnote 4: Comedy stands in a different position. The tricks played bychance often form a principal part of the comic action. ]

[Footnote 5: It may be observed that the influence of the three elementsjust considered is to strengthen the tendency, produced by thesufferings considered first, to regard the tragic persons as passiverather than as agents. ]

[Footnote 6: An account of Hegel's view may be found in _Oxford Lectureson Poetry_. ]

[Footnote 7: The reader, however, will find considerable difficulty inplacing some very important characters in these and other plays. I willgive only two or three illustrations. Edgar is clearly not on the sameside as Edmund, and yet it seems awkward to range him on Gloster's sidewhen Gloster wishes to put him to death. Ophelia is in love with Hamlet, but how can she be said to be of Hamlet's party against the King andPolonius, or of their party against Hamlet? Desdemona worships Othello, yet it sounds odd to say that Othello is on the same side with a personwhom he insults, strikes and murders. ]

[Footnote 8: I have given names to the 'spiritual forces' in _Macbeth_merely to illustrate the idea, and without any pretension to adequacy. Perhaps, in view of some interpretations of Shakespeare's plays, it willbe as well to add that I do not dream of suggesting that in any of hisdramas Shakespeare imagined two abstract principles or passionsconflicting, and incorporated them in persons; or that there is anynecessity for a reader to define for himself the particular forces whichconflict in a given case. ]

[Footnote 9: Aristotle apparently would exclude them. ]

[Footnote 10: Richard II. Is perhaps an exception, and I must confessthat to me he is scarcely a tragic character, and that, if he isnevertheless a tragic figure, he is so only because his fall fromprosperity to adversity is so great. ]

[Footnote 11: I say substantially; but the concluding remarks on_Hamlet_ will modify a little the statements above. ]

[Footnote 12: I have raised no objection to the use of the idea of fate, because it occurs so often both in conversation and in books aboutShakespeare's tragedies that I must suppose it to be natural to manyreaders. Yet I doubt whether it would be so if Greek tragedy had neverbeen written; and I must in candour confess that to me it does not oftenoccur while I am reading, or when I have just read, a tragedy ofShakespeare. Wordsworth's lines, for example, about

 poor humanity's afflicted will Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny

do not represent the impression I receive; much less do images whichcompare man to a puny creature helpless in the claws of a bird of prey. The reader should examine himself closely on this matter. ]

[Footnote 13: It is dangerous, I think, in reference to all really goodtragedies, but I am dealing here only with Shakespeare's. In not a fewGreek tragedies it is almost inevitable that we should think of justiceand retribution, not only because the _dramatis personae_ often speak ofthem, but also because there is something casuistical about the tragicproblem itself. The poet treats the story in such a way that thequestion, Is the hero doing right or wrong? is almost forced upon us. But this is not so with Shakespeare. _Julius Caesar_ is probably theonly one of his tragedies in which the question suggests itself to us, and this is one of the reasons why that play has something of a classicair. Even here, if we ask the question, we have no doubt at all aboutthe answer. ]

[Footnote 14: It is most essential to remember that an evil man is muchmore than the evil in him. I may add that in this paragraph I have, forthe sake of clearness, considered evil in its most pronounced form; butwhat is said would apply, _mutatis mutandis_, to evil as imperfection, etc. ]

[Footnote 15: Partly in order not to anticipate later passages, Iabstained from treating fully here the question why we feel, at thedeath of the tragic hero, not only pain but also reconciliation andsometimes even exultation. As I cannot at present make good this defect, I would ask the reader to refer to the word _Reconciliation_ in theIndex. See also, in _Oxford Lectures on Poetry_, _Hegel's Theory ofTragedy_, especially pp. 90, 91. ]

LECTURE II

CONSTRUCTION IN SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIES

Having discussed the substance of a Shakespearean tragedy, we shouldnaturally go on to examine the form. And under this head many thingsmight be included; for example, Shakespeare's methods ofcharacterisation, his language, his versification, the construction ofhis plots. I intend, however, to speak only of the last of thesesubjects, which has been somewhat neglected;[16] and, as construction isa more or less technical matter, I shall add some general remarks onShakespeare as an artist. 

1

As a Shakespearean tragedy represents a conflict which terminates in acatastrophe, any such tragedy may roughly be divided into three parts. The first of these sets forth or expounds the situation, [17] or state ofaffairs, out of which the conflict arises; and it may, therefore, becalled the Exposition. The second deals with the definite beginning, thegrowth and the vicissitudes of the conflict. It forms accordingly thebulk of the play, comprising the Second, Third and Fourth Acts, andusually a part of the First and a part of the Fifth. The final sectionof the tragedy shows the issue of the conflict in a catastrophe. [18]

The application of this scheme of division is naturally more or lessarbitrary. The first part glides into the second, and the second intothe third, and there may often be difficulty in drawing the linesbetween them. But it is still harder to divide spring from summer, andsummer from autumn; and yet spring is spring, and summer summer. 

The main business of the Exposition, which we will consider first, is tointroduce us into a little world of persons; to show us their positionsin life, their circumstances, their relations to one another, andperhaps something of their characters; and to leave us keenly interestedin the question what will come out of this condition of things. We areleft thus expectant, not merely because some of the persons interest usat once, but also because their situation in regard to one anotherpoints to difficulties in the future. This situation is not one ofconflict, [19] but it threatens conflict. For example, we see first thehatred of the Montagues and Capulets; and then we see Romeo ready tofall violently in love; and then we hear talk of a marriage betweenJuliet and Paris; but the exposition is not complete, and the conflicthas not definitely begun to arise, till, in the last scene of the FirstAct, Romeo the Montague sees Juliet the Capulet and becomes her slave. 

The dramatist's chief difficulty in the exposition is obvious, and it isillustrated clearly enough in the plays of unpractised writers; forexample, in _Remorse_, and even in _The Cenci_. He has to impart to theaudience a quantity of information about matters of which they generallyknow nothing and never know all that is necessary for his purpose. [20]But the process of merely acquiring information is unpleasant, and thedirect imparting of it is undramatic. Unless he uses a prologue, therefore, he must conceal from his auditors the fact that they arebeing informed, and must tell them what he wants them to know by meanswhich are interesting on their own account. These means, withShakespeare, are not only speeches but actions and events. From the verybeginning of the play, though the conflict has not arisen, things arehappening and being done which in some degree arrest, startle, andexcite; and in a few scenes we have mastered the situation of affairswithout perceiving the dramatist's designs upon us. Not that this isalways so with Shakespeare. In the opening scene of his early _Comedy ofErrors_, and in the opening speech of _Richard III. _, we feel that thespeakers are addressing us; and in the second scene of the _Tempest_(for Shakespeare grew at last rather negligent of technique) the purposeof Prospero's long explanation to Miranda is palpable. But in generalShakespeare's expositions are masterpieces. [21]

His usual plan in tragedy is to begin with a short scene, or part of ascene, either full of life and stir, or in some other way arresting. Then, having secured a hearing, he proceeds to conversations at a lowerpitch, accompanied by little action but conveying much information. Forexample, _Romeo and Juliet_ opens with a street-fight, _Julius Caesar_and _Coriolanus_ with a crowd in commotion; and when this excitement hashad its effect on the audience, there follow quiet speeches, in whichthe cause of the excitement, and so a great part of the situation, aredisclosed. In _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_ this scheme is employed with greatboldness. In _Hamlet_ the first appearance of the Ghost occurs at thefortieth line, and with such effect that Shakespeare can afford tointroduce at once a conversation which explains part of the state ofaffairs at Elsinore; and the second appearance, having again increasedthe tension, is followed by a long scene, which contains no action butintroduces almost all the _dramatis personae_ and adds the informationleft wanting. The opening of _Macbeth_ is even more remarkable, forthere is probably no parallel to its first scene, where the senses andimagination are assaulted by a storm of thunder and supernatural alarm. This scene is only eleven lines long, but its influence is so great thatthe next can safely be occupied with a mere report of Macbeth'sbattles, --a narrative which would have won much less attention if it hadopened the play. 

When Shakespeare begins his exposition thus he generally at first makespeople talk about the hero, but keeps the hero himself for some time outof sight, so that we await his entrance with curiosity, and sometimeswith anxiety. On the other hand, if the play opens with a quietconversation, this is usually brief, and then at once the hero entersand takes action of some decided kind. Nothing, for example, can be lesslike the beginning of _Macbeth_ than that of _King Lear_. The tone ispitched so low that the conversation between Kent, Gloster, and Edmundis written in prose. But at the thirty-fourth line it is broken off bythe entrance of Lear and his court, and without delay the King proceedsto his fatal division of the kingdom. 

This tragedy illustrates another practice of Shakespeare's. _King Lear_has a secondary plot, that which concerns Gloster and his two sons. Tomake the beginning of this plot quite clear, and to mark it off from themain action, Shakespeare gives it a separate exposition. The great sceneof the division of Britain and the rejection of Cordelia and Kent isfollowed by the second scene, in which Gloster and his two sons appearalone, and the beginning of Edmund's design is disclosed. In _Hamlet_, though the plot is single, there is a little group of characterspossessing a certain independent interest, --Polonius, his son, and hisdaughter; and so the third scene is devoted wholly to them. And again, in _Othello_, since Roderigo is to occupy a peculiar position almostthroughout the action, he is introduced at once, alone with Iago, andhis position is explained before the other characters are allowed toappear. 

But why should Iago open the play? Or, if this seems too presumptuous aquestion, let us put it in the form, What is the effect of his openingthe play? It is that we receive at the very outset a strong impressionof the force which is to prove fatal to the hero's happiness, so that, when we see the hero himself, the shadow of fate already rests upon him. And an effect of this kind is to be noticed in other tragedies. We aremade conscious at once of some power which is to influence the wholeaction to the hero's undoing. In _Macbeth_ we see and hear the Witches, in _Hamlet_ the Ghost. In the first scene of _Julius Caesar_ and of_Coriolanus_ those qualities of the crowd are vividly shown which renderhopeless the enterprise of the one hero and wreck the ambition of theother. It is the same with the hatred between the rival houses in _Romeoand Juliet_, and with Antony's infatuated passion. We realise them atthe end of the first page, and are almost ready to regard the hero asdoomed. Often, again, at one or more points during the exposition thisfeeling is reinforced by some expression that has an ominous effect. Thefirst words we hear from Macbeth, 'So foul and fair a day I have notseen, ' echo, though he knows it not, the last words we heard from theWitches, 'Fair is foul, and foul is fair. ' Romeo, on his way with hisfriends to the banquet, where he is to see Juliet for the first time, tells Mercutio that he has had a dream. What the dream was we neverlearn, for Mercutio does not care to know, and breaks into his speechabout Queen Mab; but we can guess its nature from Romeo's last speech inthe scene:

 My mind misgives Some consequence yet hanging in the stars Shall bitterly begin his fearful date With this night's revels. 

When Brabantio, forced to acquiesce in his daughter's stolen marriage, turns, as he leaves the council-chamber, to Othello, with the warning, Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see; She has deceived her father, and may thee, this warning, and no less Othello's answer, 'My life upon her faith, 'make our hearts sink. The whole of the coming story seems to beprefigured in Antony's muttered words (I. Ii. 120):

 These strong Egyptian fetters I must break, Or lose myself in dotage;

and, again, in Hamlet's weary sigh, following so soon on the passionateresolution stirred by the message of the Ghost:

 The time is out of joint. Oh cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right. 

These words occur at a point (the end of the First Act) which may beheld to fall either within the exposition or beyond it. I should takethe former view, though such questions, as we saw at starting, canhardly be decided with certainty. The dimensions of this first sectionof a tragedy depend on a variety of causes, of which the chief seems tobe the comparative simplicity or complexity of the situation from whichthe conflict arises. Where this is simple the exposition is short, as in_Julius Caesar_ and _Macbeth_. Where it is complicated the expositionrequires more space, as in _Romeo and Juliet_, _Hamlet_, and _KingLear_. Its completion is generally marked in the mind of the reader by afeeling that the action it contains is for the moment complete but hasleft a problem. The lovers have met, but their families are at deadlyenmity; the hero seems at the height of success, but has admitted thethought of murdering his sovereign; the old king has divided his kingdombetween two hypocritical daughters, and has rejected his true child; thehero has acknowledged a sacred duty of revenge, but is weary of life:and we ask, What will come of this? Sometimes, I may add, a certain timeis supposed to elapse before the events which answer our question maketheir appearance and the conflict begins; in _King Lear_, for instance, about a fortnight; in _Hamlet_ about two months. 

2

We come now to the conflict itself. And here one or two preliminaryremarks are necessary. In the first place, it must be remembered thatour point of view in examining the construction of a play will notalways coincide with that which we occupy in thinking of its wholedramatic effect. For example, that struggle in the hero's soul whichsometimes accompanies the outward struggle is of the highest importancefor the total effect of a tragedy; but it is not always necessary ordesirable to consider it when the question is merely one ofconstruction. And this is natural. The play is meant primarily for thetheatre; and theatrically the outward conflict, with its influence onthe fortunes of the hero, is the aspect which first catches, if it doesnot engross, attention. For the average play-goer of every period themain interest of _Hamlet_ has probably lain in the vicissitudes of hislong duel with the King; and the question, one may almost say, has beenwhich will first kill the other. And so, from the point of view ofconstruction, the fact that Hamlet spares the King when he finds himpraying, is, from its effect on the hero's fortunes, of great moment;but the cause of the fact, which lies within Hamlet's character, is notso. 

In the second place we must be prepared to find that, as the plays varyso much, no single way of regarding the conflict will answer preciselyto the construction of all; that it sometimes appears possible to lookat the construction of a tragedy in two quite different ways, and thatit is material to find the best of the two; and that thus, in any giveninstance, it is necessary first to define the opposing sides in theconflict. I will give one or two examples. In some tragedies, as we sawin our first lecture, the opposing forces can, for practical purposes, be identified with opposing persons or groups. So it is in _Romeo andJuliet_ and _Macbeth_. But it is not always so. The love of Othello maybe said to contend with another force, as the love of Romeo does; butOthello cannot be said to contend with Iago as Romeo contends with therepresentatives of the hatred of the houses, or as Macbeth contends withMalcolm and Macduff. Again, in _Macbeth_ the hero, however muchinfluenced by others, supplies the main driving power of the action; butin _King Lear_ he does not. Possibly, therefore, the conflict, and withit the construction, may best be regarded from different points of viewin these two plays, in spite of the fact that the hero is the centralfigure in each. But if we do not observe this we shall attempt to findthe same scheme in both, and shall either be driven to some unnaturalview or to a sceptical despair of perceiving any principle ofconstruction at all. 

With these warnings, I turn to the question whether we can trace anydistinct method or methods by which Shakespeare represents the rise anddevelopment of the conflict. 

(1) One at least is obvious, and indeed it is followed not merely duringthe conflict but from beginning to end of the play. There are, ofcourse, in the action certain places where the tension in the minds ofthe audience becomes extreme. We shall consider these presently. But, inaddition, there is, all through the tragedy, a constant alternation ofrises and falls in this tension or in the emotional pitch of the work, aregular sequence of more exciting and less exciting sections. Some kindof variation of pitch is to be found, of course, in all drama, for itrests on the elementary facts that relief must be given after emotionalstrain, and that contrast is required to bring out the full force of aneffect. But a good drama of our own time shows nothing approaching tothe _regularity_ with which in the plays of Shakespeare and of hiscontemporaries the principle is applied. And the main cause of thisdifference lies simply in a change of theatrical arrangements. InShakespeare's theatre, as there was no scenery, scene followed scenewith scarcely any pause; and so the readiest, though not the only, wayto vary the emotional pitch was to interpose a whole scene where thetension was low between scenes where it was high. In our theatres thereis a great deal of scenery, which takes a long time to set and change;and therefore the number of scenes is small, and the variations oftension have to be provided within the scenes, and still more by thepauses between them. With Shakespeare there are, of course, in any longscene variations of tension, but the scenes are numerous and, comparedwith ours, usually short, and variety is given principally by theirdifference in pitch. 

It may further be observed that, in a portion of the play which isrelatively unexciting, the scenes of lower tension may be as long asthose of higher; while in a portion of the play which is speciallyexciting the scenes of low tension are shorter, often much shorter, thanthe others. The reader may verify this statement by comparing the Firstor the Fourth Act in most of the tragedies with the Third; for, speakingvery roughly, we may say that the First and Fourth are relatively quietacts, the Third highly critical. A good example is the Third Act of_King Lear_, where the scenes of high tension (ii. , iv. , vi. ) arerespectively 95, 186 and 122 lines in length, while those of low tension(i. , iii. , v. ) are respectively 55, 26 and 26 lines long. Scene vii. , the last of the Act, is, I may add, a very exciting scene, though itfollows scene vi. , and therefore the tone of scene vi. Is greatlylowered during its final thirty lines. 

(2) If we turn now from the differences of tension to the sequence ofevents within the conflict, we shall find the principle of alternationat work again in another and a quite independent way. Let us for thesake of brevity call the two sides in the conflict A and B. Now, usually, as we shall see presently, through a considerable part of theplay, perhaps the first half, the cause of A is, on the whole, advancing; and through the remaining part it is retiring, while that ofB advances in turn. But, underlying this broad movement, all through theconflict we shall find a regular alternation of smaller advances andretirals; first A seeming to win some ground, and then thecounter-action of B being shown. And since we always more or lessdecidedly prefer A to B or B to A, the result of this oscillatingmovement is a constant alternation of hope and fear, or rather of amixed state predominantly hopeful and a mixed state predominantlyapprehensive. An example will make the point clear. In _Hamlet_ theconflict begins with the hero's feigning to be insane fromdisappointment in love, and we are shown his immediate success inconvincing Polonius. Let us call this an advance of A. The next sceneshows the King's great uneasiness about Hamlet's melancholy, and hisscepticism as to Polonius's explanation of its cause: advance of B. Hamlet completely baffles Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who have beensent to discover his secret, and he arranges for the test of theplay-scene: advance of A. But immediately before the play-scene hissoliloquy on suicide fills us with misgiving; and his words to Ophelia, overheard, so convince the King that love is _not_ the cause of hisnephew's strange behaviour, that he determines to get rid of him bysending him to England: advance of B. The play-scene proves a completesuccess: decided advance of A. Directly after it Hamlet spares the Kingat prayer, and in an interview with his mother unwittingly killsPolonius, and so gives his enemy a perfect excuse for sending him away(to be executed): decided advance of B. I need not pursue theillustration further. This oscillating movement can be traced withoutdifficulty in any of the tragedies, though less distinctly in one or twoof the earliest. 

(3) Though this movement continues right up to the catastrophe, itseffect does not disguise that much broader effect to which I havealready alluded, and which we have now to study. In all the tragedies, though more clearly in some than in others, one side is distinctly feltto be on the whole advancing up to a certain point in the conflict, andthen to be on the whole declining before the reaction of the other. There is therefore felt to be a critical point in the action, whichproves also to be a turning point. It is critical sometimes in the sensethat, until it is reached, the conflict is not, so to speak, clenched;one of the two sets of forces might subside, or a reconciliation mightsomehow be effected; while, as soon as it is reached, we feel this canno longer be. It is critical also because the advancing force hasapparently asserted itself victoriously, gaining, if not all it couldwish, still a very substantial advantage; whereas really it is on thepoint of turning downward towards its fall. This Crisis, as a rule, comes somewhere near the middle of the play; and where it is well markedit has the effect, as to construction, of dividing the play into fiveparts instead of three; these parts showing (1) a situation not yet oneof conflict, (2) the rise and development of the conflict, in which A orB advances on the whole till it reaches (3) the Crisis, on which follows(4) the decline of A or B towards (5) the Catastrophe. And it will beseen that the fourth and fifth parts repeat, though with a reversal ofdirection as regards A or B, the movement of the second and third, working towards the catastrophe as the second and third worked towardsthe crisis. 

In developing, illustrating and qualifying this statement, it will bebest to begin with the tragedies in which the movement is most clear andsimple. These are _Julius Caesar_ and _Macbeth_. In the former thefortunes of the conspiracy rise with vicissitudes up to the crisis ofthe assassination (III. I. ); they then sink with vicissitudes to thecatastrophe, where Brutus and Cassius perish. In the latter, Macbeth, hurrying, in spite of much inward resistance, to the murder of Duncan, attains the crown, the upward movement being extraordinarily rapid, andthe crisis arriving early: his cause then turns slowly downward, andsoon hastens to ruin. In both these tragedies the simplicity of theconstructional effect, it should be noticed, depends in part on the factthat the contending forces may quite naturally be identified withcertain persons, and partly again on the fact that the defeat of oneside is the victory of the other. Octavius and Antony, Malcolm andMacduff, are left standing over the bodies of their foes. 

This is not so in _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Hamlet_, because here, although the hero perishes, the side opposed to him, being the morefaulty or evil, cannot be allowed to triumph when he falls. Otherwisethe type of construction is the same. The fortunes of Romeo and Julietrise and culminate in their marriage (II. Vi. ), and then begin todecline before the opposition of their houses, which, aided byaccidents, produces a catastrophe, but is thereupon converted into aremorseful reconciliation. Hamlet's cause reaches its zenith in thesuccess of the play-scene (III. Ii. ). Thereafter the reaction makes way, and he perishes through the plot of the King and Laertes. But they arenot allowed to survive their success. 

The construction in the remaining Roman plays follows the same plan, butin both plays (as in _Richard II. _ and _Richard III. _) it suffers fromthe intractable nature of the historical material, and is alsoinfluenced by other causes. In _Coriolanus_ the hero reaches the topmostpoint of success when he is named consul (II. Iii. ), and the rest of theplay shows his decline and fall; but in this decline he attains againfor a time extraordinary power, and triumphs, in a sense, over hisoriginal adversary, though he succumbs to another. In _Antony andCleopatra_ the advance of the hero's cause depends on his freeinghimself from the heroine, and he appears to have succeeded when hebecomes reconciled to Octavius and marries Octavia (III. Ii. ); but hereturns to Egypt and is gradually driven to his death, which involvesthat of the heroine. 

There remain two of the greatest of the tragedies, and in both of them acertain difficulty will be felt. _King Lear_ alone among these plays hasa distinct double action. Besides this, it is impossible, I think, fromthe point of view of construction, to regard the hero as the leadingfigure. If we attempt to do so, we must either find the crisis in theFirst Act (for after it Lear's course is downward), and this is absurd;or else we must say that the usual movement is present but its directionis reversed, the hero's cause first sinking to the lowest point (in theStorm-scenes) and then rising again. But this also will not do; forthough his fortunes may be said to rise again for a time, they rise onlyto fall once more to a catastrophe. The truth is, that after the FirstAct, which is really filled by the exposition, Lear suffers but hardlyinitiates action at all; and the right way to look at the matter, _fromthe point of view of construction_, is to regard Goneril, Regan andEdmund as the leading characters. It is they who, in the conflict, initiate action. Their fortune mounts to the crisis, where the old Kingis driven out into the storm and loses his reason, and where Gloster isblinded and expelled from his home (III. Vi. And vii. ). Then thecounter-action begins to gather force, and their cause to decline; and, although they win the battle, they are involved in the catastrophe whichthey bring on Cordelia and Lear. Thus we may still find in _King Lear_the usual scheme of an ascending and a descending movement of one sidein the conflict. 

The case of _Othello_ is more peculiar. In its whole constructionaleffect _Othello_ differs from the other tragedies, and the cause of thisdifference is not hard to find, and will be mentioned presently. Buthow, after it is found, are we to define the principle of theconstruction? On the one hand the usual method seems to show itself. Othello's fortune certainly advances in the early part of the play, andit may be considered to reach its topmost point in the exquisite joy ofhis reunion with Desdemona in Cyprus; while soon afterwards it begins toturn, and then falls to the catastrophe. But the topmost point thuscomes very early (II. I. ), and, moreover, is but faintly marked; indeed, it is scarcely felt as a crisis at all. And, what is still moresignificant, though reached by conflict, it is not reached by conflictwith the force which afterwards destroys it. Iago, in the early scenes, is indeed shown to cherish a design against Othello, but it is not Iagoagainst whom he has at first to assert himself, but Brabantio; and Iagodoes not even begin to poison his mind until the third scene of theThird Act. 

Can we then, on the other hand, following the precedent of _King Lear_, and remembering the probable chronological juxtaposition of the twoplays, regard Iago as the leading figure from the point of view ofconstruction? This might at first seem the right view; for it is thecase that _Othello_ resembles _King Lear_ in having a hero more actedupon than acting, or rather a hero driven to act by being acted upon. But then, if Iago is taken as the leading figure, the usual mode ofconstruction is plainly abandoned, for there will nowhere be a crisisfollowed by a descending movement. Iago's cause advances, at firstslowly and quietly, then rapidly, but it does nothing but advance untilthe catastrophe swallows his dupe and him together. And this way ofregarding the action does positive violence, I think, to our naturalimpressions of the earlier part of the play. 

I think, therefore, that the usual scheme is so far followed that thedrama represents first the rise of the hero, and then his fall. But, however this question may be decided, one striking peculiarity remains, and is the cause of the unique effect of _Othello_. In the first half ofthe play the main conflict is merely incubating; then it bursts intolife, and goes storming, without intermission or change of direction, toits close. Now, in this peculiarity _Othello_ is quite unlike the othertragedies; and in the consequent effect, which is that the second halfof the drama is immeasurably more exciting than the first, it isapproached only by _Antony and Cleopatra_. I shall therefore reserve itfor separate consideration, though in proceeding to speak further ofShakespeare's treatment of the tragic conflict I shall have to mentionsome devices which are used in _Othello_ as well as in the othertragedies. 

3

Shakespeare's general plan, we have seen, is to show one set of forcesadvancing, in secret or open opposition to the other, to some decisivesuccess, and then driven downward to defeat by the reaction it provokes. And the advantages of this plan, as seen in such a typical instance as_Julius Caesar_, are manifest. It conveys the movement of the conflictto the mind with great clearness and force. It helps to produce theimpression that in his decline and fall the doer's act is returning onhis own head. And, finally, as used by Shakespeare, it makes the firsthalf of the play intensely interesting and dramatic. Action whicheffects a striking change in an existing situation is naturally watchedwith keen interest; and this we find in some of these tragedies. And thespectacle, which others exhibit, of a purpose forming itself and, inspite of outward obstacles and often of inward resistance, forcing itsway onward to a happy consummation or a terrible deed, not only givesscope to that psychological subtlety in which Shakespeare is scarcelyrivalled, but is also dramatic in the highest degree. 

But when the crisis has been reached there come difficulties anddangers, which, if we put Shakespeare for the moment out of mind, areeasily seen. An immediate and crushing counter-action would, no doubt, sustain the interest, but it would precipitate the catastrophe, andleave a feeling that there has been too long a preparation for a finaleffect so brief. What seems necessary is a momentary pause, followed bya counter-action which mounts at first slowly, and afterwards, as itgathers force, with quickening speed. And yet the result of thisarrangement, it would seem, must be, for a time, a decided slackening oftension. Nor is this the only difficulty. The persons who represent thecounter-action and now take the lead, are likely to be comparativelyunfamiliar, and therefore unwelcome, to the audience; and, even iffamiliar, they are almost sure to be at first, if not permanently, lessinteresting than those who figured in the ascending movement, and onwhom attention has been fixed. Possibly, too, their necessary prominencemay crowd the hero into the back-ground. Hence the point of danger inthis method of construction seems to lie in that section of the playwhich follows the crisis and has not yet approached the catastrophe. Andthis section will usually comprise the Fourth Act, together, in somecases, with a part of the Third and a part of the Fifth. 

Shakespeare was so masterly a playwright, and had so wonderful a powerof giving life to unpromising subjects, that to a large extent he wasable to surmount this difficulty. But illustrations of it are easily tobe found in his tragedies, and it is not always surmounted. In almostall of them we are conscious of that momentary pause in the action, though, as we shall see, it does not generally occur _immediately_ afterthe crisis. Sometimes he allows himself to be driven to keep the herooff the stage for a long time while the counter-action is rising;Macbeth, Hamlet and Coriolanus during about 450 lines, Lear for nearly500, Romeo for about 550 (it matters less here, because Juliet is quiteas important as Romeo). How can a drama in which this happens compete, in its latter part, with _Othello_? And again, how can deliberationsbetween Octavius, Antony and Lepidus, between Malcolm and Macduff, between the Capulets, between Laertes and the King, keep us at thepitch, I do not say of the crisis, but even of the action which led upto it? Good critics--writers who have criticised Shakespeare's dramasfrom within, instead of applying to them some standard ready-made bythemselves or derived from dramas and a theatre of quite other kindsthan his--have held that some of his greatest tragedies fall off in theFourth Act, and that one or two never wholly recover themselves. And Ibelieve most readers would find, if they examined their impressions, that to their minds _Julius Caesar_, _Hamlet_, _King Lear_ and _Macbeth_have all a tendency to 'drag' in this section of the play, and that thefirst and perhaps also the last of these four fail even in thecatastrophe to reach the height of the greatest scenes that havepreceded the Fourth Act. I will not ask how far these impressions arejustified. The difficulties in question will become clearer and willgain in interest if we look rather at the means which have been employedto meet them, and which certainly have in part, at least, overcome them. 

(_a_) The first of these is always strikingly effective, sometimesmarvellously so. The crisis in which the ascending force reaches itszenith is followed quickly, or even without the slightest pause, by areverse or counter-blow not less emphatic and in some cases even moreexciting. And the effect is to make us feel a sudden and tragic changein the direction of the movement, which, after ascending more or lessgradually, now turns sharply downward. To the assassination of Caesar(III. I. ) succeeds the scene in the Forum (III. Ii. ), where Antonycarries the people away in a storm of sympathy with the dead man and offury against the conspirators. We have hardly realised their victorybefore we are forced to anticipate their ultimate defeat and to take theliveliest interest in their chief antagonist. In _Hamlet_ the thrillingsuccess of the play-scene (III. Ii. ) is met and undone at once by thecounter-stroke of Hamlet's failure to take vengeance (III. Iii. ) and hismisfortune in killing Polonius (III. Iv. ). Coriolanus has no soonergained the consulship than he is excited to frenzy by the tribunes anddriven into exile. On the marriage of Romeo follows immediately thebrawl which leads to Mercutio's death and the banishment of the hero(II. Vi. And III. I. ). In all of these instances excepting that of_Hamlet_ the scene of the counter-stroke is at least as exciting as thatof the crisis, perhaps more so. Most people, if asked to mention thescene that occupies the _centre_ of the action in _Julius Caesar_ and in_Coriolanus_, would mention the scenes of Antony's speech andCoriolanus' banishment. Thus that apparently necessary pause in theaction does not, in any of these dramas, come directly after the crisis. It is deferred; and in several cases it is by various devices deferredfor some little time; _e. G. _ in _Romeo and Juliet_ till the hero hasleft Verona, and Juliet is told that her marriage with Paris is to takeplace 'next Thursday morn' (end of Act III. ); in _Macbeth_ till themurder of Duncan has been followed by that of Banquo, and this by thebanquet-scene. Hence the point where this pause occurs is very rarelyreached before the end of the Third Act. 

(_b_) Either at this point, or in the scene of the counter-stroke whichprecedes it, we sometimes find a peculiar effect. We are reminded of thestate of affairs in which the conflict began. The opening of _JuliusCaesar_ warned us that, among a people so unstable and so easily ledthis way or that, the enterprise of Brutus is hopeless; the days of theRepublic are done. In the scene of Antony's speech we see this samepeople again. At the beginning of _Antony and Cleopatra_ the hero isabout to leave Cleopatra for Rome. Where the play takes, as it were, afresh start after the crisis, he leaves Octavia for Egypt. In _Hamlet_, when the counter-stroke succeeds to the crisis, the Ghost, who hadappeared in the opening scenes, reappears. Macbeth's action in the firstpart of the tragedy followed on the prediction of the Witches whopromised him the throne. When the action moves forward again after thebanquet-scene the Witches appear once more, and make those freshpromises which again drive him forward. This repetition of a firsteffect produces a fateful feeling. It generally also stimulatesexpectation as to the new movement about to begin. In _Macbeth_ thescene is, in addition, of the greatest consequence from the purelytheatrical point of view. 

(_c_) It has yet another function. It shows, in Macbeth's furiousirritability and purposeless savagery, the internal reaction whichaccompanies the outward decline of his fortunes. And in other plays alsothe exhibition of such inner changes forms a means by which interest issustained in this difficult section of a tragedy. There is no point in_Hamlet_ where we feel more hopeless than that where the hero, havingmissed his chance, moralises over his irresolution and determines tocherish now only thoughts of blood, and then departs without an effortfor England. One purpose, again, of the quarrel-scene between Brutus andCassius (IV. Iii), as also of the appearance of Caesar's ghost justafterwards, is to indicate the inward changes. Otherwise theintroduction of this famous and wonderful scene can hardly be defendedon strictly dramatic grounds. No one would consent to part with it, andit is invaluable in sustaining interest during the progress of thereaction, but it is an episode, the removal of which would not affectthe actual sequence of events (unless we may hold that, but for theemotion caused by the quarrel and reconciliation, Cassius would not haveallowed Brutus to overcome his objection to the fatal policy of offeringbattle at Philippi). 

(_d_) The quarrel-scene illustrates yet another favourite expedient. Inthis section of a tragedy Shakespeare often appeals to an emotiondifferent from any of those excited in the first half of the play, andso provides novelty and generally also relief. As a rule this newemotion is pathetic; and the pathos is not terrible or lacerating, but, even if painful, is accompanied by the sense of beauty and by an outflowof admiration or affection, which come with an inexpressible sweetnessafter the tension of the crisis and the first counter-stroke. So it iswith the reconciliation of Brutus and Cassius, and the arrival of thenews of Portia's death. The most famous instance of this effect is thescene (IV. Vii. ) where Lear wakes from sleep and finds Cordelia bendingover him, perhaps the most tear-compelling passage in literature. Another is the short scene (IV. Ii. ) in which the talk of Lady Macduffand her little boy is interrupted by the entrance of the murderers, apassage of touching beauty and heroism. Another is the introduction ofOphelia in her madness (twice in different parts of IV. V. ), where theeffect, though intensely pathetic, is beautiful and moving rather thanharrowing; and this effect is repeated in a softer tone in thedescription of Ophelia's death (end of Act IV. ). And in _Othello_ thepassage where pathos of _this_ kind reaches its height is certainly thatwhere Desdemona and Emilia converse, and the willow-song is sung, on theeve of the catastrophe (IV. Iii. ). 

(_e_) Sometimes, again, in this section of a tragedy we find humorous orsemi-humorous passages. On the whole such passages occur most frequentlyin the early or middle part of the play, which naturally grows moresombre as it nears the close; but their occasional introduction in theFourth Act, and even later, affords variety and relief, and alsoheightens by contrast the tragic feelings. For example, there is a touchof comedy in the conversation of Lady Macduff with her little boy. Purely and delightfully humorous are the talk and behaviour of theservants in that admirable scene where Coriolanus comes disguised inmean apparel to the house of Aufidius (IV. V. ); of a more mingled kindis the effect of the discussion between Menenius and the sentinels in V. Ii. ; and in the very middle of the supreme scene between the hero, Volumnia and Virgilia, little Marcius makes us burst out laughing (V. Iii. ) A little before the catastrophe in _Hamlet_ comes the grave-diggerpassage, a passage ever welcome, but of a length which could hardly bedefended on purely dramatic grounds; and still later, occupying somehundred and twenty lines of the very last scene, we have the chatter ofOsric with Hamlet's mockery of it. But the acme of audacity is reachedin _Antony and Cleopatra_, where, quite close to the end, the oldcountryman who brings the asps to Cleopatra discourses on the virtuesand vices of the worm, and where his last words, 'Yes, forsooth: I wishyou joy o' the worm, ' are followed, without the intervention of a line, by the glorious speech, Give me my robe; put on my crown; I have Immortal longings in me. .. . 

In some of the instances of pathos or humour just mentioned we have beenbrought to that part of the play which immediately precedes, or evencontains, the catastrophe. And I will add at once three remarks whichrefer specially to this final section of a tragedy. 

(_f_) In several plays Shakespeare makes here an appeal which in his owntime was evidently powerful: he introduces scenes of battle. This is thecase in _Richard III. _, _Julius Caesar_, _King Lear_, _Macbeth_ and_Antony and Cleopatra_. Richard, Brutus and Cassius, and Macbeth die onthe battlefield. Even if his use of this expedient were not enough toshow that battle-scenes were extremely popular in the Elizabethantheatre, we know it from other sources. It is a curious comment on thefutility of our spectacular effects that in our theatre these scenes, inwhich we strive after an 'illusion' of which the Elizabethans neverdreamt, produce comparatively little excitement, and to many spectatorsare even somewhat distasteful. [22] And although some of them thrill theimagination of the reader, they rarely, I think, quite satisfy the_dramatic_ sense. Perhaps this is partly because a battle is not themost favourable place for the exhibition of tragic character; and it isworth notice that Brutus, Cassius and Antony do not die fighting, butcommit suicide after defeat. The actual battle, however, does make usfeel the greatness of Antony, and still more does it help us to regardRichard and Macbeth in their day of doom as heroes, and to minglesympathy and enthusiastic admiration with desire for their defeat. 

(_g_) In some of the tragedies, again, an expedient is used, whichFreytag has pointed out (though he sometimes finds it, I think, where itis not really employed). Shakespeare very rarely makes the least attemptto surprise by his catastrophes. They are felt to be inevitable, thoughthe precise way in which they will be brought about is not, of course, foreseen. Occasionally, however, where we dread the catastrophe becausewe love the hero, a moment occurs, just before it, in which a gleam offalse hope lights up the darkening scene; and, though we know it isfalse, it affects us. Far the most remarkable example is to be found inthe final Act of _King Lear_. Here the victory of Edgar and the deathsof Edmund and the two sisters have almost made us forget the design onthe lives of Lear and Cordelia. Even when we are reminded of it there isstill room for hope that Edgar, who rushes away to the prison, will bein time to save them; and, however familiar we are with the play, thesudden entrance of Lear, with Cordelia dead in his arms, comes on uswith a shock. Much slighter, but quite perceptible, is the effect ofAntony's victory on land, and of the last outburst of pride and joy ashe and Cleopatra meet (IV. Viii. ). The frank apology of Hamlet toLaertes, their reconciliation, and a delusive appearance of quiet andeven confident firmness in the tone of the hero's conversation withHoratio, almost blind us to our better knowledge, and give to thecatastrophe an added pain. Those in the audience who are ignorant of_Macbeth_, and who take more simply than most readers now can do themysterious prophecies concerning Birnam Wood and the man not born ofwoman, feel, I imagine, just before the catastrophe, a false fear thatthe hero may yet escape. 

(_h_) I will mention only one point more. In some cases Shakespearespreads the catastrophe out, so to speak, over a considerable space, andthus shortens that difficult section which has to show the developmentof the counter-action. This is possible only where there is, besides thehero, some character who engages our interest in the highest degree, andwith whose fate his own is bound up. Thus the murder of Desdemona isseparated by some distance from the death of Othello. The mostimpressive scene in _Macbeth_, after that of Duncan's murder, is thesleep-walking scene; and it may truly, if not literally, be said to showthe catastrophe of Lady Macbeth. Yet it is the opening scene of theFifth Act, and a number of scenes in which Macbeth's fate is stillapproaching intervene before the close. Finally, in _Antony andCleopatra_ the heroine equals the hero in importance, and here the deathof Antony actually occurs in the Fourth Act, and the whole of the Fifthis devoted to Cleopatra. 

 * * * * *

Let us now turn to _Othello_ and consider briefly its exceptional schemeof construction. The advantage of this scheme is obvious. In the secondhalf of the tragedy there is no danger of 'dragging, ' of any awkwardpause, any undue lowering of pitch, any need of scenes which, howeverfine, are more or less episodic. The tension is extreme, and it isrelaxed only for brief intervals to permit of some slight relief. Fromthe moment when Iago begins to poison Othello's mind we hold our breath. _Othello_ from this point onwards is certainly the most exciting ofShakespeare's plays, unless possibly _Macbeth_ in its first part may beheld to rival it. And _Othello_ is such a masterpiece that we arescarcely conscious of any disadvantage attending its method ofconstruction, and may even wonder why Shakespeare employed thismethod--at any rate in its purity--in this tragedy alone. Nor is it anyanswer to say that it would not elsewhere have suited his material. Evenif this be granted, how was it that he only once chose a story to whichthis method was appropriate? To his eyes, or for his instinct, theremust have been some disadvantage in it. And dangers in it are in factnot hard to see. 

In the first place, where the conflict develops very slowly, or, as in_Othello_, remains in a state of incubation during the first part of atragedy, that part cannot produce the tension proper to thecorresponding part of a tragedy like _Macbeth_, and may even run therisk of being somewhat flat. This seems obvious, and it is none the lesstrue because in _Othello_ the difficulty is overcome. We may even seethat in _Othello_ a difficulty was felt. The First Act is full of stir, but it is so because Shakespeare has filled it with a kind ofpreliminary conflict between the hero and Brabantio, --a personage whothen vanishes from the stage. The long first scene of the Second Act islargely occupied with mere conversations, artfully drawn out todimensions which can scarcely be considered essential to the plot. Theseexpedients are fully justified by their success, and nothing moreconsummate in their way is to be found in Shakespeare than Othello'sspeech to the Senate and Iago's two talks with Roderigo. But the factthat Shakespeare can make a plan succeed does not show that the plan is, abstractedly considered, a good plan; and if the scheme of constructionin _Othello_ were placed, in the shape of a mere outline, before aplay-wright ignorant of the actual drama, he would certainly, I believe, feel grave misgivings about the first half of the play. 

There is a second difficulty in the scheme. When the middle of thetragedy is reached, the audience is not what it was at the beginning. Ithas been attending for some time, and has been through a certain amountof agitation. The extreme tension which now arises may therefore easilytire and displease it, all the more if the matter which produces thetension is very painful, if the catastrophe is not less so, and if thelimits of the remainder of the play (not to speak of any otherconsideration) permit of very little relief. It is one thing to watchthe scene of Duncan's assassination at the beginning of the Second Act, and another thing to watch the murder of Desdemona at the beginning ofthe Fifth. If Shakespeare has wholly avoided this difficulty in_Othello_, it is by treating the first part of the play in such a mannerthat the sympathies excited are predominantly pleasant and therefore notexhausting. The scene in the Council Chamber, and the scene of thereunion at Cyprus, give almost unmixed happiness to the audience;however repulsive Iago may be, the humour of his gulling of Roderigo isagreeable; even the scene of Cassio's intoxication is not, on the whole, painful. Hence we come to the great temptation-scene, where the conflictemerges into life (III. Iii. ), with nerves unshaken and feelings muchfresher than those with which we greet the banquet-scene in _Macbeth_(III. Iv. ), or the first of the storm-scenes in _King Lear_ (III. I. ). The same skill may be observed in _Antony and Cleopatra_, where, as wesaw, the second half of the tragedy is the more exciting. But, again, the success due to Shakespeare's skill does not show that the scheme ofconstruction is free from a characteristic danger; and on the whole itwould appear to be best fitted for a plot which, though it may causepainful agitation as it nears the end, actually ends with a solutioninstead of a catastrophe. 

But for Shakespeare's scanty use of this method there may have been adeeper, though probably an unconscious, reason. The method suits a plotbased on intrigue. It may produce intense suspense. It may stir mostpowerfully the tragic feelings of pity and fear. And it throws intorelief that aspect of tragedy in which great or beautiful lives seemcaught in the net of fate. But it is apt to be less favourable to theexhibition of character, to show less clearly how an act returns uponthe agent, and to produce less strongly the impression of an inexorableorder working in the passions and actions of men, and labouring throughtheir agony and waste towards good. Now, it seems clear from histragedies that what appealed most to Shakespeare was this latter classof effects. I do not ask here whether _Othello_ fails to produce, in thesame degree as the other tragedies, these impressions; but Shakespeare'spreference for them may have been one reason why he habitually chose ascheme of construction which produces in the final Acts but little ofstrained suspense, and presents the catastrophe as a thing foreseen andfollowing with a psychological and moral necessity on the actionexhibited in the first part of the tragedy. 

4

The more minute details of construction cannot well be examined here, and I will not pursue the subject further. But its discussion suggests aquestion which will have occurred to some of my hearers. They may haveasked themselves whether I have not used the words 'art' and 'device'and 'expedient' and 'method' too boldly, as though Shakespeare were aconscious artist, and not rather a writer who constructed in obedienceto an extraordinary dramatic instinct, as he composed mainly byinspiration. And a brief explanation on this head will enable me toallude to a few more points, chiefly of construction, which are not tootechnical for a lecture. 

In speaking, for convenience, of devices and expedients, I did notintend to imply that Shakespeare always deliberately aimed at theeffects which he produced. But _no_ artist always does this, and I seeno reason to doubt that Shakespeare often did it, or to suppose that hismethod of constructing and composing differed, except in degree, fromthat of the most 'conscious' of artists. The antithesis of art andinspiration, though not meaningless, is often most misleading. Inspiration is surely not incompatible with considerate workmanship. Thetwo may be severed, but they need not be so, and where a genuinelypoetic result is being produced they cannot be so. The glow of a firstconception must in some measure survive or rekindle itself in the workof planning and executing; and what is called a technical expedient may'come' to a man with as sudden a glory as a splendid image. Verse may beeasy and unpremeditated, as Milton says his was, and yet many a word init may be changed many a time, and the last change be more 'inspired'than the original. The difference between poets in these matters is nodoubt considerable, and sometimes important, but it can only be adifference of less and more. It is probable that Shakespeare often wrotefluently, for Jonson (a better authority than Heminge and Condell) saysso; and for anything we can tell he may also have constructed withunusual readiness. But we know that he revised and re-wrote (forinstance in _Love's Labour's Lost_ and _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Hamlet_);it is almost impossible that he can have worked out the plots of hisbest plays without much reflection and many experiments; and it appearsto me scarcely more possible to mistake the signs of deliberate care insome of his famous speeches. If a 'conscious artist' means one who holdshis work away from him, scrutinises and judges it, and, if need be, alters it and alters it till it comes as near satisfying him as he canmake it, I am sure that Shakespeare frequently employed such consciousart. If it means, again, an artist who consciously aims at the effectshe produces, what ground have we for doubting that he frequentlyemployed such art, though probably less frequently than a good manyother poets?

But perhaps the notion of a 'conscious artist' in drama is that of onewho studies the theory of the art, and even writes with an eye to its'rules. ' And we know it was long a favourite idea that Shakespeare wastotally ignorant of the 'rules. ' Yet this is quite incredible. Therules referred to, such as they were, were not buried in Aristotle'sGreek nor even hidden away in Italian treatises. He could find prettywell all of them in a book so current and famous as Sidney's _Defenceof Poetry_. Even if we suppose that he refused to open this book(which is most unlikely), how could he possibly remain ignorant of therules in a society of actors and dramatists and amateurs who must havebeen incessantly talking about plays and play-writing, and some ofwhom were ardent champions of the rules and full of contempt for thelawlessness of the popular drama? Who can doubt that at the MermaidShakespeare heard from Jonson's lips much more censure of his offencesagainst 'art' than Jonson ever confided to Drummond or to paper? Andis it not most probable that those battles between the two whichFuller imagines, were waged often on the field of dramatic criticism?If Shakespeare, then, broke some of the 'rules, ' it was not fromignorance. Probably he refused, on grounds of art itself, to troublehimself with rules derived from forms of drama long extinct. And it isnot unlikely that he was little interested in theory as such, and morethan likely that he was impatient of pedantic distinctions between'pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable or poemunlimited. ' But that would not prove that he never reflected on hisart, or could not explain, if he cared to, what _he_ thought would begood general rules for the drama of his own time. He could give adviceabout play-acting. Why should we suppose that he could not give adviceabout play-making?

Still Shakespeare, though in some considerable degree a 'conscious'artist, frequently sins against art; and if his sins were not due toignorance or inspiration, they must be accounted for otherwise. Neithercan there be much doubt about their causes (for they have more than onecause), as we shall see if we take some illustrations of the defectsthemselves. 

Among these are not to be reckoned certain things which in dramaswritten at the present time would rightly be counted defects. There are, for example, in most Elizabethan plays peculiarities of constructionwhich would injure a play written for our stage but were perfectlywell-fitted for that very different stage, --a stage on which again someof the best-constructed plays of our time would appear absurdly faulty. Or take the charge of improbability. Shakespeare certainly hasimprobabilities which are defects. They are most frequent in the windingup of his comedies (and how many comedies are there in the world whichend satisfactorily?). But his improbabilities are rarely psychological, and in some of his plays there occurs one kind of improbability which isno defect, but simply a characteristic which has lost in our day much ofits former attraction. I mean that the story, in most of the comediesand many of the tragedies of the Elizabethans, was _intended_ to bestrange and wonderful. These plays were tales of romance dramatised, andthey were meant in part to satisfy the same love of wonder to which theromances appealed. It is no defect in the Arthurian legends, or the oldFrench romances, or many of the stories in the _Decameron_, that theyare improbable: it is a virtue. To criticise them as though they were ofthe same species as a realistic novel, is, we should all say, merelystupid. Is it anything else to criticise in the same way _Twelfth Night_or _As You Like It_? And so, even when the difference between comedy andtragedy is allowed for, the improbability of the opening of _King Lear_, so often censured, is no defect. It is not out of character, it is onlyextremely unusual and strange. But it was meant to be so; like themarriage of the black Othello with Desdemona, the Venetian senator'sdaughter. 

To come then to real defects, (_a_) one may be found in places whereShakespeare strings together a number of scenes, some very short, inwhich the _dramatis personae_ are frequently changed; as though anovelist were to tell his story in a succession of short chapters, inwhich he flitted from one group of his characters to another. Thismethod shows itself here and there in the pure tragedies (_e. G. _ in thelast Act of _Macbeth_), but it appears most decidedly where thehistorical material was undramatic, as in the middle part of _Antony andCleopatra_. It was made possible by the absence of scenery, anddoubtless Shakespeare used it because it was the easiest way out of adifficulty. But, considered abstractedly, it is a defective method, and, even as used by Shakespeare, it sometimes reminds us of the merelynarrative arrangement common in plays before his time. 

(_b_) We may take next the introduction or excessive development ofmatter neither required by the plot nor essential to the exhibition ofcharacter: _e. G. _ the references in _Hamlet_ to theatre-quarrels of theday, and the length of the player's speech and also of Hamlet'sdirections to him respecting the delivery of the lines to be inserted inthe 'Murder of Gonzago. ' All this was probably of great interest at thetime when _Hamlet_ was first presented; most of it we should be verysorry to miss; some of it seems to bring us close to Shakespearehimself; but who can defend it from the point of view of constructiveart?

(_c_) Again, we may look at Shakespeare's soliloquies. It will be agreedthat in listening to a soliloquy we ought never to feel that we arebeing addressed. And in this respect, as in others, many of thesoliloquies are master-pieces. But certainly in some the purpose ofgiving information lies bare, and in one or two the actor openly speaksto the audience. Such faults are found chiefly in the early plays, though there is a glaring instance at the end of Belarius's speech in_Cymbeline_ (III. Iii. 99 ff. ), and even in the mature tragediessomething of this kind may be traced. Let anyone compare, for example, Edmund's soliloquy in _King Lear_, I. Ii. , 'This is the excellentfoppery of the world, ' with Edgar's in II. Iii. , and he will beconscious that in the latter the purpose of giving information isimperfectly disguised. [23]

(_d_) It cannot be denied, further, that in many of Shakespeare's plays, if not in all, there are inconsistencies and contradictions, and alsothat questions are suggested to the reader which it is impossible forhim to answer with certainty. For instance, some of the indications ofthe lapse of time between Othello's marriage and the events of the laterActs flatly contradict one another; and it is impossible to make outwhether Hamlet was at Court or at the University when his father wasmurdered. But it should be noticed that often what seems a defect ofthis latter kind is not really a defect. For instance, the difficultyabout Hamlet's age (even if it cannot be resolved by the text alone) didnot exist for Shakespeare's audience. The moment Burbage entered it musthave been clear whether the hero was twenty or thirty. And in likemanner many questions of dramatic interpretation which trouble us couldnever have arisen when the plays were first produced, for the actorwould be instructed by the author how to render any critical andpossibly ambiguous passage. (I have heard it remarked, and the remark Ibelieve is just, that Shakespeare seems to have relied on suchinstructions less than most of his contemporaries; one fact out ofseveral which might be adduced to prove that he did not regard his playsas mere stage-dramas of the moment. )

(_e_) To turn to another field, the early critics were no doubt oftenprovokingly wrong when they censured the language of particular passagesin Shakespeare as obscure, inflated, tasteless, or 'pestered withmetaphors'; but they were surely right in the general statement that hislanguage often shows these faults. And this is a subject which latercriticism has never fairly faced and examined. 

(_f_) Once more, to say that Shakespeare makes all his seriouscharacters talk alike, [24] and that he constantly speaks through themouths of his _dramatis personae_ without regard to their individualnatures, would be to exaggerate absurdly; but it is true that in hisearlier plays these faults are traceable in some degree, and even in_Hamlet_ there are striking passages where dramatic appropriateness issacrificed to some other object. When Laertes speaks the linesbeginning, For nature, crescent, does not grow alone In thews and bulk, who can help feeling that Shakespeare is speaking rather than Laertes?Or when the player-king discourses for more than twenty lines on theinstability of human purpose, and when King Claudius afterwards insiststo Laertes on the same subject at almost equal length, who does not seethat Shakespeare, thinking but little of dramatic fitness, wishes inpart simply to write poetry, and partly to impress on the audiencethoughts which will help them to understand, not the player-king nor yetKing Claudius, but Hamlet himself, who, on his side, --and here quite incharacter--has already enlarged on the same topic in the most famous ofhis soliloquies?

(_g_) Lastly, like nearly all the dramatists of his day and of timesmuch earlier, Shakespeare was fond of 'gnomic' passages, and introducesthem probably not more freely than his readers like, but more freelythan, I suppose, a good play-wright now would care to do. Thesepassages, it may be observed, are frequently rhymed (_e. G. _ _Othello_, I. Iii. 201 ff. , II. I. 149 ff. ). Sometimes they were printed in earlyeditions with inverted commas round them, as are in the First QuartoPolonius's 'few precepts' to Laertes. 

If now we ask whence defects like these arose, we shall observe thatsome of them are shared by the majority of Shakespeare's contemporaries, and abound in the dramas immediately preceding his time. They arecharacteristics of an art still undeveloped, and, no doubt, were notperceived to be defects. But though it is quite probable that in regardto one or two kinds of imperfection (such as the superabundance of'gnomic' passages) Shakespeare himself erred thus ignorantly, it is veryunlikely that in most cases he did so, unless in the first years of hiscareer of authorship. And certainly he never can have thought itartistic to leave inconsistencies, obscurities, or passages of bombastin his work. Most of the defects in his writings must be due toindifference or want of care. 

I do not say that all were so. In regard, for example, to his occasionalbombast and other errors of diction, it seems hardly doubtful that hisperception was sometimes at fault, and that, though he used the Englishlanguage like no one else, he had not that _sureness_ of taste in wordswhich has been shown by some much smaller writers. And it seems notunlikely that here he suffered from his comparative want of'learning, '--that is, of familiarity with the great writers ofantiquity. But nine-tenths of his defects are not, I believe, the errorsof an inspired genius, ignorant of art, but the sins of a great butnegligent artist. He was often, no doubt, over-worked and pressed fortime. He knew that the immense majority of his audience were incapableof distinguishing between rough and finished work. He often felt thedegradation of having to live by pleasing them. Probably in hours ofdepression he was quite indifferent to fame, and perhaps in another moodthe whole business of play-writing seemed to him a little thing. None ofthese thoughts and feelings influenced him when his subject had caughthold of him. To imagine that _then_ he 'winged his roving flight' for'gain' or 'glory, ' or wrote from any cause on earth but the necessity ofexpression, with all its pains and raptures, is mere folly. He waspossessed: his mind must have been in a white heat: he worked, no doubt, with the _furia_ of Michael Angelo. And if he did not succeed atonce--and how can even he have always done so?--he returned to thematter again and again. Such things as the scenes of Duncan's murder orOthello's temptation, such speeches as those of the Duke to Claudio andof Claudio to his sister about death, were not composed in an hour andtossed aside; and if they have defects, they have not what Shakespearethought defects. Nor is it possible that his astonishingly individualconceptions of character can have been struck out at a heat: prolongedand repeated thought must have gone to them. But of smallinconsistencies in the plot he was often quite careless. He seems tohave finished off some of his comedies with a hasty and evencontemptuous indifference, as if it mattered nothing how the people gotmarried, or even who married whom, so long as enough were marriedsomehow. And often, when he came to parts of his scheme that werenecessary but not interesting to him, he wrote with a slack hand, like acraftsman of genius who knows that his natural gift and acquired skillwill turn out something more than good enough for his audience: wroteprobably fluently but certainly negligently, sometimes only half sayingwhat he meant, and sometimes saying the opposite, and now and then, whenpassion was required, lapsing into bombast because he knew he mustheighten his style but would not take the trouble to inflame hisimagination. It may truly be said that what injures such passages is notinspiration, but the want of it. But, as they are mostly passages whereno poet could expect to be inspired, it is even more true to say thathere Shakespeare lacked the conscience of the artist who is determinedto make everything as good as he can. Such poets as Milton, Pope, Tennyson, habitually show this conscience. They left probably scarcelyanything that they felt they could improve. No one could dream of sayingthat of Shakespeare. 

Hence comes what is perhaps the chief difficulty in interpreting hisworks. Where his power or art is fully exerted it really does resemblethat of nature. It organises and vitalises its product from the centreoutward to the minutest markings on the surface, so that when you turnupon it the most searching light you can command, when you dissect itand apply to it the test of a microscope, still you find in it nothingformless, general or vague, but everywhere structure, character, individuality. In this his great things, which seem to come wheneverthey are wanted, have no companions in literature except the fewgreatest things in Dante; and it is a fatal error to allow hiscarelessness elsewhere to make one doubt whether here one is not seekingmore than can be found. It is very possible to look for subtlety in thewrong places in Shakespeare, but in the right places it is not possibleto find too much. But then this characteristic, which is one source ofhis endless attraction, is also a source of perplexity. For in thoseparts of his plays which show him neither in his most intense nor in hismost negligent mood, we are often unable to decide whether somethingthat seems inconsistent, indistinct, feeble, exaggerated, is really so, or whether it was definitely meant to be as it is, and has an intentionwhich we ought to be able to divine; whether, for example, we havebefore us some unusual trait in character, some abnormal movement ofmind, only surprising to us because we understand so very much less ofhuman nature than Shakespeare did, or whether he wanted to get his workdone and made a slip, or in using an old play adopted hastily somethingthat would not square with his own conception, or even refused totrouble himself with minutiae which we notice only because we study him, but which nobody ever notices in a stage performance. We know wellenough what Shakespeare is doing when at the end of _Measure forMeasure_ he marries Isabella to the Duke--and a scandalous proceeding itis; but who can ever feel sure that the doubts which vex him as to somenot unimportant points in _Hamlet_ are due to his own want of eyesightor to Shakespeare's want of care?

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 16: The famous critics of the Romantic Revival seem to havepaid very little attention to this subject. Mr. R. G. Moulton has writtenan interesting book on _Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist_ (1885). Inparts of my analysis I am much indebted to Gustav Freytag's _Technik desDramas_, a book which deserves to be much better known than it appearsto be to Englishmen interested in the drama. I may add, for the benefitof classical scholars, that Freytag has a chapter on Sophocles. Thereader of his book will easily distinguish, if he cares to, the placeswhere I follow Freytag, those where I differ from him, and those where Iwrite in independence of him. I may add that in speaking of constructionI have thought it best to assume in my hearers no previous knowledge ofthe subject; that I have not attempted to discuss how much of what issaid of Shakespeare would apply also to other dramatists; and that Ihave illustrated from the tragedies generally, not only from the chosenfour. ]

[Footnote 17: This word throughout the lecture bears the sense it hashere, which, of course, is not its usual dramatic sense. ]

[Footnote 18: In the same way a comedy will consist of three parts, showing the 'situation, ' the 'complication' or 'entanglement, ' and the_dénouement_ or 'solution. ']

[Footnote 19: It is possible, of course, to open the tragedy with theconflict already begun, but Shakespeare never does so. ]

[Footnote 20: When the subject comes from English history, andespecially when the play forms one of a series, some knowledge may beassumed. So in _Richard III. _ Even in _Richard II. _ not a littleknowledge seems to be assumed, and this fact points to the existence ofa popular play on the earlier part of Richard's reign. Such a playexists, though it is not clear that it is a genuine Elizabethan work. See the _Jahrbuch d. Deutschen Sh. -gesellschaft_ for 1899. ]

[Footnote 21: This is one of several reasons why many people enjoyreading him, who, on the whole, dislike reading plays. A main cause ofthis very general dislike is that the reader has not a lively enoughimagination to carry him with pleasure through the exposition, though inthe theatre, where his imagination is helped, he would experience littledifficulty. ]

[Footnote 22: The end of _Richard III. _ is perhaps an exception. ]

[Footnote 23: I do not discuss the general question of the justificationof soliloquy, for it concerns not Shakespeare only, but practically alldramatists down to quite recent times. I will only remark that neithersoliloquy nor the use of verse can be condemned on the mere ground thatthey are 'unnatural. ' No dramatic language is 'natural'; _all_ dramaticlanguage is idealised. So that the question as to soliloquy must be oneas to the degree of idealisation and the balance of advantages anddisadvantages. (Since this lecture was written I have read some remarkson Shakespeare's soliloquies to much the same effect by E. Kilian in the_Jahrbuch d. Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft_ for 1903. )]

[Footnote 24: If by this we mean that these characters all speak what isrecognisably Shakespeare's style, of course it is true; but it is noaccusation. Nor does it follow that they all speak alike; and in factthey are far from doing so. ]

LECTURE III

SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGIC PERIOD--HAMLET

1

Before we come to-day to _Hamlet_, the first of our four tragedies, afew remarks must be made on their probable place in Shakespeare'sliterary career. But I shall say no more than seems necessary for ourrestricted purpose, and, therefore, for the most part shall merely bestating widely accepted results of investigation, without going into theevidence on which they rest. [25]

Shakespeare's tragedies fall into two distinct groups, and these groupsare separated by a considerable interval. He wrote tragedy--pure, like_Romeo and Juliet_; historical, like _Richard III. _--in the early yearsof his career of authorship, when he was also writing such comedies as_Love's Labour's Lost_ and the _Midsummer-Night's Dream_. Then came atime, lasting some half-dozen years, during which he composed the mostmature and humorous of his English History plays (the plays withFalstaff in them), and the best of his romantic comedies (the plays withBeatrice and Jaques and Viola in them). There are no tragedies belongingto these half-dozen years, nor any dramas approaching tragedy. But now, from about 1601 to about 1608, comes tragedy after tragedy--_JuliusCaesar_, _Hamlet_, _Othello_, _King Lear_, _Timon of Athens_, _Macbeth_, _Antony and Cleopatra_ and _Coriolanus_; and their companions are playswhich cannot indeed be called tragedies, but certainly are not comediesin the same sense as _As You Like It_ or the _Tempest_. These sevenyears, accordingly, might, without much risk of misunderstanding, becalled Shakespeare's tragic period. [26] And after it he wrote no moretragedies, but chiefly romances more serious and less sunny than _As YouLike It_, but not much less serene. 

The existence of this distinct tragic period, of a time when thedramatist seems to have been occupied almost exclusively with deep andpainful problems, has naturally helped to suggest the idea that the'man' also, in these years of middle age, from thirty-seven toforty-four, was heavily burdened in spirit; that Shakespeare turned totragedy not merely for change, or because he felt it to be the greatestform of drama and felt himself equal to it, but also because the worldhad come to look dark and terrible to him; and even that the railings ofThersites and the maledictions of Timon express his own contempt andhatred for mankind. Discussion of this large and difficult subject, however, is not necessary to the dramatic appreciation of any of hisworks, and I shall say nothing of it here, but shall pass on at once todraw attention to certain stages and changes which may be observedwithin the tragic period. For this purpose too it is needless to raiseany question as to the respective chronological positions of _Othello_, _King Lear_ and _Macbeth_. What is important is also generally admitted:that _Julius Caesar_ and _Hamlet_ precede these plays, and that _Antonyand Cleopatra_ and _Coriolanus_ follow them. [27]

If we consider the tragedies first on the side of their substance, wefind at once an obvious difference between the first two and theremainder. Both Brutus and Hamlet are highly intellectual by nature andreflective by habit. Both may even be called, in a popular sense, philosophic; Brutus may be called so in a stricter sense. Each, beingalso a 'good' man, shows accordingly, when placed in criticalcircumstances, a sensitive and almost painful anxiety to do right. Andthough they fail--of course in quite different ways--to dealsuccessfully with these circumstances, the failure in each case isconnected rather with their intellectual nature and reflective habitthan with any yielding to passion. Hence the name 'tragedy of thought, 'which Schlegel gave to _Hamlet_, may be given also, as in effect it hasbeen by Professor Dowden, to _Julius Caesar_. The later heroes, on theother hand, Othello, Lear, Timon, Macbeth, Antony, Coriolanus, have, oneand all, passionate natures, and, speaking roughly, we may attribute thetragic failure in each of these cases to passion. Partly for thisreason, the later plays are wilder and stormier than the first two. Wesee a greater mass of human nature in commotion, and we seeShakespeare's own powers exhibited on a larger scale. Finally, examination would show that, in all these respects, the first tragedy, _Julius Caesar_, is further removed from the later type than is thesecond, _Hamlet_. 

These two earlier works are both distinguished from most of thesucceeding tragedies in another though a kindred respect. Moral evil isnot so intently scrutinised or so fully displayed in them. In _JuliusCaesar_, we may almost say, everybody means well. In _Hamlet_, though wehave a villain, he is a small one. The murder which gives rise to theaction lies outside the play, and the centre of attention within theplay lies in the hero's efforts to do his duty. It seems clear thatShakespeare's interest, since the early days when under Marlowe'sinfluence he wrote _Richard III. _, has not been directed to the moreextreme or terrible forms of evil. But in the tragedies that follow_Hamlet_ the presence of this interest is equally clear. In Iago, in the'bad' people of _King Lear_, even in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, humannature assumes shapes which inspire not mere sadness or repulsion buthorror and dismay. If in _Timon_ no monstrous cruelty is done, we stillwatch ingratitude and selfishness so blank that they provoke a loathingwe never felt for Claudius; and in this play and _King Lear_ we canfancy that we hear at times the _saeva indignatio_, if not the despair, of Swift. This prevalence of abnormal or appalling forms of evil, sideby side with vehement passion, is another reason why the convulsiondepicted in these tragedies seems to come from a deeper source, and tobe vaster in extent, than the conflict in the two earlier plays. Andhere again _Julius Caesar_ is further removed than _Hamlet_ from_Othello_, _King Lear_, and _Macbeth_. 

But in regard to this second point of difference a reservation must bemade, on which I will speak a little more fully, because, unlike thematter hitherto touched on, its necessity seems hardly to have beenrecognised. _All_ of the later tragedies may be called tragedies ofpassion, but not all of them display these extreme forms of evil. Neither of the last two does so. Antony and Coriolanus are, from onepoint of view, victims of passion; but the passion that ruins Antonyalso exalts him, he touches the infinite in it; and the pride andself-will of Coriolanus, though terrible in bulk, are scarcely so inquality; there is nothing base in them, and the huge creature whom theydestroy is a noble, even a lovable, being. Nor does either of thesedramas, though the earlier depicts a corrupt civilisation, include evenamong the minor characters anyone who can be called villainous orhorrible. Consider, finally, the impression left on us at the close ofeach. It is remarkable that this impression, though very strong, canscarcely be called purely tragic; or, if we call it so, at least thefeeling of reconciliation which mingles with the obviously tragicemotions is here exceptionally well-marked. The death of Antony, it willbe remembered, comes before the opening of the Fifth Act. The death ofCleopatra, which closes the play, is greeted by the reader with sympathyand admiration, even with exultation at the thought that she has foiledOctavius; and these feelings are heightened by the deaths of Charmianand Iras, heroically faithful to their mistress, as Emilia was to hers. In _Coriolanus_ the feeling of reconciliation is even stronger. Thewhole interest towards the close has been concentrated on the questionwhether the hero will persist in his revengeful design of storming andburning his native city, or whether better feelings will at lastoverpower his resentment and pride. He stands on the edge of a crimebeside which, at least in outward dreadfulness, the slaughter of anindividual looks insignificant. And when, at the sound of his mother'svoice and the sight of his wife and child, nature asserts itself and hegives way, although we know he will lose his life, we care little forthat: he has saved his soul. Our relief, and our exultation in the powerof goodness, are so great that the actual catastrophe which follows andmingles sadness with these feelings leaves them but little diminished, and as we close the book we feel, it seems to me, more as we do at theclose of _Cymbeline_ than as we do at the close of _Othello_. In sayingthis I do not in the least mean to criticise _Coriolanus_. It is a muchnobler play as it stands than it would have been if Shakespeare had madethe hero persist, and we had seen him amid the flaming ruins of Rome, awaking suddenly to the enormity of his deed and taking vengeance onhimself; but that would surely have been an ending more strictly tragicthan the close of Shakespeare's play. Whether this close was simply dueto his unwillingness to contradict his historical authority on a pointof such magnitude we need not ask. In any case _Coriolanus_ is, in morethan an outward sense, the end of his tragic period. It marks thetransition to his latest works, in which the powers of repentance andforgiveness charm to rest the tempest raised by error and guilt. 

If we turn now from the substance of the tragedies to their style andversification, we find on the whole a corresponding difference betweenthe earlier and the later. The usual assignment of _Julius Caesar_, andeven of _Hamlet_, to the end of Shakespeare's Second Period--the periodof _Henry V. _--is based mainly, we saw, on considerations of form. Thegeneral style of the serious parts of the last plays from Englishhistory is one of full, noble and comparatively equable eloquence. The'honey-tongued' sweetness and beauty of Shakespeare's early writing, asseen in _Romeo and Juliet_ or the _Midsummer-Night's Dream_, remain; theease and lucidity remain; but there is an accession of force and weight. We find no great change from this style when we come to _JuliusCaesar_, [28] which may be taken to mark its culmination. At this pointin Shakespeare's literary development he reaches, if the phrase may bepardoned, a limited perfection. Neither thought on the one side, norexpression on the other, seems to have any tendency to outrun or contendwith its fellow. We receive an impression of easy mastery and completeharmony, but not so strong an impression of inner power bursting intoouter life. Shakespeare's style is perhaps nowhere else so free fromdefects, and yet almost every one of his subsequent plays containswriting which is greater. To speak familiarly, we feel in _JuliusCaesar_ that, although not even Shakespeare could better the style hehas chosen, he has not let himself go. 

In reading _Hamlet_ we have no such feeling, and in many parts (forthere is in the writing of _Hamlet_ an unusual variety[29]) we areconscious of a decided change. The style in these parts is more rapidand vehement, less equable and less simple; and there is a change of thesame kind in the versification. But on the whole the _type_ is the sameas in _Julius Caesar_, and the resemblance of the two plays is decidedlymore marked than the difference. If Hamlet's soliloquies, consideredsimply as compositions, show a great change from Jaques's speech, 'Allthe world's a stage, ' and even from the soliloquies of Brutus, yet_Hamlet_ (for instance in the hero's interview with his mother) is like_Julius Caesar_, and unlike the later tragedies, in the fulness of itseloquence, and passages like the following belong quite definitely tothe style of the Second Period:

 _Mar. _ It faded on the crowing of the cock. Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long; And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow'd and so gracious is the time. 

 _Hor. _ So have I heard and do in part believe it. But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill. 

This bewitching music is heard again in Hamlet's farewell to Horatio:

 If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story. 

But after _Hamlet_ this music is heard no more. It is followed by amusic vaster and deeper, but not the same. 

The changes observable in _Hamlet_ are afterwards, and gradually, sogreatly developed that Shakespeare's style and versification at lastbecome almost new things. It is extremely difficult to illustrate thisbriefly in a manner to which no just exception can be taken, for it isalmost impossible to find in two plays passages bearing a sufficientlyclose resemblance to one another in occasion and sentiment. But I willventure to put by the first of those quotations from _Hamlet_ this from_Macbeth_:

 _Dun. _ This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses. 

 _Ban. _ This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle; Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed, The air is delicate;

and by the second quotation from _Hamlet_ this from _Antony andCleopatra_:

 The miserable change now at my end Lament nor sorrow at; but please your thoughts In feeding them with those my former fortunes Wherein I lived, the greatest prince o' the world, The noblest; and do now not basely die, Not cowardly put off my helmet to My countryman, --a Roman by a Roman Valiantly vanquish'd. Now my spirit is going; I can no more. 

It would be almost an impertinence to point out in detail how greatlythese two passages, and especially the second, differ in effect fromthose in _Hamlet_, written perhaps five or six years earlier. Theversification, by the time we reach _Antony and Cleopatra_, has assumeda new type; and although this change would appear comparatively slightin a typical passage from _Othello_ or even from _King Lear_, itsapproach through these plays to _Timon_ and _Macbeth_ can easily betraced. It is accompanied by a similar change in diction andconstruction. After _Hamlet_ the style, in the more emotional passages, is heightened. It becomes grander, sometimes wilder, sometimes moreswelling, even tumid. It is also more concentrated, rapid, varied, and, in construction, less regular, not seldom twisted or elliptical. It is, therefore, not so easy and lucid, and in the more ordinary dialogue itis sometimes involved and obscure, and from these and other causesdeficient in charm. [30] On the other hand, it is always full of life andmovement, and in great passages produces sudden, strange, electrifyingeffects which are rarely found in earlier plays, and not so often evenin _Hamlet_. The more pervading effect of beauty gives place to what mayalmost be called explosions of sublimity or pathos. 

There is room for differences of taste and preference as regards thestyle and versification of the end of Shakespeare's Second Period, andthose of the later tragedies and last romances. But readers who miss inthe latter the peculiar enchantment of the earlier will not deny thatthe changes in form are in entire harmony with the inward changes. Ifthey object to passages where, to exaggerate a little, the sense hasrather to be discerned beyond the words than found in them, and if theydo not wholly enjoy the movement of so typical a speech as this, Yes, like enough, high-battled Caesar will Unstate his happiness, and be staged to the show, Against a sworder! I see men's judgements are A parcel of their fortunes; and things outward Do draw the inward quality after them, To suffer all alike. That he should dream, Knowing all measures, the full Caesar will Answer his emptiness! Caesar, thou hast subdued His judgement too, they will admit that, in traversing the impatient throng of thoughts notalways completely embodied, their minds move through an astonishingvariety of ideas and experiences, and that a style less generally poeticthan that of _Hamlet_ is also a style more invariably dramatic. It maybe that, for the purposes of tragedy, the highest point was reachedduring the progress of these changes, in the most critical passages of_Othello_, _King Lear_ and _Macbeth_. [31]

2

Suppose you were to describe the plot of _Hamlet_ to a person quiteignorant of the play, and suppose you were careful to tell your hearernothing about Hamlet's character, what impression would your sketch makeon him? Would he not exclaim: 'What a sensational story! Why, here aresome eight violent deaths, not to speak of adultery, a ghost, a madwoman, and a fight in a grave! If I did not know that the play wasShakespeare's, I should have thought it must have been one of thoseearly tragedies of blood and horror from which he is said to haveredeemed the stage'? And would he not then go on to ask: 'But why in theworld did not Hamlet obey the Ghost at once, and so save seven of thoseeight lives?'

This exclamation and this question both show the same thing, that thewhole story turns upon the peculiar character of the hero. For withoutthis character the story would appear sensational and horrible; and yetthe actual _Hamlet_ is very far from being so, and even has a lessterrible effect than _Othello_, _King Lear_ or _Macbeth_. And again, ifwe had no knowledge of this character, the story would hardly beintelligible; it would at any rate at once suggest that wonderingquestion about the conduct of the hero; while the story of any of theother three tragedies would sound plain enough and would raise no suchquestion. It is further very probable that the main change made byShakespeare in the story as already represented on the stage, lay in anew conception of Hamlet's character and so of the cause of his delay. And, lastly, when we examine the tragedy, we observe two things whichillustrate the same point. First, we find by the side of the hero noother figure of tragic proportions, no one like Lady Macbeth or Iago, noone even like Cordelia or Desdemona; so that, in Hamlet's absence, theremaining characters could not yield a Shakespearean tragedy at all. And, secondly, we find among them two, Laertes and Fortinbras, who areevidently designed to throw the character of the hero into relief. Evenin the situations there is a curious parallelism; for Fortinbras, likeHamlet, is the son of a king, lately dead, and succeeded by his brother;and Laertes, like Hamlet, has a father slain, and feels bound to avengehim. And with this parallelism in situation there is a strong contrastin character; for both Fortinbras and Laertes possess in abundance thevery quality which the hero seems to lack, so that, as we read, we aretempted to exclaim that either of them would have accomplished Hamlet'stask in a day. Naturally, then, the tragedy of _Hamlet_ with Hamlet leftout has become the symbol of extreme absurdity; while the characteritself has probably exerted a greater fascination, and certainly hasbeen the subject of more discussion, than any other in the wholeliterature of the world. 

Before, however, we approach the task of examining it, it is as well toremind ourselves that the virtue of the play by no means wholly dependson this most subtle creation. We are all aware of this, and if we werenot so the history of _Hamlet_, as a stage-play, might bring the facthome to us. It is to-day the most popular of Shakespeare's tragedies onour stage; and yet a large number, perhaps even the majority of thespectators, though they may feel some mysterious attraction in the hero, certainly do not question themselves about his character or the cause ofhis delay, and would still find the play exceptionally effective, evenif he were an ordinary brave young man and the obstacles in his pathwere purely external. And this has probably always been the case. _Hamlet_ seems from the first to have been a favourite play; but untillate in the eighteenth century, I believe, scarcely a critic showed thathe perceived anything specially interesting in the character. Hanmer, in1730, to be sure, remarks that 'there appears no reason at all in naturewhy this young prince did not put the usurper to death as soon aspossible'; but it does not even cross his mind that this apparent'absurdity' is odd and might possibly be due to some design on the partof the poet. He simply explains the absurdity by observing that, ifShakespeare had made the young man go 'naturally to work, ' the playwould have come to an end at once! Johnson, in like manner, notices that'Hamlet is, through the whole piece, rather an instrument than anagent, ' but it does not occur to him that this peculiar circumstance canbe anything but a defect in Shakespeare's management of the plot. Seeing, they saw not. Henry Mackenzie, the author of _The Man ofFeeling_, was, it would seem, the first of our critics to feel the'indescribable charm' of Hamlet, and to divine something ofShakespeare's intention. 'We see a man, ' he writes, 'who in othercircumstances would have exercised all the moral and social virtues, placed in a situation in which even the amiable qualities of his mindserve but to aggravate his distress and to perplex his conduct. '[32] Howsignificant is the fact (if it be the fact) that it was only when theslowly rising sun of Romance began to flush the sky that the wonder, beauty and pathos of this most marvellous of Shakespeare's creationsbegan to be visible! We do not know that they were perceived even in hisown day, and perhaps those are not wholly wrong who declare that thiscreation, so far from being a characteristic product of the time, was avision of

 the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come. 

But the dramatic splendour of the whole tragedy is another matter, andmust have been manifest not only in Shakespeare's day but even inHanmer's. 

It is indeed so obvious that I pass it by, and proceed at once to thecentral question of Hamlet's character. And I believe time will besaved, and a good deal of positive interpretation may be introduced, if, without examining in detail any one theory, we first distinguish classesor types of theory which appear to be in various ways and degreesinsufficient or mistaken. And we will confine our attention to sanetheories;--for on this subject, as on all questions relating toShakespeare, there are plenty of merely lunatic views: the view, forexample, that Hamlet, being a disguised woman in love with Horatio, could hardly help seeming unkind to Ophelia; or the view that, being avery clever and wicked young man who wanted to oust his innocent unclefrom the throne, he 'faked' the Ghost with this intent. 

But, before we come to our types of theory, it is necessary to touch onan idea, not unfrequently met with, which would make it vain labour todiscuss or propose any theory at all. It is sometimes said that Hamlet'scharacter is not only intricate but unintelligible. Now this statementmight mean something quite unobjectionable and even perhaps true andimportant. It might mean that the character cannot be _wholly_understood. As we saw, there may be questions which we cannot answerwith certainty now, because we have nothing but the text to guide us, but which never arose for the spectators who saw _Hamlet_ acted inShakespeare's day; and we shall have to refer to such questions in theselectures. Again, it may be held without any improbability that, fromcarelessness or because he was engaged on this play for several years, Shakespeare left inconsistencies in his exhibition of the characterwhich must prevent us from being certain of his ultimate meaning. Or, possibly, we may be baffled because he has illustrated in it certainstrange facts of human nature, which he had noticed but of which we areignorant. But then all this would apply in some measure to othercharacters in Shakespeare, and it is not this that is meant by thestatement that Hamlet is unintelligible. What is meant is thatShakespeare _intended_ him to be so, because he himself was feelingstrongly, and wished his audience to feel strongly, what a mystery lifeis, and how impossible it is for us to understand it. Now here, surely, we have mere confusion of mind. The mysteriousness of life is one thing, the psychological unintelligibility of a dramatic character is quiteanother; and the second does not show the first, it shows only theincapacity or folly of the dramatist. If it did show the first, it wouldbe very easy to surpass Shakespeare in producing a sense of mystery: weshould simply have to portray an absolutely nonsensical character. Ofcourse _Hamlet_ appeals powerfully to our sense of the mystery of life, but so does _every_ good tragedy; and it does so not because the hero isan enigma to us, but because, having a fair understanding of him, wefeel how strange it is that strength and weakness should be so mingledin one soul, and that this soul should be doomed to such misery andapparent failure. 

(1) To come, then, to our typical views, we may lay it down, first, thatno theory will hold water which finds the cause of Hamlet's delaymerely, or mainly, or even to any considerable extent, in externaldifficulties. Nothing is easier than to spin a plausible theory of thiskind. What, it may be asked, [33] was Hamlet to do when the Ghost hadleft him with its commission of vengeance? The King was surrounded notmerely by courtiers but by a Swiss body-guard: how was Hamlet to get athim? Was he then to accuse him publicly of the murder? If he did, whatwould happen? How would he prove the charge? All that he had to offer inproof was--a ghost-story! Others, to be sure, had seen the Ghost, but noone else had heard its revelations. Obviously, then, even if the courthad been honest, instead of subservient and corrupt, it would have votedHamlet mad, or worse, and would have shut him up out of harm's way. Hecould not see what to do, therefore, and so he waited. Then came theactors, and at once with admirable promptness he arranged for theplay-scene, hoping that the King would betray his guilt to the wholecourt. Unfortunately the King did not. It is true that immediatelyafterwards Hamlet got his chance; for he found the King defenceless onhis knees. But what Hamlet wanted was not a private revenge, to befollowed by his own imprisonment or execution; it was public justice. Sohe spared the King; and, as he unluckily killed Polonius justafterwards, he had to consent to be despatched to England. But, on thevoyage there, he discovered the King's commission, ordering the King ofEngland to put him immediately to death; and, with this in his pocket, he made his way back to Denmark. For now, he saw, the proof of theKing's attempt to murder him would procure belief also for the story ofthe murder of his father. His enemy, however, was too quick for him, andhis public arraignment of that enemy was prevented by his own death. 

A theory like this sounds very plausible--so long as you do not rememberthe text. But no unsophisticated mind, fresh from the reading of_Hamlet_, will accept it; and, as soon as we begin to probe it, fatalobjections arise in such numbers that I choose but a few, and indeed Ithink the first of them is enough. 

(_a_) From beginning to end of the play, Hamlet never makes theslightest reference to any external difficulty. How is it possible toexplain this fact in conformity with the theory? For what conceivablereason should Shakespeare conceal from us so carefully the key to theproblem?

(_b_) Not only does Hamlet fail to allude to such difficulties, but healways assumes that he _can_ obey the Ghost, [34] and he once assertsthis in so many words ('Sith I have cause and will and strength andmeans To do't, ' IV. Iv. 45). 

(_c_) Again, why does Shakespeare exhibit Laertes quite easily raisingthe people against the King? Why but to show how much more easilyHamlet, whom the people loved, could have done the same thing, if thatwas the plan he preferred?

(_d_) Again, Hamlet did _not_ plan the play-scene in the hope that theKing would betray his guilt to the court. He planned it, according tohis own account, in order to convince _himself_ by the King's agitationthat the Ghost had spoken the truth. This is perfectly clear from II. Ii. 625 ff. And from III. Ii. 80 ff. Some readers are misled by thewords in the latter passage:

 if his occulted guilt Do not itself unkennel in one speech, It is a damned ghost that we have seen. 

The meaning obviously is, as the context shows, 'if his hidden guilt donot betray itself _on occasion of_ one speech, ' viz. , the 'dozen orsixteen lines' with which Hamlet has furnished the player, and of whichonly six are delivered, because the King does not merely show his guiltin his face (which was all Hamlet had hoped, III. Ii. 90) butrushes from the room. 

It may be as well to add that, although Hamlet's own account of hisreason for arranging the play-scene may be questioned, it is impossibleto suppose that, if his real design had been to provoke an openconfession of guilt, he could have been unconscious of this design. 

(_e_) Again, Hamlet never once talks, or shows a sign of thinking, ofthe plan of bringing the King to public justice; he always talks ofusing his 'sword' or his 'arm. ' And this is so just as much after he hasreturned to Denmark with the commission in his pocket as it was beforethis event. When he has told Horatio the story of the voyage, he doesnot say, 'Now I can convict him': he says, 'Now am I not justified inusing this arm?'

This class of theory, then, we must simply reject. But it suggests tworemarks. It is of course quite probable that, when Hamlet was 'thinkingtoo precisely on the event, ' he was considering, among other things, thequestion how he could avenge his father without sacrificing his own lifeor freedom. And assuredly, also, he was anxious that his act ofvengeance should not be misconstrued, and would never have been contentto leave a 'wounded name' behind him. His dying words prove that. 

(2) Assuming, now, that Hamlet's main difficulty--almost the whole ofhis difficulty--was internal, I pass to views which, acknowledging this, are still unsatisfactory because they isolate one element in hischaracter and situation and treat it as the whole. 

According to the first of these typical views, Hamlet was restrained byconscience or a moral scruple; he could not satisfy himself that it wasright to avenge his father. 

This idea, like the first, can easily be made to look very plausible ifwe vaguely imagine the circumstances without attending to the text. Butattention to the text is fatal to it. For, on the one hand, scarcelyanything can be produced in support of it, and, on the other hand, agreat deal can be produced in its disproof. To take the latter pointfirst, Hamlet, it is impossible to deny, habitually assumes, without anyquestioning, that he _ought_ to avenge his father. Even when he doubts, or thinks that he doubts, the honesty of the Ghost, he expresses nodoubt as to what his duty will be if the Ghost turns out honest: 'If hebut blench I know my course. ' In the two soliloquies where he reviewshis position (II. Ii. , 'O what a rogue and peasant slave am I, 'and IV. Iv. , 'How all occasions do inform against me') hereproaches himself bitterly for the neglect of his duty. When hereflects on the possible causes of this neglect he never mentions amongthem a moral scruple. When the Ghost appears in the Queen's chamber heconfesses, conscience-stricken, that, lapsed in time and passion, he haslet go by the acting of its command; but he does not plead that hisconscience stood in his way. The Ghost itself says that it comes to whethis 'almost blunted purpose'; and conscience may unsettle a purpose butdoes not blunt it. What natural explanation of all this can be given onthe conscience theory?

And now what can be set against this evidence? One solitary passage. [35]Quite late, after Hamlet has narrated to Horatio the events of hisvoyage, he asks him (V. Ii. 63):

 Does it not, thinks't thee, stand me now upon-- He that hath kill'd my king and whored my mother, Popp'd in between the election and my hopes, Thrown out his angle for my proper life, And with such cozenage--is't not perfect conscience To quit him with this arm? and is't not to be damn'd To let this canker of our nature come In further evil?

Here, certainly, is a question of conscience in the usual present senseof the word; and, it may be said, does not this show that all alongHamlet really has been deterred by moral scruples? But I ask first how, in that case, the facts just adduced are to be explained: for they mustbe explained, not ignored. Next, let the reader observe that even ifthis passage did show that _one_ hindrance to Hamlet's action was hisconscience, it by no means follows that this was the sole or the chiefhindrance. And, thirdly, let him observe, and let him ask himselfwhether the coincidence is a mere accident, that Hamlet is here almostrepeating the words he used in vain self-reproach some time before(IV. Iv. 56):

 How stand I then, That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd, Excitements of my reason and my blood, And let all sleep?

Is it not clear that he is speculating just as vainly now, and that thisquestion of conscience is but one of his many unconscious excuses fordelay? And, lastly, is it not so that Horatio takes it? He declines todiscuss that unreal question, and answers simply, It must be shortly known to him from England What is the issue of the business there. 

In other words, 'Enough of this endless procrastination. What is wantedis not reasons for the deed, but the deed itself. ' What can be moresignificant?

Perhaps, however, it may be answered: 'Your explanation of this passagemay be correct, and the facts you have mentioned do seem to be fatal tothe theory of conscience in its usual form. But there is another andsubtler theory of conscience. According to it, Hamlet, so far as hisexplicit consciousness went, was sure that he ought to obey the Ghost;but in the depths of his nature, and unknown to himself, there was amoral repulsion to the deed. The conventional moral ideas of his time, which he shared with the Ghost, told him plainly that he ought to avengehis father; but a deeper conscience in him, which was in advance of histime, contended with these explicit conventional ideas. It is becausethis deeper conscience remains below the surface that he fails torecognise it, and fancies he is hindered by cowardice or sloth orpassion or what not; but it emerges into light in that speech toHoratio. And it is just because he has this nobler moral nature in himthat we admire and love him. '

Now I at once admit not only that this view is much more attractive andmore truly tragic than the ordinary conscience theory, but that it hasmore verisimilitude. But I feel no doubt that it does not answer toShakespeare's meaning, and I will simply mention, out of many objectionsto it, three which seem to be fatal. (_a_) If it answers toShakespeare's meaning, why in the world did he conceal that meaninguntil the last Act? The facts adduced above seem to show beyond questionthat, on the hypothesis, he did so. That he did so is surely next doorto incredible. In any case, it certainly requires an explanation, andcertainly has not received one. (_b_) Let us test the theory byreference to a single important passage, that where Hamlet finds theKing at prayer and spares him. The reason Hamlet gives himself forsparing the King is that, if he kills him now, he will send him toheaven, whereas he desires to send him to hell. Now, this reason may bean unconscious excuse, but is it believable that, if the real reason hadbeen the stirrings of his deeper conscience, _that_ could have maskeditself in the form of a desire to send his enemy's soul to hell? Is notthe idea quite ludicrous? (_c_) The theory requires us to suppose that, when the Ghost enjoins Hamlet to avenge the murder of his father, it islaying on him a duty which _we_ are to understand to be no duty but thevery reverse. And is not that supposition wholly contrary to the naturalimpression which we all receive in reading the play? Surely it is clearthat, whatever we in the twentieth century may think about Hamlet'sduty, we are meant in the play to assume that he _ought_ to have obeyedthe Ghost. 

The conscience theory, then, in either of its forms we must reject. Butit may remind us of points worth noting. In the first place, it iscertainly true that Hamlet, in spite of some appearances to thecontrary, was, as Goethe said, of a most moral nature, and had a greatanxiety to do right. In this anxiety he resembles Brutus, and it isstronger in him than in any of the later heroes. And, secondly, it ishighly probable that in his interminable broodings the kind of paralysiswith which he was stricken masked itself in the shape of conscientiousscruples as well as in many other shapes. And, finally, in his shrinkingfrom the deed there was probably, together with much else, somethingwhich may be called a moral, though not a conscientious, repulsion: Imean a repugnance to the idea of falling suddenly on a man who could notdefend himself. This, so far as we can see, was the only plan thatHamlet ever contemplated. There is no positive evidence in the play thathe regarded it with the aversion that any brave and honourable man, onemust suppose, would feel for it; but, as Hamlet certainly was brave andhonourable, we may presume that he did so. 

(3) We come next to what may be called the sentimental view of Hamlet, aview common both among his worshippers and among his defamers. Its germmay perhaps be found in an unfortunate phrase of Goethe's (who of courseis not responsible for the whole view): 'a lovely, pure and most moralnature, _without the strength of nerve which forms a hero_, sinksbeneath a burden which it cannot bear and must not cast away. ' When thisidea is isolated, developed and popularised, we get the picture of agraceful youth, sweet and sensitive, full of delicate sympathies andyearning aspirations, shrinking from the touch of everything gross andearthly; but frail and weak, a kind of Werther, with a face likeShelley's and a voice like Mr. Tree's. And then we ask in tender pity, how could such a man perform the terrible duty laid on him?

How, indeed! And what a foolish Ghost even to suggest such a duty! Butthis conception, though not without its basis in certain beautifultraits of Hamlet's nature, is utterly untrue. It is too kind to Hamleton one side, and it is quite unjust to him on another. The 'conscience'theory at any rate leaves Hamlet a great nature which you can admire andeven revere. But for the 'sentimental' Hamlet you can feel only pity notunmingled with contempt. Whatever else he is, he is no _hero_. 

But consider the text. This shrinking, flower-like youth--how could hepossibly have done what we _see_ Hamlet do? What likeness to him isthere in the Hamlet who, summoned by the Ghost, bursts from histerrified friends with the cry:

 Unhand me, gentlemen! By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me;

the Hamlet who scarcely once speaks to the King without an insult, or toPolonius without a gibe; the Hamlet who storms at Ophelia and speaksdaggers to his mother; the Hamlet who, hearing a cry behind the arras, whips out his sword in an instant and runs the eavesdropper through; theHamlet who sends his 'school-fellows' to their death and never troubleshis head about them more; the Hamlet who is the first man to board apirate ship, and who fights with Laertes in the grave; the Hamlet of thecatastrophe, an omnipotent fate, before whom all the court standshelpless, who, as the truth breaks upon him, rushes on the King, driveshis foil right through his body, [36] then seizes the poisoned cup andforces it violently between the wretched man's lips, and in the throesof death has force and fire enough to wrest the cup from Horatio's hand('By heaven, I'll have it!') lest he should drink and die? This man, theHamlet of the play, is a heroic, terrible figure. He would have beenformidable to Othello or Macbeth. If the sentimental Hamlet had crossedhim, he would have hurled him from his path with one sweep of his arm. 

This view, then, or any view that approaches it, is grossly unjust toHamlet, and turns tragedy into mere pathos. But, on the other side, itis too kind to him. It ignores the hardness and cynicism which wereindeed no part of his nature, but yet, in this crisis of his life, areindubitably present and painfully marked. His sternness, itself left outof sight by this theory, is no defect; but he is much more than stern. Polonius possibly deserved nothing better than the words addressed tohis corpse:

 Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell! I took thee for thy better: take thy fortune: Thou find'st to be too busy is some danger;

yet this was Ophelia's father, and, whatever he deserved, it pains us, for Hamlet's own sake, to hear the words:

 This man shall set me packing: I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room. 

There is the same insensibility in Hamlet's language about the fate ofRosencrantz and Guildenstern; and, observe, their deaths were not in theleast required by his purpose. Grant, again, that his cruelty to Opheliawas partly due to misunderstanding, partly forced on him, partlyfeigned; still one surely cannot altogether so account for it, and stillless can one so account for the disgusting and insulting grossness ofhis language to her in the play-scene. I know this is said to be merelyan example of the custom of Shakespeare's time. But it is not so. It issuch language as you will find addressed to a woman by no other hero ofShakespeare's, not even in that dreadful scene where Othello accusesDesdemona. It is a great mistake to ignore these things, or to try tosoften the impression which they naturally make on one. That thisembitterment, callousness, grossness, brutality, should be induced on asoul so pure and noble is profoundly tragic; and Shakespeare's businesswas to show this tragedy, not to paint an ideally beautiful soulunstained and undisturbed by the evil of the world and the anguish ofconscious failure. [37]

(4) There remains, finally, that class of view which may be named afterSchlegel and Coleridge. According to this, _Hamlet_ is the tragedy ofreflection. The cause of the hero's delay is irresolution; and the causeof this irresolution is excess of the reflective or speculative habit ofmind. He has a general intention to obey the Ghost, but 'the native hueof resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. ' He is'thought-sick. ' 'The whole, ' says Schlegel, 'is intended to show how acalculating consideration which aims at exhausting, so far as humanforesight can, all the relations and possible consequences of a deed, cripples[38] the power of acting. .. . Hamlet is a hypocrite towardshimself; his far-fetched scruples are often mere pretexts to cover hiswant of determination. .. . He has no firm belief in himself or inanything else. .. . He loses himself in labyrinths of thought. ' SoColeridge finds in Hamlet 'an almost enormous intellectual activity anda proportionate aversion to real action consequent upon it' (theaversion, that is to say, is consequent on the activity). ProfessorDowden objects to this view, very justly, that it neglects the emotionalside of Hamlet's character, 'which is quite as important as theintellectual'; but, with this supplement, he appears on the whole toadopt it. Hamlet, he says, 'loses a sense of fact because with him eachobject and event transforms and expands itself into an idea. .. . Hecannot steadily keep alive within himself a sense of the importance ofany positive, limited thing, --a deed, for example. ' And Professor Dowdenexplains this condition by reference to Hamlet's life. 'When the playopens he has reached the age of thirty years . .. And he has receivedculture of every kind except the culture of active life. During thereign of the strong-willed elder Hamlet there was no call to action forhis meditative son. He has slipped on into years of full manhood still ahaunter of the university, a student of philosophies, an amateur in art, a ponderer on the things of life and death, who has never formed aresolution or executed a deed' (_Shakspere, his Mind and Art_, 4th ed. , pp. 132, 133). 

On the whole, the Schlegel-Coleridge theory (with or without ProfessorDowden's modification and amplification) is the most widely receivedview of Hamlet's character. And with it we come at last into closecontact with the text of the play. It not only answers, in somefundamental respects, to the general impression produced by the drama, but it can be supported by Hamlet's own words in his soliloquies--suchwords, for example, as those about the native hue of resolution, orthose about the craven scruple of thinking too precisely on the event. It is confirmed, also, by the contrast between Hamlet on the one sideand Laertes and Fortinbras on the other; and, further, by the occurrenceof those words of the King to Laertes (IV. Vii. 119 f. ), which, if they are not in character, are all the more important as showing whatwas in Shakespeare's mind at the time:

 that we would do We should do when we would; for this 'would' changes, And hath abatements and delays as many As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents; And then this 'should' is like a spendthrift sigh That hurts by easing. 

And, lastly, even if the view itself does not suffice, the _description_given by its adherents of Hamlet's state of mind, as we see him in thelast four Acts, is, on the whole and so far as it goes, a truedescription. The energy of resolve is dissipated in an endless broodingon the deed required. When he acts, his action does not proceed fromthis deliberation and analysis, but is sudden and impulsive, evoked byan emergency in which he has no time to think. And most of the reasonshe assigns for his procrastination are evidently not the true reasons, but unconscious excuses. 

Nevertheless this theory fails to satisfy. And it fails not merely inthis or that detail, but as a whole. We feel that its Hamlet does notfully answer to our imaginative impression. He is not nearly soinadequate to this impression as the sentimental Hamlet, but still wefeel he is inferior to Shakespeare's man and does him wrong. And when wecome to examine the theory we find that it is partial and leaves muchunexplained. I pass that by for the present, for we shall see, Ibelieve, that the theory is also positively misleading, and that in amost important way. And of this I proceed to speak. 

Hamlet's irresolution, or his aversion to real action, is, according tothe theory, the _direct_ result of 'an almost enormous intellectualactivity' in the way of 'a calculating consideration which attempts toexhaust all the relations and possible consequences of a deed. ' And thisagain proceeds from an original one-sidedness of nature, strengthened byhabit, and, perhaps, by years of speculative inaction. The theorydescribes, therefore, a man in certain respects like Coleridge himself, on one side a man of genius, on the other side, the side of will, deplorably weak, always procrastinating and avoiding unpleasant duties, and often reproaching himself in vain; a man, observe, who at _any_ timeand in _any_ circumstances would be unequal to the task assigned toHamlet. And thus, I must maintain, it degrades Hamlet and travesties theplay. For Hamlet, according to all the indications in the text, was notnaturally or normally such a man, but rather, I venture to affirm, a manwho at any _other_ time and in any _other_ circumstances than thosepresented would have been perfectly equal to his task; and it is, infact, the very cruelty of his fate that the crisis of his life comes onhim at the one moment when he cannot meet it, and when his highestgifts, instead of helping him, conspire to paralyse him. This aspect ofthe tragedy the theory quite misses; and it does so because itmisconceives the cause of that irresolution which, on the whole, ittruly describes. For the cause was not directly or mainly an habitualexcess of reflectiveness. The direct cause was a state of mind quiteabnormal and induced by special circumstances, --a state of profoundmelancholy. Now, Hamlet's reflectiveness doubtless played a certain partin the _production_ of that melancholy, and was thus one indirectcontributory cause of his irresolution. And, again, the melancholy, onceestablished, displayed, as one of its _symptoms_, an excessivereflection on the required deed. But excess of reflection was not, asthe theory makes it, the _direct_ cause of the irresolution at all; norwas it the _only_ indirect cause; and in the Hamlet of the last fourActs it is to be considered rather a symptom of his state than a causeof it. 

These assertions may be too brief to be at once clear, but I hope theywill presently become so. 

3

Let us first ask ourselves what we can gather from the play, immediatelyor by inference, concerning Hamlet as he was just before his father'sdeath. And I begin by observing that the text does not bear out the ideathat he was one-sidedly reflective and indisposed to action. Nobody whoknew him seems to have noticed this weakness. Nobody regards him as amere scholar who has 'never formed a resolution or executed a deed. ' Ina court which certainly would not much admire such a person he is theobserved of all observers. Though he has been disappointed of the throneeveryone shows him respect; and he is the favourite of the people, whoare not given to worship philosophers. Fortinbras, a sufficientlypractical man, considered that he was likely, had he been put on, tohave proved most royally. He has Hamlet borne by four captains 'like asoldier' to his grave; and Ophelia says that Hamlet _was_ a soldier. Ifhe was fond of acting, an aesthetic pursuit, he was equally fond offencing, an athletic one: he practised it assiduously even in his worstdays. [39] So far as we can conjecture from what we see of him in thosebad days, he must normally have been charmingly frank, courteous andkindly to everyone, of whatever rank, whom he liked or respected, but byno means timid or deferential to others; indeed, one would gather thathe was rather the reverse, and also that he was apt to be decided andeven imperious if thwarted or interfered with. He must always have beenfearless, --in the play he appears insensible to fear of any ordinarykind. And, finally, he must have been quick and impetuous in action; forit is downright impossible that the man we see rushing after the Ghost, killing Polonius, dealing with the King's commission on the ship, boarding the pirate, leaping into the grave, executing his finalvengeance, could _ever_ have been shrinking or slow in an emergency. Imagine Coleridge doing any of these things!

If we consider all this, how can we accept the notion that Hamlet's wasa weak and one-sided character? 'Oh, but he spent ten or twelve years ata University!' Well, even if he did, it is possible to do that withoutbecoming the victim of excessive thought. But the statement that he didrests upon a most insecure foundation. [40]

Where then are we to look for the seeds of danger?

(1) Trying to reconstruct from the Hamlet of the play, one would notjudge that his temperament was melancholy in the present sense of theword; there seems nothing to show that; but one would judge that bytemperament he was inclined to nervous instability, to rapid andperhaps extreme changes of feeling and mood, and that he was disposed tobe, for the time, absorbed in the feeling or mood that possessed him, whether it were joyous or depressed. This temperament the Elizabethanswould have called melancholic; and Hamlet seems to be an example of it, as Lear is of a temperament mixedly choleric and sanguine. And thedoctrine of temperaments was so familiar in Shakespeare's time--asBurton, and earlier prose-writers, and many of the dramatists show--thatShakespeare may quite well have given this temperament to Hamletconsciously and deliberately. Of melancholy in its developed form, ahabit, not a mere temperament, he often speaks. He more than once laughsat the passing and half-fictitious melancholy of youth and love; in DonJohn in _Much Ado_ he had sketched the sour and surly melancholy ofdiscontent; in Jaques a whimsical self-pleasing melancholy; in Antonioin the _Merchant of Venice_ a quiet but deep melancholy, for whichneither the victim nor his friends can assign any cause. [41] He gives toHamlet a temperament which would not develop into melancholy unlessunder some exceptional strain, but which still involved a danger. In theplay we see the danger realised, and find a melancholy quite unlike anythat Shakespeare had as yet depicted, because the temperament of Hamletis quite different. 

(2) Next, we cannot be mistaken in attributing to the Hamlet of earlierdays an exquisite sensibility, to which we may give the name 'moral, ' ifthat word is taken in the wide meaning it ought to bear. This, thoughit suffers cruelly in later days, as we saw in criticising thesentimental view of Hamlet, never deserts him; it makes all hiscynicism, grossness and hardness appear to us morbidities, and has aninexpressibly attractive and pathetic effect. He had the soul of theyouthful poet as Shelley and Tennyson have described it, an unboundeddelight and faith in everything good and beautiful. We know this fromhimself. The world for him was _herrlich wie am ersten Tag_--'thisgoodly frame the earth, this most excellent canopy the air, this braveo'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire. 'And not nature only: 'What a piece of work is a man! how noble inreason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express andadmirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!'This is no commonplace to Hamlet; it is the language of a heart thrilledwith wonder and swelling into ecstasy. 

Doubtless it was with the same eager enthusiasm he turned to thosearound him. Where else in Shakespeare is there anything like Hamlet'sadoration of his father? The words melt into music whenever he speaks ofhim. And, if there are no signs of any such feeling towards his mother, though many signs of love, it is characteristic that he evidently neverentertained a suspicion of anything unworthy in her, --characteristic, and significant of his tendency to see only what is good unless he isforced to see the reverse. For we find this tendency elsewhere, and findit going so far that we must call it a disposition to idealise, to seesomething better than what is there, or at least to ignore deficiencies. He says to Laertes, 'I loved you ever, ' and he describes Laertes as a'very noble youth, ' which he was far from being. In his first greetingof Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, where his old self revives, we tracethe same affectionateness and readiness to take men at their best. Hislove for Ophelia, too, which seems strange to some, is surely the mostnatural thing in the world. He saw her innocence, simplicity andsweetness, and it was like him to ask no more; and it is noticeable thatHoratio, though entirely worthy of his friendship, is, like Ophelia, intellectually not remarkable. To the very end, however clouded, thisgenerous disposition, this 'free and open nature, ' this unsuspiciousnesssurvive. They cost him his life; for the King knew them, and was surethat he was too 'generous and free from all contriving' to 'peruse thefoils. ' To the very end, his soul, however sick and tortured it may be, answers instantaneously when good and evil are presented to it, lovingthe one and hating the other. He is called a sceptic who has no firmbelief in anything, but he is never sceptical about _them_. 

And the negative side of his idealism, the aversion to evil, is perhapseven more developed in the hero of the tragedy than in the Hamlet ofearlier days. It is intensely characteristic. Nothing, I believe, is tobe found elsewhere in Shakespeare (unless in the rage of thedisillusioned idealist Timon) of quite the same kind as Hamlet's disgustat his uncle's drunkenness, his loathing of his mother's sensuality, hisastonishment and horror at her shallowness, his contempt for everythingpretentious or false, his indifference to everything merely external. This last characteristic appears in his choice of the friend of hisheart, and in a certain impatience of distinctions of rank or wealth. When Horatio calls his father 'a goodly king, ' he answers, surely withan emphasis on 'man, '

 He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again. 

He will not listen to talk of Horatio being his 'servant. ' When theothers speak of their 'duty' to him, he answers, 'Your love, as mine toyou. ' He speaks to the actor precisely as he does to an honest courtier. He is not in the least a revolutionary, but still, in effect, a king anda beggar are all one to him. He cares for nothing but human worth, andhis pitilessness towards Polonius and Osric and his 'school-fellows' isnot wholly due to morbidity, but belongs in part to his originalcharacter. 

Now, in Hamlet's moral sensibility there undoubtedly lay a danger. Anygreat shock that life might inflict on it would be felt with extremeintensity. Such a shock might even produce tragic results. And, in fact, _Hamlet_ deserves the title 'tragedy of moral idealism' quite as much asthe title 'tragedy of reflection. '

(3) With this temperament and this sensibility we find, lastly, in theHamlet of earlier days, as of later, intellectual genius. It is chieflythis that makes him so different from all those about him, good and badalike, and hardly less different from most of Shakespeare's otherheroes. And this, though on the whole the most important trait in hisnature, is also so obvious and so famous that I need not dwell on it atlength. But against one prevalent misconception I must say a word ofwarning. Hamlet's intellectual power is not a specific gift, like agenius for music or mathematics or philosophy. It shows itself, fitfully, in the affairs of life as unusual quickness of perception, great agility in shifting the mental attitude, a striking rapidity andfertility in resource; so that, when his natural belief in others doesnot make him unwary, Hamlet easily sees through them and masters them, and no one can be much less like the typical helpless dreamer. It showsitself in conversation chiefly in the form of wit or humour; and, alikein conversation and in soliloquy, it shows itself in the form ofimagination quite as much as in that of thought in the stricter sense. Further, where it takes the latter shape, as it very often does, it isnot philosophic in the technical meaning of the word. There is reallynothing in the play to show that Hamlet ever was 'a student ofphilosophies, ' unless it be the famous lines which, comically enough, exhibit this supposed victim of philosophy as its critic:

 There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. [42]

His philosophy, if the word is to be used, was, like Shakespeare's own, the immediate product of the wondering and meditating mind; and suchthoughts as that celebrated one, 'There is nothing either good or badbut thinking makes it so, ' surely needed no special training to producethem. Or does Portia's remark, 'Nothing is good without respect, '_i. E. _, out of relation, prove that she had studied metaphysics?

Still Hamlet had speculative genius without being a philosopher, just ashe had imaginative genius without being a poet. Doubtless in happierdays he was a close and constant observer of men and manners, noting hisresults in those tables which he afterwards snatched from his breast tomake in wild irony his last note of all, that one may smile and smileand be a villain. Again and again we remark that passion forgeneralisation which so occupied him, for instance, in reflectionssuggested by the King's drunkenness that he quite forgot what it was hewas waiting to meet upon the battlements. Doubtless, too, he was alwaysconsidering things, as Horatio thought, too curiously. There was anecessity in his soul driving him to penetrate below the surface and toquestion what others took for granted. That fixed habitual look whichthe world wears for most men did not exist for him. He was for everunmaking his world and rebuilding it in thought, dissolving what toothers were solid facts, and discovering what to others were old truths. There were no old truths for Hamlet. It is for Horatio a thing of coursethat there's a divinity that shapes our ends, but for Hamlet it is adiscovery hardly won. And throughout this kingdom of the mind, where hefelt that man, who in action is only like an angel, is in apprehensionlike a god, he moved (we must imagine) more than content, so that evenin his dark days he declares he could be bounded in a nutshell and yetcount himself a king of infinite space, were it not that he had baddreams. 

If now we ask whether any special danger lurked _here_, how shall weanswer? We must answer, it seems to me, 'Some danger, no doubt, but, granted the ordinary chances of life, not much. ' For, in the firstplace, that idea which so many critics quietly take for granted--theidea that the gift and the habit of meditative and speculative thoughttend to produce irresolution in the affairs of life--would be found byno means easy to verify. Can you verify it, for example, in the lives ofthe philosophers, or again in the lives of men whom you have personallyknown to be addicted to such speculation? I cannot. Of course, individual peculiarities being set apart, absorption in _any_intellectual interest, together with withdrawal from affairs, may make aman slow and unskilful in affairs; and doubtless, individualpeculiarities being again set apart, a mere student is likely to be moreat a loss in a sudden and great practical emergency than a soldier or alawyer. But in all this there is no difference between a physicist, ahistorian, and a philosopher; and again, slowness, want of skill, andeven helplessness are something totally different from the peculiar kindof irresolution that Hamlet shows. The notion that speculative thinkingspecially tends to produce _this_ is really a mere illusion. 

In the second place, even if this notion were true, it has appeared thatHamlet did _not_ live the life of a mere student, much less of a meredreamer, and that his nature was by no means simply or even one-sidedlyintellectual, but was healthily active. Hence, granted the ordinarychances of life, there would seem to be no great danger in hisintellectual tendency and his habit of speculation; and I would gofurther and say that there was nothing in them, taken alone, to unfithim even for the extraordinary call that was made upon him. In fact, ifthe message of the Ghost had come to him within a week of his father'sdeath, I see no reason to doubt that he would have acted on it asdecisively as Othello himself, though probably after a longer and moreanxious deliberation. And therefore the Schlegel-Coleridge view (apartfrom its descriptive value) seems to me fatally untrue, for it impliesthat Hamlet's procrastination was the normal response of anover-speculative nature confronted with a difficult practical problem. 

On the other hand, under conditions of a peculiar kind, Hamlet'sreflectiveness certainly might prove dangerous to him, and his geniusmight even (to exaggerate a little) become his doom. Suppose thatviolent shock to his moral being of which I spoke; and suppose thatunder this shock, any possible action being denied to him, he began tosink into melancholy; then, no doubt, his imaginative and generalisinghabit of mind might extend the effects of this shock through his wholebeing and mental world. And if, the state of melancholy being thusdeepened and fixed, a sudden demand for difficult and decisive action ina matter connected with the melancholy arose, this state might well havefor one of its symptoms an endless and futile mental dissection of therequired deed. And, finally, the futility of this process, and the shameof his delay, would further weaken him and enslave him to his melancholystill more. Thus the speculative habit would be _one_ indirect cause ofthe morbid state which hindered action; and it would also reappear in adegenerate form as one of the _symptoms_ of this morbid state. 

 * * * * *

Now this is what actually happens in the play. Turn to the first wordsHamlet utters when he is alone; turn, that is to say, to the place wherethe author is likely to indicate his meaning most plainly. What do youhear?

 O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. 

Here are a sickness of life, and even a longing for death, so intensethat nothing stands between Hamlet and suicide except religious awe. Andwhat has caused them? The rest of the soliloquy so thrusts the answerupon us that it might seem impossible to miss it. It was not hisfather's death; that doubtless brought deep grief, but mere grief forsome one loved and lost does not make a noble spirit loathe the world asa place full only of things rank and gross. It was not the vaguesuspicion that we know Hamlet felt. Still less was it the loss of thecrown; for though the subserviency of the electors might well disgusthim, there is not a reference to the subject in the soliloquy, nor anysign elsewhere that it greatly occupied his mind. It was the moral shockof the sudden ghastly disclosure of his mother's true nature, falling onhim when his heart was aching with love, and his body doubtless wasweakened by sorrow. And it is essential, however disagreeable, torealise the nature of this shock. It matters little here whetherHamlet's age was twenty or thirty: in either case his mother was amatron of mature years. All his life he had believed in her, we may besure, as such a son would. He had seen her not merely devoted to hisfather, but hanging on him like a newly-wedded bride, hanging on him

 As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on. 

He had seen her following his body 'like Niobe, all tears. ' And thenwithin a month--'O God! a beast would have mourned longer'--she marriedagain, and married Hamlet's uncle, a man utterly contemptible andloathsome in his eyes; married him in what to Hamlet was incestuouswedlock;[43] married him not for any reason of state, nor even out ofold family affection, but in such a way that her son was forced to seein her action not only an astounding shallowness of feeling but aneruption of coarse sensuality, 'rank and gross, '[44] speeding post-hasteto its horrible delight. Is it possible to conceive an experience moredesolating to a man such as we have seen Hamlet to be; and is its resultanything but perfectly natural? It brings bewildered horror, thenloathing, then despair of human nature. His whole mind is poisoned. Hecan never see Ophelia in the same light again: she is a woman, and hismother is a woman: if she mentions the word 'brief' to him, the answerdrops from his lips like venom, 'as woman's love. ' The last words of thesoliloquy, which is _wholly_ concerned with this subject, are, But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue!

He can do nothing. He must lock in his heart, not any suspicion of hisuncle that moves obscurely there, but that horror and loathing; and ifhis heart ever found relief, it was when those feelings, mingled withthe love that never died out in him, poured themselves forth in a floodas he stood in his mother's chamber beside his father'smarriage-bed. [45]

If we still wonder, and ask why the effect of this shock should be sotremendous, let us observe that _now_ the conditions have arisen underwhich Hamlet's highest endowments, his moral sensibility and his genius, become his enemies. A nature morally blunter would have felt even sodreadful a revelation less keenly. A slower and more limited andpositive mind might not have extended so widely through its world thedisgust and disbelief that have entered it. But Hamlet has theimagination which, for evil as well as good, feels and sees all thingsin one. Thought is the element of his life, and his thought isinfected. He cannot prevent himself from probing and lacerating thewound in his soul. One idea, full of peril, holds him fast, and he criesout in agony at it, but is impotent to free himself ('Must I remember?''Let me not think on't'). And when, with the fading of his passion, thevividness of this idea abates, it does so only to leave behind aboundless weariness and a sick longing for death. 

And this is the time which his fate chooses. In this hour of uttermostweakness, this sinking of his whole being towards annihilation, therecomes on him, bursting the bounds of the natural world with a shock ofastonishment and terror, the revelation of his mother's adultery and hisfather's murder, and, with this, the demand on him, in the name ofeverything dearest and most sacred, to arise and act. And for a moment, though his brain reels and totters, [46] his soul leaps up in passion toanswer this demand. But it comes too late. It does but strike home thelast rivet in the melancholy which holds him bound. 

 The time is out of joint! O cursed spite That ever I was born to set it right, --

so he mutters within an hour of the moment when he vowed to give hislife to the duty of revenge; and the rest of the story exhibits his vainefforts to fulfil this duty, his unconscious self-excuses and unavailingself-reproaches, and the tragic results of his delay. 

4

'Melancholy, ' I said, not dejection, nor yet insanity. That Hamlet wasnot far from insanity is very probable. His adoption of the pretence ofmadness may well have been due in part to fear of the reality; to aninstinct of self-preservation, a fore-feeling that the pretence wouldenable him to give some utterance to the load that pressed on his heartand brain, and a fear that he would be unable altogether to repress suchutterance. And if the pathologist calls his state melancholia, and evenproceeds to determine its species, I see nothing to object to in that; Iam grateful to him for emphasising the fact that Hamlet's melancholy wasno mere common depression of spirits; and I have no doubt that manyreaders of the play would understand it better if they read an accountof melancholia in a work on mental diseases. If we like to use the word'disease' loosely, Hamlet's condition may truly be called diseased. Noexertion of will could have dispelled it. Even if he had been able atonce to do the bidding of the Ghost he would doubtless have stillremained for some time under the cloud. It would be absurdly unjust tocall _Hamlet_ a study of melancholy, but it contains such a study. 

But this melancholy is something very different from insanity, inanything like the usual meaning of that word. No doubt it might developinto insanity. The longing for death might become an irresistibleimpulse to self-destruction; the disorder of feeling and will mightextend to sense and intellect; delusions might arise; and the man mightbecome, as we say, incapable and irresponsible. But Hamlet's melancholyis some way from this condition. It is a totally different thing fromthe madness which he feigns; and he never, when alone or in company withHoratio alone, exhibits the signs of that madness. Nor is the dramaticuse of this melancholy, again, open to the objections which would justlybe made to the portrayal of an insanity which brought the hero to atragic end. The man who suffers as Hamlet suffers--and thousands goabout their business suffering thus in greater or less degree--isconsidered irresponsible neither by other people nor by himself: he isonly too keenly conscious of his responsibility. He is therefore, sofar, quite capable of being a tragic agent, which an insane person, atany rate according to Shakespeare's practice, is not. [47] And, finally, Hamlet's state is not one which a healthy mind is unable sufficiently toimagine. It is probably not further from average experience, nor moredifficult to realise, than the great tragic passions of Othello, Antonyor Macbeth. 

Let me try to show now, briefly, how much this melancholy accounts for. 

It accounts for the main fact, Hamlet's inaction. For the _immediate_cause of that is simply that his habitual feeling is one of disgust atlife and everything in it, himself included, --a disgust which varies inintensity, rising at times into a longing for death, sinking often intoweary apathy, but is never dispelled for more than brief intervals. Sucha state of feeling is inevitably adverse to _any_ kind of decidedaction; the body is inert, the mind indifferent or worse; its responseis, 'it does not matter, ' 'it is not worth while, ' 'it is no good. ' Andthe action required of Hamlet is very exceptional. It is violent, dangerous, difficult to accomplish perfectly, on one side repulsive to aman of honour and sensitive feeling, on another side involved in acertain mystery (here come in thus, in their subordinate place, variouscauses of inaction assigned by various theories). These obstacles wouldnot suffice to prevent Hamlet from acting, if his state were normal; andagainst them there operate, even in his morbid state, healthy andpositive feelings, love of his father, loathing of his uncle, desire ofrevenge, desire to do duty. But the retarding motives acquire anunnatural strength because they have an ally in something far strongerthan themselves, the melancholic disgust and apathy; while the healthymotives, emerging with difficulty from the central mass of diseasedfeeling, rapidly sink back into it and 'lose the name of action. ' We_see_ them doing so; and sometimes the process is quite simple, noanalytical reflection on the deed intervening between the outburst ofpassion and the relapse into melancholy. [48] But this melancholy isperfectly consistent also with that incessant dissection of the taskassigned, of which the Schlegel-Coleridge theory makes so much. Forthose endless questions (as we may imagine them), 'Was I deceived by theGhost? How am I to do the deed? When? Where? What will be theconsequence of attempting it--success, my death, utter misunderstanding, mere mischief to the State? Can it be right to do it, or noble to kill adefenceless man? What is the good of doing it in such a world asthis?'--all this, and whatever else passed in a sickening round throughHamlet's mind, was not the healthy and right deliberation of a man withsuch a task, but otiose thinking hardly deserving the name of thought, an unconscious weaving of pretexts for inaction, aimless tossings on asick bed, symptoms of melancholy which only increased it by deepeningself-contempt. 

Again, (_a_) this state accounts for Hamlet's energy as well as for hislassitude, those quick decided actions of his being the outcome of anature normally far from passive, now suddenly stimulated, and producinghealthy impulses which work themselves out before they have time tosubside. (_b_) It accounts for the evidently keen satisfaction whichsome of these actions give to him. He arranges the play-scene withlively interest, and exults in its success, not really because it bringshim nearer to his goal, but partly because it has hurt his enemy andpartly because it has demonstrated his own skill (III. Ii. 286-304). He looks forward almost with glee to countermining the King'sdesigns in sending him away (III. Iv. 209), and looks back withobvious satisfaction, even with pride, to the address and vigour hedisplayed on the voyage (V. Ii. 1-55). These were not _the_action on which his morbid self-feeling had centred; he feels in themhis old force, and escapes in them from his disgust. (_c_) It accountsfor the pleasure with which he meets old acquaintances, like his'school-fellows' or the actors. The former observed (and we can observe)in him a 'kind of joy' at first, though it is followed by 'much forcingof his disposition' as he attempts to keep this joy and his courtesyalive in spite of the misery which so soon returns upon him and thesuspicion he is forced to feel. (_d_) It accounts no less for thepainful features of his character as seen in the play, his almost savageirritability on the one hand, and on the other his self-absorption, hiscallousness, his insensibility to the fates of those whom he despises, and to the feelings even of those whom he loves. These are frequentsymptoms of such melancholy, and (_e_) they sometimes alternate, as theydo in Hamlet, with bursts of transitory, almost hysterical, and quitefruitless emotion. It is to these last (of which a part of thesoliloquy, 'O what a rogue, ' gives a good example) that Hamlet alludeswhen, to the Ghost, he speaks of himself as 'lapsed in _passion_, ' andit is doubtless partly his conscious weakness in regard to them thatinspires his praise of Horatio as a man who is not 'passion'sslave. '[49]

Finally, Hamlet's melancholy accounts for two things which seem to beexplained by nothing else. The first of these is his apathy or'lethargy. ' We are bound to consider the evidence which the textsupplies of this, though it is usual to ignore it. When Hamlet mentions, as one possible cause of his inaction, his 'thinking too precisely onthe event, ' he mentions another, 'bestial oblivion'; and the thingagainst which he inveighs in the greater part of that soliloquy(IV. Iv. ) is not the excess or the misuse of reason (which forhim here and always is god-like), but this _bestial_ oblivion or'_dullness_, ' this 'letting all _sleep_, ' this allowing of heaven-sentreason to 'fust unused':

 What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to _sleep_ and feed? a _beast_, no more. [50]

So, in the soliloquy in II. Ii. He accuses himself of being 'a_dull_ and muddy-mettled rascal, ' who 'peaks [mopes] like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of his cause, ' dully indifferent to his cause. [51] So, whenthe Ghost appears to him the second time, he accuses himself of beingtardy and lapsed in _time_; and the Ghost speaks of his purpose beingalmost _blunted_, and bids him not to _forget_ (cf. 'oblivion'). And so, what is emphasised in those undramatic but significant speeches of theplayer-king and of Claudius is the mere dying away of purpose or oflove. [52] Surely what all this points to is not a condition of excessivebut useless mental activity (indeed there is, in reality, curiouslylittle about that in the text), but rather one of dull, apathetic, brooding gloom, in which Hamlet, so far from analysing his duty, is notthinking of it at all, but for the time literally _forgets_ it. It seemsto me we are driven to think of Hamlet _chiefly_ thus during the longtime which elapsed between the appearance of the Ghost and the eventspresented in the Second Act. The Ghost, in fact, had more reason than wesuppose at first for leaving with Hamlet as his parting injunction thecommand, 'Remember me, ' and for greeting him, on re-appearing, with thecommand, 'Do not forget. '[53] These little things in Shakespeare are notaccidents. 

The second trait which is fully explained only by Hamlet's melancholy ishis own inability to understand why he delays. This emerges in a markeddegree when an occasion like the player's emotion or the sight ofFortinbras's army stings Hamlet into shame at his inaction. '_Why_, ' heasks himself in genuine bewilderment, 'do I linger? Can the cause becowardice? Can it be sloth? Can it be thinking too precisely of theevent? And does _that_ again mean cowardice? What is it that makes mesit idle when I feel it is shameful to do so, and when I have _cause, and will, and strength, and means_, to act?' A man irresolute merelybecause he was considering a proposed action too minutely would not feelthis bewilderment. A man might feel it whose conscience secretlycondemned the act which his explicit consciousness approved; but we haveseen that there is no sufficient evidence to justify us in conceivingHamlet thus. These are the questions of a man stimulated for the momentto shake off the weight of his melancholy, and, because for the momenthe is free from it, unable to understand the paralysing pressure whichit exerts at other times. 

I have dwelt thus at length on Hamlet's melancholy because, from thepsychological point of view, it is the centre of the tragedy, and toomit it from consideration or to underrate its intensity is to makeShakespeare's story unintelligible. But the psychological point of viewis not equivalent to the tragic; and, having once given its due weightto the fact of Hamlet's melancholy, we may freely admit, or rather maybe anxious to insist, that this pathological condition would excite butlittle, if any, tragic interest if it were not the condition of a naturedistinguished by that speculative genius on which the Schlegel-Coleridgetype of theory lays stress. Such theories misinterpret the connectionbetween that genius and Hamlet's failure, but still it is thisconnection which gives to his story its peculiar fascination and makesit appear (if the phrase may be allowed) as the symbol of a tragicmystery inherent in human nature. Wherever this mystery touches us, wherever we are forced to feel the wonder and awe of man's godlike'apprehension' and his 'thoughts that wander through eternity, ' and atthe same time are forced to see him powerless in his petty sphere ofaction, and powerless (it would appear) from the very divinity of histhought, we remember Hamlet. And this is the reason why, in the greatideal movement which began towards the close of the eighteenth century, this tragedy acquired a position unique among Shakespeare's dramas, andshared only by Goethe's _Faust_. It was not that _Hamlet_ isShakespeare's greatest tragedy or most perfect work of art; it was that_Hamlet_ most brings home to us at once the sense of the soul'sinfinity, and the sense of the doom which not only circumscribes thatinfinity but appears to be its offspring. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 25: It may be convenient to some readers for the purposes ofthis book to have by them a list of Shakespeare's plays, arranged inperiods. No such list, of course, can command general assent, but thefollowing (which does not throughout represent my own views) wouldperhaps meet with as little objection from scholars as any other. Forsome purposes the Third and Fourth Periods are better considered to beone. Within each period the so-called Comedies, Histories, and Tragediesare respectively grouped together; and for this reason, as well as forothers, the order within each period does not profess to bechronological (_e. G. _ it is not implied that the _Comedy of Errors_preceded _1 Henry VI. _ or _Titus Andronicus_). Where Shakespeare'sauthorship of any considerable part of a play is questioned, widely orby specially good authority, the name of the play is printed in italics. 

_First Period_ (to 1595?). --Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, TwoGentlemen of Verona, Midsummer-Night's Dream; _1 Henry VI. _, _2 HenryVI. _, _3 Henry VI. _, Richard III. , Richard II. ; _Titus Andronicus_, Romeo and Juliet. 

_Second Period_ (to 1602?). --Merchant of Venice, All's Well (better inThird Period?), _Taming of the Shrew_, Much Ado, As You Like it, MerryWives, Twelfth Night; King John, 1 Henry IV. , 2 Henry IV. , Henry V. ;Julius Caesar, Hamlet. 

_Third Period_ (to 1608?). --Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure;Othello, King Lear, _Timon of Athens_, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus. 

_Fourth Period. _--_Pericles_, Cymbeline, Winter's Tale, Tempest, _TwoNoble Kinsmen_, _Henry VIII. _]

[Footnote 26: The reader will observe that this 'tragic period' wouldnot exactly coincide with the 'Third Period' of the division given inthe last note. For _Julius Caesar_ and _Hamlet_ fall in the SecondPeriod, not the Third; and I may add that, as _Pericles_ was entered atStationers' Hall in 1608 and published in 1609, it ought strictly to beput in the Third Period--not the Fourth. The truth is that _JuliusCaesar_ and _Hamlet_ are given to the Second Period mainly on the groundof style; while a Fourth Period is admitted, not mainly on that ground(for there is no great difference here between _Antony_ and _Coriolanus_on the one side and _Cymbeline_ and the _Tempest_ on the other), butbecause of a difference in substance and spirit. If a Fourth Period wereadmitted on grounds of form, it ought to begin with _Antony andCleopatra_. ]

[Footnote 27: I should go perhaps too far if I said that it is generallyadmitted that _Timon of Athens_ also precedes the two Roman tragedies;but its precedence seems to me so nearly certain that I assume it inwhat follows. ]

[Footnote 28: That play, however, is distinguished, I think, by adeliberate endeavour after a dignified and unadorned simplicity, --aRoman simplicity perhaps. ]

[Footnote 29: It is quite probable that this may arise in part from thefact, which seems hardly doubtful, that the tragedy was revised, and inplaces re-written, some little time after its first composition. ]

[Footnote 30: This, if we confine ourselves to the tragedies, is, Ithink, especially the case in _King Lear_ and _Timon_. ]

[Footnote 31: The first, at any rate, of these three plays is, ofcourse, much nearer to _Hamlet_, especially in versification, than to_Antony and Cleopatra_, in which Shakespeare's final style first showsitself practically complete. It has been impossible, in the brieftreatment of this subject, to say what is required of the individualplays. ]

[Footnote 32: _The Mirror_, 18th April, 1780, quoted by Furness, _Variorum Hamlet_, ii. 148. In the above remarks I have relied mainly onFurness's collection of extracts from early critics. ]

[Footnote 33: I do not profess to reproduce any one theory, and, stillless, to do justice to the ablest exponent of this kind of view, Werder(_Vorlesungen über Hamlet_, 1875), who by no means regards Hamlet'sdifficulties as _merely_ external. ]

[Footnote 34: I give one instance. When he spares the King, he speaks ofkilling him when he is drunk asleep, when he is in his rage, when he isawake in bed, when he is gaming, as if there were in none of these casesthe least obstacle (III. Iii. 89 ff. ). ]

[Footnote 35: It is surprising to find quoted, in support of theconscience view, the line 'Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, 'and to observe the total misinterpretation of the soliloquy _To be ornot to be_, from which the line comes. In this soliloquy Hamlet is notthinking of the duty laid upon him at all. He is debating the questionof suicide. No one oppressed by the ills of life, he says, wouldcontinue to bear them if it were not for speculation about his possiblefortune in another life. And then, generalising, he says (what appliesto himself, no doubt, though he shows no consciousness of the fact) thatsuch speculation or reflection makes men hesitate and shrink likecowards from great actions and enterprises. 'Conscience' does not meanmoral sense or scrupulosity, but this reflection on the _consequences_of action. It is the same thing as the 'craven scruple of thinking tooprecisely on the event' of the speech in IV. Iv. As to this useof 'conscience, ' see Schmidt, _s. V. _ and the parallels there given. The_Oxford Dictionary_ also gives many examples of similar uses of'conscience, ' though it unfortunately lends its authority to themisinterpretation criticised. ]

[Footnote 36: The King does not die of the _poison_ on the foil, likeLaertes and Hamlet. They were wounded before he was, but they die afterhim. ]

[Footnote 37: I may add here a word on one small matter. It isconstantly asserted that Hamlet wept over the body of Polonius. Now, ifhe did, it would make no difference to my point in the paragraph above;but there is no warrant in the text for the assertion. It is based onsome words of the Queen (IV. I. 24), in answer to the King'squestion, 'Where is he gone?':

 To draw apart the body he hath killed: O'er whom his very madness, like some ore Among a mineral of metals base, Shows itself pure; he weeps for what is done. 

But the Queen, as was pointed out by Doering, is trying to screen herson. She has already made the false statement that when Hamlet, crying, 'A rat! a rat!', ran his rapier through the arras, it was because heheard _something stir_ there, whereas we know that what he heard was aman's voice crying, 'What ho! help, help, help!' And in this scene shehas come straight from the interview with her son, terribly agitated, shaken with 'sighs' and 'profound heaves, ' in the night (line 30). Nowwe know what Hamlet said to the body, and of the body, in thatinterview; and there is assuredly no sound of tears in the voice thatsaid those things and others. The only sign of relenting is in the words(III. Iv. 171):

 For this same lord, I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so, To punish me with this and this with me, That I must be their scourge and minister. 

His mother's statement, therefore, is almost certainly untrue, though itmay be to her credit. (It is just conceivable that Hamlet wept atIII. Iv. 130, and that the Queen supposed he was weeping forPolonius. )

Perhaps, however, he may have wept over Polonius's body afterwards?Well, in the _next_ scene (IV. Ii. ) we see him _alone_ with thebody, and are therefore likely to witness his genuine feelings. And hisfirst words are, 'Safely stowed'!]

[Footnote 38: Not 'must cripple, ' as the English translation has it. ]

[Footnote 39: He says so to Horatio, whom he has no motive for deceiving(V. Ii. 218). His contrary statement (II. Ii. 308) is made toRosencrantz and Guildenstern. ]

[Footnote 40: See Note B. ]

[Footnote 41: The critics have laboured to find a cause, but it seems tome Shakespeare simply meant to portray a pathological condition; and avery touching picture he draws. Antonio's sadness, which he describes inthe opening lines of the play, would never drive him to suicide, but itmakes him indifferent to the issue of the trial, as all his speeches inthe trial-scene show. ]

[Footnote 42: Of course 'your' does not mean Horatio's philosophy inparticular. 'Your' is used as the Gravedigger uses it when he says that'your water is a sore decayer of your . .. Dead body. ']

[Footnote 43: This aspect of the matter leaves _us_ comparativelyunaffected, but Shakespeare evidently means it to be of importance. TheGhost speaks of it twice, and Hamlet thrice (once in his last furiouswords to the King). If, as we must suppose, the marriage was universallyadmitted to be incestuous, the corrupt acquiescence of the court and theelectors to the crown would naturally have a strong effect on Hamlet'smind. ]

[Footnote 44: It is most significant that the metaphor of this soliloquyreappears in Hamlet's adjuration to his mother (III. Iv. 150):

 Repent what's past; avoid what is to come; And do not spread the compost on the weeds To make them ranker. ]

[Footnote 45: If the reader will now look at the only speech of Hamlet'sthat precedes the soliloquy, and is more than one line in length--thespeech beginning 'Seems, madam! nay, it _is_'--he will understand what, surely, when first we come to it, sounds very strange and almostboastful. It is not, in effect, about Hamlet himself at all; it is abouthis mother (I do not mean that it is intentionally and consciously so;and still less that she understood it so). ]

[Footnote 46: See Note D. ]

[Footnote 47: See p. 13. ]

[Footnote 48: _E. G. _ in the transition, referred to above, fromdesire for vengeance into the wish never to have been born; inthe soliloquy, 'O what a rogue'; in the scene at Ophelia's grave. The Schlegel-Coleridge theory does not account for the psychologicalmovement in these passages. ]

[Footnote 49: Hamlet's violence at Ophelia's grave, though probablyintentionally exaggerated, is another example of this want ofself-control. The Queen's description of him (V. I. 307), This is mere madness; And thus awhile the fit will work on him; Anon, as patient as the female dove, When that her golden couplets are disclosed, His silence will sit drooping. 

may be true to life, though it is evidently prompted by anxiety toexcuse his violence on the ground of his insanity. On this passage seefurther Note G. ]

[Footnote 50: Throughout, I italicise to show the connection of ideas. ]

[Footnote 51: Cf. _Measure for Measure_, IV. Iv. 23, 'This deed . .. Makes me unpregnant and dull to all proceedings. ']

[Footnote 52: III. Ii. 196 ff. , IV. Vii. 111 ff. :_e. G. _, Purpose is but the slave to _memory_, Of violent birth but poor validity. ]

[Footnote 53: So, before, he had said to him:

 And duller should'st thou be than the fat weed That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf, Would'st thou not stir in this. 

On Hamlet's soliloquy after the Ghost's disappearance see Note D. ]

LECTURE IV

HAMLET

The only way, if there is any way, in which a conception of Hamlet'scharacter could be proved true, would be to show that it, and it alone, explains all the relevant facts presented by the text of the drama. Toattempt such a demonstration here would obviously be impossible, even ifI felt certain of the interpretation of all the facts. But I propose nowto follow rapidly the course of the action in so far as it speciallyillustrates the character, reserving for separate consideration oneimportant but particularly doubtful point. 

1

We left Hamlet, at the close of the First Act, when he had just receivedhis charge from the spirit of his father; and his condition was vividlydepicted in the fact that, within an hour of receiving this charge, hehad relapsed into that weariness of life or longing for death which isthe immediate cause of his later inaction. When next we meet him, at theopening of the Second Act, a considerable time has elapsed, apparentlyas much as two months. [54] The ambassadors sent to the King of Norway(I. Ii. 27) are just returning. Laertes, whom we saw leaving Elsinore(I. Iii. ), has been in Paris long enough to be in want of freshsupplies. Ophelia has obeyed her father's command (given in I. Iii. ), and has refused to receive Hamlet's visits or letters. What has Hamletdone? He has put on an 'antic disposition' and established a reputationfor lunacy, with the result that his mother has become deeply anxiousabout him, and with the further result that the King, who was formerlyso entirely at ease regarding him that he wished him to stay on atCourt, is now extremely uneasy and very desirous to discover the causeof his 'transformation. ' Hence Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have beensent for, to cheer him by their company and to worm his secret out ofhim; and they are just about to arrive. Beyond exciting thus theapprehensions of his enemy Hamlet has done absolutely nothing; and, aswe have seen, we must imagine him during this long period sunk for themost part in 'bestial oblivion' or fruitless broodings, and fallingdeeper and deeper into the slough of despond. 

Now he takes a further step. He suddenly appears unannounced inOphelia's chamber; and his appearance and behaviour are such as tosuggest both to Ophelia and to her father that his brain is turned bydisappointment in love. How far this step was due to the design ofcreating a false impression as to the origin of his lunacy, how far toother causes, is a difficult question; but such a design seems certainlypresent. It succeeds, however, only in part; for, although Polonius isfully convinced, the King is not so, and it is therefore arranged thatthe two shall secretly witness a meeting between Ophelia and Hamlet. Meanwhile Rosencrantz and Guildenstern arrive, and at the King's requestbegin their attempts, easily foiled by Hamlet, to pluck out the heart ofhis mystery. Then the players come to Court, and for a little while oneof Hamlet's old interests revives, and he is almost happy. But only fora little while. The emotion shown by the player in reciting the speechwhich tells of Hecuba's grief for her slaughtered husband awakes intoburning life the slumbering sense of duty and shame. He must act. Withthe extreme rapidity which always distinguishes him in his healthiermoments, he conceives and arranges the plan of having the 'Murder ofGonzago' played before the King and Queen, with the addition of a speechwritten by himself for the occasion. Then, longing to be alone, heabruptly dismisses his guests, and pours out a passion of self-reproachfor his delay, asks himself in bewilderment what can be its cause, lashes himself into a fury of hatred against his foe, checks himself indisgust at his futile emotion, and quiets his conscience for the momentby trying to convince himself that he has doubts about the Ghost, and byassuring himself that, if the King's behaviour at the play-scene showsbut a sign of guilt, he 'knows his course. '

Nothing, surely, can be clearer than the meaning of this famoussoliloquy. The doubt which appears at its close, instead of being thenatural conclusion of the preceding thoughts, is totally inconsistentwith them. For Hamlet's self-reproaches, his curses on his enemy, andhis perplexity about his own inaction, one and all imply his faith inthe identity and truthfulness of the Ghost. Evidently this sudden doubt, of which there has not been the slightest trace before, is no genuinedoubt; it is an unconscious fiction, an excuse for his delay--and forits continuance. 

A night passes, and the day that follows it brings the crisis. Firsttakes place that interview from which the King is to learn whetherdisappointed love is really the cause of his nephew's lunacy. Hamlet issent for; poor Ophelia is told to walk up and down, reading herprayer-book; Polonius and the King conceal themselves behind the arras. And Hamlet enters, so deeply absorbed in thought that for some time hesupposes himself to be alone. What is he thinking of? 'The Murder ofGonzago, ' which is to be played in a few hours, and on which everythingdepends? Not at all. He is meditating on suicide; and he finds that whatstands in the way of it, and counterbalances its infinite attraction, isnot any thought of a sacred unaccomplished duty, but the doubt, quiteirrelevant to that issue, whether it is not ignoble in the mind to endits misery, and, still more, whether death _would_ end it. Hamlet, thatis to say, is here, in effect, precisely where he was at the time of hisfirst soliloquy ('O that this too too solid flesh would melt') twomonths ago, before ever he heard of his father's murder. [55] Hisreflections have no reference to this particular moment; they representthat habitual weariness of life with which his passing outbursts ofemotion or energy are contrasted. What can be more significant than thefact that he is sunk in these reflections on the very day which is todetermine for him the truthfulness of the Ghost? And how is it possiblefor us to hope that, if that truthfulness should be established, Hamletwill be any nearer to his revenge?[56]

His interview with Ophelia follows; and its result shows that his delayis becoming most dangerous to himself. The King is satisfied that, whatever else may be the hidden cause of Hamlet's madness, it is notlove. He is by no means certain even that Hamlet is mad at all. He hasheard that infuriated threat, 'I say, we will have no more marriages;those that are married, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep asthey are. ' He is thoroughly alarmed. He at any rate will not delay. Onthe spot he determines to send Hamlet to England. But, as Polonius ispresent, we do not learn at once the meaning of this purpose. 

Evening comes. The approach of the play-scene raises Hamlet's spirits. He is in his element. He feels that he is doing _something_ towards hisend, striking a stroke, but a stroke of intellect. In his instructionsto the actor on the delivery of the inserted speech, and again in hisconversation with Horatio just before the entry of the Court, we see thetrue Hamlet, the Hamlet of the days before his father's death. But howcharacteristic it is that he appears quite as anxious that his speechshould not be ranted as that Horatio should observe its effect upon theKing! This trait appears again even at that thrilling moment when theactor is just going to deliver the speech. Hamlet sees him beginning tofrown and glare like the conventional stage-murderer, and calls to himimpatiently, 'Leave thy damnable faces and begin!'[57]

Hamlet's device proves a triumph far more complete than he had dared toexpect. He had thought the King might 'blench, ' but he does much more. When only six of the 'dozen or sixteen lines' have been spoken he startsto his feet and rushes from the hall, followed by the whole dismayedCourt. In the elation of success--an elation at first almosthysterical--Hamlet treats Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who are sent tohim, with undisguised contempt. Left to himself, he declares that now hecould

 drink hot blood, And do such bitter business as the day Would quake to look on. 

He has been sent for by his mother, and is going to her chamber; and sovehement and revengeful is his mood that he actually fancies himself indanger of using daggers to her as well as speaking them. [58]

In this mood, on his way to his mother's chamber, he comes upon theKing, alone, kneeling, conscience-stricken and attempting to pray. Hisenemy is delivered into his hands. 

 Now might I do it pat, now he is praying: And now I'll do it: and so he goes to heaven: And so am I revenged. [59] That would be scanned. 

He scans it; and the sword that he drew at the words, 'And now I'll doit, ' is thrust back into its sheath. If he killed the villain now hewould send his soul to heaven; and he would fain kill soul as well asbody. 

That this again is an unconscious excuse for delay is now prettygenerally agreed, and it is needless to describe again the state of mindwhich, on the view explained in our last lecture, is the real cause ofHamlet's failure here. The first five words he utters, 'Now might I doit, ' show that he has no effective _desire_ to 'do it'; and in thelittle sentences that follow, and the long pauses between them, theendeavour at a resolution, and the sickening return of melancholicparalysis, however difficult a task they set to the actor, are plainenough to a reader. And any reader who may retain a doubt should observethe fact that, when the Ghost reappears, Hamlet does not think ofjustifying his delay by the plea that he was waiting for a more perfectvengeance. But in one point the great majority of critics, I think, goastray. The feeling of intense hatred which Hamlet expresses is not thecause of his sparing the King, and in his heart he knows this; but itdoes not at all follow that this feeling is unreal. All the evidenceafforded by the play goes to show that it is perfectly genuine, and Isee no reason whatever to doubt that Hamlet would have been very sorryto send his father's murderer to heaven, nor much to doubt that he wouldhave been glad to send him to perdition. The reason for refusing toaccept his own version of his motive in sparing Claudius is not that hissentiments are horrible, but that elsewhere, and also in the opening ofhis speech here, we can see that his reluctance to act is due to othercauses. 

The incident of the sparing of the King is contrived with extraordinarydramatic insight. On the one side we feel that the opportunity wasperfect. Hamlet could not possibly any longer tell himself that he hadno certainty as to his uncle's guilt. And the external conditions weremost favourable; for the King's remarkable behaviour at the play-scenewould have supplied a damning confirmation of the story Hamlet had totell about the Ghost. Even now, probably, in a Court so corrupt as thatof Elsinore, he could not with perfect security have begun by chargingthe King with the murder; but he could quite safely have killed himfirst and given his justification afterwards, especially as he wouldcertainly have had on his side the people, who loved him and despisedClaudius. On the other hand, Shakespeare has taken care to give thisperfect opportunity so repulsive a character that we can hardly bringourselves to wish that the hero should accept it. One of his minordifficulties, we have seen, probably was that he seemed to be requiredto attack a defenceless man; and here this difficulty is at its maximum. 

This incident is, again, the turning-point of the tragedy. So far, Hamlet's delay, though it is endangering his freedom and his life, hasdone no irreparable harm; but his failure here is the cause of all thedisasters that follow. In sparing the King, he sacrifices Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Laertes, the Queen and himself. This central significance of the passage is dramatically indicated inthe following scene by the reappearance of the Ghost and the repetitionof its charge. 

Polonius is the first to fall. The old courtier, whose vanity would notallow him to confess that his diagnosis of Hamlet's lunacy was mistaken, had suggested that, after the theatricals, the Queen should endeavour ina private interview with her son to penetrate the mystery, while hehimself would repeat his favourite part of eaves-dropper (III. I. 184ff. ). It has now become quite imperative that the Prince should bebrought to disclose his secret; for his choice of the 'Murder ofGonzago, ' and perhaps his conduct during the performance, have shown aspirit of exaggerated hostility against the King which has excitedgeneral alarm. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern discourse to Claudius on theextreme importance of his preserving his invaluable life, as thoughHamlet's insanity had now clearly shown itself to be homicidal. [60]When, then, at the opening of the interview between Hamlet and hismother, the son, instead of listening to her remonstrances, roughlyassumes the offensive, she becomes alarmed; and when, on her attemptingto leave the room, he takes her by the arm and forces her to sit down, she is terrified, cries out, 'Thou wilt not murder me?' and screams forhelp. Polonius, behind the arras, echoes her call; and in a momentHamlet, hoping the concealed person is the King, runs the old manthrough the body. 

Evidently this act is intended to stand in sharp contrast with Hamlet'ssparing of his enemy. The King would have been just as defencelessbehind the arras as he had been on his knees; but here Hamlet is alreadyexcited and in action, and the chance comes to him so suddenly that hehas no time to 'scan' it. It is a minor consideration, but still for thedramatist not unimportant, that the audience would wholly sympathisewith Hamlet's attempt here, as directed against an enemy who is lurkingto entrap him, instead of being engaged in a business which perhaps tothe bulk of the audience then, as now, seemed to have a 'relish ofsalvation in't. '

We notice in Hamlet, at the opening of this interview, something of theexcited levity which followed the _dénouement_ of the play-scene. Thedeath of Polonius sobers him; and in the remainder of the interview heshows, together with some traces of his morbid state, the peculiarbeauty and nobility of his nature. His chief desire is not by any meansto ensure his mother's silent acquiescence in his design of revenge; itis to save her soul. And while the rough work of vengeance is repugnantto him, he is at home in this higher work. Here that fatal feeling, 'itis no matter, ' never shows itself. No father-confessor could be moreselflessly set upon his end of redeeming a fellow-creature fromdegradation, more stern or pitiless in denouncing the sin, or more eagerto welcome the first token of repentance. There is something infinitelybeautiful in that sudden sunshine of faith and love which breaks outwhen, at the Queen's surrender, O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain, he answers, O throw away the worser part of it, And live the purer with the other half. 

The truth is that, though Hamlet hates his uncle and acknowledges theduty of vengeance, his whole heart is never in this feeling or thistask; but his whole heart is in his horror at his mother's fall and inhis longing to raise her. The former of these feelings was theinspiration of his first soliloquy; it combines with the second to formthe inspiration of his eloquence here. And Shakespeare never wrote moreeloquently than here. 

I have already alluded to the significance of the reappearance of theGhost in this scene; but why does Shakespeare choose for the particularmoment of its reappearance the middle of a speech in which Hamlet israving against his uncle? There seems to be more than one reason. In thefirst place, Hamlet has already attained his object of stirring shameand contrition in his mother's breast, and is now yielding to the oldtemptation of unpacking his heart with words, and exhausting in uselessemotion the force which should be stored up in his will. And, next, indoing this he is agonising his mother to no purpose, and in despite ofher piteous and repeated appeals for mercy. But the Ghost, when it gavehim his charge, had expressly warned him to spare her; and here againthe dead husband shows the same tender regard for his weak unfaithfulwife. The object of his return is to repeat his charge:

 Do not forget: this visitation Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose;

but, having uttered this reminder, he immediately bids the son to helpthe mother and 'step between her and her fighting soul. '

And, whether intentionally or not, another purpose is served byShakespeare's choice of this particular moment. It is a moment when thestate of Hamlet's mind is such that we cannot suppose the Ghost to bemeant for an hallucination; and it is of great importance here that thespectator or reader should not suppose any such thing. He is furtherguarded by the fact that the Ghost proves, so to speak, his identity byshowing the same traits as were visible on his first appearance--thesame insistence on the duty of remembering, and the same concern for theQueen. And the result is that we construe the Ghost's interpretation ofHamlet's delay ('almost blunted purpose') as the truth, the dramatist'sown interpretation. Let me add that probably no one in Shakespeare'saudience had any doubt of his meaning here. The idea of later criticsand readers that the Ghost is an hallucination is due partly to failureto follow the indications just noticed, but partly also to two mistakes, the substitution of our present intellectual atmosphere for theElizabethan, and the notion that, because the Queen does not see andhear the Ghost, it is meant to be unreal. But a ghost, in Shakespeare'sday, was able for any sufficient reason to confine its manifestation toa single person in a company; and here the sufficient reason, that ofsparing the Queen, is obvious. [61]

At the close of this scene it appears that Hamlet has somehow learned ofthe King's design of sending him to England in charge of his two'school-fellows. ' He has no doubt that this design covers somevillainous plot against himself, but neither does he doubt that he willsucceed in defeating it; and, as we saw, he looks forward with pleasureto this conflict of wits. The idea of refusing to go appears not tooccur to him. Perhaps (for here we are left to conjecture) he feels thathe could not refuse unless at the same time he openly accused the Kingof his father's murder (a course which he seems at no time tocontemplate); for by the slaughter of Polonius he has supplied his enemywith the best possible excuse for getting him out of the country. Besides, he has so effectually warned this enemy that, after the deathof Polonius is discovered, he is kept under guard (IV. Iii. 14). Heconsents, then, to go. But on his way to the shore he meets the army ofFortinbras on its march to Poland; and the sight of these men goingcheerfully to risk death 'for an egg-shell, ' and 'making mouths at theinvisible event, ' strikes him with shame as he remembers how he, with somuch greater cause for action, 'lets all sleep;' and he breaks out intothe soliloquy, 'How all occasions do inform against me!'

This great speech, in itself not inferior to the famous 'To be or not tobe, ' is absent not only from the First Quarto but from the Folio. It istherefore probable that, at any rate by the time when the Folio appeared(1623), it had become customary to omit it in theatrical representation;and this is still the custom. But, while no doubt it is dramatically theleast indispensable of the soliloquies, it has a direct dramatic value, and a great value for the interpretation of Hamlet's character. It showsthat Hamlet, though he is leaving Denmark, has not relinquished the ideaof obeying the Ghost. It exhibits very strikingly his inability tounderstand why he has delayed so long. It contains that assertion whichso many critics forget, that he has 'cause and will and strength andmeans to do it. ' On the other hand--and this was perhaps the principalpurpose of the speech--it convinces us that he has learnt little ornothing from his delay, or from his failure to seize the opportunitypresented to him after the play-scene. For, we find, both the motive andthe gist of the speech are precisely the same as those of the soliloquyat the end of the Second Act ('O what a rogue'). There too he wasstirred to shame when he saw a passionate emotion awakened by a causewhich, compared with his, was a mere egg-shell. There too he stoodbewildered at the sight of his own dulness, and was almost ready tobelieve--what was justly incredible to him--that it was the mask of merecowardice. There too he determined to delay no longer: if the Kingshould but blench, he knew his course. Yet this determination led tonothing then; and why, we ask ourselves in despair, should the bloodythoughts he now resolves to cherish ever pass beyond the realm ofthought?

Between this scene (IV. Iv. ) and the remainder of the play we must againsuppose an interval, though not a very long one. When the actionrecommences, the death of Polonius has led to the insanity of Opheliaand the secret return of Laertes from France. The young man comes backbreathing slaughter. For the King, afraid to put Hamlet on his trial (acourse likely to raise the question of his own behaviour at the play, and perhaps to provoke an open accusation), [62] has attempted to hush upthe circumstances of Polonius's death, and has given him a hurried andinglorious burial. The fury of Laertes, therefore, is directed in thefirst instance against the King: and the ease with which he raises thepeople, like the King's fear of a judicial enquiry, shows us how purelyinternal were the obstacles which the hero had to overcome. Thisimpression is intensified by the broad contrast between Hamlet andLaertes, who rushes headlong to his revenge, and is determined to haveit though allegiance, conscience, grace and damnation stand in his way(IV. V. 130). But the King, though he has been hard put to it, is now inhis element and feels safe. Knowing that he will very soon hear ofHamlet's execution in England, he tells Laertes that his father died byHamlet's hand, and expresses his willingness to let the friends ofLaertes judge whether he himself has any responsibility for the deed. And when, to his astonishment and dismay, news comes that Hamlet hasreturned to Denmark, he acts with admirable promptitude and address, turns Laertes round his finger, and arranges with him for the murder oftheir common enemy. If there were any risk of the young man's resolutionfaltering, it is removed by the death of Ophelia. And now the King hasbut one anxiety, --to prevent the young men from meeting before thefencing-match. For who can tell what Hamlet might say in his defence, orhow enchanting his tongue might prove?[63]

Hamlet's return to Denmark is due partly to his own action, partly toaccident. On the voyage he secretly possesses himself of the royalcommission, and substitutes for it another, which he himself writes andseals, and in which the King of England is ordered to put to death, notHamlet, but Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Then the ship is attacked by apirate, which, apparently, finds its intended prize too strong for it, and makes off. But as Hamlet 'in the grapple, ' eager for fighting, hasboarded the assailant, he is carried off in it, and by promises inducesthe pirates to put him ashore in Denmark. 

In what spirit does he return? Unquestionably, I think, we can observe acertain change, though it is not great. First, we notice here and therewhat seems to be a consciousness of power, due probably to his successin counter-mining Claudius and blowing the courtiers to the moon, and tohis vigorous action in the sea-fight. But I doubt if this sense of poweris more marked than it was in the scenes following the success of the'Murder of Gonzago. ' Secondly, we nowhere find any direct expression ofthat weariness of life and that longing for death which were so markedin the first soliloquy and in the speech 'To be or not to be. ' This maybe a mere accident, and it must be remembered that in the Fifth Act wehave no soliloquy. But in the earlier Acts the feelings referred to donot appear _merely_ in soliloquy, and I incline to think thatShakespeare means to show in the Hamlet of the Fifth Act a slightthinning of the dark cloud of melancholy, and means us to feel it tragicthat this change comes too late. And, in the third place, there is atrait about which doubt is impossible, --a sense in Hamlet that he is inthe hands of Providence. This had, indeed, already shown itself at thedeath of Polonius, [64] and perhaps at Hamlet's farewell to the King, [65]but the idea seems now to be constantly present in his mind. 'There's adivinity that shapes our ends, ' he declares to Horatio in speaking ofthe fighting in his heart that would not let him sleep, and of hisrashness in groping his way to the courtiers to find their commission. How was he able, Horatio asks, to seal the substituted commission?

 Why, even in that was heaven ordinant, Hamlet answers; he had his father's signet in his purse. And though hehas a presentiment of evil about the fencing-match he refuses to yieldto it: 'we defy augury: there is special providence in the fall of asparrow . .. The readiness is all. '

Though these passages strike us more when put together thus than whenthey come upon us at intervals in reading the play, they have a markedeffect on our feeling about Hamlet's character and still more about theevents of the action. But I find it impossible to believe, with somecritics, that they indicate any material change in his generalcondition, or the formation of any effective resolution to fulfil theappointed duty. On the contrary, they seem to express that kind ofreligious resignation which, however beautiful in one aspect, reallydeserves the name of fatalism rather than that of faith in Providence, because it is not united to any determination to do what is believed tobe the will of Providence. In place of this determination, the Hamlet ofthe Fifth Act shows a kind of sad or indifferent self-abandonment, as ifhe secretly despaired of forcing himself to action, and were ready toleave his duty to some other power than his own. _This_ is really themain change which appears in him after his return to Denmark, and whichhad begun to show itself before he went, --this, and not a determinationto act, nor even an anxiety to do so. 

For when he returns he stands in a most perilous position. On one sideof him is the King, whose safety depends on his death, and who has donehis best to murder him; on the other, Laertes, whose father and sisterhe has sent to their graves, and of whose behaviour and probableattitude he must surely be informed by Horatio. What is required of him, therefore, if he is not to perish with his duty undone, is the utmostwariness and the swiftest resolution. Yet it is not too much to saythat, except when Horatio forces the matter on his attention, he showsno consciousness of this position. He muses in the graveyard on thenothingness of life and fame, and the base uses to which our dustreturns, whether it be a court-jester's or a world-conqueror's. Helearns that the open grave over which he muses has been dug for thewoman he loved; and he suffers one terrible pang, from which he gainsrelief in frenzied words and frenzied action, --action which must needsintensify, if that were possible, the fury of the man whom he has, however unwittingly, so cruelly injured. Yet he appears absolutelyunconscious that he has injured Laertes at all, and asks him:

 What is the reason that you use me thus?

And as the sharpness of the first pang passes, the old weary miseryreturns, and he might almost say to Ophelia, as he does to her brother:

 I loved you ever: but it is no matter. 

'It is no matter': _nothing_ matters. 

The last scene opens. He narrates to Horatio the events of the voyageand his uncle's attempt to murder him. But the conclusion of the storyis no plan of action, but the old fatal question, 'Ought I not toact?'[66] And, while he asks it, his enemies have acted. Osric enterswith an invitation to him to take part in a fencing-match with Laertes. This match--he is expressly told so--has been arranged by his deadlyenemy the King; and his antagonist is a man whose hands but a few hoursago were at his throat, and whose voice he had heard shouting 'The deviltake thy soul!' But he does not think of that. To fence is to show acourtesy, and to himself it is a relief, --action, and not the onehateful action. There is something noble in his carelessness, and alsoin his refusal to attend to the presentiment which he suddenly feels(and of which he says, not only 'the readiness is all, ' but also 'it isno matter'). Something noble; and yet, when a sacred duty is stillundone, ought one to be so ready to die? With the same carelessness, andwith that trustfulness which makes us love him, but which is here sofatally misplaced, he picks up the first foil that comes to his hand, asks indifferently, 'These foils have all a length?' and begins. AndFate descends upon his enemies, and his mother, and himself. 

But he is not left in utter defeat. Not only is his task at lastaccomplished, but Shakespeare seems to have determined that his heroshould exhibit in his latest hour all the glorious power and all thenobility and sweetness of his nature. Of the first, the power, I spokebefore, [67] but there is a wonderful beauty in the revelation of thesecond. His body already labouring in the pangs of death, his mind soarsabove them. He forgives Laertes; he remembers his wretched mother andbids her adieu, ignorant that she has preceded him. We hear now no wordof lamentation or self-reproach. He has will, and just time, to think, not of the past or of what might have been, but of the future; to forbidhis friend's death in words more pathetic in their sadness than even hisagony of spirit had been; and to take care, so far as in him lies, forthe welfare of the State which he himself should have guided. Then inspite of shipwreck he reaches the haven of silence where he would be. What else could his world-wearied flesh desire?

But _we_ desire more; and we receive it. As those mysterious words, 'Therest is silence, ' die upon Hamlet's lips, Horatio answers:

 Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. 

Why did Shakespeare here, so much against his custom, introduce thisreference to another life? Did he remember that Hamlet is the only oneof his tragic heroes whom he has not allowed us to see in the days whenthis life smiled on him? Did he feel that, while for the others we mightbe content to imagine after life's fitful fever nothing more thanrelease and silence, we must ask more for one whose 'godlike reason' andpassionate love of goodness have only gleamed upon us through the heavyclouds of melancholy, and yet have left us murmuring, as we bow ourheads, 'This was the noblest spirit of them all'?

2

How many things still remain to say of Hamlet! Before I touch on hisrelation to Ophelia, I will choose but two. Neither of them, comparedwith the matters so far considered, is of great consequence, but bothare interesting, and the first seems to have quite escaped observation. 

(1) Most people have, beside their more essential traits of character, little peculiarities which, for their intimates, form an indissolublepart of their personality. In comedy, and in other humorous works offiction, such peculiarities often figure prominently, but they rarely doso, I think, in tragedy. Shakespeare, however, seems to have given onesuch idiosyncrasy to Hamlet. 

It is a trick of speech, a habit of repetition. And these are simpleexamples of it from the first soliloquy:

 O _God! God!_ How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! _Fie_ on't! ah _fie!_

Now I ask your patience. You will say: 'There is nothing individualhere. Everybody repeats words thus. And the tendency, in particular, touse such repetitions in moments of great emotion is well-known, andfrequently illustrated in literature--for example, in David's cry oflament for Absalom. '

This is perfectly true, and plenty of examples could be drawn fromShakespeare himself. But what we find in Hamlet's case is, I believe, _not_ common. In the first place, this repetition is a _habit_ with him. Here are some more instances: 'Thrift, thrift, Horatio'; 'Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me'; 'Come, deal justly with me: come, come'; 'Wormwood, wormwood!' I do not profess to have made an exhaustivesearch, but I am much mistaken if this _habit_ is to be found in anyother serious character of Shakespeare. [68]

And, in the second place--and here I appeal with confidence to lovers ofHamlet--some of these repetitions strike us as intensely characteristic. Some even of those already quoted strike one thus, and still more do thefollowing:

 (_a_) _Horatio. _ It would have much amazed you. _Hamlet. _ Very like, very like. Stay'd it long?

 (_b_) _Polonius. _ What do you read, my lord? _Hamlet. _ Words, words, words. 

 (_c_) _Polonius. _ My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you. _Hamlet. _ You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life. 

 (_d_) _Ophelia. _ Good my lord, How does your honour for this many a day? _Hamlet. _ I humbly thank you, well, well, well. 

Is there anything that Hamlet says or does in the whole play moreunmistakably individual than these replies?[69]

(2) Hamlet, everyone has noticed, is fond of quibbles and word-play, andof 'conceits' and turns of thought such as are common in the poets whomJohnson called Metaphysical. Sometimes, no doubt, he plays with wordsand ideas chiefly in order to mystify, thwart and annoy. To some extent, again, as we may see from the conversation where Rosencrantz andGuildenstern first present themselves (II. Ii. 227), he is merelyfollowing the fashion of the young courtiers about him, just as in hislove-letter to Ophelia[70] he uses for the most part the fantasticlanguage of Court Euphuism. Nevertheless in this trait there issomething very characteristic. We should be greatly surprised to find itmarked in Othello or Lear or Timon, in Macbeth or Antony or Coriolanus;and, in fact, we find it in them hardly at all. One reason of this mayperhaps be that these characters are all later creations than Hamlet, and that Shakespeare's own fondness for this kind of play, like thefondness of the theatrical audience for it, diminished with time. Butthe main reason is surely that this tendency, as we see it in Hamlet, betokens a nimbleness and flexibility of mind which is characteristic ofhim and not of the later less many-sided heroes. Macbeth, for instance, has an imagination quite as sensitive as Hamlet's to certainimpressions, but he has none of Hamlet's delight in freaks and twists ofthought, or of his tendency to perceive and play with resemblances inthe most diverse objects and ideas. Though Romeo shows this tendency, the only tragic hero who approaches Hamlet here is Richard II. , whoindeed in several ways recalls the emasculated Hamlet of some critics, and may, like the real Hamlet, have owed his existence in part toShakespeare's personal familiarity with the weaknesses and dangers of animaginative temperament. 

That Shakespeare meant this trait to be characteristic of Hamlet isbeyond question. The very first line the hero speaks contains a play onwords:

 A little more than kin and less than kind. 

The fact is significant, though the pun itself is not speciallycharacteristic. Much more so, and indeed absolutely individual, are theuses of word-play in moments of extreme excitement. Remember the awe andterror of the scene where the Ghost beckons Hamlet to leave his friendsand follow him into the darkness, and then consider this dialogue:

 _Hamlet. _ It waves me still. Go on; I'll follow thee. 

 _Marcellus. _ You shall not go, my lord. 

 _Hamlet. _ Hold off your hands. 

 _Horatio. _ Be ruled; you shall not go. 

 _Hamlet. _ My fate cries out, And makes each petty artery in this body As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve. Still am I called. Unhand me, gentlemen. _By heaven I'll make a ghost of him that lets me. _

Would any other character in Shakespeare have used those words? And, again, where is Hamlet more Hamlet than when he accompanies with a punthe furious action by which he compels his enemy to drink the 'poisontempered by himself'?

 Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damn'd Dane, Drink off this potion. Is thy union here? Follow my mother. 

The 'union' was the pearl which Claudius professed to throw into thecup, and in place of which (as Hamlet supposes) he dropped poison in. But the 'union' is also that incestuous marriage which must not bebroken by his remaining alive now that his partner is dead. What ragethere is in the words, and what a strange lightning of the mind!

Much of Hamlet's play with words and ideas is imaginatively humorous. That of Richard II. Is fanciful, but rarely, if ever, humorous. Antonyhas touches of humour, and Richard III. Has more; but Hamlet, we maysafely assert, is the only one of the tragic heroes who can be called ahumorist, his humour being first cousin to that speculative tendencywhich keeps his mental world in perpetual movement. Some of his quipsare, of course, poor enough, and many are not distinctive. Those of hisretorts which strike one as perfectly individual do so, I think, chieflybecause they suddenly reveal the misery and bitterness below thesurface; as when, to Rosencrantz's message from his mother, 'She desiresto speak with you in her closet, ere you go to bed, ' he answers, 'Weshall obey, were she ten times our mother'; or as when he replies toPolonius's invitation, 'Will you walk out of the air, my lord?' withwords that suddenly turn one cold, 'Into my grave. ' Otherwise, what wejustly call Hamlet's characteristic humour is not his exclusiveproperty, but appears in passages spoken by persons as different asMercutio, Falstaff and Rosalind. The truth probably is that it was thekind of humour most natural to Shakespeare himself, and that here, as insome other traits of the poet's greatest creation, we come into closecontact with Shakespeare the man. 

3

The actor who plays the part of Hamlet must make up his mind as to theinterpretation of every word and deed of the character. Even if at somepoint he feels no certainty as to which of two interpretations is right, he must still choose one or the other. The mere critic is not obliged todo this. Where he remains in doubt he may say so, and, if the matter isof importance, he ought to say so. 

This is the position in which I find myself in regard to Hamlet's lovefor Ophelia. I am unable to arrive at a conviction as to the meaning ofsome of his words and deeds, and I question whether from the mere textof the play a sure interpretation of them can be drawn. For this reasonI have reserved the subject for separate treatment, and have, so far aspossible, kept it out of the general discussion of Hamlet's character. 

On two points no reasonable doubt can, I think, be felt. (1) Hamlet wasat one time sincerely and ardently in love with Ophelia. For she herselfsays that he had importuned her with love in honourable fashion, and hadgiven countenance to his speech with almost all the holy vows of heaven(I. Iii. 110 f. ). (2) When, at Ophelia's grave, he declared, I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum, he must have spoken sincerely; and, further, we may take it for grantedthat he used the past tense, 'loved, ' merely because Ophelia was dead, and not to imply that he had once loved her but no longer did so. 

So much being assumed, we come to what is doubtful, and I will begin bystating what is probably the most popular view. According to this view, Hamlet's love for Ophelia never changed. On the revelation made by theGhost, however, he felt that he must put aside all thoughts of it; andit also seemed to him necessary to convince Ophelia, as well as others, that he was insane, and so to destroy her hopes of any happy issue totheir love. This was the purpose of his appearance in her chamber, though he was probably influenced also by a longing to see her and bidher a silent farewell, and possibly by a faint hope that he might safelyentrust his secret to her. If he entertained any such hope his study ofher face dispelled it; and thereafter, as in the Nunnery-scene (III. I. )and again at the play-scene, he not only feigned madness, but, toconvince her that he had quite lost his love for her, he also addressedher in bitter and insulting language. In all this he was acting a partintensely painful to himself; the very violence of his language in theNunnery-scene arose from this pain; and so the actor should make himshow, in that scene, occasional signs of a tenderness which with all hisefforts he cannot wholly conceal. Finally, over her grave the truthbursts from him in the declaration quoted just now, though it is stillimpossible for him to explain to others why he who loved her soprofoundly was forced to wring her heart. 

Now this theory, if the view of Hamlet's character which I have taken isanywhere near the truth, is certainly wrong at one point, viz. , in sofar as it supposes that Hamlet's bitterness to Ophelia was a _mere_pretence forced on him by his design of feigning to be insane; and Iproceed to call attention to certain facts and considerations, of whichthe theory seems to take no account. 

1. How is it that in his first soliloquy Hamlet makes no referencewhatever to Ophelia?

2. How is it that in his second soliloquy, on the departure of theGhost, he again says nothing about her? When the lover is feeling thathe must make a complete break with his past, why does it not occur tohim at once that he must give up his hopes of happiness in love?

3. Hamlet does not, as the popular theory supposes, break with Opheliadirectly after the Ghost appears to him; on the contrary, he tries tosee her and sends letters to her (II. I. 109). What really happens isthat Ophelia suddenly repels his visits and letters. Now, _we_ know thatshe is simply obeying her father's order; but how would her actionappear to Hamlet, already sick at heart because of his mother'sfrailty, [71] and now finding that, the moment fortune has turned againsthim, the woman who had welcomed his love turns against him too? Even ifhe divined (as his insults to Polonius suggest) that her father wasconcerned in this change, would he not still, in that morbid conditionof mind, certainly suspect her of being less simple than she hadappeared to him?[72] Even if he remained free from _this_ suspicion, andmerely thought her deplorably weak, would he not probably feel angeragainst _her_, an anger like that of the hero of _Locksley Hall_ againsthis Amy?

4. When Hamlet made his way into Ophelia's room, why did he go in thegarb, the conventionally recognised garb, of the distracted _lover_? Ifit was necessary to convince Ophelia of his insanity, how was itnecessary to convince her that disappointment in _love_ was the cause ofhis insanity? His _main_ object in the visit appears to have been toconvince _others_, through her, that his insanity was not due to anymysterious unknown cause, but to this disappointment, and so to allaythe suspicions of the King. But if his feeling for her had been simplythat of love, however unhappy, and had not been in any degree that ofsuspicion or resentment, would he have adopted a plan which must involveher in so much suffering?[73]

5. In what way are Hamlet's insults to Ophelia at the play-scenenecessary either to his purpose of convincing her of his insanity or tohis purpose of revenge? And, even if he did regard them as somehow meansto these ends, is it conceivable that he would have uttered them, if hisfeeling for her were one of hopeless but unmingled love?

6. How is it that neither when he kills Polonius, nor afterwards, doeshe appear to reflect that he has killed Ophelia's father, or what theeffect on Ophelia is likely to be?

7. We have seen that there is no reference to Ophelia in the soliloquiesof the First Act. Neither is there the faintest allusion to her in anyone of the soliloquies of the subsequent Acts, unless possibly in thewords (III. I. 72) 'the pangs of despised love. '[74] If the populartheory is true, is not this an astounding fact?

8. Considering this fact, is there no significance in the further fact(which, by itself, would present no difficulty) that in speaking toHoratio Hamlet never alludes to Ophelia, and that at his death he saysnothing of her?

9. If the popular theory is true, how is it that neither in theNunnery-scene nor at the play-scene does Shakespeare insert anything tomake the truth plain? Four words like Othello's 'O hardness todissemble' would have sufficed. 

These considerations, coupled with others as to Hamlet's state of mind, seem to point to two conclusions. They suggest, first, that Hamlet'slove, though never lost, was, after Ophelia's apparent rejection of him, mingled with suspicion and resentment, and that his treatment of her wasdue in part to this cause. And I find it impossible to resist thisconclusion. But the question how much of his harshness is meant to bereal, and how much assumed, seems to me impossible in some places toanswer. For example, his behaviour at the play-scene seems to me to showan intention to hurt and insult; but in the Nunnery-scene (which cannotbe discussed briefly) he is evidently acting a part and sufferingacutely, while at the same time his invective, however exaggerated, seems to spring from real feelings; and what is pretence, and whatsincerity, appears to me an insoluble problem. Something depends here onthe further question whether or no Hamlet suspects or detects thepresence of listeners; but, in the absence of an authentic stagetradition, this question too seems to be unanswerable. 

But something further seems to follow from the considerations adduced. Hamlet's love, they seem to show, was not only mingled with bitterness, it was also, like all his healthy feelings, weakened and deadened by hismelancholy. [75] It was far from being extinguished; probably it was_one_ of the causes which drove him to force his way to Ophelia;whenever he saw Ophelia, it awoke and, the circumstances being what theywere, tormented him. But it was not an absorbing passion; it did nothabitually occupy his thoughts; and when he declared that it was such alove as forty thousand brothers could not equal, he spoke sincerelyindeed but not truly. What he said was true, if I may put it thus, ofthe inner healthy self which doubtless in time would have fullyreasserted itself; but it was only partly true of the Hamlet whom we seein the play. And the morbid influence of his melancholy on his love isthe cause of those strange facts, that he never alludes to her in hissoliloquies, and that he appears not to realise how the death of herfather must affect her. 

The facts seem almost to force this idea on us. That it is less'romantic' than the popular view is no argument against it. Andpsychologically it is quite sound, for a frequent symptom of suchmelancholy as Hamlet's is a more or less complete paralysis, or evenperversion, of the emotion of love. And yet, while feeling no doubt thatup to a certain point it is true, I confess I am not satisfied that theexplanation of Hamlet's silence regarding Ophelia lies in it. And thereason of this uncertainty is that scarcely any spectators or readers of_Hamlet_ notice this silence at all; that I never noticed it myself tillI began to try to solve the problem of Hamlet's relation to Ophelia; andthat even now, when I read the play through without pausing to considerparticular questions, it scarcely strikes me. Now Shakespeare wroteprimarily for the theatre and not for students, and therefore greatweight should be attached to the immediate impressions made by hisworks. And so it seems at least possible that the explanation ofHamlet's silence may be that Shakespeare, having already a verydifficult task to perform in the soliloquies--that of showing the stateof mind which caused Hamlet to delay his vengeance--did not choose tomake his task more difficult by introducing matter which would not onlyadd to the complexity of the subject but might, from its 'sentimental'interest, distract attention from the main point; while, from histheatrical experience, he knew that the audience would not observe howunnatural it was that a man deeply in love, and forced not only torenounce but to wound the woman he loved, should not think of her whenhe was alone. But, as this explanation is no more completely convincingto me than the other, I am driven to suspend judgment, and also tosuspect that the text admits of no sure interpretation. [This paragraphstates my view imperfectly. ]

This result may seem to imply a serious accusation against Shakespeare. But it must be remembered that if we could see a contemporaryrepresentation of _Hamlet_, our doubts would probably disappear. Theactor, instructed by the author, would make it clear to us by looks, tones, gestures, and by-play how far Hamlet's feigned harshness toOphelia was mingled with real bitterness, and again how far hismelancholy had deadened his love. 

4

As we have seen, all the persons in _Hamlet_ except the hero are minorcharacters, who fail to rise to the tragic level. They are not lessinteresting on that account, but the hero has occupied us so long that Ishall refer only to those in regard to whom Shakespeare's intentionappears to be not seldom misunderstood or overlooked. 

It may seem strange that Ophelia should be one of these; and yetShakespearean literature and the experience of teachers show that thereis much difference of opinion regarding her, and in particular that alarge number of readers feel a kind of personal irritation against her. They seem unable to forgive her for not having been a heroine, and theyfancy her much weaker than she was. They think she ought to have beenable to help Hamlet to fulfil his task. And they betray, it appears tome, the strangest misconceptions as to what she actually did. 

Now it was essential to Shakespeare's purpose that too great an interestshould not be aroused in the love-story; essential, therefore, thatOphelia should be merely one of the subordinate characters; andnecessary, accordingly, that she should not be the equal, in spirit, power or intelligence, of his famous heroines. If she had been anImogen, a Cordelia, even a Portia or a Juliet, the story must have takenanother shape. Hamlet would either have been stimulated to do his duty, or (which is more likely) he would have gone mad, or (which islikeliest) he would have killed himself in despair. Ophelia, therefore, was made a character who could not help Hamlet, and for whom on theother hand he would not naturally feel a passion so vehement or profoundas to interfere with the main motive of the play. [76] And in the loveand the fate of Ophelia herself there was introduced an element, not ofdeep tragedy but of pathetic beauty, which makes the analysis of hercharacter seem almost a desecration. 

Ophelia is plainly quite young and inexperienced. She has lost hermother, and has only a father and a brother, affectionate but worldly, to take care of her. Everyone in the drama who has any heart is drawn toher. To the persons in the play, as to the readers of it, she brings thethought of flowers. 'Rose of May' Laertes names her. 

 Lay her in the earth, And from her fair and unpolluted flesh May violets spring!

--so he prays at her burial. 'Sweets to the sweet' the Queen murmurs, asshe scatters flowers on the grave; and the flowers which Ophelia herselfgathered--those which she gave to others, and those which floated abouther in the brook--glimmer in the picture of the mind. Her affection forher brother is shown in two or three delicate strokes. Her love for herfather is deep, though mingled with fear. For Hamlet she has, some say, no deep love--and perhaps she is so near childhood that old affectionshave still the strongest hold; but certainly she has given to Hamlet allthe love of which her nature is as yet capable. Beyond these threebeloved ones she seems to have eyes and ears for no one. The Queen isfond of her, but there is no sign of her returning the Queen'saffection. Her existence is wrapped up in these three. 

On this childlike nature and on Ophelia's inexperience everythingdepends. The knowledge that 'there's tricks in the world' has reachedher only as a vague report. Her father and brother are jealously anxiousfor her because of her ignorance and innocence; and we resent theiranxiety chiefly because we know Hamlet better than they. Her wholecharacter is that of simple unselfish affection. Naturally she isincapable of understanding Hamlet's mind, though she can feel itsbeauty. Naturally, too, she obeys her father when she is forbidden toreceive Hamlet's visits and letters. If we remember not what _we_ knowbut what _she_ knows of her lover and her father; if we remember thatshe had not, like Juliet, confessed her love; and if we remember thatshe was much below her suitor in station, her compliance surely mustseem perfectly natural, apart from the fact that the standard ofobedience to a father was in Shakespeare's day higher than in ours. 

'But she does more than obey, ' we are told; 'she runs off frightened toreport to her father Hamlet's strange visit and behaviour; she shows toher father one of Hamlet's letters, and tells him[77] the whole story ofthe courtship; and she joins in a plot to win Hamlet's secret from him. 'One must remember, however, that she had never read the tragedy. Consider for a moment how matters looked to _her_. She knows nothingabout the Ghost and its disclosures. She has undergone for some time thepain of repelling her lover and appearing to have turned against him. She sees him, or hears of him, sinking daily into deeper gloom, and sotransformed from what he was that he is considered to be out of hismind. She hears the question constantly discussed what the cause of thissad change can be; and her heart tells her--how can it fail to tellher?--that her unkindness is the chief cause. Suddenly Hamlet forces hisway into her chamber; and his appearance and his behaviour are those ofa man crazed with love. She is frightened--why not? She is not LadyMacbeth. Rosalind would have been frightened. Which of her censors wouldbe wholly unmoved if his room were invaded by a lunatic? She isfrightened, then; frightened, if you will, like a child. Yes, but, observe, her one idea is to help Hamlet. She goes, therefore, at once toher father. To whom else should she go? Her brother is away. Her father, whom she saw with her own eyes and not with Shakespeare's, is kind, andthe wisest of men, and concerned about Hamlet's state. Her father finds, in her report, the solution of the mystery: Hamlet is mad because shehas repulsed him. Why should she not tell her father the whole story andgive him an old letter which may help to convince the King and theQueen? Nay, why should she not allow herself to be used as a 'decoy' tosettle the question why Hamlet is mad? It is all-important that itshould be settled, in order that he may be cured; all her seniors aresimply and solely anxious for his welfare; and, if her unkindness _is_the cause of his sad state, they will permit her to restore him bykindness (III. I. 40). Was she to refuse to play a part just because itwould be painful to her to do so? I find in her joining the 'plot' (asit is absurdly called) a sign not of weakness, but of unselfishness andstrength. 

'But she practised deception; she even told a lie. Hamlet asked herwhere her father was, and she said he was at home, when he was reallylistening behind a curtain. ' Poor Ophelia! It is considered angelic inDesdemona to say untruly that she killed herself, but most immoral orpusillanimous in Ophelia to tell _her_ lie. I will not discuss thesecasuistical problems; but, if ever an angry lunatic asks me a questionwhich I cannot answer truly without great danger to him and to one of myrelations, I hope that grace may be given me to imitate Ophelia. Seriously, at such a terrible moment was it weak, was it not ratherheroic, in a simple girl not to lose her presence of mind and not toflinch, but to go through her task for Hamlet's sake and her father's?And, finally, is it really a thing to be taken as matter of course, andno matter for admiration, in this girl that, from beginning to end, andafter a storm of utterly unjust reproach, not a thought of resentmentshould even cross her mind?

Still, we are told, it was ridiculously weak in her to lose her reason. And here again her critics seem hardly to realise the situation, hardlyto put themselves in the place of a girl whose lover, estranged fromher, goes mad and kills her father. They seem to forget also thatOphelia must have believed that these frightful calamities were not merecalamities, but followed from _her_ action in repelling her lover. Nordo they realise the utter loneliness that must have fallen on her. Ofthe three persons who were all the world to her, her father has beenkilled, Hamlet has been sent out of the country insane, and her brotheris abroad. Horatio, when her mind gives way, tries to befriend her, butthere is no sign of any previous relation between them, or of Hamlet'shaving commended her to his friend's care. What support she can gainfrom the Queen we can guess from the Queen's character, and from thefact that, when Ophelia is most helpless, the Queen shrinks from thevery sight of her (IV. V. 1). She was left, thus, absolutely alone, andif she looked for her brother's return (as she did, IV. V. 70), shemight reflect that it would mean danger to Hamlet. 

Whether this idea occurred to her we cannot tell. In any case it waswell for her that her mind gave way before Laertes reached Elsinore; andpathetic as Ophelia's madness is, it is also, we feel, the kindeststroke that now could fall on her. It is evident, I think, that this wasthe effect Shakespeare intended to produce. In her madness Opheliacontinues sweet and lovable. 

 Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, She turns to favour and to prettiness. 

In her wanderings we hear from time to time an undertone of the deepestsorrow, but never the agonised cry of fear or horror which makes madnessdreadful or shocking. [78] And the picture of her death, if our eyes growdim in watching it, is still purely beautiful. Coleridge was true toShakespeare when he wrote of 'the affecting death of Ophelia, --who inthe beginning lay like a little projection of land into a lake orstream, covered with spray-flowers quietly reflected in the quietwaters, but at length is undermined or loosened, and becomes a fairyisle, and after a brief vagrancy sinks almost without an eddy. '[79]

5

I reluctantly pass by Polonius, Laertes and the beautiful character ofHoratio, to say something in conclusion of the Queen and the King. 

The answers to two questions asked about the Queen are, it seems to me, practically certain, (1) She did not merely marry a second time withindecent haste; she was false to her husband while he lived. This issurely the most natural interpretation of the words of the Ghost (I. V. 41 f. ), coming, as they do, before his account of the murder. Andagainst this testimony what force has the objection that the queen inthe 'Murder of Gonzago' is not represented as an adulteress? Hamlet'smark in arranging the play-scene was not his mother, whom besides he hadbeen expressly ordered to spare (I. V. 84 f. ). 

(2) On the other hand, she was _not_ privy to the murder of her husband, either before the deed or after it. There is no sign of her being so, and there are clear signs that she was not. The representation of themurder in the play-scene does not move her; and when her husband startsfrom his throne, she innocently asks him, 'How fares my lord?' In theinterview with Hamlet, when her son says of his slaughter of Polonius, 'A bloody deed!' Almost as bad, good mother, As kill a king and marry with his brother, the astonishment of her repetition 'As kill a king!' is evidentlygenuine; and, if it had not been so, she would never have had thehardihood to exclaim:

 What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue In noise so rude against me?

Further, it is most significant that when she and the King speaktogether alone, nothing that is said by her or to her implies herknowledge of the secret. 

The Queen was not a bad-hearted woman, not at all the woman to thinklittle of murder. But she had a soft animal nature, and was very dulland very shallow. She loved to be happy, like a sheep in the sun; and, to do her justice, it pleased her to see others happy, like more sheepin the sun. She never saw that drunkenness is disgusting till Hamlettold her so; and, though she knew that he considered her marriage'o'er-hasty' (II. Ii. 57), she was untroubled by any shame at thefeelings which had led to it. It was pleasant to sit upon her throne andsee smiling faces round her, and foolish and unkind in Hamlet to persistin grieving for his father instead of marrying Ophelia and makingeverything comfortable. She was fond of Ophelia and genuinely attachedto her son (though willing to see her lover exclude him from thethrone); and, no doubt, she considered equality of rank a mere triflecompared with the claims of love. The belief at the bottom of her heartwas that the world is a place constructed simply that people may behappy in it in a good-humoured sensual fashion. 

Her only chance was to be made unhappy. When affliction comes to her, the good in her nature struggles to the surface through the heavy massof sloth. Like other faulty characters in Shakespeare's tragedies, shedies a better woman than she had lived. When Hamlet shows her what shehas done she feels genuine remorse. It is true, Hamlet fears it will notlast, and so at the end of the interview (III. Iv. 180 ff. ) he adds awarning that, if she betrays him, she will ruin herself as well. [80] Itis true too that there is no sign of her obeying Hamlet in breaking offher most intimate connection with the King. Still she does feel remorse;and she loves her son, and does not betray him. She gives her husband afalse account of Polonius's death, and is silent about the appearance ofthe Ghost. She becomes miserable;

 To her sick soul, as sin's true nature is, Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss. 

She shows spirit when Laertes raises the mob, and one respects her forstanding up for her husband when she can do nothing to help her son. Ifshe had sense to realise Hamlet's purpose, or the probability of theKing's taking some desperate step to foil it, she must have sufferedtorture in those days. But perhaps she was too dull. 

The last we see of her, at the fencing-match, is most characteristic. She is perfectly serene. Things have slipped back into their groove, andshe has no apprehensions. She is, however, disturbed and full ofsympathy for her son, who is out of condition and pants and perspires. These are afflictions she can thoroughly feel for, though they are evenmore common than the death of a father. But then she meets her deathbecause she cannot resist the wish to please her son by drinking to hissuccess. And more: when she falls dying, and the King tries to make outthat she is merely swooning at the sight of blood, she collects herenergies to deny it and to warn Hamlet:

 No, no, the drink, the drink, --O my dear Hamlet, -- The drink, the drink! I am poison'd. [_Dies. _

Was ever any other writer at once so pitiless and so just asShakespeare? Did ever any other mingle the grotesque and the patheticwith a realism so daring and yet so true to 'the modesty of nature'?

 * * * * *

King Claudius rarely gets from the reader the attention he deserves. Buthe is very interesting, both psychologically and dramatically. On theone hand, he is not without respectable qualities. As a king he iscourteous and never undignified; he performs his ceremonial dutiesefficiently; and he takes good care of the national interests. Henowhere shows cowardice, and when Laertes and the mob force their wayinto the palace, he confronts a dangerous situation with coolness andaddress. His love for his ill-gotten wife seems to be quite genuine, andthere is no ground for suspecting him of having used her as a mere meansto the crown. [81] His conscience, though ineffective, is far from beingdead. In spite of its reproaches he plots new crimes to ensure the prizeof the old one; but still it makes him unhappy (III. I. 49 f. , III. Iii. 35 f. ). Nor is he cruel or malevolent. 

On the other hand, he is no tragic character. He had a small nature. IfHamlet may be trusted, he was a man of mean appearance--a mildewed ear, a toad, a bat; and he was also bloated by excess in drinking. Peoplemade mouths at him in contempt while his brother lived; and though, whenhe came to the throne, they spent large sums in buying his portrait, heevidently put little reliance on their loyalty. He was no villain offorce, who thought of winning his brother's crown by a bold and openstroke, but a cut-purse who stole the diadem from a shelf and put it inhis pocket. He had the inclination of natures physically weak andmorally small towards intrigue and crooked dealing. His instinctivepredilection was for poison: this was the means he used in his firstmurder, and he at once recurred to it when he had failed to get Hamletexecuted by deputy. Though in danger he showed no cowardice, his firstthought was always for himself. 

 I like him not, nor stands it safe with _us_ To let his madness range, --these are the first words we hear him speak after the play-scene. Hisfirst comment on the death of Polonius is, It had been so with _us_ had we been there;

and his second is, Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answered? It will be laid to _us_. 

He was not, however, stupid, but rather quick-witted and adroit. He wonthe Queen partly indeed by presents (how pitifully characteristic ofher!), but also by 'witch-craft of his wit' or intellect. He seems tohave been soft-spoken, ingratiating in manner, and given to smiling onthe person he addressed ('that one may smile, and smile, and be avillain'). We see this in his speech to Laertes about the young man'sdesire to return to Paris (I. Ii. 42 f. ). Hamlet scarcely ever speaks tohim without an insult, but he never shows resentment, hardly evenannoyance. He makes use of Laertes with great dexterity. He hadevidently found that a clear head, a general complaisance, a willingnessto bend and oblige where he could not overawe, would lead him to hisobjects, --that he could trick men and manage them. Unfortunately heimagined he could trick something more than men. 

This error, together with a decided trait of temperament, leads him tohis ruin. He has a sanguine disposition. When first we see him, all hasfallen out to his wishes, and he confidently looks forward to a happylife. He believes his secret to be absolutely safe, and he is quiteready to be kind to Hamlet, in whose melancholy he sees only excess ofgrief. He has no desire to see him leave the court; he promises him hisvoice for the succession (I. Ii. 108, III. Ii. 355); he will be a fatherto him. Before long, indeed, he becomes very uneasy, and then more andmore alarmed; but when, much later, he has contrived Hamlet's death inEngland, he has still no suspicion that he need not hope for happiness:

 till I know 'tis done, Howe'er my haps, my _joys_ were ne'er begun. 

Nay, his very last words show that he goes to death unchanged:

 Oh yet defend me, friends, I am but hurt [=wounded], he cries, although in half a minute he is dead. That his crime hasfailed, and that it could do nothing else, never once comes home to him. He thinks he can over-reach Heaven. When he is praying for pardon, he isall the while perfectly determined to keep his crown; and he knows it. More--it is one of the grimmest things in Shakespeare, but he puts suchthings so quietly that we are apt to miss them--when the King is prayingfor pardon for his first murder he has just made his final arrangementsfor a second, the murder of Hamlet. But he does not allude to that factin his prayer. If Hamlet had really wished to kill him at a moment thathad no relish of salvation in it, he had no need to wait. [82] So we areinclined to say; and yet it was not so. For this was the crisis forClaudius as well as Hamlet. He had better have died at once, before hehad added to his guilt a share in the responsibility for all the woe anddeath that followed. And so, we may allow ourselves to say, here alsoHamlet's indiscretion served him well. The power that shaped his endshaped the King's no less. 

For--to return in conclusion to the action of the play--in all thathappens or is done we seem to apprehend some vaster power. We do notdefine it, or even name it, or perhaps even say to ourselves that it isthere; but our imagination is haunted by the sense of it, as it worksits way through the deeds or the delays of men to its inevitable end. And most of all do we feel this in regard to Hamlet and the King. Forthese two, the one by his shrinking from his appointed task, and theother by efforts growing ever more feverish to rid himself of his enemy, seem to be bent on avoiding each other. But they cannot. Through deviouspaths, the very paths they take in order to escape, something is pushingthem silently step by step towards one another, until they meet and itputs the sword into Hamlet's hand. He himself must die, for he neededthis compulsion before he could fulfil the demand of destiny; but he_must_ fulfil it. And the King too, turn and twist as he may, must reachthe appointed goal, and is only hastening to it by the windings whichseem to lead elsewhere. Concentration on the character of the hero isapt to withdraw our attention from this aspect of the drama; but in noother tragedy of Shakespeare's, not even in _Macbeth_, is this aspect soimpressive. [83]

I mention _Macbeth_ for a further reason. In _Macbeth_ and _Hamlet_ notonly is the feeling of a supreme power or destiny peculiarly marked, butit has also at times a peculiar tone, which may be called, in a sense, religious. I cannot make my meaning clear without using language toodefinite to describe truly the imaginative impression produced; but itis roughly true that, while we do not imagine the supreme power as adivine being who avenges crime, or as a providence which supernaturallyinterferes, our sense of it is influenced by the fact that Shakespeareuses current religious ideas here much more decidedly than in _Othello_or _King Lear_. The horror in Macbeth's soul is more than oncerepresented as desperation at the thought that he is eternally 'lost';the same idea appears in the attempt of Claudius at repentance; and as_Hamlet_ nears its close the 'religious' tone of the tragedy is deepenedin two ways. In the first place, 'accident' is introduced into the plotin its barest and least dramatic form, when Hamlet is brought back toDenmark by the chance of the meeting with the pirate ship. This incidenthas been therefore severely criticised as a lame expedient, [84] but itappears probable that the 'accident' is meant to impress the imaginationas the very reverse of accidental, and with many readers it certainlydoes so. And that this was the intention is made the more likely by asecond fact, the fact that in connection with the events of the voyageShakespeare introduces that feeling, on Hamlet's part, of his being inthe hands of Providence. The repeated expressions of this feeling arenot, I have maintained, a sign that Hamlet has now formed a fixedresolution to do his duty forthwith; but their effect is to strengthenin the spectator the feeling that, whatever may become of Hamlet, andwhether he wills it or not, his task will surely be accomplished, because it is the purpose of a power against which both he and his enemyare impotent, and which makes of them the instruments of its own will. 

Observing this, we may remember another significant point of resemblancebetween _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_, the appearance in each play of aGhost, --a figure which seems quite in place in either, whereas it wouldseem utterly out of place in _Othello_ or _King Lear_. Much might besaid of the Ghost in _Hamlet_, but I confine myself to the matter whichwe are now considering. What is the effect of the appearance of theGhost? And, in particular, why does Shakespeare make this Ghost so_majestical_ a phantom, giving it that measured and solemn utterance, and that air of impersonal abstraction which forbids, for example, allexpression of affection for Hamlet and checks in Hamlet the outburst ofpity for his father? Whatever the intention may have been, the result isthat the Ghost affects imagination not simply as the apparition of adead king who desires the accomplishment of _his_ purposes, but also asthe representative of that hidden ultimate power, the messenger ofdivine justice set upon the expiation of offences which it appearedimpossible for man to discover and avenge, a reminder or a symbol of theconnexion of the limited world of ordinary experience with the vasterlife of which it is but a partial appearance. And as, at the beginningof the play, we have this intimation, conveyed through the medium of thereceived religious idea of a soul come from purgatory, so at the end, conveyed through the similar idea of a soul carried by angels to itsrest, we have an intimation of the same character, and a reminder thatthe apparent failure of Hamlet's life is not the ultimate truthconcerning him. 

If these various peculiarities of the tragedy are considered, it will beagreed that, while _Hamlet_ certainly cannot be called in the specificsense a 'religious drama, ' there is in it nevertheless both a freer useof popular religious ideas, and a more decided, though alwaysimaginative, intimation of a supreme power concerned in human evil andgood, than can be found in any other of Shakespeare's tragedies. Andthis is probably one of the causes of the special popularity of thisplay, just as _Macbeth_, the tragedy which in these respects most nearlyapproaches it, has also the place next to it in general esteem. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 54: In the First Act (I. Ii. 138) Hamlet says that his fatherhas been dead not quite two months. In the Third Act (III. Ii. 135)Ophelia says King Hamlet has been dead 'twice two months. ' The events ofthe Third Act are separated from those of the Second by one night (II. Ii. 565). ]

[Footnote 55: The only difference is that in the 'To be or not to be'soliloquy there is no reference to the idea that suicide is forbidden by'the Everlasting. ' Even this, however, seems to have been present in theoriginal form of the speech, for the version in the First Quarto has aline about our being 'borne before an everlasting Judge. ']

[Footnote 56: The present position of the 'To be or not to be'soliloquy, and of the interview with Ophelia, appears to have been dueto an after-thought of Shakespeare's; for in the First Quarto theyprecede, instead of following, the arrival of the players, andconsequently the arrangement for the play-scene. This is a notableinstance of the truth that 'inspiration' is by no means confined to apoet's first conceptions. ]

[Footnote 57: Cf. Again the scene at Ophelia's grave, where a strongstrain of aesthetic disgust is traceable in Hamlet's 'towering passion'with Laertes: 'Nay, an thou'lt mouth, I'll rant as well as thou' (V. I. 306). ]

[Footnote 58:

 O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom:

Nero, who put to death his mother who had poisoned her husband. Thispassage is surely remarkable. And so are the later words (III. Iv. 28):

 A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother, As kill a king, and marry with his brother. 

Are we to understand that at this time he really suspected her ofcomplicity in the murder? We must remember that the Ghost had not toldhim she was innocent of that. ]

[Footnote 59: I am inclined to think that the note of interrogation putafter 'revenged' in a late Quarto is right. ]

[Footnote 60: III. Iii. 1-26. The state of affairs at Court at thistime, though I have not seen it noticed by critics, seems to mepuzzling. It is quite clear from III. Ii. 310 ff. , from the passage justcited, and from IV. Vii. 1-5 and 30 ff. , that everyone sees in theplay-scene a gross and menacing insult to the King. Yet no one shows anysign of perceiving in it also an accusation of murder. Surely that isstrange. Are we perhaps meant to understand that they do perceive this, but out of subservience choose to ignore the fact? If that wereShakespeare's meaning, the actors could easily indicate it by theirlooks. And if it were so, any sympathy we may feel for Rosencrantz andGuildenstern in their fate would be much diminished. But the mere textdoes not suffice to decide either this question or the question whetherthe two courtiers were aware of the contents of the commission they boreto England. ]

[Footnote 61: This passage in _Hamlet_ seems to have been in Heywood'smind when, in _The Second Part of the Iron Age_ (Pearson's reprint, vol. Iii. , p. 423), he makes the Ghost of Agamemnon appear in order tosatisfy the doubts of Orestes as to his mother's guilt. No reader couldpossibly think that this Ghost was meant to be an hallucination; yetClytemnestra cannot see it. The Ghost of King Hamlet, I may add, goesfurther than that of Agamemnon, for he is audible, as well as visible, to the privileged person. ]

[Footnote 62: I think it is clear that it is this fear which stands inthe way of the obvious plan of bringing Hamlet to trial and getting himshut up or executed. It is much safer to hurry him off to his doom inEngland before he can say anything about the murder which he has somehowdiscovered. Perhaps the Queen's resistance, and probably Hamlet's greatpopularity with the people, are additional reasons. (It should beobserved that as early as III. I. 194 we hear of the idea of 'confining'Hamlet as an alternative to sending him to England. )]

[Footnote 63: I am inferring from IV. Vii. , 129, 130, and the last wordsof the scene. ]

[Footnote 64: III. Iv. 172:

 For this same lord, I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so, To punish me with this and this with me, That I must be their scourge and minister:

_i. E. _ the scourge and minister of 'heaven, ' which has a plural senseelsewhere also in Shakespeare. ]

[Footnote 65: IV. Iii. 48:

 _Ham. _ For England!

 _King. _ Ay, Hamlet. 

 _Ham. _ Good. 

 _King. _ So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes. 

 _Ham. _ I see a cherub that sees them. ]

[Footnote 66: On this passage see p. 98. Hamlet's reply to Horatio'swarning sounds, no doubt, determined; but so did 'I know my course. ' Andis it not significant that, having given it, he abruptly changes thesubject?]

[Footnote 67: P. 102. ]

[Footnote 68: It should be observed also that many of Hamlet'srepetitions can hardly be said to occur at moments of great emotion, like Cordelia's 'And so I am, I am, ' and 'No cause, no cause. '

Of course, a habit of repetition quite as marked as Hamlet's may befound in comic persons, _e. G. _ Justice Shallow in _2 Henry IV. _]

[Footnote 69: Perhaps it is from noticing this trait that I findsomething characteristic too in this coincidence of phrase: 'Alas, poorghost!' (I. V. 4), 'Alas, poor Yorick!' (V. I. 202). ]

[Footnote 70: This letter, of course, was written before the time whenthe action of the drama begins, for we know that Ophelia, after herfather's commands in I. Iii. , received no more letters (II. I. 109). ]

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

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

[Footnote 72: There are signs that Hamlet was haunted by the horribleidea that he had been deceived in Ophelia as he had been in his mother;that she was shallow and artificial, and even that what had seemedsimple and affectionate love might really have been something verydifferent. The grossness of his language at the play-scene, and somelines in the Nunnery-scene, suggest this; and, considering the state ofhis mind, there is nothing unnatural in his suffering from such asuspicion. I do not suggest that he _believed_ in it, and in theNunnery-scene it is clear that his healthy perception of her innocenceis in conflict with it. 

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

[Footnote 73: Many readers and critics imagine that Hamlet went straightto Ophelia's room after his interview with the Ghost. But we have justseen that on the contrary he tried to visit her and was repelled, and itis absolutely certain that a long interval separates the events of I. V. And II. I. They think also, of course, that Hamlet's visit to Opheliawas the first announcement of his madness. But the text flatlycontradicts that idea also. Hamlet has for some time appeared totallychanged (II. Ii. 1-10); the King is very uneasy at his 'transformation, 'and has sent for his school-fellows in order to discover its cause. Polonius now, after Ophelia has told him of the interview, comes toannounce his discovery, not of Hamlet's madness, but of its cause (II. Ii. 49). That, it would seem, was the effect Hamlet aimed at in hisinterview. I may add that Ophelia's description of his intentexamination of her face suggests doubt rather as to her 'honesty' orsincerity than as to her strength of mind. I cannot believe that he everdreamed of confiding his secret to her. ]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She then offers to return Hamlet's presents. This has not been suggestedto her by her father: it is her own thought. And the next lines, inwhich she refers to the sweet words which accompanied those gifts, andto the unkindness which has succeeded that kindness, imply a reproach. So again do those most touching little speeches:

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

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

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

 _Ophelia. _ I was the more deceived. 

Now the obvious surface fact was not that Hamlet had forsaken her, butthat _she_ had repulsed _him_; and here, with his usual unobtrusivesubtlety, Shakespeare shows how Ophelia, even though she may haveaccepted from her elders the theory that her unkindness has drivenHamlet mad, knows within herself that she is forsaken, and cannotrepress the timid attempt to win her lover back by showing that her ownheart is unchanged. 

I will add one note. There are critics who, after all the help giventhem in different ways by Goethe and Coleridge and Mrs. Jameson, stillshake their heads over Ophelia's song, 'To-morrow is Saint Valentine'sday. ' Probably they are incurable, but they may be asked to considerthat Shakespeare makes Desdemona, 'as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, 'sing an old song containing the line, If I court moe women, you'll couch with moe men. ]

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

[Footnote 81: I do not rely so much on his own statement to Laertes (IV. Vii. 12 f. ) as on the absence of contrary indications, on his tone inspeaking to her, and on such signs as his mention of her in soliloquy(III. Iii. 55). ]

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

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

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

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

LECTURE V

OTHELLO

There is practically no doubt that _Othello_ was the tragedy writtennext after _Hamlet_. Such external evidence as we possess points to thisconclusion, and it is confirmed by similarities of style, diction andversification, and also by the fact that ideas and phrases of theearlier play are echoed in the later. [85] There is, further (not tospeak of one curious point, to be considered when we come to Iago), acertain resemblance in the subjects. The heroes of the two plays aredoubtless extremely unlike, so unlike that each could have dealt withoutmuch difficulty with the situation which proved fatal to the other; butstill each is a man exceptionally noble and trustful, and each enduresthe shock of a terrible disillusionment. This theme is treated byShakespeare for the first time in _Hamlet_, for the second in _Othello_. It recurs with modifications in _King Lear_, and it probably formed theattraction which drew Shakespeare to refashion in part another writer'stragedy of _Timon_. These four dramas may so far be grouped together indistinction from the remaining tragedies. 

But in point of substance, and, in certain respects, in point of style, the unlikeness of _Othello_ to _Hamlet_ is much greater than thelikeness, and the later play belongs decidedly to one group with itssuccessors. We have seen that, like them, it is a tragedy of passion, adescription inapplicable to _Julius Caesar_ or _Hamlet_. And with thischange goes another, an enlargement in the stature of the hero. There isin most of the later heroes something colossal, something which remindsus of Michael Angelo's figures. They are not merely exceptional men, they are huge men; as it were, survivors of the heroic age living in alater and smaller world. We do not receive this impression from Romeo orBrutus or Hamlet, nor did it lie in Shakespeare's design to allow morethan touches of this trait to Julius Caesar himself; but it is stronglymarked in Lear and Coriolanus, and quite distinct in Macbeth and even inAntony. Othello is the first of these men, a being essentially large andgrand, towering above his fellows, holding a volume of force which inrepose ensures preeminence without an effort, and in commotion remindsus rather of the fury of the elements than of the tumult of common humanpassion. 

1

What is the peculiarity of _Othello_? What is the distinctive impressionthat it leaves? Of all Shakespeare's tragedies, I would answer, not evenexcepting _King Lear_, _Othello_ is the most painfully exciting and themost terrible. From the moment when the temptation of the hero begins, the reader's heart and mind are held in a vice, experiencing theextremes of pity and fear, sympathy and repulsion, sickening hope anddreadful expectation. Evil is displayed before him, not indeed with theprofusion found in _King Lear_, but forming, as it were, the soul of asingle character, and united with an intellectual superiority so greatthat he watches its advance fascinated and appalled. He sees it, initself almost irresistible, aided at every step by fortunate accidentsand the innocent mistakes of its victims. He seems to breathe anatmosphere as fateful as that of _King Lear_, but more confined andoppressive, the darkness not of night but of a close-shut murderousroom. His imagination is excited to intense activity, but it is theactivity of concentration rather than dilation. 

I will not dwell now on aspects of the play which modify thisimpression, and I reserve for later discussion one of its principalsources, the character of Iago. But if we glance at some of its othersources, we shall find at the same time certain distinguishingcharacteristics of _Othello_. 

(1) One of these has been already mentioned in our discussion ofShakespeare's technique. _Othello_ is not only the most masterly of thetragedies in point of construction, but its method of construction isunusual. And this method, by which the conflict begins late, andadvances without appreciable pause and with accelerating speed to thecatastrophe, is a main cause of the painful tension just described. Tothis may be added that, after the conflict has begun, there is verylittle relief by way of the ridiculous. Henceforward at any rate Iago'shumour never raises a smile. The clown is a poor one; we hardly attendto him and quickly forget him; I believe most readers of Shakespeare, ifasked whether there is a clown in _Othello_, would answer No. 

(2) In the second place, there is no subject more exciting than sexualjealousy rising to the pitch of passion; and there can hardly be anyspectacle at once so engrossing and so painful as that of a great naturesuffering the torment of this passion, and driven by it to a crime whichis also a hideous blunder. Such a passion as ambition, however terribleits results, is not itself ignoble; if we separate it in thought fromthe conditions which make it guilty, it does not appear despicable; itis not a kind of suffering, its nature is active; and therefore we canwatch its course without shrinking. But jealousy, and especially sexualjealousy, brings with it a sense of shame and humiliation. For thisreason it is generally hidden; if we perceive it we ourselves areashamed and turn our eyes away; and when it is not hidden it commonlystirs contempt as well as pity. Nor is this all. Such jealousy asOthello's converts human nature into chaos, and liberates the beast inman; and it does this in relation to one of the most intense and alsothe most ideal of human feelings. What spectacle can be more painfulthan that of this feeling turned into a tortured mixture of longing andloathing, the 'golden purity' of passion split by poison into fragments, the animal in man forcing itself into his consciousness in nakedgrossness, and he writhing before it but powerless to deny it entrance, gasping inarticulate images of pollution, and finding relief only in abestial thirst for blood? This is what we have to witness in one who wasindeed 'great of heart' and no less pure and tender than he was great. And this, with what it leads to, the blow to Desdemona, and the scenewhere she is treated as the inmate of a brothel, a scene far morepainful than the murder scene, is another cause of the special effect ofthis tragedy. [86]

(3) The mere mention of these scenes will remind us painfully of a thirdcause; and perhaps it is the most potent of all. I mean the suffering ofDesdemona. This is, unless I mistake, the most nearly intolerablespectacle that Shakespeare offers us. For one thing, it is _mere_suffering; and, _ceteris paribus_, that is much worse to witness thansuffering that issues in action. Desdemona is helplessly passive. Shecan do nothing whatever. She cannot retaliate even in speech; no, noteven in silent feeling. And the chief reason of her helplessness onlymakes the sight of her suffering more exquisitely painful. She ishelpless because her nature is infinitely sweet and her love absolute. Iwould not challenge Mr. Swinburne's statement that we _pity_ Othelloeven more than Desdemona; but we watch Desdemona with more unmitigateddistress. We are never wholly uninfluenced by the feeling that Othellois a man contending with another man; but Desdemona's suffering is likethat of the most loving of dumb creatures tortured without cause by thebeing he adores. 

(4) Turning from the hero and heroine to the third principal character, we observe (what has often been pointed out) that the action andcatastrophe of _Othello_ depend largely on intrigue. We must not saymore than this. We must not call the play a tragedy of intrigue asdistinguished from a tragedy of character. Iago's plot is Iago'scharacter in action; and it is built on his knowledge of Othello'scharacter, and could not otherwise have succeeded. Still it remains truethat an elaborate plot was necessary to elicit the catastrophe; forOthello was no Leontes, and his was the last nature to engender suchjealousy from itself. Accordingly Iago's intrigue occupies a position inthe drama for which no parallel can be found in the other tragedies; theonly approach, and that a distant one, being the intrigue of Edmund inthe secondary plot of _King Lear_. Now in any novel or play, even if thepersons rouse little interest and are never in serious danger, askilfully-worked intrigue will excite eager attention and suspense. Andwhere, as in _Othello_, the persons inspire the keenest sympathy andantipathy, and life and death depend on the intrigue, it becomes thesource of a tension in which pain almost overpowers pleasure. Nowhereelse in Shakespeare do we hold our breath in such anxiety and for solong a time as in the later Acts of _Othello_. 

(5) One result of the prominence of the element of intrigue is that_Othello_ is less unlike a story of private life than any other of thegreat tragedies. And this impression is strengthened in further ways. Inthe other great tragedies the action is placed in a distant period, sothat its general significance is perceived through a thin veil whichseparates the persons from ourselves and our own world. But _Othello_ isa drama of modern life; when it first appeared it was a drama almost ofcontemporary life, for the date of the Turkish attack on Cyprus is 1570. The characters come close to us, and the application of the drama toourselves (if the phrase may be pardoned) is more immediate than it canbe in _Hamlet_ or _Lear_. Besides this, their fortunes affect us asthose of private individuals more than is possible in any of the latertragedies with the exception of _Timon_. I have not forgotten theSenate, nor Othello's position, nor his service to the State;[87] buthis deed and his death have not that influence on the interests of anation or an empire which serves to idealise, and to remove far from ourown sphere, the stories of Hamlet and Macbeth, of Coriolanus and Antony. Indeed he is already superseded at Cyprus when his fate is consummated, and as we leave him no vision rises on us, as in other tragedies, ofpeace descending on a distracted land. 

(6) The peculiarities so far considered combine with others to producethose feelings of oppression, of confinement to a comparatively narrowworld, and of dark fatality, which haunt us in reading _Othello_. In_Macbeth_ the fate which works itself out alike in the external conflictand in the hero's soul, is obviously hostile to evil; and theimagination is dilated both by the consciousness of its presence and bythe appearance of supernatural agencies. These, as we have seen, producein _Hamlet_ a somewhat similar effect, which is increased by the hero'sacceptance of the accidents as a providential shaping of his end. _KingLear_ is undoubtedly the tragedy which comes nearest to _Othello_ in theimpression of darkness and fatefulness, and in the absence of directindications of any guiding power. [88] But in _King Lear_, apart fromother differences to be considered later, the conflict assumesproportions so vast that the imagination seems, as in _Paradise Lost_, to traverse spaces wider than the earth. In reading _Othello_ the mindis not thus distended. It is more bound down to the spectacle of noblebeings caught in toils from which there is no escape; while theprominence of the intrigue diminishes the sense of the dependence of thecatastrophe on character, and the part played by accident[89] in thiscatastrophe accentuates the feeling of fate. This influence of accidentis keenly felt in _King Lear_ only once, and at the very end of theplay. In _Othello_, after the temptation has begun, it is incessant andterrible. The skill of Iago was extraordinary, but so was his goodfortune. Again and again a chance word from Desdemona, a chance meetingof Othello and Cassio, a question which starts to our lips and whichanyone but Othello would have asked, would have destroyed Iago's plotand ended his life. In their stead, Desdemona drops her handkerchief atthe moment most favourable to him, [90] Cassio blunders into the presenceof Othello only to find him in a swoon, Bianca arrives precisely whenshe is wanted to complete Othello's deception and incense his anger intofury. All this and much more seems to us quite natural, so potent is theart of the dramatist; but it confounds us with a feeling, such as weexperience in the _Oedipus Tyrannus_, that for these star-crossedmortals--both [Greek: dysdaimones]--there is no escape from fate, andeven with a feeling, absent from that play, that fate has taken sideswith villainy. [91] It is not surprising, therefore, that _Othello_should affect us as _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_ never do, and as _King Lear_does only in slighter measure. On the contrary, it is marvellous that, before the tragedy is over, Shakespeare should have succeeded in toningdown this impression into harmony with others more solemn and serene. 

But has he wholly succeeded? Or is there a justification for the fact--afact it certainly is--that some readers, while acknowledging, of course, the immense power of _Othello_, and even admitting that it isdramatically perhaps Shakespeare's greatest triumph, still regard itwith a certain distaste, or, at any rate, hardly allow it a place intheir minds beside _Hamlet_, _King Lear_ and _Macbeth_?

The distaste to which I refer is due chiefly to two causes. First, tomany readers in our time, men as well as women, the subject of sexualjealousy, treated with Elizabethan fulness and frankness, is not merelypainful but so repulsive that not even the intense tragic emotions whichthe story generates can overcome this repulsion. But, while it is easyto understand a dislike of _Othello_ thus caused, it does not seemnecessary to discuss it, for it may fairly be called personal orsubjective. It would become more than this, and would amount to acriticism of the play, only if those who feel it maintained that thefulness and frankness which are disagreeable to them are also needlessfrom a dramatic point of view, or betray a design of appealing tounpoetic feelings in the audience. But I do not think that this ismaintained, or that such a view would be plausible. 

To some readers, again, parts of _Othello_ appear shocking or evenhorrible. They think--if I may formulate their objection--that in theseparts Shakespeare has sinned against the canons of art, by representingon the stage a violence or brutality the effect of which isunnecessarily painful and rather sensational than tragic. The passageswhich thus give offence are probably those already referred to, --thatwhere Othello strikes Desdemona (IV. I. 251), that where he affects totreat her as an inmate of a house of ill-fame (IV. Ii. ), and finally thescene of her death. 

The issues thus raised ought not to be ignored or impatiently dismissed, but they cannot be decided, it seems to me, by argument. All we canprofitably do is to consider narrowly our experience, and to askourselves this question: If we feel these objections, do we feel themwhen we are reading the play with all our force, or only when we arereading it in a half-hearted manner? For, however matters may stand inthe former case, in the latter case evidently the fault is ours and notShakespeare's. And if we try the question thus, I believe we shall findthat on the whole the fault is ours. The first, and least important, ofthe three passages--that of the blow--seems to me the most doubtful. Iconfess that, do what I will, I cannot reconcile myself with it. Itseems certain that the blow is by no means a tap on the shoulder with aroll of paper, as some actors, feeling the repulsiveness of the passage, have made it. It must occur, too, on the open stage. And there is not, Ithink, a sufficiently overwhelming tragic feeling in the passage to makeit bearable. But in the other two scenes the case is different. There, it seems to me, if we fully imagine the inward tragedy in the souls ofthe persons as we read, the more obvious and almost physical sensationsof pain or horror do not appear in their own likeness, and only serve tointensify the tragic feelings in which they are absorbed. Whether thiswould be so in the murder-scene if Desdemona had to be imagined asdragged about the open stage (as in some modern performances) may bedoubtful; but there is absolutely no warrant in the text for imaginingthis, and it is also quite clear that the bed where she is stifled waswithin the curtains, [92] and so, presumably, in part concealed. 

Here, then, _Othello_ does not appear to be, unless perhaps at onepoint, [93] open to criticism, though it has more passages than the otherthree tragedies where, if imagination is not fully exerted, it isshocked or else sensationally excited. If nevertheless we feel it tooccupy a place in our minds a little lower than the other three (and Ibelieve this feeling, though not general, is not rare), the reason liesnot here but in another characteristic, to which I have alreadyreferred, --the comparative confinement of the imaginative atmosphere. _Othello_ has not equally with the other three the power of dilating theimagination by vague suggestions of huge universal powers working in theworld of individual fate and passion. It is, in a sense, less'symbolic. ' We seem to be aware in it of a certain limitation, a partialsuppression of that element in Shakespeare's mind which unites him withthe mystical poets and with the great musicians and philosophers. In oneor two of his plays, notably in _Troilus and Cressida_, we are almostpainfully conscious of this suppression; we feel an intense intellectualactivity, but at the same time a certain coldness and hardness, asthough some power in his soul, at once the highest and the sweetest, were for a time in abeyance. In other plays, notably in the _Tempest_, we are constantly aware of the presence of this power; and in such caseswe seem to be peculiarly near to Shakespeare himself. Now this is so in_Hamlet_ and _King Lear_, and, in a slighter degree, in _Macbeth_; butit is much less so in _Othello_. I do not mean that in _Othello_ thesuppression is marked, or that, as in _Troilus and Cressida_, it strikesus as due to some unpleasant mood; it seems rather to follow simply fromthe design of a play on a contemporary and wholly mundane subject. Stillit makes a difference of the kind I have attempted to indicate, and itleaves an impression that in _Othello_ we are not in contact with thewhole of Shakespeare. And it is perhaps significant in this respect thatthe hero himself strikes us as having, probably, less of the poet'spersonality in him than many characters far inferior both as dramaticcreations and as men. 

2

The character of Othello is comparatively simple, but, as I have dwelton the prominence of intrigue and accident in the play, it is desirableto show how essentially the success of Iago's plot is connected withthis character. Othello's description of himself as

 one not easily jealous, but, being wrought, Perplexed in the extreme, is perfectly just. His tragedy lies in this--that his whole nature wasindisposed to jealousy, and yet was such that he was unusually open todeception, and, if once wrought to passion, likely to act with littlereflection, with no delay, and in the most decisive manner conceivable. 

Let me first set aside a mistaken view. I do not mean the ridiculousnotion that Othello was jealous by temperament, but the idea, which hassome little plausibility, that the play is primarily a study of a noblebarbarian, who has become a Christian and has imbibed some of thecivilisation of his employers, but who retains beneath the surface thesavage passions of his Moorish blood and also the suspiciousnessregarding female chastity common among Oriental peoples, and that thelast three Acts depict the outburst of these original feelings throughthe thin crust of Venetian culture. It would take too long to discussthis idea, [94] and it would perhaps be useless to do so, for allarguments against it must end in an appeal to the reader's understandingof Shakespeare. If he thinks it is like Shakespeare to look at things inthis manner; that he had a historical mind and occupied himself withproblems of 'Culturgeschichte'; that he laboured to make his Romansperfectly Roman, to give a correct view of the Britons in the days ofLear or Cymbeline, to portray in Hamlet a stage of the moralconsciousness not yet reached by the people around him, the reader willalso think this interpretation of _Othello_ probable. To me it appearshopelessly un-Shakespearean. I could as easily believe that Chaucermeant the Wife of Bath for a study of the peculiarities ofSomersetshire. I do not mean that Othello's race is a matter of noaccount. It has, as we shall presently see, its importance in the play. It makes a difference to our idea of him; it makes a difference to theaction and catastrophe. But in regard to the essentials of his characterit is not important; and if anyone had told Shakespeare that noEnglishman would have acted like the Moor, and had congratulated him onthe accuracy of his racial psychology, I am sure he would have laughed. 

Othello is, in one sense of the word, by far the most romantic figureamong Shakespeare's heroes; and he is so partly from the strange life ofwar and adventure which he has lived from childhood. He does not belongto our world, and he seems to enter it we know not whence--almost as iffrom wonderland. There is something mysterious in his descent from menof royal siege; in his wanderings in vast deserts and among marvellouspeoples; in his tales of magic handkerchiefs and prophetic Sibyls; inthe sudden vague glimpses we get of numberless battles and sieges inwhich he has played the hero and has borne a charmed life; even inchance references to his baptism, his being sold to slavery, his sojournin Aleppo. 

And he is not merely a romantic figure; his own nature is romantic. Hehas not, indeed, the meditative or speculative imagination of Hamlet;but in the strictest sense of the word he is more poetic than Hamlet. Indeed, if one recalls Othello's most famous speeches--those that begin, 'Her father loved me, ' 'O now for ever, ' 'Never, Iago, ' 'Had it pleasedHeaven, ' 'It is the cause, ' 'Behold, I have a weapon, ' 'Soft you, a wordor two before you go'--and if one places side by side with thesespeeches an equal number by any other hero, one will not doubt thatOthello is the greatest poet of them all. There is the same poetry inhis casual phrases--like 'These nine moons wasted, ' 'Keep up your brightswords, for the dew will rust them, ' 'You chaste stars, ' 'It is a swordof Spain, the ice-brook's temper, ' 'It is the very error of themoon'--and in those brief expressions of intense feeling which eversince have been taken as the absolute expression, like

 If it were now to die, 'Twere now to be most happy; for, I fear, My soul hath her content so absolute That not another comfort like to this Succeeds in unknown fate, or

 If she be false, O then Heaven mocks itself. I'll not believe it;

or

 No, my heart is turned to stone; I strike it, and it hurts my hand, or

 But yet the pity of it, Iago! O Iago, the pity of it, Iago!

or

 O thou weed, Who art so lovely fair and smell'st so sweet That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst ne'er been born. 

And this imagination, we feel, has accompanied his whole life. He haswatched with a poet's eye the Arabian trees dropping their med'cinablegum, and the Indian throwing away his chance-found pearl; and has gazedin a fascinated dream at the Pontic sea rushing, never to return, to thePropontic and the Hellespont; and has felt as no other man ever felt(for he speaks of it as none other ever did) the poetry of the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war. 

So he comes before us, dark and grand, with a light upon him from thesun where he was born; but no longer young, and now grave, self-controlled, steeled by the experience of countless perils, hardships and vicissitudes, at once simple and stately in bearing and inspeech, a great man naturally modest but fully conscious of his worth, proud of his services to the state, unawed by dignitaries and unelatedby honours, secure, it would seem, against all dangers from without andall rebellion from within. And he comes to have his life crowned withthe final glory of love, a love as strange, adventurous and romantic asany passage of his eventful history, filling his heart with tendernessand his imagination with ecstasy. For there is no love, not that ofRomeo in his youth, more steeped in imagination than Othello's. 

The sources of danger in this character are revealed but too clearly bythe story. In the first place, Othello's mind, for all its poetry, isvery simple. He is not observant. His nature tends outward. He is quitefree from introspection, and is not given to reflection. Emotion exciteshis imagination, but it confuses and dulls his intellect. On this sidehe is the very opposite of Hamlet, with whom, however, he shares a greatopenness and trustfulness of nature. In addition, he has littleexperience of the corrupt products of civilised life, and is ignorant ofEuropean women. 

In the second place, for all his dignity and massive calm (and he hasgreater dignity than any other of Shakespeare's men), he is by naturefull of the most vehement passion. Shakespeare emphasises hisself-control, not only by the wonderful pictures of the First Act, butby references to the past. Lodovico, amazed at his violence, exclaims:

 Is this the noble Moor whom our full Senate Call all in all sufficient? Is this the nature Whom passion could not shake? whose solid virtue The shot of accident nor dart of chance Could neither graze nor pierce?

Iago, who has here no motive for lying, asks:

 Can he be angry? I have seen the cannon When it hath blown his ranks into the air, And, like the devil, from his very arm Puffed his own brother--and can he be angry?[95]

This, and other aspects of his character, are best exhibited by a singleline--one of Shakespeare's miracles--the words by which Othello silencesin a moment the night-brawl between his attendants and those ofBrabantio:

 Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them. 

And the same self-control is strikingly shown where Othello endeavoursto elicit some explanation of the fight between Cassio and Montano. Here, however, there occur ominous words, which make us feel hownecessary was this self-control, and make us admire it the more:

 Now, by heaven, My blood begins my safer guides to rule, And passion, having my best judgment collied, Assays to lead the way. 

We remember these words later, when the sun of reason is 'collied, 'blackened and blotted out in total eclipse. 

Lastly, Othello's nature is all of one piece. His trust, where hetrusts, is absolute. Hesitation is almost impossible to him. He isextremely self-reliant, and decides and acts instantaneously. If stirredto indignation, as 'in Aleppo once, ' he answers with one lightningstroke. Love, if he loves, must be to him the heaven where either hemust live or bear no life. If such a passion as jealousy seizes him, itwill swell into a well-nigh incontrollable flood. He will press forimmediate conviction or immediate relief. Convinced, he will act withthe authority of a judge and the swiftness of a man in mortal pain. Undeceived, he will do like execution on himself. 

This character is so noble, Othello's feelings and actions follow soinevitably from it and from the forces brought to bear on it, and hissufferings are so heart-rending, that he stirs, I believe, in mostreaders a passion of mingled love and pity which they feel for no otherhero in Shakespeare, and to which not even Mr. Swinburne can do morethan justice. Yet there are some critics and not a few readers whocherish a grudge against him. They do not merely think that in the laterstages of his temptation he showed a certain obtuseness, and that, tospeak pedantically, he acted with unjustifiable precipitance andviolence; no one, I suppose, denies that. But, even when they admit thathe was not of a jealous temper, they consider that he _was_ 'easilyjealous'; they seem to think that it was inexcusable in him to feel anysuspicion of his wife at all; and they blame him for never suspectingIago or asking him for evidence. I refer to this attitude of mindchiefly in order to draw attention to certain points in the story. Itcomes partly from mere inattention (for Othello did suspect Iago and didask him for evidence); partly from a misconstruction of the text whichmakes Othello appear jealous long before he really is so;[96] and partlyfrom failure to realise certain essential facts. I will begin withthese. 

(1) Othello, we have seen, was trustful, and thorough in his trust. Heput entire confidence in the honesty of Iago, who had not only been hiscompanion in arms, but, as he believed, had just proved his faithfulnessin the matter of the marriage. This confidence was misplaced, and wehappen to know it; but it was no sign of stupidity in Othello. For hisopinion of Iago was the opinion of practically everyone who knew him:and that opinion was that Iago was before all things 'honest, ' his veryfaults being those of excess in honesty. This being so, even if Othellohad not been trustful and simple, it would have been quite unnatural inhim to be unmoved by the warnings of so honest a friend, warningsoffered with extreme reluctance and manifestly from a sense of afriend's duty. [97] _Any_ husband would have been troubled by them. 

(2) Iago does not bring these warnings to a husband who had lived with awife for months and years and knew her like his sister or hisbosom-friend. Nor is there any ground in Othello's character forsupposing that, if he had been such a man, he would have felt and actedas he does in the play. But he was newly married; in the circumstanceshe cannot have known much of Desdemona before his marriage; and furtherhe was conscious of being under the spell of a feeling which can giveglory to the truth but can also give it to a dream. 

(3) This consciousness in any imaginative man is enough, in suchcircumstances, to destroy his confidence in his powers of perception. InOthello's case, after a long and most artful preparation, there nowcomes, to reinforce its effect, the suggestions that he is not anItalian, not even a European; that he is totally ignorant of thethoughts and the customary morality of Venetian women;[98] that he hadhimself seen in Desdemona's deception of her father how perfect anactress she could be. As he listens in horror, for a moment at least thepast is revealed to him in a new and dreadful light, and the groundseems to sink under his feet. These suggestions are followed by atentative but hideous and humiliating insinuation of what his honest andmuch-experienced friend fears may be the true explanation of Desdemona'srejection of acceptable suitors, and of her strange, and naturallytemporary, preference for a black man. Here Iago goes too far. He seessomething in Othello's face that frightens him, and he breaks off. Nordoes this idea take any hold of Othello's mind. But it is not surprisingthat his utter powerlessness to repel it on the ground of knowledge ofhis wife, or even of that instinctive interpretation of character whichis possible between persons of the same race, [99] should complete hismisery, so that he feels he can bear no more, and abruptly dismisses hisfriend (III. Iii. 238). 

Now I repeat that _any_ man situated as Othello was would have beendisturbed by Iago's communications, and I add that many men would havebeen made wildly jealous. But up to this point, where Iago is dismissed, Othello, I must maintain, does not show jealousy. His confidence isshaken, he is confused and deeply troubled, he feels even horror; but heis not yet jealous in the proper sense of that word. In his soliloquy(III. Iii. 258 ff. ) the beginning of this passion may be traced; but itis only after an interval of solitude, when he has had time to dwell onthe idea presented to him, and especially after statements of fact, notmere general grounds of suspicion, are offered, that the passion layshold of him. Even then, however, and indeed to the very end, he is quiteunlike the essentially jealous man, quite unlike Leontes. No doubt thethought of another man's possessing the woman he loves is intolerable tohim; no doubt the sense of insult and the impulse of revenge are attimes most violent; and these are the feelings of jealousy proper. Butthese are not the chief or the deepest source of Othello's suffering. Itis the wreck of his faith and his love. It is the feeling, If she be false, oh then Heaven mocks itself;

the feeling, O Iago, the pity of it, Iago!

the feeling, But there where I have garner'd up my heart, Where either I must live, or bear no life; The fountain from the which my current runs, Or else dries up--to be discarded thence. .. . 

You will find nothing like this in Leontes. 

Up to this point, it appears to me, there is not a syllable to be saidagainst Othello. But the play is a tragedy, and from this point we mayabandon the ungrateful and undramatic task of awarding praise and blame. When Othello, after a brief interval, re-enters (III. Iii. 330), we seeat once that the poison has been at work and 'burns like the mines ofsulphur. '

 Look where he comes! Not poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou owedst yesterday. 

He is 'on the rack, ' in an agony so unbearable that he cannot endure thesight of Iago. Anticipating the probability that Iago has spared him thewhole truth, he feels that in that case his life is over and his'occupation gone' with all its glories. But he has not abandoned hope. The bare possibility that his friend is deliberately deceivinghim--though such a deception would be a thing so monstrously wicked thathe can hardly conceive it credible--is a kind of hope. He furiouslydemands proof, ocular proof. And when he is compelled to see that he isdemanding an impossibility he still demands evidence. He forces it fromthe unwilling witness, and hears the maddening tale of Cassio's dream. It is enough. And if it were not enough, has he not sometimes seen ahandkerchief spotted with strawberries in his wife's hand? Yes, it washis first gift to her. 

 I know not that; but such a handkerchief-- I am sure it was your wife's--did I to-day See Cassio wipe his beard with. 

'If it be that, ' he answers--but what need to test the fact? The'madness of revenge' is in his blood, and hesitation is a thing he neverknew. He passes judgment, and controls himself only to make his sentencea solemn vow. 

The Othello of the Fourth Act is Othello in his fall. His fall is nevercomplete, but he is much changed. Towards the close of theTemptation-scene he becomes at times most terrible, but his grandeurremains almost undiminished. Even in the following scene (III. Iv. ), where he goes to test Desdemona in the matter of the handkerchief, andreceives a fatal confirmation of her guilt, our sympathy with him ishardly touched by any feeling of humiliation. But in the Fourth Act'Chaos has come. ' A slight interval of time may be admitted here. It isbut slight; for it was necessary for Iago to hurry on, and terriblydangerous to leave a chance for a meeting of Cassio with Othello; andhis insight into Othello's nature taught him that his plan was todeliver blow on blow, and never to allow his victim to recover from theconfusion of the first shock. Still there is a slight interval; and whenOthello reappears we see at a glance that he is a changed man. He isphysically exhausted, and his mind is dazed. [100] He sees everythingblurred through a mist of blood and tears. He has actually forgotten theincident of the handkerchief, and has to be reminded of it. When Iago, perceiving that he can now risk almost any lie, tells him that Cassiohas confessed his guilt, Othello, the hero who has seemed to us onlysecond to Coriolanus in physical power, trembles all over; he muttersdisjointed words; a blackness suddenly intervenes between his eyes andthe world; he takes it for the shuddering testimony of nature to thehorror he has just heard, [101] and he falls senseless to the ground. When he recovers it is to watch Cassio, as he imagines, laughing overhis shame. It is an imposition so gross, and should have been one soperilous, that Iago would never have ventured it before. But he is safenow. The sight only adds to the confusion of intellect the madness ofrage; and a ravenous thirst for revenge, contending with motions ofinfinite longing and regret, conquers them. The delay till night-fall istorture to him. His self-control has wholly deserted him, and he strikeshis wife in the presence of the Venetian envoy. He is so lost to allsense of reality that he never asks himself what will follow the deathsof Cassio and his wife. An ineradicable instinct of justice, rather thanany last quiver of hope, leads him to question Emilia; but nothing couldconvince him now, and there follows the dreadful scene of accusation;and then, to allow us the relief of burning hatred and burning tears, the interview of Desdemona with Iago, and that last talk of hers withEmilia, and her last song. 

But before the end there is again a change. The supposed death of Cassio(V. I. ) satiates the thirst for vengeance. The Othello who enters thebed-chamber with the words, It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul, is not the man of the Fourth Act. The deed he is bound to do is nomurder, but a sacrifice. He is to save Desdemona from herself, not inhate but in honour; in honour, and also in love. His anger has passed; aboundless sorrow has taken its place; and

 this sorrow's heavenly: It strikes where it doth love. 

Even when, at the sight of her apparent obduracy, and at the hearing ofwords which by a crowning fatality can only reconvince him of her guilt, these feelings give way to others, it is to righteous indignation theygive way, not to rage; and, terribly painful as this scene is, there isalmost nothing here to diminish the admiration and love which heightenpity. [102] And pity itself vanishes, and love and admiration aloneremain, in the majestic dignity and sovereign ascendancy of the close. Chaos has come and gone; and the Othello of the Council-chamber and thequay of Cyprus has returned, or a greater and nobler Othello still. Ashe speaks those final words in which all the glory and agony of hislife--long ago in India and Arabia and Aleppo, and afterwards in Venice, and now in Cyprus--seem to pass before us, like the pictures that flashbefore the eyes of a drowning man, a triumphant scorn for the fetters ofthe flesh and the littleness of all the lives that must survive himsweeps our grief away, and when he dies upon a kiss the most painful ofall tragedies leaves us for the moment free from pain, and exulting inthe power of 'love and man's unconquerable mind. '

3

The words just quoted come from Wordsworth's sonnet to Toussaintl'Ouverture. Toussaint was a Negro; and there is a question, which, though of little consequence, is not without dramatic interest, whetherShakespeare imagined Othello as a Negro or as a Moor. Now I will not saythat Shakespeare imagined him as a Negro and not as a Moor, for thatmight imply that he distinguished Negroes and Moors precisely as we do;but what appears to me nearly certain is that he imagined Othello as ablack man, and not as a light-brown one. 

In the first place, we must remember that the brown or bronze to whichwe are now accustomed in the Othellos of our theatres is a recentinnovation. Down to Edmund Kean's time, so far as is known, Othello wasalways quite black. This stage-tradition goes back to the Restoration, and it almost settles our question. For it is impossible that the colourof the original Othello should have been forgotten so soon afterShakespeare's time, and most improbable that it should have been changedfrom brown to black. 

If we turn to the play itself, we find many references to Othello'scolour and appearance. Most of these are indecisive; for the word'black' was of course used then where we should speak of a 'dark'complexion now; and even the nickname 'thick-lips, ' appealed to as proofthat Othello was a Negro, might have been applied by an enemy to what wecall a Moor. On the other hand, it is hard to believe that, if Othellohad been light-brown, Brabantio would have taunted him with having a'sooty bosom, ' or that (as Mr. Furness observes) he himself would haveused the words, her name, that was as fresh As Dian's visage, is now begrimed and black As mine own face. 

These arguments cannot be met by pointing out that Othello was of royalblood, is not called an Ethiopian, is called a Barbary horse, and issaid to be going to Mauritania. All this would be of importance if wehad reason to believe that Shakespeare shared our ideas, knowledge andterms. Otherwise it proves nothing. And we know that sixteenth-centurywriters called any dark North-African a Moor, or a black Moor, or ablackamoor. Sir Thomas Elyot, according to Hunter, [103] calls EthiopiansMoors; and the following are the first two illustrations of 'Blackamoor'in the Oxford _English Dictionary_: 1547, 'I am a blake More borne inBarbary'; 1548, '_Ethiopo_, a blake More, or a man of Ethiope. ' Thusgeographical names can tell us nothing about the question howShakespeare imagined Othello. He may have known that a Mauritanian isnot a Negro nor black, but we cannot assume that he did. He may haveknown, again, that the Prince of Morocco, who is described in the_Merchant of Venice_ as having, like Othello, the complexion of a devil, was no Negro. But we cannot tell: nor is there any reason why he shouldnot have imagined the Prince as a brown Moor and Othello as aBlackamoor. 

_Titus Andronicus_ appeared in the Folio among Shakespeare's works. Itis believed by some good critics to be his: hardly anyone doubts that hehad a hand in it: it is certain that he knew it, for reminiscences of itare scattered through his plays. Now no one who reads _Titus Andronicus_with an open mind can doubt that Aaron was, in our sense, black; and heappears to have been a Negro. To mention nothing else, he is twicecalled 'coal-black'; his colour is compared with that of a raven and aswan's legs; his child is coal-black and thick-lipped; he himself has a'fleece of woolly hair. ' Yet he is 'Aaron the Moor, ' just as Othello is'Othello the Moor. ' In the _Battle of Alcazar_ (Dyce's _Peele_, p. 421)Muly the Moor is called 'the negro'; and Shakespeare himself in a singleline uses 'negro' and 'Moor' of the same person (_Merchant of Venice_, III. V. 42). 

The horror of most American critics (Mr. Furness is a bright exception)at the idea of a black Othello is very amusing, and their arguments arehighly instructive. But they were anticipated, I regret to say, byColeridge, and we will hear him. 'No doubt Desdemona saw Othello'svisage in his mind; yet, as we are constituted, and most surely as anEnglish audience was disposed in the beginning of the seventeenthcentury, it would be something monstrous to conceive this beautifulVenetian girl falling in love with a veritable negro. It would argue adisproportionateness, a want of balance, in Desdemona, which Shakespearedoes not appear to have in the least contemplated. '[104] Could anyargument be more self-destructive? It actually _did_ appear to Brabantio'something monstrous to conceive' his daughter falling in love withOthello, --so monstrous that he could account for her love only by drugsand foul charms. And the suggestion that such love would argue'disproportionateness' is precisely the suggestion that Iago _did_ makein Desdemona's case:

 Foh! one may smell in such a will most rank, Foul _disproportion_, thoughts unnatural. 

In fact he spoke of the marriage exactly as a filthy-minded cynic nowmight speak of the marriage of an English lady to a negro likeToussaint. Thus the argument of Coleridge and others points straight tothe conclusion against which they argue. 

But this is not all. The question whether to Shakespeare Othello wasblack or brown is not a mere question of isolated fact or historicalcuriosity; it concerns the character of Desdemona. Coleridge, and stillmore the American writers, regard her love, in effect, as Brabantioregarded it, and not as Shakespeare conceived it. They are simplyblurring this glorious conception when they try to lessen the distancebetween her and Othello, and to smooth away the obstacle which his'visage' offered to her romantic passion for a hero. Desdemona, the'eternal womanly' in its most lovely and adorable form, simple andinnocent as a child, ardent with the courage and idealism of a saint, radiant with that heavenly purity of heart which men worship the morebecause nature so rarely permits it to themselves, had no theories aboutuniversal brotherhood, and no phrases about 'one blood in all thenations of the earth' or 'barbarian, Scythian, bond and free'; but whenher soul came in sight of the noblest soul on earth, she made nothing ofthe shrinking of her senses, but followed her soul until her senses tookpart with it, and 'loved him with the love which was her doom. ' It wasnot prudent. It even turned out tragically. She met in life with thereward of those who rise too far above our common level; and we continueto allot her the same reward when we consent to forgive her for loving abrown man, but find it monstrous that she should love a black one. [105]

There is perhaps a certain excuse for our failure to rise toShakespeare's meaning, and to realise how extraordinary and splendid athing it was in a gentle Venetian girl to love Othello, and to assailfortune with such a 'downright violence and storm' as is expected onlyin a hero. It is that when first we hear of her marriage we have not yetseen the Desdemona of the later Acts; and therefore we do not perceivehow astonishing this love and boldness must have been in a maiden soquiet and submissive. And when we watch her in her suffering and deathwe are so penetrated by the sense of her heavenly sweetness andself-surrender that we almost forget that she had shown herself quite asexceptional in the active assertion of her own soul and will. She tendsto become to us predominantly pathetic, the sweetest and most patheticof Shakespeare's women, as innocent as Miranda and as loving as Viola, yet suffering more deeply than Cordelia or Imogen. And she seems to lackthat independence and strength of spirit which Cordelia and Imogenpossess, and which in a manner raises them above suffering. She appearspassive and defenceless, and can oppose to wrong nothing but theinfinite endurance and forgiveness of a love that knows not how toresist or resent. She thus becomes at once the most beautiful example ofthis love, and the most pathetic heroine in Shakespeare's world. If herpart were acted by an artist equal to Salvini, and with a Salvini forOthello, I doubt if the spectacle of the last two Acts would not bepronounced intolerable. 

Of course this later impression of Desdemona is perfectly right, but itmust be carried back and united with the earlier before we can see whatShakespeare imagined. Evidently, we are to understand, innocence, gentleness, sweetness, lovingness were the salient and, in a sense, theprincipal traits in Desdemona's character. She was, as her fathersupposed her to be, a maiden never bold, Of spirit so still and quiet that her motion Blushed at herself. 

But suddenly there appeared something quite different--something whichcould never have appeared, for example, in Ophelia--a love not only fullof romance but showing a strange freedom and energy of spirit, andleading to a most unusual boldness of action; and this action wascarried through with a confidence and decision worthy of Juliet orCordelia. Desdemona does not shrink before the Senate; and her languageto her father, though deeply respectful, is firm enough to stir in ussome sympathy with the old man who could not survive his daughter'sloss. This then, we must understand, was the emergence in Desdemona, asshe passed from girlhood to womanhood, of an individuality and strengthwhich, if she had lived, would have been gradually fused with her moreobvious qualities and have issued in a thousand actions, sweet and good, but surprising to her conventional or timid neighbours. And, indeed, wehave already a slight example in her overflowing kindness, her boldnessand her ill-fated persistence in pleading Cassio's cause. But the fullripening of her lovely and noble nature was not to be. In her briefwedded life she appeared again chiefly as the sweet and submissive beingof her girlhood; and the strength of her soul, first evoked by love, found scope to show itself only in a love which, when harshly repulsed, blamed only its own pain; when bruised, only gave forth a more exquisitefragrance; and, when rewarded with death, summoned its last labouringbreath to save its murderer. 

Many traits in Desdemona's character have been described withsympathetic insight by Mrs. Jameson, and I will pass them by and add buta few words on the connection between this character and the catastropheof _Othello_. Desdemona, as Mrs. Jameson remarks, shows less quicknessof intellect and less tendency to reflection than most of Shakespeare'sheroines; but I question whether the critic is right in adding that sheshows much of the 'unconscious address common in women. ' She seems to medeficient in this address, having in its place a frank childlikeboldness and persistency, which are full of charm but are unhappilyunited with a certain want of perception. And these graces and thisdeficiency appear to be inextricably intertwined, and in thecircumstances conspire tragically against her. They, with her innocence, hinder her from understanding Othello's state of mind, and lead her tothe most unlucky acts and words; and unkindness or anger subdues her socompletely that she becomes passive and seems to drift helplesslytowards the cataract in front. 

In Desdemona's incapacity to resist there is also, in addition to herperfect love, something which is very characteristic. She is, in asense, a child of nature. That deep inward division which leads to clearand conscious oppositions of right and wrong, duty and inclination, justice and injustice, is alien to her beautiful soul. She is not good, kind and true in spite of a temptation to be otherwise, any more thanshe is charming in spite of a temptation to be otherwise. She seems toknow evil only by name, and, her inclinations being good, she acts oninclination. This trait, with its results, may be seen if we compareher, at the crises of the story, with Cordelia. In Desdemona's place, Cordelia, however frightened at Othello's anger about the losthandkerchief, would not have denied its loss. Painful experience hadproduced in her a conscious principle of rectitude and a proud hatred offalseness, which would have made a lie, even one wholly innocent inspirit, impossible to her; and the clear sense of justice and rightwould have led her, instead, to require an explanation of Othello'sagitation which would have broken Iago's plot to pieces. In the sameway, at the final crisis, no instinctive terror of death would havecompelled Cordelia suddenly to relinquish her demand for justice and toplead for life. But these moments are fatal to Desdemona, who actsprecisely as if she were guilty; and they are fatal because they ask forsomething which, it seems to us, could hardly be united with thepeculiar beauty of her nature. 

This beauty is all her own. Something as beautiful may be found inCordelia, but not the same beauty. Desdemona, confronted with Lear'sfoolish but pathetic demand for a profession of love, could have done, Ithink, what Cordelia could not do--could have refused to compete withher sisters, and yet have made her father feel that she loved him well. And I doubt if Cordelia, 'falsely murdered, ' would have been capable ofthose last words of Desdemona--her answer to Emilia's 'O, who hath donethis deed?'

 Nobody: I myself. Farewell. Commend me to my kind lord. O, farewell!

Were we intended to remember, as we hear this last 'falsehood, ' thatother falsehood, 'It is not lost, ' and to feel that, alike in themomentary child's fear and the deathless woman's love, Desdemona isherself and herself alone?[106]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 85: One instance is worth pointing out, because the passage in_Othello_ has, oddly enough, given trouble. Desdemona says of the maidBarbara: 'She was in love, and he she loved proved mad And did forsakeher. ' Theobald changed 'mad' to 'bad. ' Warburton read 'and he she lovedforsook her, And she proved mad'! Johnson said 'mad' meant only 'wild, frantic, uncertain. ' But what Desdemona says of Barbara is just whatOphelia might have said of herself. ]

[Footnote 86: The whole force of the passages referred to can be feltonly by a reader. The Othello of our stage can never be Shakespeare'sOthello, any more than the Cleopatra of our stage can be his Cleopatra. ]

[Footnote 87: See p. 9. ]

[Footnote 88: Even here, however, there is a great difference; foralthough the idea of such a power is not suggested by _King Lear_ as itis by _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_, it is repeatedly expressed by persons _in_the drama. Of such references there are very few in _Othello_. But forsomewhat frequent allusions to hell and the devil the view of thecharacters is almost strictly secular. Desdemona's sweetness andforgivingness are not based on religion, and her only way of accountingfor her undeserved suffering is by an appeal to Fortune: 'It is mywretched fortune' (IV. Ii. 128). In like manner Othello can only appealto Fate (V. Ii. 264):

 but, oh vain boast! Who can control his fate?]

[Footnote 89: Ulrici has good remarks, though he exaggerates, on thispoint and the element of intrigue. ]

[Footnote 90: And neither she nor Othello observes what handkerchief itis. Else she would have remembered how she came to lose it, and wouldhave told Othello; and Othello, too, would at once have detected Iago'slie (III. Iii. 438) that he had seen Cassio wipe his beard with thehandkerchief 'to-day. ' For in fact the handkerchief had been lost _notan hour_ before Iago told that lie (line 288 of the _same scene_), andit was at that moment in his pocket. He lied therefore most rashly, butwith his usual luck. ]

[Footnote 91: For those who know the end of the story there is aterrible irony in the enthusiasm with which Cassio greets the arrival ofDesdemona in Cyprus. Her ship (which is also Iago's) sets out fromVenice a week later than the others, but reaches Cyprus on the same daywith them:

 Tempests themselves, high seas and howling winds, The gutter'd rocks and congregated sands-- Traitors ensteep'd to clog the guiltless keel-- As having sense of beauty, do omit Their mortal natures, letting go safely by The divine Desdemona. 

So swiftly does Fate conduct her to her doom. ]

[Footnote 92: The dead bodies are not carried out at the end, as theymust have been if the bed had been on the main stage (for this had nofront curtain). The curtains within which the bed stood were drawntogether at the words, 'Let it be hid' (V. Ii. 365). ]

[Footnote 93: Against which may be set the scene of the blinding ofGloster in _King Lear_. ]

[Footnote 94: The reader who is tempted by it should, however, first askhimself whether Othello does act like a barbarian, or like a man who, though wrought almost to madness, does 'all in honour. ']

[Footnote 95: For the actor, then, to represent him as violently angrywhen he cashiers Cassio is an utter mistake. ]

[Footnote 96: I cannot deal fully with this point in the lecture. SeeNote L. ]

[Footnote 97: It is important to observe that, in his attempt to arriveat the facts about Cassio's drunken misdemeanour, Othello had just hadan example of Iago's unwillingness to tell the whole truth where it mustinjure a friend. No wonder he feels in the Temptation-scene that 'thishonest creature doubtless Sees and knows more, much more, than heunfolds. ']

[Footnote 98: To represent that Venetian women do not regard adultery soseriously as Othello does, and again that Othello would be wise toaccept the situation like an Italian husband, is one of Iago's mostartful and most maddening devices. ]

[Footnote 99: If the reader has ever chanced to see an African violentlyexcited, he may have been startled to observe how completely at a losshe was to interpret those bodily expressions of passion which in afellow-countryman he understands at once, and in a European foreignerwith somewhat less certainty. The effect of difference in blood inincreasing Othello's bewilderment regarding his wife is not sufficientlyrealised. The same effect has to be remembered in regard to Desdemona'smistakes in dealing with Othello in his anger. ]

[Footnote 100: See Note M. ]

[Footnote 101: Cf. _Winter's Tale_, I. Ii. 137 ff. :

 Can thy dam?--may't be?-- Affection! thy intention stabs the centre: Thou dost make possible things not so held, Communicatest with dreams;--how can this be? With what's unreal thou coactive art, And fellow'st nothing: then 'tis very credent Thou may'st cojoin with something; and thou dost, And that beyond commission, and I find it, And that to the infection of my brains And hardening of my brows. ]

[Footnote 102: See Note O. ]

[Footnote 103: New Illustrations, ii. 281. ]

[Footnote 104: _Lectures on Shakespeare_, ed. Ashe, p. 386. ]

[Footnote 105: I will not discuss the further question whether, grantedthat to Shakespeare Othello was a black, he should be represented as ablack in our theatres now. I dare say not. We do not like the realShakespeare. We like to have his language pruned and his conceptionsflattened into something that suits our mouths and minds. And even if wewere prepared to make an effort, still, as Lamb observes, to imagine isone thing and to see is another. Perhaps if we saw Othello coal-blackwith the bodily eye, the aversion of our blood, an aversion which comesas near to being merely physical as anything human can, would overpowerour imagination and sink us below not Shakespeare only but the audiencesof the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 

As I have mentioned Lamb, I may observe that he differed from Coleridgeas to Othello's colour, but, I am sorry to add, thought Desdemona tostand in need of excuse. 'This noble lady, with a singularity rather tobe wondered at than imitated, had chosen for the object of heraffections a Moor, a black. .. . Neither is Desdemona to be altogethercondemned for the unsuitableness of the person whom she selected for herlover' (_Tales from Shakespeare_). Others, of course, have gone muchfurther and have treated all the calamities of the tragedy as a sort ofjudgment on Desdemona's rashness, wilfulness and undutifulness. There isno arguing with opinions like this; but I cannot believe that even Lambis true to Shakespeare in implying that Desdemona is in some degree tobe condemned. What is there in the play to show that Shakespeareregarded her marriage differently from Imogen's?]

[Footnote 106: When Desdemona spoke her last words, perhaps that line ofthe ballad which she sang an hour before her death was still busy in herbrain, Let nobody blame him: his scorn I approve. 

Nature plays such strange tricks, and Shakespeare almost alone amongpoets seems to create in somewhat the same manner as Nature. In the sameway, as Malone pointed out, Othello's exclamation, 'Goats and monkeys!'(IV. I. 274) is an unconscious reminiscence of Iago's words at III. Iii. 403. ]

LECTURE VI

OTHELLO

1

Evil has nowhere else been portrayed with such mastery as in thecharacter of Iago. Richard III. , for example, beside being less subtlyconceived, is a far greater figure and a less repellent. His physicaldeformity, separating him from other men, seems to offer some excuse forhis egoism. In spite of his egoism, too, he appears to us more than amere individual: he is the representative of his family, the Fury of theHouse of York. Nor is he so negative as Iago: he has strong passions, hehas admirations, and his conscience disturbs him. There is the glory ofpower about him. Though an excellent actor, he prefers force to fraud, and in his world there is no general illusion as to his true nature. Again, to compare Iago with the Satan of _Paradise Lost_ seems almostabsurd, so immensely does Shakespeare's man exceed Milton's Fiend inevil. That mighty Spirit, whose

 form had yet not lost All her original brightness, nor appeared Less than archangel ruined and the excess Of glory obscured;

who knew loyalty to comrades and pity for victims; who

 felt how awful goodness is, and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely; saw, and pined His loss;

who could still weep--how much further distant is he than Iago fromspiritual death, even when, in procuring the fall of Man, he completeshis own fall! It is only in Goethe's Mephistopheles that a fit companionfor Iago can be found. Here there is something of the same deadlycoldness, the same gaiety in destruction. But then Mephistopheles, likeso many scores of literary villains, has Iago for his father. AndMephistopheles, besides, is not, in the strict sense, a character. He ishalf person, half symbol. A metaphysical idea speaks through him. He isearthy, but could never live upon the earth. 

Of Shakespeare's characters Falstaff, Hamlet, Iago, and Cleopatra (Iname them in the order of their births) are probably the most wonderful. Of these, again, Hamlet and Iago, whose births come nearest together, are perhaps the most subtle. And if Iago had been a person as attractiveas Hamlet, as many thousands of pages might have been written about him, containing as much criticism good and bad. As it is, the majority ofinterpretations of his character are inadequate not only toShakespeare's conception, but, I believe, to the impressions of mostreaders of taste who are unbewildered by analysis. These falseinterpretations, if we set aside the usual lunacies, [107] fall into twogroups. The first contains views which reduce Shakespeare tocommonplace. In different ways and degrees they convert his Iago intoan ordinary villain. Their Iago is simply a man who has been slightedand revenges himself; or a husband who believes he has been wronged, andwill make his enemy suffer a jealousy worse than his own; or anambitious man determined to ruin his successful rival--one of these, ora combination of these, endowed with unusual ability and cruelty. Theseare the more popular views. The second group of false interpretations ismuch smaller, but it contains much weightier matter than the first. HereIago is a being who hates good simply because it is good, and loves evilpurely for itself. His action is not prompted by any plain motive likerevenge, jealousy or ambition. It springs from a 'motiveless malignity, 'or a disinterested delight in the pain of others; and Othello, Cassioand Desdemona are scarcely more than the material requisite for the fullattainment of this delight. This second Iago, evidently, is noconventional villain, and he is much nearer to Shakespeare's Iago thanthe first. Only he is, if not a psychological impossibility, at any ratenot a _human_ being. He might be in place, therefore, in a symbolicalpoem like _Faust_, but in a purely human drama like _Othello_ he wouldbe a ruinous blunder. Moreover, he is not in _Othello_: he is a productof imperfect observation and analysis. 

Coleridge, the author of that misleading phrase 'motiveless malignity, 'has some fine remarks on Iago; and the essence of the character has beendescribed, first in some of the best lines Hazlitt ever wrote, and thenrather more fully by Mr. Swinburne, --so admirably described that I amtempted merely to read and illustrate these two criticisms. This plan, however, would make it difficult to introduce all that I wish to say. Ipropose, therefore, to approach the subject directly, and, first, toconsider how Iago appeared to those who knew him, and what inferencesmay be drawn from their illusions; and then to ask what, if we judgefrom the play, his character really was. And I will indicate the pointswhere I am directly indebted to the criticisms just mentioned. 

But two warnings are first required. One of these concerns Iago'snationality. It has been held that he is a study of that peculiarlyItalian form of villainy which is considered both too clever and toodiabolical for an Englishman. I doubt if there is much more to be saidfor this idea than for the notion that Othello is a study of Moorishcharacter. No doubt the belief in that Italian villainy was prevalent inShakespeare's time, and it may perhaps have influenced him in someslight degree both here and in drawing the character of Iachimo in_Cymbeline_. But even this slight influence seems to me doubtful. If DonJohn in _Much Ado_ had been an Englishman, critics would have admiredShakespeare's discernment in making his English villain sulky andstupid. If Edmund's father had been Duke of Ferrara instead of Earl ofGloster, they would have said that Edmund could have been nothing but anItalian. Change the name and country of Richard III. , and he would becalled a typical despot of the Italian Renaissance. Change those ofJuliet, and we should find her wholesome English nature contrasted withthe southern dreaminess of Romeo. But this way of interpretingShakespeare is not Shakespearean. With him the differences of period, race, nationality and locality have little bearing on the inwardcharacter, though they sometimes have a good deal on the totalimaginative effect, of his figures. When he does lay stress on suchdifferences his intention is at once obvious, as in characters likeFluellen or Sir Hugh Evans, or in the talk of the French princes beforethe battle of Agincourt. I may add that Iago certainly cannot be takento exemplify the popular Elizabethan idea of a disciple of Macchiavelli. There is no sign that he is in theory an atheist or even an unbelieverin the received religion. On the contrary, he uses its language, andsays nothing resembling the words of the prologue to the _Jew of Malta_:

 I count religion but a childish toy, And hold there is no sin but ignorance. 

Aaron in _Titus Andronicus_ might have said this (and is not more likelyto be Shakespeare's creation on that account), but not Iago. 

I come to a second warning. One must constantly remember not to believea syllable that Iago utters on any subject, including himself, until onehas tested his statement by comparing it with known facts and with otherstatements of his own or of other people, and by considering whether hehad in the particular circumstances any reason for telling a lie or fortelling the truth. The implicit confidence which his acquaintancesplaced in his integrity has descended to most of his critics; and this, reinforcing the comical habit of quoting as Shakespeare's own statementeverything said by his characters, has been a fruitful source ofmisinterpretation. I will take as an instance the very first assertionsmade by Iago. In the opening scene he tells his dupe Roderigo that threegreat men of Venice went to Othello and begged him to make Iago hislieutenant; that Othello, out of pride and obstinacy, refused; that inrefusing he talked a deal of military rigmarole, and ended by declaring(falsely, we are to understand) that he had already filled up thevacancy; that Cassio, whom he chose, had absolutely no practicalknowledge of war, nothing but bookish theoric, mere prattle, arithmetic, whereas Iago himself had often fought by Othello's side, and by 'oldgradation' too ought to have been preferred. Most or all of this isrepeated by some critics as though it were information given byShakespeare, and the conclusion is quite naturally drawn that Iago hadsome reason to feel aggrieved. But if we ask ourselves how much of allthis is true we shall answer, I believe, as follows. It is absolutelycertain that Othello appointed Cassio his lieutenant, and _nothing_ elseis absolutely certain. But there is no reason to doubt the statementthat Iago had seen service with him, nor is there anything inherentlyimprobable in the statement that he was solicited by three greatpersonages on Iago's behalf. On the other hand, the suggestions that herefused out of pride and obstinacy, and that he lied in saying he hadalready chosen his officer, have no verisimilitude; and if there is anyfact at all (as there probably is) behind Iago's account of theconversation, it doubtless is the fact that Iago himself was ignorant ofmilitary science, while Cassio was an expert, and that Othello explainedthis to the great personages. That Cassio, again, was an interloper anda mere closet-student without experience of war is incredible, considering first that Othello chose him for lieutenant, and secondlythat the senate appointed him to succeed Othello in command at Cyprus;and we have direct evidence that part of Iago's statement is a lie, forDesdemona happens to mention that Cassio was a man who 'all his time hadfounded his good fortunes' on Othello's love and had 'shared dangers'with him (III. Iv. 93). There remains only the implied assertion that, if promotion had gone by old gradation, Iago, as the senior, would havebeen preferred. It may be true: Othello was not the man to hesitate topromote a junior for good reasons. But it is just as likely to be a pureinvention; and, though Cassio was young, there is nothing to show thathe was younger, in years or in service, than Iago. Iago, for instance, never calls him 'young, ' as he does Roderigo; and a mere youth would nothave been made Governor of Cyprus. What is certain, finally, in thewhole business is that Othello's mind was perfectly at ease about theappointment, and that he never dreamed of Iago's being discontented atit, not even when the intrigue was disclosed and he asked himself how hehad offended Iago. 

2

It is necessary to examine in this manner every statement made by Iago. But it is not necessary to do so in public, and I proceed to thequestion what impression he made on his friends and acquaintances. Inthe main there is here no room for doubt. Nothing could be less likeIago than the melodramatic villain so often substituted for him on thestage, a person whom everyone in the theatre knows for a scoundrel atthe first glance. Iago, we gather, was a Venetian[108] soldier, eight-and-twenty years of age, who had seen a good deal of service andhad a high reputation for courage. Of his origin we are ignorant, but, unless I am mistaken, he was not of gentle birth or breeding. [109] Hedoes not strike one as a degraded man of culture: for all his greatpowers, he is vulgar, and his probable want of military science may wellbe significant. He was married to a wife who evidently lackedrefinement, and who appears in the drama almost in the relation of aservant to Desdemona. His manner was that of a blunt, bluff soldier, whospoke his mind freely and plainly. He was often hearty, and could bethoroughly jovial; but he was not seldom rather rough and caustic ofspeech, and he was given to making remarks somewhat disparaging to humannature. He was aware of this trait in himself, and frankly admitted thathe was nothing if not critical, and that it was his nature to spy intoabuses. In these admissions he characteristically exaggerated his fault, as plain-dealers are apt to do; and he was liked none the less for it, seeing that his satire was humorous, that on serious matters he did notspeak lightly (III. Iii. 119), and that the one thing perfectly obviousabout him was his honesty. 'Honest' is the word that springs to the lipsof everyone who speaks of him. It is applied to him some fifteen timesin the play, not to mention some half-dozen where he employs it, inderision, of himself. In fact he was one of those sterling men who, indisgust at gush, say cynical things which they do not believe, and then, the moment you are in trouble, put in practice the very sentiment theyhad laughed at. On such occasions he showed the kindliest sympathy andthe most eager desire to help. When Cassio misbehaved so dreadfully andwas found fighting with Montano, did not Othello see that 'honest Iagolooked dead with grieving'? With what difficulty was he induced, nay, compelled, to speak the truth against the lieutenant! Another man mighthave felt a touch of satisfaction at the thought that the post he hadcoveted was now vacant; but Iago not only comforted Cassio, talking tohim cynically about reputation, just to help him over his shame, but heset his wits to work and at once perceived that the right plan forCassio to get his post again was to ask Desdemona to intercede. Sotroubled was he at his friend's disgrace that his own wife was sure 'itgrieved her husband as if the case was his. ' What wonder that anyone insore trouble, like Desdemona, should send at once for Iago (IV. Ii. 106)? If this rough diamond had any flaw, it was that Iago's warm loyalheart incited him to too impulsive action. If he merely heard a friendlike Othello calumniated, his hand flew to his sword; and though herestrained himself he almost regretted his own virtue (I. Ii. 1-10). 

Such seemed Iago to the people about him, even to those who, likeOthello, had known him for some time. And it is a fact too littlenoticed but most remarkable, that he presented an appearance not verydifferent to his wife. There is no sign either that Emilia's marriagewas downright unhappy, or that she suspected the true nature of herhusband. [110] No doubt she knew rather more of him than others. Thus wegather that he was given to chiding and sometimes spoke shortly andsharply to her (III. Iii. 300 f. ); and it is quite likely that she gavehim a good deal of her tongue in exchange (II. I. 101 f. ). He was alsounreasonably jealous; for his own statement that he was jealous ofOthello is confirmed by Emilia herself, and must therefore be believed(IV. Ii. 145). [111] But it seems clear that these defects of his had notseriously impaired Emilia's confidence in her husband or her affectionfor him. She knew in addition that he was not quite so honest as heseemed, for he had often begged her to steal Desdemona's handkerchief. But Emilia's nature was not very delicate or scrupulous about trifles. She thought her husband odd and 'wayward, ' and looked on his fancy forthe handkerchief as an instance of this (III. Iii. 292); but she neverdreamed he was a villain, and there is no reason to doubt the sincerityof her belief that he was heartily sorry for Cassio's disgrace. Herfailure, on seeing Othello's agitation about the handkerchief, to formany suspicion of an intrigue, shows how little she doubted her husband. Even when, later, the idea strikes her that some scoundrel has poisonedOthello's mind, the tone of all her speeches, and her mention of therogue who (she believes) had stirred up Iago's jealousy of her, provebeyond doubt that the thought of Iago's being the scoundrel has notcrossed her mind (IV. Ii. 115-147). And if any hesitation on the subjectcould remain, surely it must be dispelled by the thrice-repeated cry ofastonishment and horror, 'My husband!', which follows Othello's words, 'Thy husband knew it all'; and by the choking indignation and desperatehope which we hear in her appeal when Iago comes in:

 Disprove this villain if thou be'st a man: He says thou told'st him that his wife was false: I know thou did'st not, thou'rt not such a villain: Speak, for my heart is full. 

Even if Iago _had_ betrayed much more of his true self to his wife thanto others, it would make no difference to the contrast between his trueself and the self he presented to the world in general. But he never didso. Only the feeble eyes of the poor gull Roderigo were allowed aglimpse into that pit. 

The bearing of this contrast upon the apparently excessive credulity ofOthello has been already pointed out. What further conclusions can bedrawn from it? Obviously, to begin with, the inference, which isaccompanied by a thrill of admiration, that Iago's powers ofdissimulation and of self-control must have been prodigious: for he wasnot a youth, like Edmund, but had worn this mask for years, and he hadapparently never enjoyed, like Richard, occasional explosions of thereality within him. In fact so prodigious does his self-control appearthat a reader might be excused for feeling a doubt of its possibility. But there are certain observations and further inferences which, apartfrom confidence in Shakespeare, would remove this doubt. It is to beobserved, first, that Iago was able to find a certain relief from thediscomfort of hypocrisy in those caustic or cynical speeches which, being misinterpreted, only heightened confidence in his honesty. Theyacted as a safety-valve, very much as Hamlet's pretended insanity did. Next, I would infer from the entire success of his hypocrisy--what mayalso be inferred on other grounds, and is of great importance--that hewas by no means a man of strong feelings and passions, like Richard, butdecidedly cold by temperament. Even so, his self-control was wonderful, but there never was in him any violent storm to be controlled. Thirdly, I would suggest that Iago, though thoroughly selfish and unfeeling, wasnot by nature malignant, nor even morose, but that, on the contrary, hehad a superficial good-nature, the kind of good-nature that winspopularity and is often taken as the sign, not of a good digestion, butof a good heart. And lastly, it may be inferred that, before the giantcrime which we witness, Iago had never been detected in any seriousoffence and may even never have been guilty of one, but had pursued aselfish but outwardly decent life, enjoying the excitement of war and ofcasual pleasures, but never yet meeting with any sufficient temptationto risk his position and advancement by a dangerous crime. So that, infact, the tragedy of _Othello_ is in a sense his tragedy too. It showsus not a violent man, like Richard, who spends his life in murder, but athoroughly bad, _cold_ man, who is at last tempted to let loose theforces within him, and is at once destroyed. 

3

In order to see how this tragedy arises let us now look more closelyinto Iago's inner man. We find here, in the first place, as has beenimplied in part, very remarkable powers both of intellect and of will. Iago's insight, within certain limits, into human nature; his ingenuityand address in working upon it; his quickness and versatility in dealingwith sudden difficulties and unforeseen opportunities, have probably noparallel among dramatic characters. Equally remarkable is his strengthof will. Not Socrates himself, not the ideal sage of the Stoics, wasmore lord of himself than Iago appears to be. It is not merely that henever betrays his true nature; he seems to be master of _all_ themotions that might affect his will. In the most dangerous moments of hisplot, when the least slip or accident would be fatal, he never shows atrace of nervousness. When Othello takes him by the throat he merelyshifts his part with his usual instantaneous adroitness. When he isattacked and wounded at the end he is perfectly unmoved. As Mr. Swinburne says, you cannot believe for a moment that the pain of torturewill ever open Iago's lips. He is equally unassailable by thetemptations of indolence or of sensuality. It is difficult to imaginehim inactive; and though he has an obscene mind, and doubtless took hispleasures when and how he chose, he certainly took them by choice andnot from weakness, and if pleasure interfered with his purposes theholiest of ascetics would not put it more resolutely by. 'What should Ido?' Roderigo whimpers to him; 'I confess it is my shame to be so fond;but it is not in my virtue to amend it. ' He answers: 'Virtue! a fig!'tis in ourselves that we are thus and thus. It all depends on our will. Love is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will. Come, be a man. .. . Ere I would say I would drown myself for the love of aguinea-hen, I would change my humanity with a baboon. ' Forget for amoment that love is for Iago the appetite of a baboon; forget that he isas little assailable by pity as by fear or pleasure; and you willacknowledge that this lordship of the will, which is his practice aswell as his doctrine, is great, almost sublime. Indeed, in intellect(always within certain limits) and in will (considered as a mere power, and without regard to its objects) Iago _is_ great. 

To what end does he use these great powers? His creed--for he is nosceptic, he has a definite creed--is that absolute egoism is the onlyrational and proper attitude, and that conscience or honour or any kindof regard for others is an absurdity. He does not deny that thisabsurdity exists. He does not suppose that most people secretly sharehis creed, while pretending to hold and practise another. On thecontrary, he regards most people as honest fools. He declares that hehas never yet met a man who knew how to love himself; and his oneexpression of admiration in the play is for servants

 Who, trimmed in forms and visages of duty, Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves. 

'These fellows, ' he says, 'have some soul. ' He professes to stand, andhe, attempts to stand, wholly outside the world of morality. 

The existence of Iago's creed and of his corresponding practice isevidently connected with a characteristic in which he surpasses nearlyall the other inhabitants of Shakespeare's world. Whatever he may oncehave been, he appears, when we meet him, to be almost destitute ofhumanity, of sympathetic or social feeling. He shows no trace ofaffection, and in presence of the most terrible suffering he showseither pleasure or an indifference which, if not complete, is nearly so. Here, however, we must be careful. It is important to realise, and fewreaders are in danger of ignoring, this extraordinary deadness offeeling, but it is also important not to confuse it with a generalpositive ill-will. When Iago has no dislike or hostility to a person hedoes _not_ show pleasure in the suffering of that person: he shows atmost the absence of pain. There is, for instance, not the least sign ofhis enjoying the distress of Desdemona. But his sympathetic feelings areso abnormally feeble and cold that, when his dislike is roused, or whenan indifferent person comes in the way of his purpose, there is scarcelyanything within him to prevent his applying the torture. 

What is it that provokes his dislike or hostility? Here again we mustlook closely. Iago has been represented as an incarnation of envy, as aman who, being determined to get on in the world, regards everyone elsewith enmity as his rival. But this idea, though containing truth, seemsmuch exaggerated. Certainly he is devoted to himself; but if he were aneagerly ambitious man, surely we should see much more positive signs ofthis ambition; and surely too, with his great powers, he would alreadyhave risen high, instead of being a mere ensign, short of money, andplaying Captain Rook to Roderigo's Mr. Pigeon. Taking all the facts, onemust conclude that his desires were comparatively moderate and hisambition weak; that he probably enjoyed war keenly, but, if he had moneyenough, did not exert himself greatly to acquire reputation or position;and, therefore, that he was not habitually burning with envy andactively hostile to other men as possible competitors. 

But what is clear is that Iago is keenly sensitive to anything thattouches his pride or self-esteem. It would be most unjust to call himvain, but he has a high opinion of himself and a great contempt forothers. He is quite aware of his superiority to them in certainrespects; and he either disbelieves in or despises the qualities inwhich they are superior to him. Whatever disturbs or wounds his sense ofsuperiority irritates him at once; and in _that_ sense he is highlycompetitive. This is why the appointment of Cassio provokes him. This iswhy Cassio's scientific attainments provoke him. This is the reason ofhis jealousy of Emilia. He does not care for his wife; but the fear ofanother man's getting the better of him, and exposing him to pity orderision as an unfortunate husband, is wormwood to him; and as he issure that no woman is virtuous at heart, this fear is ever with him. Formuch the same reason he has a spite against goodness in men (for it ischaracteristic that he is less blind to its existence in men, thestronger, than in women, the weaker). He has a spite against it, notfrom any love of evil for evil's sake, but partly because it annoys hisintellect as a stupidity; partly (though he hardly knows this) becauseit weakens his satisfaction with himself, and disturbs his faith thategoism is the right and proper thing; partly because, the world beingsuch a fool, goodness is popular and prospers. But he, a man ten timesas able as Cassio or even Othello, does not greatly prosper. Somehow, for all the stupidity of these open and generous people, they get onbetter than the 'fellow of some soul' And this, though he is notparticularly eager to get on, wounds his pride. Goodness thereforeannoys him. He is always ready to scoff at it, and would like to strikeat it. In ordinary circumstances these feelings of irritation are notvivid in Iago--_no_ feeling is so--but they are constantly present. 

4

Our task of analysis is not finished; but we are now in a position toconsider the rise of Iago's tragedy. Why did he act as we see him actingin the play? What is the answer to that appeal of Othello's:

 Will you, I pray, demand that demi-devil Why he hath thus ensnared my soul and body?

This question Why? is _the_ question about Iago, just as the questionWhy did Hamlet delay? is _the_ question about Hamlet. Iago refused toanswer it; but I will venture to say that he _could_ not have answeredit, any more than Hamlet could tell why he delayed. But Shakespeare knewthe answer, and if these characters are great creations and not blunderswe ought to be able to find it too. 

Is it possible to elicit it from Iago himself against his will? He makesvarious statements to Roderigo, and he has several soliloquies. Fromthese sources, and especially from the latter, we should learnsomething. For with Shakespeare soliloquy generally gives informationregarding the secret springs as well as the outward course of the plot;and, moreover, it is a curious point of technique with him that thesoliloquies of his villains sometimes read almost like explanationsoffered to the audience. [112] Now, Iago repeatedly offers explanationseither to Roderigo or to himself. In the first place, he says more thanonce that he 'hates' Othello. He gives two reasons for his hatred. Othello has made Cassio lieutenant; and he suspects, and has heard itreported, that Othello has an intrigue with Emilia. Next there isCassio. He never says he hates Cassio, but he finds in him three causesof offence: Cassio has been preferred to him; he suspects _him_ too ofan intrigue with Emilia; and, lastly, Cassio has a daily beauty in hislife which makes Iago ugly. In addition to these annoyances he wantsCassio's place. As for Roderigo, he calls him a snipe, and who can hatea snipe? But Roderigo knows too much; and he is becoming a nuisance, getting angry, and asking for the gold and jewels he handed to Iago togive to Desdemona. So Iago kills Roderigo. Then for Desdemona: afig's-end for her virtue! but he has no ill-will to her. In fact he'loves' her, though he is good enough to explain, varying the word, thathis 'lust' is mixed with a desire to pay Othello in his own coin. To besure she must die, and so must Emilia, and so would Bianca if only theauthorities saw things in their true light; but he did not set out withany hostile design against these persons. 

Is the account which Iago gives of the causes of his action the trueaccount? The answer of the most popular view will be, 'Yes. Iago was, ashe says, chiefly incited by two things, the desire of advancement, and ahatred of Othello due principally to the affair of the lieutenancy. These are perfectly intelligible causes; we have only to add to themunusual ability and cruelty, and all is explained. Why should Coleridgeand Hazlitt and Swinburne go further afield?' To which last question Iwill at once oppose these: If your view is correct, why should Iago beconsidered an extraordinary creation; and is it not odd that the peoplewho reject it are the people who elsewhere show an exceptionalunderstanding of Shakespeare?

The difficulty about this popular view is, in the first place, that itattributes to Iago what cannot be found in the Iago of the play. ItsIago is impelled by _passions_, a passion of ambition and a passion ofhatred; for no ambition or hatred short of passion could drive a man whois evidently so clear-sighted, and who must hitherto have been soprudent, into a plot so extremely hazardous. Why, then, in the Iago ofthe play do we find no sign of these passions or of anything approachingto them? Why, if Shakespeare meant that Iago was impelled by them, doeshe suppress the signs of them? Surely not from want of ability todisplay them. The poet who painted Macbeth and Shylock understood hisbusiness. Who ever doubted Macbeth's ambition or Shylock's hate? Andwhat resemblance is there between these passions and any feeling that wecan trace in Iago? The resemblance between a volcano in eruption and aflameless fire of coke; the resemblance between a consuming desire tohack and hew your enemy's flesh, and the resentful wish, only toofamiliar in common life, to inflict pain in return for a slight. Passion, in Shakespeare's plays, is perfectly easy to recognise. Whatvestige of it, of passion unsatisfied or of passion gratified, isvisible in Iago? None: that is the very horror of him. He has _less_passion than an ordinary man, and yet he does these frightful things. The only ground for attributing to him, I do not say a passionatehatred, but anything deserving the name of hatred at all, is his ownstatement, 'I hate Othello'; and we know what his statements are worth. 

But the popular view, beside attributing to Iago what he does not show, ignores what he does show. It selects from his own account of hismotives one or two, and drops the rest; and so it makes everythingnatural. But it fails to perceive how unnatural, how strange andsuspicious, his own account is. Certainly he assigns motives enough; thedifficulty is that he assigns so many. A man moved by simple passionsdue to simple causes does not stand fingering his feelings, industriously enumerating their sources, and groping about for new ones. But this is what Iago does. And this is not all. These motives appearand disappear in the most extraordinary manner. Resentment at Cassio'sappointment is expressed in the first conversation with Roderigo, andfrom that moment is never once mentioned again in the whole play. Hatredof Othello is expressed in the First Act alone. Desire to get Cassio'splace scarcely appears after the first soliloquy, and when it isgratified Iago does not refer to it by a single word. The suspicion ofCassio's intrigue with Emilia emerges suddenly, as an after-thought, notin the first soliloquy but the second, and then disappears forever. [113] Iago's 'love' of Desdemona is alluded to in the secondsoliloquy; there is not the faintest trace of it in word or deed eitherbefore or after. The mention of jealousy of Othello is followed bydeclarations that Othello is infatuated about Desdemona and is of aconstant nature, and during Othello's sufferings Iago never shows a signof the idea that he is now paying his rival in his own coin. In thesecond soliloquy he declares that he quite believes Cassio to be in lovewith Desdemona; it is obvious that he believes no such thing, for henever alludes to the idea again, and within a few hours describes Cassioin soliloquy as an honest fool. His final reason for ill-will to Cassionever appears till the Fifth Act. 

What is the meaning of all this? Unless Shakespeare was out of his mind, it must have a meaning. And certainly this meaning is not contained inany of the popular accounts of Iago. 

Is it contained then in Coleridge's word 'motive-hunting'? Yes, 'motive-hunting' exactly answers to the impression that Iago'ssoliloquies produce. He is pondering his design, and unconsciouslytrying to justify it to himself. He speaks of one or two real feelings, such as resentment against Othello, and he mentions one or two realcauses of these feelings. But these are not enough for him. Along withthem, or alone, there come into his head, only to leave it again, ideasand suspicions, the creations of his own baseness or uneasiness, someold, some new, caressed for a moment to feed his purpose and give it areasonable look, but never really believed in, and never the main forceswhich are determining his action. In fact, I would venture to describeIago in these soliloquies as a man setting out on a project whichstrongly attracts his desire, but at the same time conscious of aresistance to the desire, and unconsciously trying to argue theresistance away by assigning reasons for the project. He is thecounterpart of Hamlet, who tries to find reasons for his delay inpursuing a design which excites his aversion. And most of Iago's reasonsfor action are no more the real ones than Hamlet's reasons for delaywere the real ones. Each is moved by forces which he does notunderstand; and it is probably no accident that these two studies ofstates psychologically so similar were produced at about the sameperiod. 

What then were the real moving forces of Iago's action? Are we to fallback on the idea of a 'motiveless malignity;'[114] that is to say, adisinterested love of evil, or a delight in the pain of others as simpleand direct as the delight in one's own pleasure? Surely not. I will notinsist that this thing or these things are inconceivable, mere phrases, not ideas; for, even so, it would remain possible that Shakespeare hadtried to represent an inconceivability. But there is not the slightestreason to suppose that he did so. Iago's action is intelligible; andindeed the popular view contains enough truth to refute this desperatetheory. It greatly exaggerates his desire for advancement, and theill-will caused by his disappointment, and it ignores other forces moreimportant than these; but it is right in insisting on the presence ofthis desire and this ill-will, and their presence is enough to destroyIago's claims to be more than a demi-devil. For love of the evil thatadvances my interest and hurts a person I dislike, is a very differentthing from love of evil simply as evil; and pleasure in the pain of aperson disliked or regarded as a competitor is quite distinct frompleasure in the pain of others simply as others. The first isintelligible, and we find it in Iago. The second, even if it wereintelligible, we do not find in Iago. 

Still, desire of advancement and resentment about the lieutenancy, though factors and indispensable factors in the cause of Iago's action, are neither the principal nor the most characteristic factors. To findthese, let us return to our half-completed analysis of the character. Let us remember especially the keen sense of superiority, the contemptof others, the sensitiveness to everything which wounds these feelings, the spite against goodness in men as a thing not only stupid but, bothin its nature and by its success, contrary to Iago's nature andirritating to his pride. Let us remember in addition the annoyance ofhaving always to play a part, the consciousness of exceptional butunused ingenuity and address, the enjoyment of action, and the absenceof fear. And let us ask what would be the greatest pleasure of such aman, and what the situation which might tempt him to abandon hishabitual prudence and pursue this pleasure. Hazlitt and Mr. Swinburne donot put this question, but the answer I proceed to give to it is inprinciple theirs. [115]

The most delightful thing to such a man would be something that gave anextreme satisfaction to his sense of power and superiority; and if itinvolved, secondly, the triumphant exertion of his abilities, and, thirdly, the excitement of danger, his delight would be consummated. Andthe moment most dangerous to such a man would be one when his sense ofsuperiority had met with an affront, so that its habitual craving wasreinforced by resentment, while at the same time he saw an opportunityof satisfying it by subjecting to his will the very persons who hadaffronted it. Now, this is the temptation that comes to Iago. Othello'seminence, Othello's goodness, and his own dependence on Othello, musthave been a perpetual annoyance to him. At _any_ time he would haveenjoyed befooling and tormenting Othello. Under ordinary circumstanceshe was restrained, chiefly by self-interest, in some slight degreeperhaps by the faint pulsations of conscience or humanity. Butdisappointment at the loss of the lieutenancy supplied the touch oflively resentment that was required to overcome these obstacles; and theprospect of satisfying the sense of power by mastering Othello throughan intricate and hazardous intrigue now became irresistible. Iago didnot clearly understand what was moving his desire; though he tried togive himself reasons for his action, even those that had some realitymade but a small part of the motive force; one may almost say they wereno more than the turning of the handle which admits the driving powerinto the machine. Only once does he appear to see something of thetruth. It is when he uses the phrase '_to plume up my will_ in doubleknavery. '

To 'plume up the will, ' to heighten the sense of power orsuperiority--this seems to be the unconscious motive of many acts ofcruelty which evidently do not spring chiefly from ill-will, and whichtherefore puzzle and sometimes horrify us most. It is often this thatmakes a man bully the wife or children of whom he is fond. The boy whotorments another boy, as we say, 'for no reason, ' or who without anyhatred for frogs tortures a frog, is pleased with his victim's pain, notfrom any disinterested love of evil or pleasure in pain, but mainlybecause this pain is the unmistakable proof of his own power over hisvictim. So it is with Iago. His thwarted sense of superiority wantssatisfaction. What fuller satisfaction could it find than theconsciousness that he is the master of the General who has undervaluedhim and of the rival who has been preferred to him; that these worthypeople, who are so successful and popular and stupid, are mere puppetsin his hands, but living puppets, who at the motion of his finger mustcontort themselves in agony, while all the time they believe that he istheir one true friend and comforter? It must have been an ecstasy ofbliss to him. And this, granted a most abnormal deadness of humanfeeling, is, however horrible, perfectly intelligible. There is nomystery in the psychology of Iago; the mystery lies in a furtherquestion, which the drama has not to answer, the question why such abeing should exist. 

Iago's longing to satisfy the sense of power is, I think, the strongestof the forces that drive him on. But there are two others to be noticed. One is the pleasure in an action very difficult and perilous and, therefore, intensely exciting. This action sets all his powers on thestrain. He feels the delight of one who executes successfully a featthoroughly congenial to his special aptitude, and only just within hiscompass; and, as he is fearless by nature, the fact that a single slipwill cost him his life only increases his pleasure. His exhilarationbreaks out in the ghastly words with which he greets the sunrise afterthe night of the drunken tumult which has led to Cassio's disgrace: 'Bythe mass, 'tis morning. Pleasure and action make the hours seem short. 'Here, however, the joy in exciting action is quickened by otherfeelings. It appears more simply elsewhere in such a way as to suggestthat nothing but such actions gave him happiness, and that his happinesswas greater if the action was destructive as well as exciting. We findit, for instance, in his gleeful cry to Roderigo, who proposes to shoutto Brabantio in order to wake him and tell him of his daughter's flight:

 Do, with like timorous[116] accent and dire yell As when, by night and negligence, the fire Is spied in populous cities. 

All through that scene; again, in the scene where Cassio is attacked andRoderigo murdered; everywhere where Iago is in physical action, we catchthis sound of almost feverish enjoyment. His blood, usually so cold andslow, is racing through his veins. 

But Iago, finally, is not simply a man of action; he is an artist. Hisaction is a plot, the intricate plot of a drama, and in the conceptionand execution of it he experiences the tension and the joy of artisticcreation. 'He is, ' says Hazlitt, 'an amateur of tragedy in real life;and, instead of employing his invention on imaginary characters orlong-forgotten incidents, he takes the bolder and more dangerous courseof getting up his plot at home, casts the principal parts among hisnewest friends and connections, and rehearses it in downright earnest, with steady nerves and unabated resolution. ' Mr. Swinburne lays evengreater stress on this aspect of Iago's character, and even declaresthat 'the very subtlest and strongest component of his complex nature'is 'the instinct of what Mr. Carlyle would call an inarticulate poet. 'And those to whom this idea is unfamiliar, and who may suspect it atfirst sight of being fanciful, will find, if they examine the play inthe light of Mr. Swinburne's exposition, that it rests on a true anddeep perception, will stand scrutiny, and might easily be illustrated. They may observe, to take only one point, the curious analogy betweenthe early stages of dramatic composition and those soliloquies in whichIago broods over his plot, drawing at first only an outline, puzzled howto fix more than the main idea, and gradually seeing it develop andclarify as he works upon it or lets it work. Here at any rateShakespeare put a good deal of himself into Iago. But the tragedian inreal life was not the equal of the tragic poet. His psychology, as weshall see, was at fault at a critical point, as Shakespeare's never was. And so his catastrophe came out wrong, and his piece was ruined. 

Such, then, seem to be the chief ingredients of the force which, liberated by his resentment at Cassio's promotion, drives Iago frominactivity into action, and sustains him through it. And, to pass to anew point, this force completely possesses him; it is his fate. It islike the passion with which a tragic hero wholly identifies himself, andwhich bears him on to his doom. It is true that, once embarked on hiscourse, Iago _could_ not turn back, even if this passion did abate; andit is also true that he is compelled, by his success in convincingOthello, to advance to conclusions of which at the outset he did notdream. He is thus caught in his own web, and could not liberate himselfif he would. But, in fact, he never shows a trace of wishing to do so, not a trace of hesitation, of looking back, or of fear, any more than ofremorse; there is no ebb in the tide. As the crisis approaches therepasses through his mind a fleeting doubt whether the deaths of Cassioand Roderigo are indispensable; but that uncertainty, which does notconcern the main issue, is dismissed, and he goes forward withundiminished zest. Not even in his sleep--as in Richard's before hisfinal battle--does any rebellion of outraged conscience or pity, or anyforeboding of despair, force itself into clear consciousness. Hisfate--which is himself--has completely mastered him: so that, in thelater scenes, where the improbability of the entire success of a designbuilt on so many different falsehoods forces itself on the reader, Iagoappears for moments not as a consummate schemer, but as a man absolutelyinfatuated and delivered over to certain destruction. 

5

Iago stands supreme among Shakespeare's evil characters because thegreatest intensity and subtlety of imagination have gone to his making, and because he illustrates in the most perfect combination the two factsconcerning evil which seem to have impressed Shakespeare most. The firstof these is the fact that perfectly sane people exist in whomfellow-feeling of any kind is so weak that an almost absolute egoismbecomes possible to them, and with it those hard vices--such asingratitude and cruelty--which to Shakespeare were far the worst. Thesecond is that such evil is compatible, and even appears to ally itselfeasily, with exceptional powers of will and intellect. In the latterrespect Iago is nearly or quite the equal of Richard, in egoism he isthe superior, and his inferiority in passion and massive force onlymakes him more repulsive. How is it then that we can bear to contemplatehim; nay, that, if we really imagine him, we feel admiration and somekind of sympathy? Henry the Fifth tells us:

 There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distil it out;

but here, it may be said, we are shown a thing absolutely evil, and--what is more dreadful still--this absolute evil is united withsupreme intellectual power. Why is the representation tolerable, and whydo we not accuse its author either of untruth or of a desperatepessimism?

To these questions it might at once be replied: Iago does not standalone; he is a factor in a whole; and we perceive him there and not inisolation, acted upon as well as acting, destroyed as well asdestroying. [117] But, although this is true and important, I pass it byand, continuing to regard him by himself, I would make three remarks inanswer to the questions. 

In the first place, Iago is not merely negative or evil--far from it. Those very forces that moved him and made his fate--sense of power, delight in performing a difficult and dangerous action, delight in theexercise of artistic skill--are not at all evil things. We sympathisewith one or other of them almost every day of our lives. And, accordingly, though in Iago they are combined with something detestableand so contribute to evil, our perception of them is accompanied withsympathy. In the same way, Iago's insight, dexterity, quickness, address, and the like, are in themselves admirable things; the perfectman would possess them. And certainly he would possess also Iago'scourage and self-control, and, like Iago, would stand above the impulsesof mere feeling, lord of his inner world. All this goes to evil ends inIago, but in itself it has a great worth; and, although in reading, ofcourse, we do not sift it out and regard it separately, it inevitablyaffects us and mingles admiration with our hatred or horror. 

All this, however, might apparently co-exist with absolute egoism andtotal want of humanity. But, in the second place, it is not true that inIago this egoism and this want are absolute, and that in this sense heis a thing of mere evil. They are frightful, but if they were absoluteIago would be a monster, not a man. The fact is, he _tries_ to make themabsolute and cannot succeed; and the traces of conscience, shame andhumanity, though faint, are discernible. If his egoism were absolute hewould be perfectly indifferent to the opinion of others; and he clearlyis not so. His very irritation at goodness, again, is a sign that hisfaith in his creed is not entirely firm; and it is not entirely firmbecause he himself has a perception, however dim, of the goodness ofgoodness. What is the meaning of the last reason he gives himself forkilling Cassio:

 He hath a daily beauty in his life That makes me ugly?

Does he mean that he is ugly to others? Then he is not an absoluteegoist. Does he mean that he is ugly to himself? Then he makes an openconfession of moral sense. And, once more, if he really possessed nomoral sense, we should never have heard those soliloquies which soclearly betray his uneasiness and his unconscious desire to persuadehimself that he has some excuse for the villainy he contemplates. Theseseem to be indubitable proofs that, against his will, Iago is a littlebetter than his creed, and has failed to withdraw himself wholly fromthe human atmosphere about him. And to these proofs I would add, thoughwith less confidence, two others. Iago's momentary doubt towards the endwhether Roderigo and Cassio must be killed has always surprised me. As amere matter of calculation it is perfectly obvious that they must; and Ibelieve his hesitation is not merely intellectual, it is another symptomof the obscure working of conscience or humanity. Lastly, is it notsignificant that, when once his plot has begun to develop, Iago neverseeks the presence of Desdemona; that he seems to leave her as quicklyas he can (III. Iv. 138); and that, when he is fetched byEmilia to see her in her distress (IV. Ii. 110 ff. ), we fail tocatch in his words any sign of the pleasure he shows in Othello'smisery, and seem rather to perceive a certain discomfort, and, if onedare say it, a faint touch of shame or remorse? This interpretation ofthe passage, I admit, is not inevitable, but to my mind (quite apartfrom any theorising about Iago) it seems the natural one. [118] And if itis right, Iago's discomfort is easily understood; for Desdemona is theone person concerned against whom it is impossible for him even toimagine a ground of resentment, and so an excuse for cruelty. [119]

There remains, thirdly, the idea that Iago is a man of supremeintellect who is at the same time supremely wicked. That he is supremelywicked nobody will doubt; and I have claimed for him nothing that willinterfere with his right to that title. But to say that his intellectualpower is supreme is to make a great mistake. Within certain limits hehas indeed extraordinary penetration, quickness, inventiveness, adaptiveness; but the limits are defined with the hardest of lines, andthey are narrow limits. It would scarcely be unjust to call him simplyastonishingly clever, or simply a consummate master of intrigue. Butcompare him with one who may perhaps be roughly called a bad man ofsupreme intellectual power, Napoleon, and you see how small and negativeIago's mind is, incapable of Napoleon's military achievements, and muchmore incapable of his political constructions. Or, to keep within theShakespearean world, compare him with Hamlet, and you perceive howmiserably close is his intellectual horizon; that such a thing as athought beyond the reaches of his soul has never come near him; that heis prosaic through and through, deaf and blind to all but a tinyfragment of the meaning of things. Is it not quite absurd, then, to callhim a man of supreme intellect?

And observe, lastly, that his failure in perception is closely connectedwith his badness. He was destroyed by the power that he attacked, thepower of love; and he was destroyed by it because he could notunderstand it; and he could not understand it because it was not in him. Iago never meant his plot to be so dangerous to himself. He knew thatjealousy is painful, but the jealousy of a love like Othello's he couldnot imagine, and he found himself involved in murders which were no partof his original design. That difficulty he surmounted, and his changedplot still seemed to prosper. Roderigo and Cassio and Desdemona oncedead, all will be well. Nay, when he fails to kill Cassio, all may stillbe well. He will avow that he told Othello of the adultery, and persistthat he told the truth, and Cassio will deny it in vain. And then, in amoment, his plot is shattered by a blow from a quarter where he neverdreamt of danger. He knows his wife, he thinks. She is notover-scrupulous, she will do anything to please him, and she has learntobedience. But one thing in her he does not know--that she _loves_ hermistress and would face a hundred deaths sooner than see her fair famedarkened. There is genuine astonishment in his outburst 'What! Are youmad?' as it dawns upon him that she means to speak the truth about thehandkerchief. But he might well have applied to himself the words sheflings at Othello, O gull! O dolt! As ignorant as dirt!

The foulness of his own soul made him so ignorant that he built into themarvellous structure of his plot a piece of crass stupidity. 

To the thinking mind the divorce of unusual intellect from goodness is athing to startle; and Shakespeare clearly felt it so. The combination ofunusual intellect with extreme evil is more than startling, it isfrightful. It is rare, but it exists; and Shakespeare represented it inIago. But the alliance of evil like Iago's with _supreme_ intellect isan impossible fiction; and Shakespeare's fictions were truth. 

6

The characters of Cassio and Emilia hardly require analysis, and I willtouch on them only from a single point of view. In their combination ofexcellences and defects they are good examples of that truth to naturewhich in dramatic art is the one unfailing source of moral instruction. 

Cassio is a handsome, light-hearted, good-natured young fellow, whotakes life gaily, and is evidently very attractive and popular. Othello, who calls him by his Christian name, is fond of him; Desdemona likes himmuch; Emilia at once interests herself on his behalf. He has warmgenerous feelings, an enthusiastic admiration for the General, and achivalrous adoration for his peerless wife. But he is too easy-going. Hefinds it hard to say No; and accordingly, although he is aware that hehas a very weak head, and that the occasion is one on which he is boundto run no risk, he gets drunk--not disgustingly so, but ludicrouslyso. [120] And, besides, he amuses himself without any scruple byfrequenting the company of a woman of more than doubtful reputation, whohas fallen in love with his good looks. Moralising critics point outthat he pays for the first offence by losing his post, and for thesecond by nearly losing his life. They are quite entitled to do so, though the careful reader will not forget Iago's part in thesetransactions. But they ought also to point out that Cassio's loosenessdoes not in the least disturb our confidence in him in his relationswith Desdemona and Othello. He is loose, and we are sorry for it; but wenever doubt that there was 'a daily beauty in his life, ' or that hisrapturous admiration of Desdemona was as wholly beautiful a thing as itappears, or that Othello was perfectly safe when in his courtship heemployed Cassio to 'go between' Desdemona and himself. It is fortunatelya fact in human nature that these aspects of Cassio's character arequite compatible. Shakespeare simply sets it down; and it is justbecause he is truthful in these smaller things that in greater things wetrust him absolutely never to pervert the truth for the sake of somedoctrine or purpose of his own. 

There is something very lovable about Cassio, with his fresh eagerfeelings; his distress at his disgrace and still more at having lostOthello's trust; his hero-worship; and at the end his sorrow and pity, which are at first too acute for words. He is carried in, wounded, on achair. He looks at Othello and cannot speak. His first words come laterwhen, to Lodovico's question, 'Did you and he consent in Cassio'sdeath?' Othello answers 'Ay. ' Then he falters out, 'Dear General, Inever gave you cause. ' One is sure he had never used that adjectivebefore. The love in it makes it beautiful, but there is something elsein it, unknown to Cassio, which goes to one's heart. It tells us thathis hero is no longer unapproachably above him. 

Few of Shakespeare's minor characters are more distinct than Emilia, andtowards few do our feelings change so much within the course of a play. Till close to the end she frequently sets one's teeth on edge; and atthe end one is ready to worship her. She nowhere shows any sign ofhaving a bad heart; but she is common, sometimes vulgar, in minormatters far from scrupulous, blunt in perception and feeling, and quitedestitute of imagination. She let Iago take the handkerchief though sheknew how much its loss would distress Desdemona; and she said nothingabout it though she saw that Othello was jealous. We rightly resent herunkindness in permitting the theft, but--it is an important point--weare apt to misconstrue her subsequent silence, because we know thatOthello's jealousy was intimately connected with the loss of thehandkerchief. Emilia, however, certainly failed to perceive this; forotherwise, when Othello's anger showed itself violently and she wasreally distressed for her mistress, she could not have failed to thinkof the handkerchief, and would, I believe, undoubtedly have told thetruth about it. But, in fact, she never thought of it, although sheguessed that Othello was being deceived by some scoundrel. Even afterDesdemona's death, nay, even when she knew that Iago had brought itabout, she still did not remember the handkerchief; and when Othello atlast mentions, as a proof of his wife's guilt, that he had seen thehandkerchief in Cassio's hand, the truth falls on Emilia like athunder-bolt. 'O God!' she bursts out, 'O heavenly God!'[121] Herstupidity in this matter is gross, but it is stupidity and nothingworse. 

But along with it goes a certain coarseness of nature. The contrastbetween Emilia and Desdemona in their conversation about the infidelityof wives (IV. Iii. ) is too famous to need a word, --unless it be a wordof warning against critics who take her light talk too seriously. Butthe contrast in the preceding scene is hardly less remarkable. Othello, affecting to treat Emilia as the keeper of a brothel, sends her away, bidding her shut the door behind her; and then he proceeds to torturehimself as well as Desdemona by accusations of adultery. But, as acritic has pointed out, Emilia listens at the door, for we find, as soonas Othello is gone and Iago has been summoned, that she knows whatOthello has said to Desdemona. And what could better illustrate thosedefects of hers which make one wince, than her repeating again and againin Desdemona's presence the word Desdemona could not repeat; than hertalking before Desdemona of Iago's suspicions regarding Othello andherself; than her speaking to Desdemona of husbands who strike theirwives; than the expression of her honest indignation in the words, Has she forsook so many noble matches, Her father and her country and her friends, To be called whore?

If one were capable of laughing or even of smiling when this point inthe play is reached, the difference between Desdemona's anguish at theloss of Othello's love, and Emilia's recollection of the noble matchesshe might have secured, would be irresistibly ludicrous. 

And yet how all this, and all her defects, vanish into nothingness whenwe see her face to face with that which she can understand and feel!From the moment of her appearance after the murder to the moment of herdeath she is transfigured; and yet she remains perfectly true toherself, and we would not have her one atom less herself. She is theonly person who utters for us the violent common emotions which we feel, together with those more tragic emotions which she does not comprehend. She has done this once already, to our great comfort. When she suggeststhat some villain has poisoned Othello's mind, and Iago answers, Fie, there is no such man; it is impossible;

and Desdemona answers, If any such there be, Heaven pardon him;

Emilia's retort, A halter pardon him, and Hell gnaw his bones, says what we long to say, and helps us. And who has not felt in the lastscene how her glorious carelessness of her own life, and her outburstsagainst Othello--even that most characteristic one, She was too fond of her most filthy bargain--

lift the overwhelming weight of calamity that oppresses us, and bring usan extraordinary lightening of the heart? Terror and pity are here toomuch to bear; we long to be allowed to feel also indignation, if notrage; and Emilia lets us feel them and gives them words. She brings ustoo the relief of joy and admiration, --a joy that is not lessened by herdeath. Why should she live? If she lived for ever she never could soar ahigher pitch, and nothing in her life became her like the losingit. [122]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 107: It has been held, for example, that Othello treated Iagoabominably in preferring Cassio to him; that he _did_ seduce Emilia;that he and Desdemona were too familiar before marriage; and that in anycase his fate was a moral judgment on his sins, and Iago a righteous, ifsharp, instrument of Providence. ]

[Footnote 108: See III. Iii. 201, V. I. 89 f. The statements are hisown, but he has no particular reason for lying. One reason of hisdisgust at Cassio's appointment was that Cassio was a Florentine (I. I. 20). When Cassio says (III. I. 42) 'I never knew a Florentine more kindand honest, ' of course he means, not that Iago is a Florentine, but thathe could not be kinder and honester if he were one. ]

[Footnote 109: I am here merely recording a general impression. There isno specific evidence, unless we take Cassio's language in his drink (II. Ii. 105 f. ) to imply that Iago was not a 'man of quality' like himself. I do not know if it has been observed that Iago uses more nauticalphrases and metaphors than is at all usual with Shakespeare'scharacters. This might naturally be explained by his roving militarylife, but it is curious that almost all the examples occur in theearlier scenes (see _e. G. _ I. I. 30, 153, 157; I. Ii. 17, 50; I. Iii. 343; II. Iii. 65), so that the use of these phrases and metaphors maynot be characteristic of Iago but symptomatic of a particular state ofShakespeare's mind. ]

[Footnote 110: See further Note P. ]

[Footnote 111: But it by no means follows that we are to believe hisstatement that there was a report abroad about an intrigue between hiswife and Othello (I. Iii. 393), or his statement (which may be divinedfrom IV. Ii. 145) that someone had spoken to him on the subject. ]

[Footnote 112: See, for instance, Aaron in _Titus Andronicus_, II. Iii. ;Richard in _3 Henry VI. _, III. Ii. And V. Vi. , and in _Richard III. _, I. I. (twice), I. Ii. ; Edmund in _King Lear_, I. Ii. (twice), III. Iii. Andv. , V. I. ]

[Footnote 113: See, further, Note Q. ]

[Footnote 114: On the meaning which this phrase had for its author, Coleridge, see note on p. 228. ][Transcriber's note: Reference is toFootnote 115. ]

[Footnote 115: Coleridge's view is not materially different, though lesscomplete. When he speaks of 'the motive-hunting of a motivelessmalignity, ' he does not mean by the last two words that 'disinterestedlove of evil' or 'love of evil for evil's sake' of which I spoke justnow, and which other critics attribute to Iago. He means really thatIago's malignity does not spring from the causes to which Iago himselfrefers it, nor from any 'motive' in the sense of an idea present toconsciousness. But unfortunately his phrase suggests the theory whichhas been criticised above. On the question whether there is such a thingas this supposed pure malignity, the reader may refer to a discussionbetween Professor Bain and F. H. Bradley in _Mind_, vol. Viii. ]

[Footnote 116: _I. E. _ terrifying. ]

[Footnote 117: Cf. Note at end of lecture. ][Transcriber's note: Refersto Footnote 122. ]

[Footnote 118: It was suggested to me by a Glasgow student. ]

[Footnote 119: A curious proof of Iago's inability to hold by his creedthat absolute egoism is the only proper attitude, and that loyalty andaffection are mere stupidity or want of spirit, may be found in his onemoment of real passion, where he rushes at Emilia with the cry, 'Villainous whore!' (V. Ii. 229). There is more than fury in his cry, there is indignation. She has been false to him, she has betrayed him. Well, but why should she not, if his creed is true? And what amelancholy exhibition of human inconsistency it is that he should use asterms of reproach words which, according to him, should be quiteneutral, if not complimentary!]

[Footnote 120: Cassio's invective against drink may be compared withHamlet's expressions of disgust at his uncle's drunkenness. Possibly thesubject may for some reason have been prominent in Shakespeare's mindabout this time. ]

[Footnote 121: So the Quarto, and certainly rightly, though moderneditors reprint the feeble alteration of the Folio, due to fear of theCensor, 'O heaven! O heavenly Powers!']

[Footnote 122: The feelings evoked by Emilia are one of the causes whichmitigate the excess of tragic pain at the conclusion. Others are thedownfall of Iago, and the fact, already alluded to, that both Desdemonaand Othello show themselves at their noblest just before death. ]

LECTURE VII

KING LEAR

_King Lear_ has again and again been described as Shakespeare's greatestwork, the best of his plays, the tragedy in which he exhibits most fullyhis multitudinous powers; and if we were doomed to lose all his dramasexcept one, probably the majority of those who know and appreciate himbest would pronounce for keeping _King Lear_. 

Yet this tragedy is certainly the least popular of the famous four. The'general reader' reads it less often than the others, and, though heacknowledges its greatness, he will sometimes speak of it with a certaindistaste. It is also the least often presented on the stage, and theleast successful there. And when we look back on its history we find acurious fact. Some twenty years after the Restoration, Nahum Tatealtered _King Lear_ for the stage, giving it a happy ending, and puttingEdgar in the place of the King of France as Cordelia's lover. From thattime Shakespeare's tragedy in its original form was never seen on thestage for a century and a half. Betterton acted Tate's version; Garrickacted it and Dr. Johnson approved it. Kemble acted it, Kean acted it. In1823 Kean, 'stimulated by Hazlitt's remonstrances and Charles Lamb'sessays, ' restored the original tragic ending. At last, in 1838, Macreadyreturned to Shakespeare's text throughout. 

What is the meaning of these opposite sets of facts? Are the lovers ofShakespeare wholly in the right; and is the general reader andplay-goer, were even Tate and Dr. Johnson, altogether in the wrong? Iventure to doubt it. When I read _King Lear_ two impressions are left onmy mind, which seem to answer roughly to the two sets of facts. _KingLear_ seems to me Shakespeare's greatest achievement, but it seems to me_not_ his best play. And I find that I tend to consider it from tworather different points of view. When I regard it strictly as a drama, it appears to me, though in certain parts overwhelming, decidedlyinferior as a whole to _Hamlet_, _Othello_ and _Macbeth_. When I amfeeling that it is greater than any of these, and the fullest revelationof Shakespeare's power, I find I am not regarding it simply as a drama, but am grouping it in my mind with works like the _Prometheus Vinctus_and the _Divine Comedy_, and even with the greatest symphonies ofBeethoven and the statues in the Medici Chapel. 

This two-fold character of the play is to some extent illustrated by theaffinities and the probable chronological position of _King Lear_. It isallied with two tragedies, _Othello_ and _Timon of Athens_; and thesetwo tragedies are utterly unlike. [123] _Othello_ was probably composedabout 1604, and _King Lear_ about 1605; and though there is a somewhatmarked change in style and versification, there are obvious resemblancesbetween the two. The most important have been touched on already: theseare the most painful and the most pathetic of the four tragedies, thosein which evil appears in its coldest and most inhuman forms, and thosewhich exclude the supernatural from the action. But there is also in_King Lear_ a good deal which sounds like an echo of _Othello_, --a factwhich should not surprise us, since there are other instances where thematter of a play seems to go on working in Shakespeare's mind andre-appears, generally in a weaker form, in his next play. So, in _KingLear_, the conception of Edmund is not so fresh as that of Goneril. Goneril has no predecessor; but Edmund, though of course essentiallydistinguished from Iago, often reminds us of him, and the soliloquy, 'This is the excellent foppery of the world, ' is in the very tone ofIago's discourse on the sovereignty of the will. The gulling of Gloster, again, recalls the gulling of Othello. Even Edmund's idea (not carriedout) of making his father witness, without over-hearing, hisconversation with Edgar, reproduces the idea of the passage whereOthello watches Iago and Cassio talking about Bianca; and the conclusionof the temptation, where Gloster says to Edmund:

 and of my land, Loyal and natural boy, I'll work the means To make thee capable, reminds us of Othello's last words in the scene of temptation, 'Now artthou my lieutenant. ' This list might be extended; and the appearance ofcertain unusual words and phrases in both the plays increases thelikelihood that the composition of the one followed at no great distanceon that of the other. [124]

When we turn from _Othello_ to _Timon of Athens_ we find a play of quiteanother kind. _Othello_ is dramatically the most perfect of thetragedies. _Timon_, on the contrary, is weak, ill-constructed andconfused; and, though care might have made it clear, no mere care couldmake it really dramatic. Yet it is undoubtedly Shakespearean in part, probably in great part; and it immediately reminds us of _King Lear_. Both plays deal with the tragic effects of ingratitude. In both thevictim is exceptionally unsuspicious, soft-hearted and vehement. In bothhe is completely overwhelmed, passing through fury to madness in the onecase, to suicide in the other. Famous passages in both plays are curses. The misanthropy of Timon pours itself out in a torrent of maledictionson the whole race of man; and these at once recall, alike by their formand their substance, the most powerful speeches uttered by Lear in hismadness. In both plays occur repeated comparisons between man and thebeasts; the idea that 'the strain of man's bred out into baboon, ' wolf, tiger, fox; the idea that this bestial degradation will end in a furiousstruggle of all with all, in which the race will perish. The'pessimistic' strain in _Timon_ suggests to many readers, even moreimperatively than _King Lear_, the notion that Shakespeare was givingvent to some personal feeling, whether present or past; for the signs ofhis hand appear most unmistakably when the hero begins to pour the vialsof his wrath upon mankind. _Timon_, lastly, in some of theunquestionably Shakespearean parts, bears (as it appears to me) sostrong a resemblance to _King Lear_ in style and in versification thatit is hard to understand how competent judges can suppose that itbelongs to a time at all near that of the final romances, or even thatit was written so late as the last Roman plays. It is more likely tohave been composed immediately after _King Lear_ and before_Macbeth_. [125]

Drawing these comparisons together, we may say that, while as a work ofart and in tragic power _King Lear_ is infinitely nearer to _Othello_than to _Timon_, in its spirit and substance its affinity with _Timon_is a good deal the stronger. And, returning to the point from whichthese comparisons began, I would now add that there is in _King Lear_ areflection or anticipation, however faint, of the structural weakness of_Timon_. This weakness in _King Lear_ is not due, however, to anythingintrinsically undramatic in the story, but to characteristics which werenecessary to an effect not wholly dramatic. The stage is the test ofstrictly dramatic quality, and _King Lear_ is too huge for the stage. Ofcourse, I am not denying that it is a great stage-play. It has scenesimmensely effective in the theatre; three of them--the two between Learand Goneril and between Lear, Goneril and Regan, and the ineffablybeautiful scene in the Fourth Act between Lear and Cordelia--lose in thetheatre very little of the spell they have for imagination; and thegradual interweaving of the two plots is almost as masterly as in _MuchAdo_. But (not to speak of defects due to mere carelessness) that whichmakes the _peculiar_ greatness of King Lear, --the immense scope of thework; the mass and variety of intense experience which it contains; theinterpenetration of sublime imagination, piercing pathos, and humouralmost as moving as the pathos; the vastness of the convulsion both ofnature and of human passion; the vagueness of the scene where the actiontakes place, and of the movements of the figures which cross this scene;the strange atmosphere, cold and dark, which strikes on us as we enterthis scene, enfolding these figures and magnifying their dim outlineslike a winter mist; the half-realised suggestions of vast universalpowers working in the world of individual fates and passions, --all thisinterferes with dramatic clearness even when the play is read, and inthe theatre not only refuses to reveal itself fully through the sensesbut seems to be almost in contradiction with their reports. This is notso with the other great tragedies. No doubt, as Lamb declared, theatrical representation gives only a part of what we imagine when weread them; but there is no _conflict_ between the representation and theimagination, because these tragedies are, in essentials, perfectlydramatic. But _King Lear_, as a whole, is imperfectly dramatic, andthere is something in its very essence which is at war with the senses, and demands a purely imaginative realisation. It is thereforeShakespeare's greatest work, but it is not what Hazlitt called it, thebest of his plays; and its comparative unpopularity is due, not merelyto the extreme painfulness of the catastrophe, but in part to itsdramatic defects, and in part to a failure in many readers to catch thepeculiar effects to which I have referred, --a failure which is naturalbecause the appeal is made not so much to dramatic perception as to ararer and more strictly poetic kind of imagination. For this reason, too, even the best attempts at exposition of _King Lear_ aredisappointing; they remind us of attempts to reduce to prose theimpalpable spirit of the _Tempest_. 

I propose to develop some of these ideas by considering, first, thedramatic defects of the play, and then some of the causes of itsextraordinary imaginative effect. 

1

We may begin, however, by referring to two passages which have oftenbeen criticised with injustice. The first is that where the blindedGloster, believing that he is going to leap down Dover cliff, does infact fall flat on the ground at his feet, and then is persuaded that he_has_ leaped down Dover cliff but has been miraculously preserved. Imagine this incident transferred to _Othello_, and you realise howcompletely the two tragedies differ in dramatic atmosphere. In _Othello_it would be a shocking or a ludicrous dissonance, but it is in harmonywith the spirit of _King Lear_. And not only is this so, but, contraryto expectation, it is not, if properly acted, in the least absurd on thestage. The imagination and the feelings have been worked upon with sucheffect by the description of the cliff, and by the portrayal of the oldman's despair and his son's courageous and loving wisdom, that we areunconscious of the grotesqueness of the incident for common sense. 

The second passage is more important, for it deals with the origin ofthe whole conflict. The oft-repeated judgment that the first scene of_King Lear_ is absurdly improbable, and that no sane man would think ofdividing his kingdom among his daughters in proportion to the strengthof their several protestations of love, is much too harsh and is basedupon a strange misunderstanding. This scene acts effectively, and toimagination the story is not at all incredible. It is merely strange, like so many of the stories on which our romantic dramas are based. Shakespeare, besides, has done a good deal to soften the improbabilityof the legend, and he has done much more than the casual readerperceives. The very first words of the drama, as Coleridge pointed out, tell us that the division of the kingdom is already settled in all itsdetails, so that only the public announcement of it remains. [126] Laterwe find that the lines of division have already been drawn on the map ofBritain (l. 38), and again that Cordelia's share, which is her dowry, isperfectly well known to Burgundy, if not to France (ll. 197, 245). Thatthen which is censured as absurd, the dependence of the division on thespeeches of the daughters, was in Lear's intention a mere form, devisedas a childish scheme to gratify his love of absolute power and hishunger for assurances of devotion. And this scheme is perfectly incharacter. We may even say that the main cause of its failure was notthat Goneril and Regan were exceptionally hypocritical, but thatCordelia was exceptionally sincere and unbending. And it is essential toobserve that its failure, and the consequent necessity of publiclyreversing his whole well-known intention, is one source of Lear'sextreme anger. He loved Cordelia most and knew that she loved him best, and the supreme moment to which he looked forward was that in which sheshould outdo her sisters in expressions of affection, and should berewarded by that 'third' of the kingdom which was the most 'opulent. 'And then--so it naturally seemed to him--she put him to open shame. 

There is a further point, which seems to have escaped the attention ofColeridge and others. Part of the absurdity of Lear's plan is taken tobe his idea of living with his three daughters in turn. But he nevermeant to do this. He meant to live with Cordelia, and with heralone. [127] The scheme of his alternate monthly stay with Goneril andRegan is forced on him at the moment by what he thinks the undutifulnessof his favourite child. In fact his whole original plan, though foolishand rash, was not a 'hideous rashness'[128] or incredible folly. Ifcarried out it would have had no such consequences as followed itsalteration. It would probably have led quickly to war, [129] but not tothe agony which culminated in the storm upon the heath. The first scene, therefore, is not absurd, though it must be pronounced dramaticallyfaulty in so far as it discloses the true position of affairs only to anattention more alert than can be expected in a theatrical audience orhas been found in many critics of the play. 

Let us turn next to two passages of another kind, the two which aremainly responsible for the accusation of excessive painfulness, and sofor the distaste of many readers and the long theatrical eclipse of_King Lear_. The first of these is much the less important; it is thescene of the blinding of Gloster. The blinding of Gloster on the stagehas been condemned almost universally; and surely with justice, becausethe mere physical horror of such a spectacle would in the theatre be asensation so violent as to overpower the purely tragic emotions, andtherefore the spectacle would seem revolting or shocking. But it isotherwise in reading. For mere imagination the physical horror, thoughnot lost, is so far deadened that it can do its duty as a stimulus topity, and to that appalled dismay at the extremity of human crueltywhich it is of the essence of the tragedy to excite. Thus the blindingof Gloster belongs rightly to _King Lear_ in its proper world ofimagination; it is a blot upon _King Lear_ as a stage-play. 

But what are we to say of the second and far more important passage, theconclusion of the tragedy, the 'unhappy ending, ' as it is called, thoughthe word 'unhappy' sounds almost ironical in its weakness? Is this too ablot upon _King Lear_ as a stage-play? The question is not so easilyanswered as might appear. Doubtless we are right when we turn withdisgust from Tate's sentimental alterations, from his marriage of Edgarand Cordelia, and from that cheap moral which every one of Shakespeare'stragedies contradicts, 'that Truth and Virtue shall at last succeed. 'But are we so sure that we are right when we unreservedly condemn thefeeling which prompted these alterations, or at all events the feelingwhich beyond question comes naturally to many readers of _King Lear_ whowould like Tate as little as we? What they wish, though they have notalways the courage to confess it even to themselves, is that the deathsof Edmund, Goneril, Regan and Gloster should be followed by the escapeof Lear and Cordelia from death, and that we should be allowed toimagine the poor old King passing quietly in the home of his belovedchild to the end which cannot be far off. Now, I do not dream of sayingthat we ought to wish this, so long as we regard _King Lear_ simply as awork of poetic imagination. But if _King Lear_ is to be consideredstrictly as a drama, or simply as we consider _Othello_, it is not soclear that the wish is unjustified. In fact I will take my courage inboth hands and say boldly that I share it, and also that I believeShakespeare would have ended his play thus had he taken the subject inhand a few years later, in the days of _Cymbeline_ and the _Winter'sTale_. If I read _King Lear_ simply as a drama, I find that my feelingscall for this 'happy ending. ' I do not mean the human, thephilanthropic, feelings, but the dramatic sense. The former wish Hamletand Othello to escape their doom; the latter does not; but it does wishLear and Cordelia to be saved. Surely, it says, the tragic emotions havebeen sufficiently stirred already. Surely the tragic outcome of Lear'serror and his daughters' ingratitude has been made clear enough andmoving enough. And, still more surely, such a tragic catastrophe as thisshould seem _inevitable_. But this catastrophe, unlike those of all theother mature tragedies, does not seem at all inevitable. It is not evensatisfactorily motived. [130] In fact it seems expressly designed to fallsuddenly like a bolt from a sky cleared by the vanished storm. Andalthough from a wider point of view one may fully recognise the value ofthis effect, and may even reject with horror the wish for a 'happyending, ' this wider point of view, I must maintain, is not strictlydramatic or tragic. 

Of course this is a heresy and all the best authority is against it. Butthen the best authority, it seems to me, is either influencedunconsciously by disgust at Tate's sentimentalism or unconsciously takesthat wider point of view. When Lamb--there is no higherauthority--writes, 'A happy ending!--as if the living martyrdom thatLear had gone through, the flaying of his feelings alive, did not make afair dismissal from the stage of life the only decorous thing for him, 'I answer, first, that it is precisely this _fair_ dismissal which wedesire for him instead of renewed anguish; and, secondly, that what wedesire for him during the brief remainder of his days is not 'thechildish pleasure of getting his gilt robes and sceptre again, ' not whatTate gives him, but what Shakespeare himself might have given him--peaceand happiness by Cordelia's fireside. And if I am told that he hassuffered too much for this, how can I possibly believe it with thesewords ringing in my ears:

 Come, let's away to prison: We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage. When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down, And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies?

And again when Schlegel declares that, if Lear were saved, 'the whole'would 'lose its significance, ' because it would no longer show us thatthe belief in Providence 'requires a wider range than the darkpilgrimage on earth to be established in its whole extent, ' I answerthat, if the drama does show us that, it takes us beyond the strictlytragic point of view. [131]

A dramatic mistake in regard to the catastrophe, however, even supposingit to exist, would not seriously affect the whole play. The principalstructural weakness of _King Lear_ lies elsewhere. It is felt to someextent in the earlier Acts, but still more (as from our study ofShakespeare's technique we have learnt to expect) in the Fourth and thefirst part of the Fifth. And it arises chiefly from the double action, which is a peculiarity of _King Lear_ among the tragedies. By the sideof Lear, his daughters, Kent, and the Fool, who are the principalfigures in the main plot, stand Gloster and his two sons, the chiefpersons of the secondary plot. Now by means of this double actionShakespeare secured certain results highly advantageous even from thestrictly dramatic point of view, and easy to perceive. But thedisadvantages were dramatically greater. The number of essentialcharacters is so large, their actions and movements are so complicated, and events towards the close crowd on one another so thickly, that thereader's attention, [132] rapidly transferred from one centre of interestto another, is overstrained. He becomes, if not intellectually confused, at least emotionally fatigued. The battle, on which everything turns, scarcely affects him. The deaths of Edmund, Goneril, Regan and Glosterseem 'but trifles here'; and anything short of the incomparable pathosof the close would leave him cold. There is something almost ludicrousin the insignificance of this battle, when it is compared with thecorresponding battles in _Julius Caesar_ and _Macbeth_; and though theremay have been further reasons for its insignificance, the main one issimply that there was no room to give it its due effect among such ahost of competing interests. [133]

A comparison of the last two Acts of _Othello_ with the last two Acts of_King Lear_ would show how unfavourable to dramatic clearness is amultiplicity of figures. But that this multiplicity is not in itself afatal obstacle is evident from the last two Acts of _Hamlet_, andespecially from the final scene. This is in all respects one ofShakespeare's triumphs, yet the stage is crowded with characters. Onlythey are not _leading_ characters. The plot is single; Hamlet and theKing are the 'mighty opposites'; and Ophelia, the only other person inwhom we are obliged to take a vivid interest, has already disappeared. It is therefore natural and right that the deaths of Laertes and theQueen should affect us comparatively little. But in _King Lear_, becausethe plot is double, we have present in the last scene no less than fivepersons who are technically of the first importance--Lear, his threedaughters and Edmund; not to speak of Kent and Edgar, of whom the latterat any rate is technically quite as important as Laertes. And again, owing to the pressure of persons and events, and owing to theconcentration of our anxiety on Lear and Cordelia, the combat of Edgarand Edmund, which occupies so considerable a space, fails to excite atithe of the interest of the fencing-match in _Hamlet_. The truth isthat all through these Acts Shakespeare has too vast a material to usewith complete dramatic effectiveness, however essential this veryvastness was for effects of another kind. 

Added to these defects there are others, which suggest that in _KingLear_ Shakespeare was less concerned than usual with dramatic fitness:improbabilities, inconsistencies, sayings and doings which suggestquestions only to be answered by conjecture. The improbabilities in_King Lear_ surely far surpass those of the other great tragedies innumber and in grossness. And they are particularly noticeable in thesecondary plot. For example, no sort of reason is given why Edgar, wholives in the same house with Edmund, should write a letter to himinstead of speaking; and this is a letter absolutely damning to hischaracter. Gloster was very foolish, but surely not so foolish as topass unnoticed this improbability; or, if so foolish, what need forEdmund to forge a letter rather than a conversation, especially asGloster appears to be unacquainted with his son's handwriting?[134] Isit in character that Edgar should be persuaded without the slightestdemur to avoid his father instead of confronting him and asking him thecause of his anger? Why in the world should Gloster, when expelled fromhis castle, wander painfully all the way to Dover simply in order todestroy himself (IV. I. 80)? And is it not extraordinary that, afterGloster's attempted suicide, Edgar should first talk to him in thelanguage of a gentleman, then to Oswald in his presence in broad peasantdialect, then again to Gloster in gentle language, and yet that Glostershould not manifest the least surprise?

Again, to take three instances of another kind; (_a_) only a fortnightseems to have elapsed between the first scene and the breach withGoneril; yet already there are rumours not only of war between Goneriland Regan but of the coming of a French army; and this, Kent says, isperhaps connected with the harshness of _both_ the sisters to theirfather, although Regan has apparently had no opportunity of showing anyharshness till the day before. (_b_) In the quarrel with Goneril Learspeaks of his having to dismiss fifty of his followers at a clap, yetshe has neither mentioned any number nor had any opportunity ofmentioning it off the stage. (_c_) Lear and Goneril, intending to hurryto Regan, both send off messengers to her, and both tell the messengersto bring back an answer. But it does not appear either how themessengers _could_ return or what answer could be required, as theirsuperiors are following them with the greatest speed. 

Once more, (_a_) why does Edgar not reveal himself to his blind father, as he truly says he ought to have done? The answer is left to mereconjecture. (_b_) Why does Kent so carefully preserve his incognito tillthe last scene? He says he does it for an important purpose, but whatthe purpose is we have to guess. (_c_) Why Burgundy rather than Franceshould have first choice of Cordelia's hand is a question we cannot helpasking, but there is no hint of any answer. [135] (_d_) I have referredalready to the strange obscurity regarding Edmund's delay in trying tosave his victims, and I will not extend this list of examples. No one ofsuch defects is surprising when considered by itself, but their numberis surely significant. Taken in conjunction with other symptoms it meansthat Shakespeare, set upon the dramatic effect of the great scenes andupon certain effects not wholly dramatic, was exceptionally careless ofprobability, clearness and consistency in smaller matters, introducingwhat was convenient or striking for a momentary purpose withouttroubling himself about anything more than the moment. In presence ofthese signs it seems doubtful whether his failure to give informationabout the fate of the Fool was due to anything more than carelessness oran impatient desire to reduce his overloaded material. [136]

Before I turn to the other side of the subject I will refer to one morecharacteristic of this play which is dramatically disadvantageous. InShakespeare's dramas, owing to the absence of scenery from theElizabethan stage, the question, so vexatious to editors, of the exactlocality of a particular scene is usually unimportant and oftenunanswerable; but, as a rule, we know, broadly speaking, where thepersons live and what their journeys are. The text makes this plain, forexample, almost throughout _Hamlet_, _Othello_ and _Macbeth_; and theimagination is therefore untroubled. But in _King Lear_ the indicationsare so scanty that the reader's mind is left not seldom both vague andbewildered. Nothing enables us to imagine whereabouts in Britain Lear'spalace lies, or where the Duke of Albany lives. In referring to thedividing-lines on the map, Lear tells us of shadowy forests andplenteous rivers, but, unlike Hotspur and his companions, he studiouslyavoids proper names. The Duke of Cornwall, we presume in the absence ofinformation, is likely to live in Cornwall; but we suddenly find, fromthe introduction of a place-name which all readers take at first for asurname, that he lives at Gloster (I. V. 1). [137] This seems likely tobe also the home of the Earl of Gloster, to whom Cornwall is patron. Butno: it is a night's journey from Cornwall's 'house' to Gloster's, andGloster's is in the middle of an uninhabited heath. [138] Here, for thepurpose of the crisis, nearly all the persons assemble, but they do soin a manner which no casual spectator or reader could follow. Afterwardsthey all drift towards Dover for the purpose of the catastrophe; butagain the localities and movements are unusually indefinite. And thisindefiniteness is found in smaller matters. One cannot help asking, forexample, and yet one feels one had better not ask, where that 'lodging'of Edmund's can be, in which he hides Edgar from his father, and whetherEdgar is mad that he should return from his hollow tree (in a districtwhere 'for many miles about there's scarce a bush') to his father'scastle in order to soliloquise (II. Iii. ):--for the favouritestage-direction, 'a wood' (which is more than 'a bush'), howeverconvenient to imagination, is scarcely compatible with the presence ofKent asleep in the stocks. [139] Something of the confusion whichbewilders the reader's mind in _King Lear_ recurs in _Antony andCleopatra_, the most faultily constructed of all the tragedies; butthere it is due not so much to the absence or vagueness of theindications as to the necessity of taking frequent and fatiguingjourneys over thousands of miles. Shakespeare could not help himself inthe Roman play: in _King Lear_ he did not choose to help himself, perhaps deliberately chose to be vague. 

From these defects, or from some of them, follows one result which mustbe familiar to many readers of _King Lear_. It is far more difficult toretrace in memory the steps of the action in this tragedy than in_Hamlet_, _Othello_, or _Macbeth_. The outline is of course quite clear;anyone could write an 'argument' of the play. But when an attempt ismade to fill in the detail, it issues sooner or later in confusion evenwith readers whose dramatic memory is unusually strong. [140]

2

How is it, now, that this defective drama so overpowers us that we areeither unconscious of its blemishes or regard them as almost irrelevant?As soon as we turn to this question we recognise, not merely that _KingLear_ possesses purely dramatic qualities which far outweigh itsdefects, but that its greatness consists partly in imaginative effectsof a wider kind. And, looking for the sources of these effects, we findamong them some of those very things which appeared to us dramaticallyfaulty or injurious. Thus, to take at once two of the simplest examplesof this, that very vagueness in the sense of locality which we have justconsidered, and again that excess in the bulk of the material and thenumber of figures, events and movements, while they interfere with theclearness of vision, have at the same time a positive value forimagination. They give the feeling of vastness, the feeling not of ascene or particular place, but of a world; or, to speak more accurately, of a particular place which is also a world. This world is dim to us, partly from its immensity, and partly because it is filled with gloom;and in the gloom shapes approach and recede, whose half-seen faces andmotions touch us with dread, horror, or the most painfulpity, --sympathies and antipathies which we seem to be feeling not onlyfor them but for the whole race. This world, we are told, is calledBritain; but we should no more look for it in an atlas than for theplace, called Caucasus, where Prometheus was chained by Strength andForce and comforted by the daughters of Ocean, or the place whereFarinata stands erect in his glowing tomb, 'Come avesse lo Inferno ingran dispitto. '

Consider next the double action. It has certain strictly dramaticadvantages, and may well have had its origin in purely dramaticconsiderations. To go no further, the secondary plot fills out a storywhich would by itself have been somewhat thin, and it provides a mosteffective contrast between its personages and those of the main plot, the tragic strength and stature of the latter being heightened bycomparison with the slighter build of the former. But its chief valuelies elsewhere, and is not merely dramatic. It lies in the fact--inShakespeare without a parallel--that the sub-plot simply repeats thetheme of the main story. Here, as there, we see an old man 'with a whitebeard. ' He, like Lear, is affectionate, unsuspicious, foolish, andself-willed. He, too, wrongs deeply a child who loves him not less forthe wrong. He, too, meets with monstrous ingratitude from the child whomhe favours, and is tortured and driven to death. This repetition doesnot simply double the pain with which the tragedy is witnessed: itstartles and terrifies by suggesting that the folly of Lear and theingratitude of his daughters are no accidents or merely individualaberrations, but that in that dark cold world some fateful malignantinfluence is abroad, turning the hearts of the fathers against theirchildren and of the children against their fathers, smiting the earthwith a curse, so that the brother gives the brother to death and thefather the son, blinding the eyes, maddening the brain, freezing thesprings of pity, numbing all powers except the nerves of anguish and thedull lust of life. [141]

Hence too, as well as from other sources, comes that feeling whichhaunts us in _King Lear_, as though we were witnessing somethinguniversal, --a conflict not so much of particular persons as of thepowers of good and evil in the world. And the treatment of many of thecharacters confirms this feeling. Considered simply as psychologicalstudies few of them, surely, are of the highest interest. Fine andsubtle touches could not be absent from a work of Shakespeare'smaturity; but, with the possible exception of Lear himself, no one ofthe characters strikes us as psychologically a _wonderful_ creation, like Hamlet or Iago or even Macbeth; one or two seem even to be somewhatfaint and thin. And, what is more significant, it is not quite naturalto us to regard them from this point of view at all. Rather we observe amost unusual circumstance. If Lear, Gloster and Albany are set apart, the rest fall into two distinct groups, which are strongly, evenviolently, contrasted: Cordelia, Kent, Edgar, the Fool on one side, Goneril, Regan, Edmund, Cornwall, Oswald on the other. These charactersare in various degrees individualised, most of them completely so; butstill in each group there is a quality common to all the members, or onespirit breathing through them all. Here we have unselfish and devotedlove, there hard self-seeking. On both sides, further, the commonquality takes an extreme form; the love is incapable of being chilled byinjury, the selfishness of being softened by pity; and, it may be added, this tendency to extremes is found again in the characters of Lear andGloster, and is the main source of the accusations of improbabilitydirected against their conduct at certain points. Hence the members ofeach group tend to appear, at least in part, as varieties of onespecies; the radical differences of the two species are emphasized inbroad hard strokes; and the two are set in conflict, almost as ifShakespeare, like Empedocles, were regarding Love and Hate as the twoultimate forces of the universe. 

The presence in _King Lear_ of so large a number of characters in whomlove or self-seeking is so extreme, has another effect. They do notmerely inspire in us emotions of unusual strength, but they also stirthe intellect to wonder and speculation. How can there be such men andwomen? we ask ourselves. How comes it that humanity can take suchabsolutely opposite forms? And, in particular, to what omission ofelements which should be present in human nature, or, if there is noomission, to what distortion of these elements is it due that suchbeings as some of these come to exist? This is a question which Iago(and perhaps no previous creation of Shakespeare's) forces us to ask, but in _King Lear_ it is provoked again and again. And more, it seems tous that the author himself is asking this question. 'Then let themanatomise Regan, see what breeds about her heart. Is there any cause innature that makes these hard hearts?'--the strain of thought whichappears here seems to be present in some degree throughout the play. Weseem to trace the tendency which, a few years later, produced Ariel andCaliban, the tendency of imagination to analyse and abstract, todecompose human nature into its constituent factors, and then toconstruct beings in whom one or more of these factors is absent oratrophied or only incipient. This, of course, is a tendency whichproduces symbols, allegories, personifications of qualities and abstractideas; and we are accustomed to think it quite foreign to Shakespeare'sgenius, which was in the highest degree concrete. No doubt in the mainwe are right here; but it is hazardous to set limits to that genius. TheSonnets, if nothing else, may show us how easy it was to Shakespeare'smind to move in a world of 'Platonic' ideas;[142] and, while it would begoing too far to suggest that he was employing conscious symbolism orallegory in _King Lear_, it does appear to disclose a mode ofimagination not so very far removed from the mode with which, we mustremember, Shakespeare was perfectly familiar in Morality plays and inthe _Fairy Queen_. 

This same tendency shows itself in _King Lear_ in other forms. To it isdue the idea of monstrosity--of beings, actions, states of mind, whichappear not only abnormal but absolutely contrary to nature; an idea, which, of course, is common enough in Shakespeare, but appears withunusual frequency in _King Lear_, for instance in the lines:

 Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend, More hideous when thou show'st thee in a child Than the sea-monster!

or in the exclamation, Filial ingratitude! Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand For lifting food to't?

It appears in another shape in that most vivid passage where Albany, ashe looks at the face which had bewitched him, now distorted withdreadful passions, suddenly sees it in a new light and exclaims inhorror:

 Thou changed and self-cover'd thing, for shame. Be-monster not thy feature. Were't my fitness To let these hands obey my blood, They are apt enough to dislocate and tear Thy flesh and bones: howe'er thou art a fiend, A woman's shape doth shield thee. [143]

It appears once more in that exclamation of Kent's, as he listens tothe description of Cordelia's grief:

 It is the stars, The stars above us, govern our conditions; Else one self mate and mate could not beget Such different issues. 

(This is not the only sign that Shakespeare had been musing overheredity, and wondering how it comes about that the composition of twostrains of blood or two parent souls can produce such astonishinglydifferent products. )

This mode of thought is responsible, lastly, for a very strikingcharacteristic of _King Lear_--one in which it has no parallel except_Timon_--the incessant references to the lower animals[144] and man'slikeness to them. These references are scattered broadcast through thewhole play, as though Shakespeare's mind were so busy with the subjectthat he could hardly write a page without some allusion to it. The dog, the horse, the cow, the sheep, the hog, the lion, the bear, the wolf, the fox, the monkey, the pole-cat, the civet-cat, the pelican, the owl, the crow, the chough, the wren, the fly, the butterfly, the rat, themouse, the frog, the tadpole, the wall-newt, the water-newt, the worm--Iam sure I cannot have completed the list, and some of them are mentionedagain and again. Often, of course, and especially in the talk of Edgaras the Bedlam, they have no symbolical meaning; but not seldom, even inhis talk, they are expressly referred to for their typicalqualities--'hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog inmadness, lion in prey, ' 'The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to't Witha more riotous appetite. ' Sometimes a person in the drama is compared, openly or implicitly, with one of them. Goneril is a kite: heringratitude has a serpent's tooth: she has struck her father mostserpent-like upon the very heart: her visage is wolvish: she has tiedsharp-toothed unkindness like a vulture on her father's breast: for herhusband she is a gilded serpent: to Gloster her cruelty seems to havethe fangs of a boar. She and Regan are dog-hearted: they are tigers, notdaughters: each is an adder to the other: the flesh of each is coveredwith the fell of a beast. Oswald is a mongrel, and the son and heir of amongrel: ducking to everyone in power, he is a wag-tail: white withfear, he is a goose. Gloster, for Regan, is an ingrateful fox: Albany, for his wife, has a cowish spirit and is milk-liver'd: when Edgar as theBedlam first appeared to Lear he made him think a man a worm. As weread, the souls of all the beasts in turn seem to us to have entered thebodies of these mortals; horrible in their venom, savagery, lust, deceitfulness, sloth, cruelty, filthiness; miserable in theirfeebleness, nakedness, defencelessness, blindness; and man, 'considerhim well, ' is even what they are. Shakespeare, to whom the idea of thetransmigration of souls was familiar and had once been material forjest, [145] seems to have been brooding on humanity in the light of it. It is remarkable, and somewhat sad, that he seems to find none of man'sbetter qualities in the world of the brutes (though he might well havefound the prototype of the self-less love of Kent and Cordelia in thedog whom he so habitually maligns);[146] but he seems to have beenasking himself whether that which he loathes in man may not be due tosome strange wrenching of this frame of things, through which the loweranimal souls have found a lodgment in human forms, and there found--tothe horror and confusion of the thinking mind--brains to forge, tonguesto speak, and hands to act, enormities which no mere brute can conceiveor execute. He shows us in _King Lear_ these terrible forces burstinginto monstrous life and flinging themselves upon those human beings whoare weak and defenceless, partly from old age, but partly because they_are_ human and lack the dreadful undivided energy of the beast. And theonly comfort he might seem to hold out to us is the prospect that atleast this bestial race, strong only where it is vile, cannot endure:though stars and gods are powerless, or careless, or empty dreams, yetthere must be an end of this horrible world:

 It will come; Humanity must perforce prey on itself Like monsters of the deep. [147]

The influence of all this on imagination as we read _King Lear_ is verygreat; and it combines with other influences to convey to us, not in theform of distinct ideas but in the manner proper to poetry, the wider oruniversal significance of the spectacle presented to the inward eye. Butthe effect of theatrical exhibition is precisely the reverse. There thepoetic atmosphere is dissipated; the meaning of the very words whichcreate it passes half-realised; in obedience to the tyranny of the eyewe conceive the characters as mere particular men and women; and allthat mass of vague suggestion, if it enters the mind at all, appears inthe shape of an allegory which we immediately reject. A similar conflictbetween imagination and sense will be found if we consider the dramaticcentre of the whole tragedy, the Storm-scenes. The temptation of Othelloand the scene of Duncan's murder may lose upon the stage, but they donot lose their essence, and they gain as well as lose. The Storm-scenesin _King Lear_ gain nothing and their very essence is destroyed. It iscomparatively a small thing that the theatrical storm, not to drown thedialogue, must be silent whenever a human being wishes to speak, and iswretchedly inferior to many a storm we have witnessed. Nor is it simplythat, as Lamb observed, the corporal presence of Lear, 'an old mantottering about the stage with a walking-stick, ' disturbs and depressesthat sense of the greatness of his mind which fills the imagination. There is a further reason, which is not expressed, but still emerges, inthese words of Lamb's: 'the explosions of his passion are terrible as avolcano: they are storms turning up and disclosing to the bottom thatsea, his mind, with all its vast riches. ' Yes, 'they are _storms_. ' Forimagination, that is to say, the explosions of Lear's passion, and thebursts of rain and thunder, are not, what for the senses they must be, two things, but manifestations of one thing. It is the powers of thetormented soul that we hear and see in the 'groans of roaring wind andrain' and the 'sheets of fire'; and they that, at intervals almost moreoverwhelming, sink back into darkness and silence. Nor yet is even thisall; but, as those incessant references to wolf and tiger made us seehumanity 'reeling back into the beast' and ravening against itself, soin the storm we seem to see Nature herself convulsed by the samehorrible passions; the 'common mother, '

 Whose womb immeasurable and infinite breast Teems and feeds all, turning on her children, to complete the ruin they have wrought uponthemselves. Surely something not less, but much more, than thesehelpless words convey, is what comes to us in these astounding scenes;and if, translated thus into the language of prose, it becomes confusedand inconsistent, the reason is simply that it itself is poetry, andsuch poetry as cannot be transferred to the space behind thefoot-lights, but has its being only in imagination. Here then isShakespeare at his very greatest, but not the mere dramatistShakespeare. [148]

And now we may say this also of the catastrophe, which we foundquestionable from the strictly dramatic point of view. Its purpose isnot merely dramatic. This sudden blow out of the darkness, which seemsso far from inevitable, and which strikes down our reviving hopes forthe victims of so much cruelty, seems now only what we might haveexpected in a world so wild and monstrous. It is as if Shakespeare saidto us: 'Did you think weakness and innocence have any chance here? Wereyou beginning to dream that? I will show you it is not so. '

I come to a last point. As we contemplate this world, the questionpresses on us, What can be the ultimate power that moves it, thatexcites this gigantic war and waste, or, perhaps, that suffers them andoverrules them? And in _King Lear_ this question is not left to us toask, it is raised by the characters themselves. References to religiousor irreligious beliefs and feelings are more frequent than is usual inShakespeare's tragedies, as frequent perhaps as in his final plays. Heintroduces characteristic differences in the language of the differentpersons about fortune or the stars or the gods, and shows how thequestion What rules the world? is forced upon their minds. They answerit in their turn: Kent, for instance:

 It is the stars, The stars above us, govern our condition:

Edmund:

 Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law My services are bound:

and again, This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune--often the surfeit of our own behaviour--we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, . .. And all that we are evil in by a divine thrusting on:

Gloster:

 As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport;

Edgar:

 Think that the clearest gods, who make them honours Of men's impossibilities, have preserved thee. 

Here we have four distinct theories of the nature of the ruling power. And besides this, in such of the characters as have any belief in godswho love good and hate evil, the spectacle of triumphant injustice orcruelty provokes questionings like those of Job, or else the thought, often repeated, of divine retribution. To Lear at one moment the stormseems the messenger of heaven:

 Let the great gods, That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads, Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch, That hast within thee undivulged crimes. .. . 

At another moment those habitual miseries of the poor, of which he hastaken too little account, seem to him to accuse the gods of injustice:

 Take physic, pomp; Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, That thou mayst shake the superflux to them And show the heavens more just;

and Gloster has almost the same thought (IV. I. 67 ff. ). Gloster again, thinking of the cruelty of Lear's daughters, breaks out, but I shall see The winged vengeance overtake such children. 

The servants who have witnessed the blinding of Gloster by Cornwall andRegan, cannot believe that cruelty so atrocious will pass unpunished. One cries, I'll never care what wickedness I do, If this man come to good;

and another, if she live long, And in the end meet the old course of death, Women will all turn monsters. 

Albany greets the news of Cornwall's death with the exclamation, This shows you are above, You justicers, that these our nether crimes So speedily can venge;

and the news of the deaths of the sisters with the words, This judgment[149] of the heavens, that makes us tremble, Touches us not with pity. 

Edgar, speaking to Edmund of their father, declares

 The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to plague us, and Edmund himself assents. Almost throughout the latter half of thedrama we note in most of the better characters a pre-occupation with thequestion of the ultimate power, and a passionate need to explain byreference to it what otherwise would drive them to despair. And theinfluence of this pre-occupation and need joins with other influences inaffecting the imagination, and in causing it to receive from _King Lear_an impression which is at least as near of kin to the _Divine Comedy_ asto _Othello_. 

3

For Dante that which is recorded in the _Divine Comedy_ was the justiceand love of God. What did _King Lear_ record for Shakespeare? Something, it would seem, very different. This is certainly the most terriblepicture that Shakespeare painted of the world. In no other of histragedies does humanity appear more pitiably infirm or more hopelesslybad. What is Iago's malignity against an envied stranger compared withthe cruelty of the son of Gloster and the daughters of Lear? What arethe sufferings of a strong man like Othello to those of helpless age?Much too that we have already observed--the repetition of the main themein that of the under-plot, the comparisons of man with the most wretchedand the most horrible of the beasts, the impression of Nature'shostility to him, the irony of the unexpected catastrophe--these, withmuch else, seem even to indicate an intention to show things at theirworst, and to return the sternest of replies to that question of theultimate power and those appeals for retribution. Is it an accident, forexample, that Lear's first appeal to something beyond the earth, O heavens, If you do love old men, if your sweet sway Allow[150] obedience, if yourselves are old, Make it your cause:

is immediately answered by the iron voices of his daughters, raising byturns the conditions on which they will give him a humiliatingharbourage; or that his second appeal, heart-rending in its piteousness, You see me here, you gods, a poor old man, As full of grief as age; wretched in both:

is immediately answered from the heavens by the sounds of the breakingstorm?[151] Albany and Edgar may moralise on the divine justice as theywill, but how, in face of all that we see, shall we believe that theyspeak Shakespeare's mind? Is not his mind rather expressed in the bittercontrast between their faith and the events we witness, or in thescornful rebuke of those who take upon them the mystery of things as ifthey were God's spies?[152] Is it not Shakespeare's judgment on his kindthat we hear in Lear's appeal, And thou, all-shaking thunder, Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world! Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once, That make ingrateful man!

and Shakespeare's judgment on the worth of existence that we hear inLear's agonised cry, 'No, no, no life!'?

Beyond doubt, I think, some such feelings as these possess us, and, ifwe follow Shakespeare, ought to possess us, from time to time as we read_King Lear_. And some readers will go further and maintain that this isalso the ultimate and total impression left by the tragedy. _King Lear_has been held to be profoundly 'pessimistic' in the full meaning of thatword, --the record of a time when contempt and loathing for his kind hadovermastered the poet's soul, and in despair he pronounced man's life tobe simply hateful and hideous. And if we exclude the biographical partof this view, [153] the rest may claim some support even from thegreatest of Shakespearean critics since the days of Coleridge, Hazlittand Lamb. Mr. Swinburne, after observing that _King Lear_ is 'by far themost Aeschylean' of Shakespeare's works, proceeds thus:

'But in one main point it differs radically from the work and the spiritof Aeschylus. Its fatalism is of a darker and harder nature. ToPrometheus the fetters of the lord and enemy of mankind were bitter;upon Orestes the hand of heaven was laid too heavily to bear; yet in thenot utterly infinite or everlasting distance we see beyond them thepromise of the morning on which mystery and justice shall be made one;when righteousness and omnipotence at last shall kiss each other. But onthe horizon of Shakespeare's tragic fatalism we see no such twilight ofatonement, such pledge of reconciliation as this. Requital, redemption, amends, equity, explanation, pity and mercy, are words without a meaninghere. 

 As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport. 

Here is no need of the Eumenides, children of Night everlasting; forhere is very Night herself. 

'The words just cited are not casual or episodical; they strike thekeynote of the whole poem, lay the keystone of the whole arch ofthought. There is no contest of conflicting forces, no judgment so muchas by casting of lots: far less is there any light of heavenly harmonyor of heavenly wisdom, of Apollo or Athene from above. We have heardmuch and often from theologians of the light of revelation: and somesuch thing indeed we find in Aeschylus; but the darkness of revelationis here. '[154]

It is hard to refuse assent to these eloquent words, for they express inthe language of a poet what we feel at times in reading _King Lear_ butcannot express. But do they represent the total and final impressionproduced by the play? If they do, this impression, so far as thesubstance of the drama is concerned (and nothing else is in questionhere), must, it would seem, be one composed almost wholly of painfulfeelings, --utter depression, or indignant rebellion, or appalleddespair. And that would surely be strange. For _King Lear_ is admittedlyone of the world's greatest poems, and yet there is surely no other ofthese poems which produces on the whole this effect, and we regard it asa very serious flaw in any considerable work of art that this should beits ultimate effect. [155] So that Mr. Swinburne's description, if takenas final, and any description of King Lear as 'pessimistic' in theproper sense of that word, would imply a criticism which is notintended, and which would make it difficult to leave the work in theposition almost universally assigned to it. 

But in fact these descriptions, like most of the remarks made on _KingLear_ in the present lecture, emphasise only certain aspects of the playand certain elements in the total impression; and in that impression theeffect of these aspects, though far from being lost, is modified by thatof others. I do not mean that the final effect resembles that of the_Divine Comedy_ or the _Oresteia_: how should it, when the first ofthese can be called by its author a 'Comedy, ' and when the second, ending (as doubtless the _Prometheus_ trilogy also ended) with asolution, is not in the Shakespearean sense a tragedy at all?[156] Nordo I mean that _King Lear_ contains a revelation of righteousomnipotence or heavenly harmony, or even a promise of the reconciliationof mystery and justice. But then, as we saw, neither do Shakespeare'sother tragedies contain these things. Any theological interpretation ofthe world on the author's part is excluded from them, and their effectwould be disordered or destroyed equally by the ideas of righteous or ofunrighteous omnipotence. Nor, in reading them, do we think of 'justice'or 'equity' in the sense of a strict requital or such an adjustment ofmerit and prosperity as our moral sense is said to demand; and therenever was vainer labour than that of critics who try to make out thatthe persons in these dramas meet with 'justice' or their 'deserts. '[157]But, on the other hand, man is not represented in these tragedies as themere plaything of a blind or capricious power, suffering woes which haveno relation to his character and actions; nor is the world representedas given over to darkness. And in these respects _King Lear_, though themost terrible of these works, does not differ in essence from the rest. Its keynote is surely to be heard neither in the words wrung fromGloster in his anguish, nor in Edgar's words 'the gods are just. ' Itsfinal and total result is one in which pity and terror, carried perhapsto the extreme limits of art, are so blended with a sense of law andbeauty that we feel at last, not depression and much less despair, but aconsciousness of greatness in pain, and of solemnity in the mystery wecannot fathom. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 123: I leave undiscussed the position of _King Lear_ inrelation to the 'comedies' of _Measure for Measure_, _Troilus andCressida_ and _All's Well_. ]

[Footnote 124: See Note R. ]

[Footnote 125: On some of the points mentioned in this paragraph seeNote S. ]

[Footnote 126:

 '_Kent. _ I thought the king had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall. 

 _Glos. _ It did always seem so to us: but now, in the division of the kingdom, it appears not which of the dukes he values most. '

For (Gloster goes on to say) their shares are exactly equal in value. And if the shares of the two elder daughters are fixed, obviously thatof the third is so too. ]

[Footnote 127:

 I loved her most, and thought to set my rest On her kind nursery. ]

[Footnote 128: It is to Lear's altered plan that Kent applies thesewords. ]

[Footnote 129: There is talk of a war between Goneril and Regan within afortnight of the division of the kingdom (II. I. 11 f. ). ]

[Footnote 130: I mean that no sufficiently clear reason is supplied forEdmund's delay in attempting to save Cordelia and Lear. The matterstands thus. Edmund, after the defeat of the opposing army, sends Learand Cordelia to prison. Then, in accordance with a plan agreed onbetween himself and Goneril, he despatches a captain with secret ordersto put them both to death _instantly_ (V. Iii. 26-37, 244, 252). He thenhas to fight with the disguised Edgar. He is mortally wounded, and, ashe lies dying, he says to Edgar (at line 162, _more than a hundredlines_ after he gave that commission to the captain):

 What you have charged me with, that have I done; And more, much more; the time will bring it out; 'Tis past, and so am I. 

In 'more, much more' he seems to be thinking of the order for the deathsof Lear and Cordelia (what else remained undisclosed?); yet he saysnothing about it. A few lines later he recognises the justice of hisfate, yet still says nothing. Then he hears the story of his father'sdeath, says it has moved him and 'shall perchance do good' (What goodexcept saving his victims?); yet he still says nothing. Even when hehears that Goneril is dead and Regan poisoned, he _still_ says nothing. It is only when directly questioned about Lear and Cordelia that hetries to save the victims who were to be killed 'instantly' (242). Howcan we explain his delay? Perhaps, thinking the deaths of Lear andCordelia would be of use to Goneril and Regan, he will not speak till heis sure that both the sisters are dead. Or perhaps, though he canrecognise the justice of his fate and can be touched by the account ofhis father's death, he is still too self-absorbed to rise to the activeeffort to 'do some good, despite of his own nature. ' But, while eitherof these conjectures is possible, it is surely far from satisfactorythat we should be left to mere conjecture as to the cause of the delaywhich permits the catastrophe to take place. The _real_ cause liesoutside the dramatic _nexus_. It is Shakespeare's wish to deliver asudden and crushing blow to the hopes which he has excited. ]

[Footnote 131: Everything in these paragraphs must, of course, be takenin connection with later remarks. ]

[Footnote 132: I say 'the reader's, ' because on the stage, whenever Ihave seen _King Lear_, the 'cuts' necessitated by modern scenery wouldhave made this part of the play absolutely unintelligible to me if I hadnot been familiar with it. It is significant that Lamb in his _Tale ofKing Lear_ almost omits the sub-plot. ]

[Footnote 133: Even if Cordelia had won the battle, Shakespeare wouldprobably have hesitated to concentrate interest on it, for her victorywould have been a British defeat. On Spedding's view, that he did meanto make the battle more interesting, and that his purpose has beendefeated by our wrong division of Acts IV. And V. , see Note X. ]

[Footnote 134: It is vain to suggest that Edmund has only just comehome, and that the letter is supposed to have been sent to him when hewas 'out' See I. Ii. 38-40, 65 f. ]

[Footnote 135: The idea in scene i. , perhaps, is that Cordelia'smarriage, like the division of the kingdom, has really beenpre-arranged, and that the ceremony of choosing between France andBurgundy (I. I. 46 f. ) is a mere fiction. Burgundy is to be her husband, and that is why, when Lear has cast her off, he offers her to Burgundyfirst (l. 192 ff. ). It might seem from 211 ff. That Lear's reason fordoing so is that he prefers France, or thinks him the greater man, andtherefore will not offer him first what is worthless: but the languageof France (240 ff. ) seems to show that he recognises a prior right inBurgundy. ]

[Footnote 136: See Note T. And p. 315. ]

[Footnote 137: See Note U. ]

[Footnote 138: The word 'heath' in the stage-directions of thestorm-scenes is, I may remark, Rowe's, not Shakespeare's, who never usedthe word till he wrote _Macbeth_. ]

[Footnote 139: It is pointed out in Note V. That what modern editorscall Scenes ii. , iii. , iv. Of Act II. Are really one scene, for Kent ison the stage through them all. ]

[Footnote 140: [On the locality of Act I. , Sc. Ii. , see _Modern LanguageReview_ for Oct. , 1908, and Jan. , 1909. ]]

[Footnote 141: This effect of the double action seems to have beenpointed out first by Schlegel. ]

[Footnote 142: How prevalent these are is not recognised by readersfamiliar only with English poetry. See Simpson's _Introduction to thePhilosophy of Shakespeare's Sonnets_ (1868) and Mr. Wyndham's edition ofShakespeare's Poems. Perhaps both writers overstate, and Simpson'sinterpretations are often forced or arbitrary, but his book is valuableand ought not to remain out of print. ]

[Footnote 143: The monstrosity here is a being with a woman's body and afiend's soul. For the interpretation of the lines see Note Y. ]

[Footnote 144: Since this paragraph was written I have found that theabundance of these references has been pointed out and commented on byJ. Kirkman, _New Shaks. Soc. Trans. _, 1877. ]

[Footnote 145: _E. G. _ in _As You Like It_, III. Ii. 187, 'I was never soberhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat, which I canhardly remember'; _Twelfth Night_, IV. Ii. 55, '_Clown. _ What is theopinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl? _Mal. _ That the soul of ourgrandam might haply inhabit a bird. _Clown. _ What thinkest thou of hisopinion? _Mal. _ I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve hisopinion, ' etc. But earlier comes a passage which reminds us of _KingLear_, _Merchant of Venice_, IV. I. 128:

 O be thou damn'd, inexecrable dog! And for thy life let justice be accused. Thou almost makest me waver in my faith To hold opinion with Pythagoras, That souls of animals infuse themselves Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit Govern'd a wolf, who, hang'd for human slaughter, Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet, And, whilst thou lay'st in thy unhallow'd dam, Infused itself in thee; for thy desires Are wolvish, bloody, starved and ravenous. ]

[Footnote 146: I fear it is not possible, however, to refute, on thewhole, one charge, --that the dog is a snob, in the sense that herespects power and prosperity, and objects to the poor and despised. Itis curious that Shakespeare refers to this trait three times in _KingLear_, as if he were feeling a peculiar disgust at it. See III. Vi. 65, 'The little dogs and all, ' etc. : IV. Vi. 159, 'Thou hast seen a farmer'sdog bark at a beggar . .. And the creature run from the cur? There thoumightst behold the great image of authority': V. Iii. 186, 'taught me toshift Into a madman's rags; to assume a semblance That very dogsdisdain'd. ' Cf. _Oxford Lectures_, p. 341. ]

[Footnote 147: With this compare the following lines in the great speechon 'degree' in _Troilus and Cressida_, I. Iii. :

 Take but degree away, untune that string, And, hark, what discord follows! Each thing meets In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores And make a sop of all this solid globe: Strength should be lord of imbecility, And the rude son should strike his father dead: Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong, Between whose endless jar justice resides, Should lose their names, and so should justice too. Then everything includes itself in power, Power into will, will into appetite; And appetite, an universal wolf, So doubly seconded with will and power, Must make perforce an universal prey, And last eat up himself. ]

[Footnote 148: Nor is it believable that Shakespeare, whose means ofimitating a storm were so greatly inferior even to ours, had thestage-performance only or chiefly in view in composing these scenes. Hemay not have thought of readers (or he may), but he must in any casehave written to satisfy his own imagination. I have taken no notice ofthe part played in these scenes by anyone except Lear. The matter is toohuge, and too strictly poetic, for analysis. I may observe that in ourpresent theatres, owing to the use of elaborate scenery, the threeStorm-scenes are usually combined, with disastrous effect. Shakespeare, as we saw (p. 49), interposed between them short scenes of much lowertone. ]

[Footnote 149: 'justice, ' Qq. ]

[Footnote 150: =approve. ]

[Footnote 151: The direction 'Storm and tempest' at the end of thisspeech is not modern, it is in the Folio. ]

[Footnote 152: The gods are mentioned many times in _King Lear_, but'God' only here (V. Ii. 16). ]

[Footnote 153: The whole question how far Shakespeare's works representhis personal feelings and attitude, and the changes in them, would carryus so far beyond the bounds of the four tragedies, is so needless forthe understanding of them, and is so little capable of decision, that Ihave excluded it from these lectures; and I will add here a note on itonly as it concerns the 'tragic period. '

There are here two distinct sets of facts, equally important, (1) On theone side there is the fact that, so far as we can make out, after_Twelfth Night_ Shakespeare wrote, for seven or eight years, no playwhich, like many of his earlier works, can be called happy, much lessmerry or sunny. He wrote tragedies; and if the chronological order_Hamlet_, _Othello_, _King Lear_, _Timon_, _Macbeth_, is correct, thesetragedies show for some time a deepening darkness, and _King Lear_ and_Timon_ lie at the nadir. He wrote also in these years (probably in theearlier of them) certain 'comedies, ' _Measure for Measure_ and _Troilusand Cressida_, and perhaps _All's Well_. But about these comedies thereis a peculiar air of coldness; there is humour, of course, but littlemirth; in _Measure for Measure_ perhaps, certainly in _Troilus andCressida_, a spirit of bitterness and contempt seems to pervade anintellectual atmosphere of an intense but hard clearness. With _Macbeth_perhaps, and more decidedly in the two Roman tragedies which followed, the gloom seems to lift; and the final romances show a mellow serenitywhich sometimes warms into radiant sympathy, and even into a mirthalmost as light-hearted as that of younger days. When we consider thesefacts, not as barely stated thus but as they affect us in reading theplays, it is, to my mind, very hard to believe that their origin wassimply and solely a change in dramatic methods or choice of subjects, oreven merely such inward changes as may be expected to accompany thearrival and progress of middle age. 

(2) On the other side, and over against these facts, we have to set themultitudinousness of Shakespeare's genius, and his almost unlimitedpower of conceiving and expressing human experience of all kinds. And wehave to set more. Apparently during this period of years he never ceasedto write busily, or to exhibit in his writings the greatest mentalactivity. He wrote also either nothing or very little (_Troilus andCressida_ and his part of _Timon_ are the possible exceptions) in whichthere is any appearance of personal feeling overcoming or seriouslyendangering the self-control or 'objectivity' of the artist. And finallyit is not possible to make out any continuously deepening _personal_note: for although _Othello_ is darker than _Hamlet_ it surely strikesone as about as impersonal as a play can be; and, on grounds of styleand versification, it appears (to me, at least) impossible to bring_Troilus and Cressida_ chronologically close to _King Lear_ and _Timon_;even if parts of it are later than others, the late parts must bedecidedly earlier than those plays. 

The conclusion we may very tentatively draw from these sets of factswould seem to be as follows. Shakespeare during these years was probablynot a happy man, and it is quite likely that he felt at times even anintense melancholy, bitterness, contempt, anger, possibly even loathingand despair. It is quite likely too that he used these experiences ofhis in writing such plays as _Hamlet_, _Troilus and Cressida_, _KingLear_, _Timon_. But it is evident that he cannot have been for anyconsiderable time, if, ever, overwhelmed by such feelings, and there isno appearance of their having issued in any settled 'pessimistic'conviction which coloured his whole imagination and expressed itself inhis works. The choice of the subject of ingratitude, for instance, in_King Lear_ and _Timon_, and the method of handling it, may have beendue in part to personal feeling; but it does not follow that thisfeeling was particularly acute at this particular time, and, even if itwas, it certainly was not so absorbing as to hinder Shakespeare fromrepresenting in the most sympathetic manner aspects of life the veryreverse of pessimistic. Whether the total impression of _King Lear_ canbe called pessimistic is a further question, which is considered in thetext. ]

[Footnote 154: _A Study of Shakespeare_, pp. 171, 172. ]

[Footnote 155: A flaw, I mean, in a work of art considered not as amoral or theological document but as a work of art, --an aesthetic flaw. I add the word 'considerable' because we do not regard the effect inquestion as a flaw in a work like a lyric or a short piece of music, which may naturally be taken as expressions merely of a mood or asubordinate aspect of things. ]

[Footnote 156: Caution is very necessary in making comparisons betweenShakespeare and the Greek dramatists. A tragedy like the _Antigone_stands, in spite of differences, on the same ground as a Shakespeareantragedy; it is a self-contained whole with a catastrophe. A drama likethe _Philoctetes_ is a self-contained whole, but, ending with asolution, it corresponds not with a Shakespearean tragedy but with aplay like _Cymbeline_. A drama like the _Agamemnon_ or the _PrometheusVinctus_ answers to no Shakespearean form of play. It is not aself-contained whole, but a part of a trilogy. If the trilogy isconsidered as a unit, it answers not to _Hamlet_ but to _Cymbeline_. Ifthe part is considered as a whole, it answers to _Hamlet_, but may thenbe open to serious criticism. Shakespeare never made a tragedy end withthe complete triumph of the worse side: the _Agamemnon_ and_Prometheus_, if wrongly taken as wholes, would do this, and would sofar, I must think, be bad tragedies. [It can scarcely be necessary toremind the reader that, in point of 'self-containedness, ' there is adifference of degree between the pure tragedies of Shakespeare and someof the historical. ]]

[Footnote 157: I leave it to better authorities to say how far theseremarks apply also to Greek Tragedy, however much the language of'justice' may be used there. ]

LECTURE VIII

KING LEAR

We have now to look at the characters in _King Lear_; and I propose toconsider them to some extent from the point of view indicated at theclose of the last lecture, partly because we have so far been regardingthe tragedy mainly from an opposite point of view, and partly becausethese characters are so numerous that it would not be possible withinour limits to examine them fully. 

1

The position of the hero in this tragedy is in one important respectpeculiar. The reader of _Hamlet_, _Othello_, or _Macbeth_, is in nodanger of forgetting, when the catastrophe is reached, the part playedby the hero in bringing it on. His fatal weakness, error, wrong-doing, continues almost to the end. It is otherwise with _King Lear_. When theconclusion arrives, the old King has for a long while been passive. Wehave long regarded him not only as 'a man more sinned against thansinning, ' but almost wholly as a sufferer, hardly at all as an agent. His sufferings too have been so cruel, and our indignation against thosewho inflicted them has been so intense, that recollection of the wronghe did to Cordelia, to Kent, and to his realm, has been well-nigheffaced. Lastly, for nearly four Acts he has inspired in us, togetherwith this pity, much admiration and affection. The force of his passionhas made us feel that his nature was great; and his frankness andgenerosity, his heroic efforts to be patient, the depth of his shame andrepentance, and the ecstasy of his re-union with Cordelia, have meltedour very hearts. Naturally, therefore, at the close we are in somedanger of forgetting that the storm which has overwhelmed him wasliberated by his own deed. 

Yet it is essential that Lear's contribution to the action of the dramashould be remembered; not at all in order that we may feel that he'deserved' what he suffered, but because otherwise his fate would appearto us at best pathetic, at worst shocking, but certainly not tragic. Andwhen we were reading the earlier scenes of the play we recognised thiscontribution clearly enough. At the very beginning, it is true, we areinclined to feel merely pity and misgivings. The first lines tell usthat Lear's mind is beginning to fail with age. [158] Formerly he hadperceived how different were the characters of Albany and Cornwall, butnow he seems either to have lost this perception or to be unwiselyignoring it. The rashness of his division of the kingdom troubles us, and we cannot but see with concern that its motive is mainly selfish. The absurdity of the pretence of making the division depend onprotestations of love from his daughters, his complete blindness to thehypocrisy which is patent to us at a glance, his piteous delight inthese protestations, the openness of his expressions of preference forhis youngest daughter--all make us smile, but all pain us. But pitybegins to give way to another feeling when we witness the precipitance, the despotism, the uncontrolled anger of his injustice to Cordelia andKent, and the 'hideous rashness' of his persistence in dividing thekingdom after the rejection of his one dutiful child. We feel now thepresence of force, as well as weakness, but we feel also the presence ofthe tragic [Greek: hubris]. Lear, we see, is generous and unsuspicious, of an open and free nature, like Hamlet and Othello and indeed most ofShakespeare's heroes, who in this, according to Ben Jonson, resemble thepoet who made them. Lear, we see, is also choleric by temperament--thefirst of Shakespeare's heroes who is so. And a long life of absolutepower, in which he has been flattered to the top of his bent, hasproduced in him that blindness to human limitations, and thatpresumptuous self-will, which in Greek tragedy we have so often seenstumbling against the altar of Nemesis. Our consciousness that the decayof old age contributes to this condition deepens our pity and our senseof human infirmity, but certainly does not lead us to regard the oldKing as irresponsible, and so to sever the tragic _nexus_ which bindstogether his error and his calamities. 

The magnitude of this first error is generally fully recognised by thereader owing to his sympathy with Cordelia, though, as we have seen, heoften loses the memory of it as the play advances. But this is not so, Ithink, with the repetition of this error, in the quarrel with Goneril. Here the daughter excites so much detestation, and the father so muchsympathy, that we often fail to receive the due impression of hisviolence. There is not here, of course, the _injustice_ of his rejectionof Cordelia, but there is precisely the same [Greek: hubris]. This hadbeen shown most strikingly in the first scene when, _immediately_ uponthe apparently cold words of Cordelia, 'So young, my lord, and true, 'there comes this dreadful answer:

 Let it be so; thy truth then be thy dower. For, by the sacred radiance of the sun, The mysteries of Hecate and the night; By all the operation of the orbs From whom we do exist and cease to be; Here I disclaim all my paternal care, Propinquity and property of blood, And as a stranger to my heart and me Hold thee from this for ever. The barbarous Scythian, Or he that makes his generation messes To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom Be as well neighbour'd, pitied and relieved, As thou my sometime daughter. 

Now the dramatic effect of this passage is exactly, and doubtlessintentionally, repeated in the curse pronounced against Goneril. Thisdoes not come after the daughters have openly and wholly turned againsttheir father. Up to the moment of its utterance Goneril has done no morethan to require him 'a little to disquantity' and reform his train ofknights. Certainly her manner and spirit in making this demand arehateful, and probably her accusations against the knights are false; andwe should expect from any father in Lear's position passionate distressand indignation. But surely the famous words which form Lear's immediatereply were meant to be nothing short of frightful:

 Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear! Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend To make this creature fruitful! Into her womb convey sterility! Dry up in her the organs of increase; And from her derogate body never spring A babe to honour her! If she must teem, Create her child of spleen; that it may live, And be a thwart disnatured torment to her! Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth; With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks; Turn all her mother's pains and benefits To laughter and contempt; that she may feel How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child!

The question is not whether Goneril deserves these appallingimprecations, but what they tell us about Lear. They show that, althoughhe has already recognised his injustice towards Cordelia, is secretlyblaming himself, and is endeavouring to do better, the disposition fromwhich his first error sprang is still unchanged. And it is precisely thedisposition to give rise, in evil surroundings, to calamities dreadfulbut at the same time tragic, because due in some measure to the personwho endures them. 

The perception of this connection, if it is not lost as the playadvances, does not at all diminish our pity for Lear, but it makes itimpossible for us permanently to regard the world displayed in thistragedy as subject to a mere arbitrary or malicious power. It makes usfeel that this world is so far at least a rational and a moral order, that there holds in it the law, not of proportionate requital, but ofstrict connection between act and consequence. It is, so far, the worldof all Shakespeare's tragedies. 

But there is another aspect of Lear's story, the influence of whichmodifies, in a way quite different and more peculiar to this tragedy, the impressions called pessimistic and even this impression of law. There is nothing more noble and beautiful in literature thanShakespeare's exposition of the effect of suffering in reviving thegreatness and eliciting the sweetness of Lear's nature. The occasionalrecurrence, during his madness, of autocratic impatience or of desirefor revenge serves only to heighten this effect, and the moments whenhis insanity becomes merely infinitely piteous do not weaken it. The oldKing who in pleading with his daughters feels so intensely his ownhumiliation and their horrible ingratitude, and who yet, at fourscoreand upward, constrains himself to practise a self-control and patienceso many years disused; who out of old affection for his Fool, and inrepentance for his injustice to the Fool's beloved mistress, toleratesincessant and cutting reminders of his own folly and wrong; in whom therage of the storm awakes a power and a poetic grandeur surpassing eventhat of Othello's anguish; who comes in his affliction to think ofothers first, and to seek, in tender solicitude for his poor boy, theshelter he scorns for his own bare head; who learns to feel and to prayfor the miserable and houseless poor, to discern the falseness offlattery and the brutality of authority, and to pierce below thedifferences of rank and raiment to the common humanity beneath; whosesight is so purged by scalding tears that it sees at last how power andplace and all things in the world are vanity except love; who tastes inhis last hours the extremes both of love's rapture and of its agony, butcould never, if he lived on or lived again, care a jot for aughtbeside--there is no figure, surely, in the world of poetry at once sogrand, so pathetic, and so beautiful as his. Well, but Lear owes thewhole of this to those sufferings which made us doubt whether life werenot simply evil, and men like the flies which wanton boys torture fortheir sport. Should we not be at least as near the truth if we calledthis poem _The Redemption of King Lear_, and declared that the businessof 'the gods' with him was neither to torment him, nor to teach him a'noble anger, ' but to lead him to attain through apparently hopelessfailure the very end and aim of life? One can believe that Shakespearehad been tempted at times to feel misanthropy and despair, but it isquite impossible that he can have been mastered by such feelings at thetime when he produced this conception. 

To dwell on the stages of this process of purification (the word isProfessor Dowden's) is impossible here; and there are scenes, such asthat of the meeting of Lear and Cordelia, which it seems almost aprofanity to touch. [159] But I will refer to two scenes which may remindus more in detail of some of the points just mentioned. The third andfourth scenes of Act III. Present one of those contrasts which speak aseloquently even as Shakespeare's words, and which were made possible inhis theatre by the absence of scenery and the consequent absence ofintervals between the scenes. First, in a scene of twenty-three lines, mostly in prose, Gloster is shown, telling his son Edmund how Goneriland Regan have forbidden him on pain of death to succour the houselessKing; how a secret letter has reached him, announcing the arrival of aFrench force; and how, whatever the consequences may be, he isdetermined to relieve his old master. Edmund, left alone, soliloquisesin words which seem to freeze one's blood:

 This courtesy, forbid thee, shall the duke Instantly know; and of that letter too: This seems a fair deserving, and must draw me That which my father loses; no less than all: The younger rises when the old doth fall. 

He goes out; and the next moment, as the fourth scene opens, we findourselves in the icy storm with Lear, Kent and the Fool, and yet in theinmost shrine of love. I am not speaking of the devotion of the othersto Lear, but of Lear himself. He had consented, merely for the Fool'ssake, to seek shelter in the hovel:

 Come, your hovel. Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart That's sorry yet for thee. 

But on the way he has broken down and has been weeping (III. Iv. 17), and now he resists Kent's efforts to persuade him to enter. He does notfeel the storm:

 when the mind's free The body's delicate: the tempest in my mind Doth from my senses take all feeling else Save what beats there:

and the thoughts that will drive him mad are burning in his brain:

 Filial ingratitude! Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand For lifting food to't? But I will punish home. No, I will weep no more. In such a night To shut me out! Pour on; I will endure. In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril! Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all, -- O, that way madness lies; let me shun that; No more of that. 

And then suddenly, as he controls himself, the blessed spirit ofkindness breathes on him 'like a meadow gale of spring, ' and he turnsgently to Kent:

 Prithee, go in thyself; seek thine own ease: This tempest will not give me leave to ponder On things would hurt me more. But I'll go in. In, boy; go first. You houseless poverty-- Nay, get thee in. I'll pray, and then I'll sleep. 

But his prayer is not for himself. 

 Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, it begins, and I need not quote more. This is one of those passageswhich make one worship Shakespeare. [160]

Much has been written on the representation of insanity in _King Lear_, and I will confine myself to one or two points which may have escapednotice. The most obvious symptom of Lear's insanity, especially in itsfirst stages, is of course the domination of a fixed idea. Whateverpresents itself to his senses, is seized on by this idea and compelledto express it; as for example in those words, already quoted, whichfirst show that his mind has actually given way:

 Hast thou given all To thy two daughters? And art thou come to this?[161]

But it is remarkable that what we have here is only, in an exaggeratedand perverted form, the very same action of imagination that, justbefore the breakdown of reason, produced those sublime appeals:

 O heavens, If you do love old men, if your sweet sway Allow obedience, if yourselves are old, Make it your cause;

and:

 Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain! Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters: I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness; I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children, You owe me no subscription: then let fall Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave, A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man: But yet I call you servile ministers, That have with two pernicious daughters join'd Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head So old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul!

Shakespeare, long before this, in the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, hadnoticed the resemblance between the lunatic, the lover, and the poet;and the partial truth that genius is allied to insanity was quitefamiliar to him. But he presents here the supplementary half-truth thatinsanity is allied to genius. 

He does not, however, put into the mouth of the insane Lear any suchsublime passages as those just quoted. Lear's insanity, which destroysthe coherence, also reduces the poetry of his imagination. What itstimulates is that power of moral perception and reflection which hadalready been quickened by his sufferings. This, however partial andhowever disconnectedly used, first appears, quite soon after theinsanity has declared itself, in the idea that the naked beggarrepresents truth and reality, in contrast with those conventions, flatteries, and corruptions of the great world, by which Lear has solong been deceived and will never be deceived again:

 Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! here's three on's are sophisticated: thou art the thing itself. 

Lear regards the beggar therefore with reverence and delight, as aperson who is in the secret of things, and he longs to question himabout their causes. It is this same strain of thought which much later(IV. Vi. ), gaining far greater force, though the insanity has otherwiseadvanced, issues in those famous Timon-like speeches which make usrealise the original strength of the old King's mind. And when thisstrain, on his recovery, unites with the streams of repentance and love, it produces that serene renunciation of the world, with its power andglory and resentments and revenges, which is expressed in the speech (V. Iii. ):

 No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison: We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage: When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down, And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too, Who loses, and who wins; who's in, who's out; And take upon's the mystery of things, As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out, In a wall'd prison, packs and sets of great ones, That ebb and flow by the moon. 

This is that renunciation which is at the same time a sacrifice offeredto the gods, and on which the gods themselves throw incense; and, it maybe, it would never have been offered but for the knowledge that came toLear in his madness. 

I spoke of Lear's 'recovery, ' but the word is too strong. The Lear ofthe Fifth Act is not indeed insane, but his mind is greatly enfeebled. The speech just quoted is followed by a sudden flash of the oldpassionate nature, reminding us most pathetically of Lear's efforts, just before his madness, to restrain his tears:

 Wipe thine eyes: The good-years shall devour them, flesh and fell, Ere they shall make us weep: we'll see 'em starve first. 

And this weakness is still more pathetically shown in the blindness ofthe old King to his position now that he and Cordelia are madeprisoners. It is evident that Cordelia knows well what mercy her fatheris likely to receive from her sisters; that is the reason of herweeping. But he does not understand her tears; it never crosses his mindthat they have anything more than imprisonment to fear. And what is thatto them? They have made that sacrifice, and all is well:

 Have I caught thee? He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven, And fire us hence like foxes. 

This blindness is most affecting to us, who know in what manner theywill be parted; but it is also comforting. And we find the same minglingof effects in the overwhelming conclusion of the story. If to thereader, as to the bystanders, that scene brings one unbroken pain, it isnot so with Lear himself. His shattered mind passes from the firsttransports of hope and despair, as he bends over Cordelia's body andholds the feather to her lips, into an absolute forgetfulness of thecause of these transports. This continues so long as he can conversewith Kent; becomes an almost complete vacancy; and is disturbed only toyield, as his eyes suddenly fall again on his child's corpse, to anagony which at once breaks his heart. And, finally, though he is killedby an agony of pain, the agony in which he actually dies is one not ofpain but of ecstasy. Suddenly, with a cry represented in the oldest textby a four-times repeated 'O, ' he exclaims:

 Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips, Look there, look there!

These are the last words of Lear. He is sure, at last, that she _lives_:and what had he said when he was still in doubt?

 She lives! if it be so, It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows That ever I have felt!

To us, perhaps, the knowledge that he is deceived may bring aculmination of pain: but, if it brings _only_ that, I believe we arefalse to Shakespeare, and it seems almost beyond question that any actoris false to the text who does not attempt to express, in Lear's lastaccents and gestures and look, an unbearable _joy_. [162]

To dwell on the pathos of Lear's last speech would be an impertinence, but I may add a remark on the speech from the literary point of view. Inthe simplicity of its language, which consists almost wholly ofmonosyllables of native origin, composed in very brief sentences of theplainest structure, it presents an extraordinary contrast to the dyingspeech of Hamlet and the last words of Othello to the by-standers. Thefact that Lear speaks in passion is one cause of the difference, but notthe sole cause. The language is more than simple, it is familiar. Andthis familiarity is characteristic of Lear (except at certain moments, already referred to) from the time of his madness onwards, and is thesource of the peculiarly poignant effect of some of his sentences (suchas 'The little dogs and all. .. . '). We feel in them the loss of power tosustain his royal dignity; we feel also that everything external hasbecome nothingness to him, and that what remains is 'the thing itself, 'the soul in its bare greatness. Hence also it is that two lines in thislast speech show, better perhaps than any other passage of poetry, oneof the qualities we have in mind when we distinguish poetry as'romantic. ' Nothing like Hamlet's mysterious sigh 'The rest is silence, 'nothing like Othello's memories of his life of marvel and achievement, was possible to Lear. Those last thoughts are romantic in theirstrangeness: Lear's five-times repeated 'Never, ' in which the simplestand most unanswerable cry of anguish rises note by note till the heartbreaks, is romantic in its naturalism; and to make a verse out of thisone word required the boldness as well as the inspiration which cameinfallibly to Shakespeare at the greatest moments. But the familiarity, boldness and inspiration are surpassed (if that can be) by the nextline, which shows the bodily oppression asking for bodily relief. Theimagination that produced Lear's curse or his defiance of the storm maybe paralleled in its kind, but where else are we to seek the imaginationthat could venture to follow that cry of 'Never' with such a phrase as'undo this button, ' and yet could leave us on the topmost peaks ofpoetry?[163]

2

Gloster and Albany are the two neutral characters of the tragedy. Theparallel between Lear and Gloster, already noticed, is, up to a certainpoint, so marked that it cannot possibly be accidental. Both are oldwhite-haired men (III. Vii. 37); both, it would seem, widowers, withchildren comparatively young. Like Lear, Gloster is tormented, and hislife is sought, by the child whom he favours; he is tended and healed bythe child whom he has wronged. His sufferings, like Lear's, are partlytraceable to his own extreme folly and injustice, and, it may be added, to a selfish pursuit of his own pleasure. [164] His sufferings, again, like Lear's, purify and enlighten him: he dies a better and wiser manthan he showed himself at first. They even learn the same lesson, andGloster's repetition (noticed and blamed by Johnson) of the thought in afamous speech of Lear's is surely intentional. [165] And, finally, Gloster dies almost as Lear dies. Edgar reveals himself to him and askshis blessing (as Cordelia asks Lear's):

 but his flaw'd heart-- Alack, too weak the conflict to support-- 'Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief, Burst smilingly. 

So far, the resemblance of the two stories, and also of the ways inwhich their painful effect is modified, is curiously close. And incharacter too Gloster is, like his master, affectionate, [166] credulousand hasty. But otherwise he is sharply contrasted with the tragic Lear, who is a towering figure, every inch a king, [167] while Gloster is builton a much smaller scale, and has infinitely less force and fire. He is, indeed, a decidedly weak though good-hearted man; and, failing wholly tosupport Kent in resisting Lear's original folly and injustice, [168] heonly gradually takes the better part. Nor is his character either veryinteresting or very distinct. He often gives one the impression of beingwanted mainly to fill a place in the scheme of the play; and, though itwould be easy to give a long list of his characteristics, they scarcely, it seems to me, compose an individual, a person whom we are sure weshould recognise at once. If this is so, the fact is curious, considering how much we see and hear of him. 

I will add a single note. Gloster is the superstitious character of thedrama, --the only one. He thinks much of 'these late eclipses in the sunand moon. ' His two sons, from opposite points of view, make nothing ofthem. His easy acceptance of the calumny against Edgar is partly due tothis weakness, and Edmund builds upon it, for an evil purpose, when hedescribes Edgar thus:

 Here stood he in the dark, his sharp sword out, Mumbling of wicked charms, conjuring the moon, To prove's auspicious mistress. 

Edgar in turn builds upon it, for a good purpose, when he persuades hisblind father that he was led to jump down Dover cliff by the temptationof a fiend in the form of a beggar, and was saved by a miracle:

 As I stood here below, methought his eyes Were two full moons; he had a thousand noses, Horns whelk'd and waved like the enridged sea: It was some fiend; therefore, thou happy father, Think that the clearest gods, who make them honours Of men's impossibilities, have preserved thee. 

This passage is odd in its collocation of the thousand noses and theclearest gods, of grotesque absurdity and extreme seriousness. Edgarknew that the 'fiend' was really Gloster's 'worser spirit, ' and that'the gods' were himself. Doubtless, however--for he is the mostreligious person in the play--he thought that it _was_ the gods who, through him, had preserved his father; but he knew that the truth couldonly enter this superstitious mind in a superstitious form. 

The combination of parallelism and contrast that we observe in Lear andGloster, and again in the attitude of the two brothers to their father'ssuperstition, is one of many indications that in _King Lear_ Shakespearewas working more than usual on a basis of conscious and reflectiveideas. Perhaps it is not by accident, then, that he makes Edgar and Learpreach to Gloster in precisely the same strain. Lear says to him:

 If thou wilt weep my fortunes, take my eyes. I know thee well enough; thy name is Gloster: Thou must be patient; we came crying hither: Thou know'st, the first time that we smell the air, We wawl and cry. I will preach to thee: mark. 

Edgar's last words to him are:

 What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is all. 

Albany is merely sketched, and he is so generally neglected that a fewwords about him may be in place. He too ends a better and wiser man thanhe began. When the play opens he is, of course, only just married toGoneril; and the idea is, I think, that he has been bewitched by herfiery beauty not less than by her dowry. He is an inoffensivepeace-loving man, and is overborne at first by his 'great love' for hiswife and by her imperious will. He is not free from responsibility forthe treatment which the King receives in his house; the Knight says toLear, 'there's a great abatement of kindness appears as well in thegeneral dependants as in _the duke himself also_ and your daughter. ' Buthe takes no part in the quarrel, and doubtless speaks truly when heprotests that he is as guiltless as ignorant of the cause of Lear'sviolent passion. When the King departs, he begins to remonstrate withGoneril, but shrinks in a cowardly manner, which is a trifle comical, from contest with her. She leaves him behind when she goes to joinRegan, and he is not further responsible for what follows. When he hearsof it, he is struck with horror: the scales drop from his eyes, Gonerilbecomes hateful to him, he determines to revenge Gloster's eyes. Hisposition is however very difficult, as he is willing to fight againstCordelia in so far as her army is French, and unwilling in so far as sherepresents her father. This difficulty, and his natural inferiority toEdmund in force and ability, pushes him into the background; the battleis not won by him but by Edmund; and but for Edgar he would certainlyhave fallen a victim to the murderous plot against him. When it isdiscovered, however, he is fearless and resolute enough, beside beingfull of kind feeling towards Kent and Edgar, and of sympathetic distressat Gloster's death. And one would be sure that he is meant to retainthis strength till the end, but for his last words. He has announced hisintention of resigning, during Lear's life, the 'absolute power' whichhas come to him; and that may be right. But after Lear's death he saysto Kent and Edgar:

 Friends of my soul, you twain Rule in this realm, and the gored state sustain. 

If this means that he wishes to hand over his absolute power to them, Shakespeare's intention is certainly to mark the feebleness of awell-meaning but weak man. But possibly he means by 'this realm' onlythat half of Britain which had belonged to Cornwall and Regan. 

3

I turn now to those two strongly contrasted groups of good and evilbeings; and to the evil first. The members of this group are by no meanson a level. Far the most contemptible of them is Oswald, and Kent hasfortunately expressed our feelings towards him. Yet twice we are able tofeel sympathy with him. Regan cannot tempt him to let her open Goneril'sletter to Edmund; and his last thought as he dies is given to thefulfilment of his trust. It is to a monster that he is faithful, and heis faithful to her in a monstrous design. Still faithfulness isfaithfulness, and he is not wholly worthless. Dr. Johnson says: 'I knownot well why Shakespeare gives to Oswald, who is a mere factor ofwickedness, so much fidelity'; but in any other tragedy this touch, sotrue to human nature, is only what we should expect. If it surprises usin _King Lear_, the reason is that Shakespeare, in dealing with theother members of the group, seems to have been less concerned than usualwith such mingling of light with darkness, and intent rather on makingthe shadows as utterly black as a regard for truth would permit. 

Cornwall seems to have been a fit mate for Regan; and what worse can besaid of him? It is a great satisfaction to think that he endured what tohim must have seemed the dreadful disgrace of being killed by a servant. He shows, I believe, no redeeming trait, and he is a coward, as may beseen from the sudden rise in his courage when Goneril arrives at thecastle and supports him and Regan against Lear (II. Iv. 202). But as hiscruelties are not aimed at a blood-relation, he is not, in this sense, a'monster, ' like the remaining three. 

Which of these three is the least and which the most detestable therecan surely be no question. For Edmund, not to mention otheralleviations, is at any rate not a woman. And the differences betweenthe sisters, which are distinctly marked and need not be exhibited oncemore in full, are all in favour of 'the elder and more terrible. ' ThatRegan did not commit adultery, did not murder her sister or plot tomurder her husband, did not join her name with Edmund's on the order forthe deaths of Cordelia and Lear, and in other respects failed to takequite so active a part as Goneril in atrocious wickedness, is quite truebut not in the least to her credit. It only means that she had much lessforce, courage and initiative than her sister, and for that reason isless formidable and more loathsome. Edmund judged right when, caring forneither sister but aiming at the crown, he preferred Goneril, for hecould trust her to remove the living impediments to her desires. Thescornful and fearless exclamation, 'An interlude!' with which she greetsthe exposure of her design, was quite beyond Regan. Her unhesitatingsuicide was perhaps no less so. She would not have condescended to thelie which Regan so needlessly tells to Oswald:

 It was great ignorance, Gloster's eyes being out, To let him live: where he arrives he moves All hearts against us: Edmund, I think, is gone, _In pity of his misery_, to dispatch His nighted life. 

Her father's curse is nothing to her. She scorns even to mention thegods. [169] Horrible as she is, she is almost awful. But, to set againstRegan's inferiority in power, there is nothing: she is superior only ina venomous meanness which is almost as hateful as her cruelty. She isthe most hideous human being (if she is one) that Shakespeare ever drew. 

I have already noticed the resemblance between Edmund and Iago in onepoint; and Edmund recalls his greater forerunner also in courage, strength of will, address, egoism, an abnormal want of feeling, and thepossession of a sense of humour. But here the likeness ends. Indeed adecided difference is observable even in the humour. Edmund isapparently a good deal younger than Iago. He has a lighter and moresuperficial nature, and there is a certain genuine gaiety in him whichmakes one smile not unsympathetically as one listens to his firstsoliloquy, with its cheery conclusion, so unlike Iago's references tothe powers of darkness, Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

Even after we have witnessed his dreadful deeds, a touch of thissympathy is felt again when we hear his nonchalant reflections beforethe battle:

 To both these sisters have I sworn my love: Each jealous of the other, as the stung Are of the adder. Which of them shall I take? Both? one? or neither?

Besides, there is nothing in Edmund of Iago's motive-hunting, and verylittle of any of the secret forces which impelled Iago. He iscomparatively a straightforward character, as straightforward as theIago of some critics. He moves wonder and horror merely because the factthat a man so young can have a nature so bad is a dark mystery. 

Edmund is an adventurer pure and simple. He acts in pursuance of apurpose, and, if he has any affections or dislikes, ignores them. He isdetermined to make his way, first to his brother's lands, then--as theprospect widens--to the crown; and he regards men and women, with theirvirtues and vices, together with the bonds of kinship, friendship, orallegiance, merely as hindrances or helps to his end. They are for himdivested of all quality except their relation to this end; asindifferent as mathematical quantities or mere physical agents. 

 A credulous father and a brother noble, . .. I see the business, he says, as if he were talking of _x_ and _y_. 

 This seems a fair deserving, and must draw me That which my father loses; no less than all: The younger rises when the old doth fall:

he meditates, as if he were considering a problem in mechanics. Hepreserves this attitude with perfect consistency until the possibilityof attaining his end is snatched from him by death. 

Like the deformity of Richard, Edmund's illegitimacy furnishes, ofcourse, no excuse for his villainy, but it somewhat influences ourfeelings. It is no fault of his, and yet it separates him from othermen. He is the product of Nature--of a natural appetite asserting itselfagainst the social order; and he has no recognised place within thisorder. So he devotes himself to Nature, whose law is that of thestronger, and who does not recognise those moral obligations which existonly by convention, --by 'custom' or 'the curiosity of nations. '[170]Practically, his attitude is that of a professional criminal. 'You tellme I do not belong to you, ' he seems to say to society: 'very well: Iwill make my way into your treasure-house if I can. And if I have totake life in doing so, that is your affair. ' How far he is serious inthis attitude, and really indignant at the brand of bastardy, how farhis indignation is a half-conscious self-excuse for his meditatedvillainy, it is hard to say; but the end shows that he is not entirelyin earnest. 

As he is an adventurer, with no more ill-will to anyone than good-will, it is natural that, when he has lost the game, he should accept hisfailure without showing personal animosity. But he does more. He admitsthe truth of Edgar's words about the justice of the gods, and appliesthem to his own case (though the fact that he himself refers tofortune's wheel rather than to the gods may be significant). He showstoo that he is not destitute of feeling; for he is touched by the storyof his father's death, and at last 'pants for life' in the effort to do'some good' by saving Lear and Cordelia. There is something pathetichere which tempts one to dream that, if Edmund had been whole brother toEdgar, and had been at home during those 'nine years' when he was 'out, 'he might have been a very different man. But perhaps his words, Some good I mean to do, _Despite of mine own nature_, suggest rather that Shakespeare is emphasising the mysterious fact, commented on by Kent in the case of the three daughters of Lear, of animmense original difference between children of one father. Strangerthan this emergence of better feelings, and curiously pathetic, is thepleasure of the dying man in the thought that he was loved by both thewomen whose corpses are almost the last sight he is to see. Perhaps, aswe conjectured, the cause of his delay in saving Lear and Cordelia evenafter he hears of the deaths of the sisters is that he is sunk in dreamyreflections on his past. When he murmurs, 'Yet Edmund was beloved, ' oneis almost in danger of forgetting that he had done much more than rejectthe love of his father and half-brother. The passage is one of severalin Shakespeare's plays where it strikes us that he is recording somefact about human nature with which he had actually met, and which hadseemed to him peculiarly strange. 

What are we to say of the world which contains these five beings, Goneril, Regan, Edmund, Cornwall, Oswald? I have tried to answer thisquestion in our first lecture; for in its representation of evil _KingLear_ differs from the other tragedies only in degree and manner. It isthe tragedy in which evil is shown in the greatest abundance; and theevil characters are peculiarly repellent from their hard savagery, andbecause so little good is mingled with their evil. The effect istherefore more startling than elsewhere; it is even appalling. But insubstance it is the same as elsewhere; and accordingly, although it maybe useful to recall here our previous discussion, I will do so only bythe briefest statement. 

On the one hand we see a world which generates terrible evil inprofusion. Further, the beings in whom this evil appears at itsstrongest are able, to a certain extent, to thrive. They are notunhappy, and they have power to spread misery and destruction aroundthem. All this is undeniable fact. 

On the other hand this evil is _merely_ destructive: it founds nothing, and seems capable of existing only on foundations laid by its opposite. It is also self-destructive: it sets these beings at enmity; they canscarcely unite against a common and pressing danger; if it were avertedthey would be at each other's throats in a moment; the sisters do noteven wait till it is past. Finally, these beings, all five of them, aredead a few weeks after we see them first; three at least die young; theoutburst of their evil is fatal to them. These also are undeniablefacts; and, in face of them, it seems odd to describe _King Lear_ as 'aplay in which the wicked prosper' (Johnson). 

Thus the world in which evil appears seems to be at heart unfriendly toit. And this impression is confirmed by the fact that the convulsion ofthis world is due to evil, mainly in the worst forms here considered, partly in the milder forms which we call the errors or defects of thebetter characters. Good, in the widest sense, seems thus to be theprinciple of life and health in the world; evil, at least in these worstforms, to be a poison. The world reacts against it violently, and, inthe struggle to expel it, is driven to devastate itself. 

If we ask why the world should generate that which convulses and wastesit, the tragedy gives no answer, and we are trying to go beyond tragedyin seeking one. But the world, in this tragic picture, is convulsed byevil, and rejects it. 

4

And if here there is 'very Night herself, ' she comes 'with stars in herraiment. ' Cordelia, Kent, Edgar, the Fool--these form a group not lessremarkable than that which we have just left. There is in the world of_King Lear_ the same abundance of extreme good as of extreme evil. Itgenerates in profusion self-less devotion and unconquerable love. Andthe strange thing is that neither Shakespeare nor we are surprised. Weapprove these characters, admire them, love them; but we feel nomystery. We do not ask in bewilderment, Is there any cause in naturethat makes these kind hearts? Such hardened optimists are we, andShakespeare, --and those who find the darkness of revelation in a tragedywhich reveals Cordelia. Yet surely, if we condemn the universe forCordelia's death, we ought also to remember that it gave her birth. Thefact that Socrates was executed does not remove the fact that he lived, and the inference thence to be drawn about the world that produced him. 

Of these four characters Edgar excites the least enthusiasm, but he isthe one whose development is the most marked. His behaviour in the earlypart of the play, granted that it is not too improbable, is so foolishas to provoke one. But he learns by experience, and becomes the mostcapable person in the story, without losing any of his purity andnobility of mind. There remain in him, however, touches which a littlechill one's feeling for him. 

 The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to plague us: The dark and vicious place where thee he got Cost him his eyes:

--one wishes he had not said to his dying brother those words abouttheir dead father. 'The gods are just' would have been enough. [171] Itmay be suggested that Shakespeare merely wished to introduce this moralsomehow, and did not mean the speech to be characteristic of thespeaker. But I doubt this: he might well have delivered it throughAlbany, if he was determined to deliver it. This trait in Edgar _is_characteristic. It seems to be connected with his pronounced andconscious religiousness. He interprets everything religiously, and isspeaking here from an intense conviction which overrides personalfeelings. With this religiousness, on the other side, is connected hischeerful and confident endurance, and his practical helpfulness andresource. He never thinks of despairing; in the worst circumstances heis sure there is something to be done to make things better. And he issure of this, not only from temperament, but from faith in 'the clearestgods. ' He is the man on whom we are to rely at the end for the recoveryand welfare of the state: and we do rely on him. 

I spoke of his temperament. There is in Edgar, with much else that isfine, something of that buoyancy of spirit which charms us in Imogen. Nothing can subdue in him the feeling that life is sweet and must becherished. At his worst, misconstrued, contemned, exiled, under sentenceof death, 'the lowest and most dejected thing of fortune, ' he keeps hishead erect. The inextinguishable spirit of youth and delight is in him;he _embraces_ the unsubstantial air which has blown him to the worst;for him 'the worst returns to laughter. '[172] 'Bear free and patientthoughts, ' he says to his father. His own thoughts are more thanpatient, they are 'free, ' even joyous, in spite of the tender sympathieswhich strive in vain to overwhelm him. This ability to feel and offergreat sympathy with distress, without losing through the sympathy anyelasticity or strength, is a noble quality, sometimes found in soulslike Edgar's, naturally buoyant and also religious. It may even becharacteristic of him that, when Lear is sinking down in death, he triesto rouse him and bring him back to life. 'Look up, my lord!' he cries. It is Kent who feels that

 he hates him, That would upon the rack of this tough world Stretch him out longer. 

Kent is one of the best-loved characters in Shakespeare. He is belovedfor his own sake, and also for the sake of Cordelia and of Lear. We aregrateful to him because he stands up for Cordelia, and because, when sheis out of sight, he constantly keeps her in our minds. And how wellthese two love each other we see when they meet. Yet it is not Cordeliawho is dearest to Kent. His love for Lear is the passion of his life: it_is_ his life. At the beginning he braves Lear's wrath even more forLear's sake than Cordelia's. [173] At the end he seems to realiseCordelia's death only as it is reflected in Lear's agony. Nor does hemerely love his master passionately, as Cordelia loves her father. Thatword 'master, ' and Kent's appeal to the 'authority' he saw in the oldKing's face, are significant. He belongs to Lear, body and soul, as adog does to his master and god. The King is not to him old, wayward, unreasonable, piteous: he is still terrible, grand, the king of men. Through his eyes we see the Lear of Lear's prime, whom Cordelia neversaw. Kent never forgets this Lear. In the Storm-scenes, even after theKing becomes insane, Kent never addresses him without the old terms ofrespect, 'your grace, ' 'my lord, ' 'sir. ' How characteristic it is thatin the scene of Lear's recovery Kent speaks to him but once: it is whenthe King asks 'Am I in France?' and he answers 'In your own kingdom, sir. '

In acting the part of a blunt and eccentric serving-man Kent retainsmuch of his natural character. The eccentricity seems to be put on, butthe plainness which gets him set in the stocks is but an exaggeration ofhis plainness in the opening scene, and Shakespeare certainly meant himfor one of those characters whom we love none the less for theirdefects. He is hot and rash; noble but far from skilful in hisresistance to the King; he might well have chosen wiser words to gainhis point. But, as he himself says, he has more man than wit about him. He shows this again when he rejoins Lear as a servant, for he at oncebrings the quarrel with Goneril to a head; and, later, by falling uponOswald, whom he so detests that he cannot keep his hands off him, heprovides Regan and Cornwall with a pretext for their inhospitality. Onehas not the heart to wish him different, but he illustrates the truththat to run one's head unselfishly against a wall is not the best way tohelp one's friends. 

One fact about Kent is often overlooked. He is an old man. He tells Learthat he is eight and forty, but it is clear that he is much older; notso old as his master, who was 'four-score and upward' and whom he 'lovedas his father, ' but, one may suppose, three-score and upward. From thefirst scene we get this impression, and in the scene with Oswald it isrepeatedly confirmed. His beard is grey. 'Ancient ruffian, ' 'oldfellow, ' 'you stubborn ancient knave, you reverent braggart'--these aresome of the expressions applied to him. 'Sir, ' he says to Cornwall, 'Iam too old to learn. ' If his age is not remembered, we fail to realisethe full beauty of his thoughtlessness of himself, his incessant care ofthe King, his light-hearted indifference to fortune or fate. [174] Welose also some of the naturalness and pathos of his feeling that histask is nearly done. Even at the end of the Fourth Act we find himsaying, My point and period will be throughly wrought Or well or ill, as this day's battle's fought. 

His heart is ready to break when he falls with his strong arms aboutEdgar's neck; bellows out as he'd burst heaven (how like him!);

 threw him on my father, Told the most piteous tale of Lear and him That ever ear received; which in recounting His grief grew puissant, and the strings of life Began to crack. Twice then the trumpet sounded, And there I left him tranced;

and a little after, when he enters, we hear the sound of death in hisvoice:

 I am come To bid my king and master aye goodnight. 

This desire possesses him wholly. When the bodies of Goneril and Reganare brought in he asks merely, 'Alack, why thus?' How can he care? He iswaiting for one thing alone. He cannot but yearn for recognition, cannotbut beg for it even when Lear is bending over the body of Cordelia; andeven in that scene of unmatched pathos we feel a sharp pang at hisfailure to receive it. It is of himself he is speaking, perhaps, when hemurmurs, as his master dies, 'Break, heart, I prithee, break!' He putsaside Albany's invitation to take part in the government; his task isover:

 I have a journey, sir, shortly to go: My master calls me; I must not say no. 

Kent in his devotion, his self-effacement, his cheerful stoicism, hisdesire to follow his dead lord, has been well likened to Horatio. ButHoratio is not old; nor is he hot-headed; and though he is stoical he isalso religious. Kent, as compared with him and with Edgar, is not so. Hehas not Edgar's ever-present faith in the 'clearest gods. ' He refers tothem, in fact, less often than to fortune or the stars. He lives mainlyby the love in his own heart. [175]

 * * * * *

The theatrical fool or clown (we need not distinguish them here) was asore trial to the cultured poet and spectator in Shakespeare's day. Hecame down from the Morality plays, and was beloved of the groundlings. His antics, his songs, his dances, his jests, too often unclean, delighted them, and did something to make the drama, what the vulgar, poor or rich, like it to be, a variety entertainment. Even if heconfined himself to what was set down for him, he often disturbed thedramatic unity of the piece; and the temptation to 'gag' was too strongfor him to resist. Shakespeare makes Hamlet object to it in emphaticterms. The more learned critics and poets went further and would haveabolished the fool altogether. His part declines as the drama advances, diminishing markedly at the end of the sixteenth century. Jonson andMassinger exclude him. Shakespeare used him--we know to what effect--ashe used all the other popular elements of the drama; but he abstainedfrom introducing him into the Roman plays, [176] and there is no fool inthe last of the pure tragedies, _Macbeth_. 

But the Fool is one of Shakespeare's triumphs in _King Lear_. Imaginethe tragedy without him, and you hardly know it. To remove him wouldspoil its harmony, as the harmony of a picture would be spoiled if oneof the colours were extracted. One can almost imagine that Shakespeare, going home from an evening at the Mermaid, where he had listened toJonson fulminating against fools in general and perhaps criticising theClown in _Twelfth Night_ in particular, had said to himself: 'Come, myfriends, I will show you once for all that the mischief is in you, andnot in the fool or the audience. I will have a fool in the most tragicof my tragedies. He shall not play a little part. He shall keep fromfirst to last the company in which you most object to see him, thecompany of a king. Instead of amusing the king's idle hours, he shallstand by him in the very tempest and whirlwind of passion. Before I havedone you shall confess, between laughter and tears, that he is of thevery essence of life, that you have known him all your days though younever recognised him till now, and that you would as soon go withoutHamlet as miss him. '

The Fool in _King Lear_ has been so favourite a subject with goodcritics that I will confine myself to one or two points on which adifference of opinion is possible. To suppose that the Fool is, likemany a domestic fool at that time, a perfectly sane man pretending to behalf-witted, is surely a most prosaic blunder. There is no difficulty inimagining that, being slightly touched in the brain, and holding theoffice of fool, he performs the duties of his office intentionally aswell as involuntarily: it is evident that he does so. But unless wesuppose that he _is_ touched in the brain we lose half the effect ofhis appearance in the Storm-scenes. The effect of those scenes (to statethe matter as plainly as possible) depends largely on the presence ofthree characters, and on the affinities and contrasts between them; onour perception that the differences of station in King, Fool, andbeggar-noble, are levelled by one blast of calamity; but also on ourperception of the differences between these three in one respect, --viz. In regard to the peculiar affliction of insanity. The insanity of theKing differs widely in its nature from that of the Fool, and that of theFool from that of the beggar. But the insanity of the King differs fromthat of the beggar not only in its nature, but also in the fact that oneis real and the other simply a pretence. Are we to suppose then that theinsanity of the third character, the Fool, is, in this respect, a mererepetition of that of the second, the beggar, --that it too is _mere_pretence? To suppose this is not only to impoverish miserably theimpression made by the trio as a whole, it is also to diminish theheroic and pathetic effect of the character of the Fool. For his heroismconsists largely in this, that his efforts to outjest his master'sinjuries are the efforts of a being to whom a responsible and consistentcourse of action, nay even a responsible use of language, is at the bestof times difficult, and from whom it is never at the best of timesexpected. It is a heroism something like that of Lear himself in hisendeavour to learn patience at the age of eighty. But arguments againstthe idea that the Fool is wholly sane are either needless or futile; forin the end they are appeals to the perception that this idea almostdestroys the poetry of the character. 

This is not the case with another question, the question whether theFool is a man or a boy. Here the evidence and the grounds for discussionare more tangible. He is frequently addressed as 'boy. ' This is notdecisive; but Lear's first words to him, 'How now, my pretty knave, howdost thou?' are difficult to reconcile with the idea of his being a man, and the use of this phrase on his first entrance may show Shakespeare'sdesire to prevent any mistake on the point. As a boy, too, he would bemore strongly contrasted in the Storm-scenes with Edgar as well as withLear; his faithfulness and courage would be even more heroic andtouching; his devotion to Cordelia, and the consequent bitterness ofsome of his speeches to Lear, would be even more natural. Nor does heseem to show a knowledge of the world impossible to a quick-wittedthough not whole-witted lad who had lived at Court. The only seriousobstacle to this view, I think, is the fact that he is not known to havebeen represented as a boy or youth till Macready produced _KingLear_. [177]

But even if this obstacle were serious and the Fool were imagined as agrown man, we may still insist that he must also be imagined as a timid, delicate and frail being, who on that account and from the expression ofhis face has a boyish look. [178] He pines away when Cordelia goes toFrance. Though he takes great liberties with his master he is frightenedby Goneril, and becomes quite silent when the quarrel rises high. In theterrible scene between Lear and his two daughters and Cornwall(II. Iv. 129-289), he says not a word; we have almost forgottenhis presence when, at the topmost pitch of passion, Lear suddenly turnsto him from the hateful faces that encompass him:

 You think I'll weep; No, I'll not weep: I have full cause of weeping; but this heart Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws Or ere I'll weep. O fool, I shall go mad. 

From the beginning of the Storm-scenes, though he thinks of his masteralone, we perceive from his words that the cold and rain are almost morethan he can bear. His childishness comes home to us when he runs out ofthe hovel, terrified by the madman and crying out to the King 'Help me, help me, ' and the good Kent takes him by the hand and draws him to hisside. A little later he exclaims, 'This cold night will turn us all tofools and madmen'; and almost from that point he leaves the King toEdgar, speaking only once again in the remaining hundred lines of thescene. In the shelter of the 'farm-house' (III. Vi. ) he revives, andresumes his office of love; but I think that critic is right whoconsiders his last words significant. 'We'll go to supper i' themorning, ' says Lear; and the Fool answers 'And I'll go to bed at noon, 'as though he felt he had taken his death. When, a little later, the Kingis being carried away on a litter, the Fool sits idle. He is so benumbedand worn out that he scarcely notices what is going on. Kent has torouse him with the words, Come, help to bear thy master, Thou must not stay behind. 

We know no more. For the famous exclamation 'And my poor fool is hanged'unquestionably refers to Cordelia; and even if it is intended to show aconfused association in Lear's mind between his child and the Fool whoso loved her (as a very old man may confuse two of his children), stillit tells us nothing of the Fool's fate. It seems strange indeed thatShakespeare should have left us thus in ignorance. But we have seen thatthere are many marks of haste and carelessness in _King Lear_; and itmay also be observed that, if the poet imagined the Fool dying on theway to Dover of the effects of that night upon the heath, he couldperhaps convey this idea to the audience by instructing the actor whotook the part to show, as he left the stage for the last time, therecognised tokens of approaching death. [179]

Something has now been said of the four characters, Lear, Edgar, Kentand the Fool, who are together in the storm upon the heath. I have madeno attempt to analyse the whole effect of these scenes, but one remarkmay be added. These scenes, as we observed, suggest the idea of aconvulsion in which Nature herself joins with the forces of evil in manto overpower the weak; and they are thus one of the main sources of themore terrible impressions produced by _King Lear_. But they have at thesame time an effect of a totally different kind, because in them areexhibited also the strength and the beauty of Lear's nature, and, inKent and the Fool and Edgar, the ideal of faithful devoted love. Hencefrom the beginning to the end of these scenes we have, mingled with painand awe and a sense of man's infirmity, an equally strong feeling of hisgreatness; and this becomes at times even an exulting sense of thepowerlessness of outward calamity or the malice of others against hissoul. And this is one reason why imagination and emotion are never herepressed painfully inward, as in the scenes between Lear and hisdaughters, but are liberated and dilated. 

5

The character of Cordelia is not a masterpiece of invention or subtletylike that of Cleopatra; yet in its own way it is a creation aswonderful. Cordelia appears in only four of the twenty-six scenes of_King Lear_; she speaks--it is hard to believe it--scarcely more than ahundred lines; and yet no character in Shakespeare is more absolutelyindividual or more ineffaceably stamped on the memory of his readers. There is a harmony, strange but perhaps the result of intention, betweenthe character itself and this reserved or parsimonious method ofdepicting it. An expressiveness almost inexhaustible gained throughpaucity of expression; the suggestion of infinite wealth and beautyconveyed by the very refusal to reveal this beauty in expansivespeech--this is at once the nature of Cordelia herself and the chiefcharacteristic of Shakespeare's art in representing it. Perhaps it isnot fanciful to find a parallel in his drawing of a person verydifferent, Hamlet. It was natural to Hamlet to examine himself minutely, to discuss himself at large, and yet to remain a mystery to himself; andShakespeare's method of drawing the character answers to it; it isextremely detailed and searching, and yet its effect is to enhance thesense of mystery. The results in the two cases differ correspondingly. No one hesitates to enlarge upon Hamlet, who speaks of himself so much;but to use many words about Cordelia seems to be a kind of impiety. 

I am obliged to speak of her chiefly because the devotion she inspiresalmost inevitably obscures her part in the tragedy. This devotion iscomposed, so to speak, of two contrary elements, reverence and pity. Thefirst, because Cordelia's is a higher nature than that of most even ofShakespeare's heroines. With the tenderness of Viola or Desdemona sheunites something of the resolution, power, and dignity of Hermione, andreminds us sometimes of Helena, sometimes of Isabella, though she hasnone of the traits which prevent Isabella from winning our hearts. Herassertion of truth and right, her allegiance to them, even the touch ofseverity that accompanies it, instead of compelling mere respect oradmiration, become adorable in a nature so loving as Cordelia's. She isa thing enskyed and sainted, and yet we feel no incongruity in the loveof the King of France for her, as we do in the love of the Duke forIsabella. 

But with this reverence or worship is combined in the reader's mind apassion of championship, of pity, even of protecting pity. She is sodeeply wronged, and she appears, for all her strength, so defenceless. We think of her as unable to speak for herself. We think of her as quiteyoung, and as slight and small. [180] 'Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low'; ever so, whether the tone was that of resolution, or rebuke, or love. [181] Of all Shakespeare's heroines she knew least of joy. Shegrew up with Goneril and Regan for sisters. Even her love for her fathermust have been mingled with pain and anxiety. She must early havelearned to school and repress emotion. She never knew the bliss of younglove: there is no trace of such love for the King of France. She hadknowingly to wound most deeply the being dearest to her. He cast heroff; and, after suffering an agony for him, and before she could see himsafe in death, she was brutally murdered. We have to thank the poet forpassing lightly over the circumstances of her death. We do not think ofthem. Her image comes before us calm and bright and still. 

The memory of Cordelia thus becomes detached in a manner from the actionof the drama. The reader refuses to admit into it any idea ofimperfection, and is outraged when any share in her father's sufferingsis attributed to the part she plays in the opening scene. Because shewas deeply wronged he is ready to insist that she was wholly right. Herefuses, that is, to take the tragic point of view, and, when it istaken, he imagines that Cordelia is being attacked, or is being declaredto have 'deserved' all that befell her. But Shakespeare's was the tragicpoint of view. He exhibits in the opening scene a situation tragic forCordelia as well as for Lear. At a moment where terrible issues join, Fate makes on her the one demand which she is unable to meet. As I havealready remarked in speaking of Desdemona, it was a demand which otherheroines of Shakespeare could have met. Without loss of self-respect, and refusing even to appear to compete for a reward, they could havemade the unreasonable old King feel that he was fondly loved. Cordeliacannot, because she is Cordelia. And so she is not merely rejected andbanished, but her father is left to the mercies of her sisters. And thecause of her failure--a failure a thousand-fold redeemed--is a compoundin which imperfection appears so intimately mingled with the noblestqualities that--if we are true to Shakespeare--we do not think either ofjustifying her or of blaming her: we feel simply the tragic emotions offear and pity. 

In this failure a large part is played by that obvious characteristic towhich I have already referred. Cordelia is not, indeed, alwaystongue-tied, as several passages in the drama, and even in this scene, clearly show. But tender emotion, and especially a tender love for theperson to whom she has to speak, makes her dumb. Her love, as she says, is more ponderous than her tongue:[182]

 Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave My heart into my mouth. 

This expressive word 'heave' is repeated in the passage which describesher reception of Kent's letter:

 Faith, once or twice she heaved the name of 'Father' Pantingly forth, as if it press'd her heart:

two or three broken ejaculations escape her lips, and she 'starts' away'to deal with grief alone. ' The same trait reappears with an ineffablebeauty in the stifled repetitions with which she attempts to answer herfather in the moment of his restoration:

 _Lear. _ Do not laugh at me; For, as I am a man, I think this lady To be my child Cordelia. 

 _Cor. _ And so I am, I am. 

 _Lear. _ Be your tears wet? yes, faith. I pray, weep not; If you have poison for me, I will drink it. I know you do not love me; for your sisters Have, as I do remember, done me wrong: You have some cause, they have not. 

 _Cor. _ No cause, no cause. 

We see this trait for the last time, marked by Shakespeare with adecision clearly intentional, in her inability to answer one syllable tothe last words we hear her father speak to her:

 No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison: We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage: When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down, And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies. .. . 

She stands and weeps, and goes out with him silent. And we see her aliveno more. 

But (I am forced to dwell on the point, because I am sure to slur itover is to be false to Shakespeare) this dumbness of love was not thesole source of misunderstanding. If this had been all, even Lear couldhave seen the love in Cordelia's eyes when, to his question 'What canyou say to draw a third more opulent than your sisters?' she answered'Nothing. ' But it did not shine there. She is not merely silent, nordoes she merely answer 'Nothing. ' She tells him that she loves him'according to her bond, nor more nor less'; and his answer, How now, Cordelia! mend your speech a little, Lest it may mar your fortunes, so intensifies her horror at the hypocrisy of her sisters that shereplies, Good my Lord, You have begot me, bred me, loved me: I Return those duties back as are right fit, Obey you, love you, and most honour you. Why have my sisters husbands, if they say They love you all? Haply, when I shall wed, That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry Half my love with him, half my care and duty: Sure, I shall never marry like my sisters, To love my father all. 

What words for the ear of an old father, unreasonable, despotic, butfondly loving, indecent in his own expressions of preference, and blindto the indecency of his appeal for protestations of fondness! Blankastonishment, anger, wounded love, contend within him; but for themoment he restrains himself and asks, But goes thy heart with this?

Imagine Imogen's reply! But Cordelia answers, Ay, good my lord. 

 _Lear. _ So young, and so untender?

 _Cor. _ So young, my lord, and true. 

Yes, 'heavenly true. ' But truth is not the only good in the world, noris the obligation to tell truth the only obligation. The matter here wasto keep it inviolate, but also to preserve a father. And even if truth_were_ the one and only obligation, to tell much less than truth is notto tell it. And Cordelia's speech not only tells much less than truthabout her love, it actually perverts the truth when it implies that togive love to a husband is to take it from a father. There surely neverwas a more unhappy speech. 

When Isabella goes to plead with Angelo for her brother's life, herhorror of her brother's sin is so intense, and her perception of thejustice of Angelo's reasons for refusing her is so clear and keen, thatshe is ready to abandon her appeal before it is well begun; she wouldactually do so but that the warm-hearted profligate Lucio reproaches herfor her coldness and urges her on. Cordelia's hatred of hypocrisy and ofthe faintest appearance of mercenary professions reminds us ofIsabella's hatred of impurity; but Cordelia's position is infinitelymore difficult, and on the other hand there is mingled with her hatred atouch of personal antagonism and of pride. Lear's words, Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her![183]

are monstrously unjust, but they contain one grain of truth; and indeedit was scarcely possible that a nature so strong as Cordelia's, and withso keen a sense of dignity, should feel here nothing whatever of prideand resentment. This side of her character is emphatically shown in herlanguage to her sisters in the first scene--language perfectly just, butlittle adapted to soften their hearts towards their father--and again inthe very last words we hear her speak. She and her father are broughtin, prisoners, to the enemy's camp; but she sees only Edmund, not those'greater' ones on whose pleasure hangs her father's fate and her own. For her own she is little concerned; she knows how to meet adversity:

 For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down; Myself could else out-frown false fortune's frown. 

Yes, that is how she would meet fortune, frowning it down, even asGoneril would have met it; nor, if her father had been already dead, would there have been any great improbability in the false story thatwas to be told of her death, that, like Goneril, she 'fordid herself. 'Then, after those austere words about fortune, she suddenly asks, Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters?

Strange last words for us to hear from a being so worshipped andbeloved; but how characteristic! Their tone is unmistakable. I doubt ifshe could have brought herself to plead with her sisters for herfather's life; and if she had attempted the task, she would haveperformed it but ill. Nor is our feeling towards her altered one whit bythat. But what is true of Kent and the Fool[184] is, in its measure, true of her. Any one of them would gladly have died a hundred deaths tohelp King Lear; and they do help his soul; but they harm his cause. Theyare all involved in tragedy. 

 * * * * *

Why does Cordelia die? I suppose no reader ever failed to ask thatquestion, and to ask it with something more than pain, --to ask it, ifonly for a moment, in bewilderment or dismay, and even perhaps in tonesof protest. These feelings are probably evoked more strongly here thanat the death of any other notable character in Shakespeare; and it maysound a wilful paradox to assert that the slightest element ofreconciliation is mingled with them or succeeds them. Yet it seems to meindubitable that such an element is present, though difficult to makeout with certainty what it is or whence it proceeds. And I will try tomake this out, and to state it methodically. 

(_a_) It is not due in any perceptible degree to the fact, which we havejust been examining, that Cordelia through her tragic imperfectioncontributes something to the conflict and catastrophe; and I drewattention to that imperfection without any view to our present problem. The critics who emphasise it at this point in the drama are surelyuntrue to Shakespeare's mind; and still more completely astray are thosewho lay stress on the idea that Cordelia, in bringing a foreign army tohelp her father, was guilty of treason to her country. When she dies weregard her, practically speaking, simply as we regard Ophelia orDesdemona, as an innocent victim swept away in the convulsion caused bythe error or guilt of others. 

(_b_) Now this destruction of the good through the evil of others is oneof the tragic facts of life, and no one can object to the use of it, within certain limits, in tragic art. And, further, those who because ofit declaim against the nature of things, declaim without thinking. It isobviously the other side of the fact that the effects of good spread farand wide beyond the doer of good; and we should ask ourselves whether wereally could wish (supposing it conceivable) to see this double-sidedfact abolished. Nevertheless the touch of reconciliation that we feel incontemplating the death of Cordelia is not due, or is due only in someslight degree, to a perception that the event is true to life, admissible in tragedy, and a case of a law which we cannot seriouslydesire to see abrogated. 

(_c_) What then is this feeling, and whence does it come? I believe weshall find that it is a feeling not confined to _King Lear_, but presentat the close of other tragedies; and that the reason why it has anexceptional tone or force at the close of _King Lear_, lies in that verypeculiarity of the close which also--at least for the moment--excitesbewilderment, dismay, or protest. The feeling I mean is the impressionthat the heroic being, though in one sense and outwardly he has failed, is yet in another sense superior to the world in which he appears; is, in some way which we do not seek to define, untouched by the doom thatovertakes him; and is rather set free from life than deprived of it. Some such feeling as this--some feeling which, from this description ofit, may be recognised as their own even by those who would dissent fromthe description--we surely have in various degrees at the deaths ofHamlet and Othello and Lear, and of Antony and Cleopatra andCoriolanus. [185] It accompanies the more prominent tragic impressions, and, regarded alone, could hardly be called tragic. For it seems toimply (though we are probably quite unconscious of the implication) anidea which, if developed, would transform the tragic view of things. Itimplies that the tragic world, if taken as it is presented, with all itserror, guilt, failure, woe and waste, is no final reality, but only apart of reality taken for the whole, and, when so taken, illusive; andthat if we could see the whole, and the tragic facts in their true placein it, we should find them, not abolished, of course, but so transmutedthat they had ceased to be strictly tragic, --find, perhaps, thesuffering and death counting for little or nothing, the greatness of thesoul for much or all, and the heroic spirit, in spite of failure, nearerto the heart of things than the smaller, more circumspect, and perhapseven 'better' beings who survived the catastrophe. The feeling which Ihave tried to describe, as accompanying the more obvious tragic emotionsat the deaths of heroes, corresponds with some such idea as this. [186]

Now this feeling is evoked with a quite exceptional strength by thedeath of Cordelia. [187] It is not due to the perception that she, likeLear, has attained through suffering; we know that she had suffered andattained in his days of prosperity. It is simply the feeling that whathappens to such a being does not matter; all that matters is what sheis. How this can be when, for anything the tragedy tells us, she hasceased to exist, we do not ask; but the tragedy itself makes us feelthat somehow it is so. And the force with which this impression isconveyed depends largely on the very fact which excites our bewildermentand protest, that her death, following on the deaths of all the evilcharacters, and brought about by an unexplained delay in Edmund's effortto save her, comes on us, not as an inevitable conclusion to thesequence of events, but as the sudden stroke of mere fate or chance. Theforce of the impression, that is to say, depends on the very violence ofthe contrast between the outward and the inward, Cordelia's death andCordelia's soul. The more unmotived, unmerited, senseless, monstrous, her fate, the more do we feel that it does not concern her. Theextremity of the disproportion between prosperity and goodness firstshocks us, and then flashes on us the conviction that our whole attitudein asking or expecting that goodness should be prosperous is wrong;that, if only we could see things as they are, we should see that theoutward is nothing and the inward is all. 

And some such thought as this (which, to bring it clearly out, I havestated, and still state, in a form both exaggerated and much tooexplicit) is really present through the whole play. Whether Shakespeareknew it or not, it is present. I might almost say that the 'moral' of_King Lear_ is presented in the irony of this collocation:

 _Albany. _ The gods defend her! _Enter Lear with Cordelia dead in his arms. _

The 'gods, ' it seems, do _not_ show their approval by 'defending' theirown from adversity or death, or by giving them power and prosperity. These, on the contrary, are worthless, or worse; it is not on them, buton the renunciation of them, that the gods throw incense. They breedlust, pride, hardness of heart, the insolence of office, cruelty, scorn, hypocrisy, contention, war, murder, self-destruction. The whole storybeats this indictment of prosperity into the brain. Lear's greatspeeches in his madness proclaim it like the curses of Timon on life andman. But here, as in _Timon_, the poor and humble are, almost withoutexception, sound and sweet at heart, faithful and pitiful. [188] And hereadversity, to the blessed in spirit, is blessed. It wins fragrance fromthe crushed flower. It melts in aged hearts sympathies which prosperityhad frozen. It purges the soul's sight by blinding that of theeyes. [189] Throughout that stupendous Third Act the good are seengrowing better through suffering, and the bad worse through success. Thewarm castle is a room in hell, the storm-swept heath a sanctuary. Thejudgment of this world is a lie; its goods, which we covet, corrupt us;its ills, which break our bodies, set our souls free;

 Our means secure us, [190] and our mere defects Prove our commodities. 

Let us renounce the world, hate it, and lose it gladly. The only realthing in it is the soul, with its courage, patience, devotion. Andnothing outward can touch that. 

This, if we like to use the word, is Shakespeare's 'pessimism' in _KingLear_. As we have seen, it is not by any means the whole spirit of thetragedy, which presents the world as a place where heavenly good growsside by side with evil, where extreme evil cannot long endure, and whereall that survives the storm is good, if not great. But still this strainof thought, to which the world appears as the kingdom of evil andtherefore worthless, is in the tragedy, and may well be the record ofmany hours of exasperated feeling and troubled brooding. Pursued furtherand allowed to dominate, it would destroy the tragedy; for it isnecessary to tragedy that we should feel that suffering and death domatter greatly, and that happiness and life are not to be renounced asworthless. Pursued further, again, it leads to the idea that the world, in that obvious appearance of it which tragedy cannot dissolve withoutdissolving itself, is illusive. And its tendency towards this idea istraceable in _King Lear_, in the shape of the notion that this 'greatworld' is transitory, or 'will wear out to nought' like the little worldcalled 'man' (IV. Vi. 137), or that humanity will destroy itself. [191]In later days, in the drama that was probably Shakespeare's lastcomplete work, the _Tempest_, this notion of the transitoriness ofthings appears, side by side with the simpler feeling that man's life isan illusion or dream, in some of the most famous lines he ever wrote:

 Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. 

These lines, detached from their context, are familiar to everyone; but, in the _Tempest_, they are dramatic as well as poetical. The suddenemergence of the thought expressed in them has a specific and mostsignificant cause; and as I have not seen it remarked I will point itout. 

Prospero, by means of his spirits, has been exhibiting to Ferdinand andMiranda a masque in which goddesses appear, and which is so majestic andharmonious that to the young man, standing beside such a father and sucha wife, the place seems Paradise, --as perhaps the world once seemed toShakespeare. Then, at the bidding of Iris, there begins a dance ofNymphs with Reapers, sunburnt, weary of their August labour, but now intheir holiday garb. But, as this is nearing its end, Prospero 'startssuddenly, and speaks'; and the visions vanish. And what he 'speaks' isshown in these lines, which introduce the famous passage just quoted:

 _Pros. _ [_Aside_] I had forgot that foul conspiracy Of the beast Caliban and his confederates Against my life: the minute of their plot Is almost come. [_To the Spirits. _] Well done! avoid; no more. 

 _Fer. _ This is strange; your father's in some passion That works him strongly. 

 _Mir. _ Never till this day Saw I him touch'd with anger so distemper'd. 

 _Pros. _ You do look, my son, in a moved sort, As if you were dismay'd: be cheerful, sir. Our revels. .. . 

And then, after the famous lines, follow these:

 Sir, I am vex'd: Bear with my weakness; my old brain is troubled; Be not disturb'd with my infirmity; If you be pleased, retire into my cell And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk, To still my beating mind. 

We seem to see here the whole mind of Shakespeare in his last years. That which provokes in Prospero first a 'passion' of anger, and, amoment later, that melancholy and mystical thought that the great worldmust perish utterly and that man is but a dream, is the suddenrecollection of gross and apparently incurable evil in the 'monster'whom he had tried in vain to raise and soften, and in the monster'shuman confederates. It is this, which is but the repetition of hisearlier experience of treachery and ingratitude, that troubles his oldbrain, makes his mind 'beat, '[192] and forces on him the sense ofunreality and evanescence in the world and the life that are haunted bysuch evil. Nor, though Prospero can spare and forgive, is there any signto the end that he believes the evil curable either in the monster, the'born devil, ' or in the more monstrous villains, the 'worse thandevils, ' whom he so sternly dismisses. But he has learned patience, hascome to regard his anger and loathing as a weakness or infirmity, andwould not have it disturb the young and innocent. And so, in the days of_King Lear_, it was chiefly the power of 'monstrous' and apparentlycureless evil in the 'great world' that filled Shakespeare's soul withhorror, and perhaps forced him sometimes to yield to the infirmity ofmisanthropy and despair, to cry 'No, no, no life, ' and to take refuge inthe thought that this fitful fever is a dream that must soon fade into adreamless sleep; until, to free himself from the perilous stuff thatweighed upon his heart, he summoned to his aid his 'so potent art, ' andwrought this stuff into the stormy music of his greatest poem, whichseems to cry, You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need, and, like the _Tempest_, seems to preach to us from end to end, 'Thoumust be patient, ' 'Bear free and patient thoughts. '[193]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 158: Of course I do not mean that he is beginning to beinsane, and still less that he _is_ insane (as some medical criticssuggest). ]

[Footnote 159: I must however point out that the modern stage-directionsare most unfortunate in concealing the fact that here Cordelia sees herfather again _for the first time_. See Note W. ]

[Footnote 160: What immediately follows is as striking an illustrationof quite another quality, and of the effects which make us think of Learas pursued by a relentless fate. If he could go in and sleep after hisprayer, as he intends, his mind, one feels, might be saved: so far therehas been only the menace of madness. But from within the hovelEdgar--the last man who would willingly have injured Lear--cries, 'Fathom and half, fathom and half! Poor Tom!'; the Fool runs outterrified; Edgar, summoned by Kent, follows him; and, at sight of Edgar, in a moment something gives way in Lear's brain, and he exclaims:

 Hast thou given all To thy two daughters? And art thou come to this?

Henceforth he is mad. And they remain out in the storm. 

I have not seen it noticed that this stroke of fate is repeated--surelyintentionally--in the sixth scene. Gloster has succeeded in persuadingLear to come into the 'house'; he then leaves, and Kent after muchdifficulty induces Lear to lie down and rest upon the cushions. Sleepbegins to come to him again, and he murmurs, 'Make no noise, make no noise; draw the curtains; so, so, so. We'll go to supper i' the morning. So, so, so. '

At that moment Gloster enters with the news that he has discovered aplot to kill the King; the rest that 'might yet have balm'd his brokensenses' is again interrupted; and he is hurried away on a litter towardsDover. (His recovery, it will be remembered, is due to a long sleepartificially induced. )]

[Footnote 161: III. Iv. 49. This is printed as prose in the Globeedition, but is surely verse. Lear has not yet spoken prose in thisscene, and his next three speeches are in verse. The next is in prose, and, ending, in his tearing off his clothes, shows the advance ofinsanity. ]

[Footnote 162: [Lear's death is thus, I am reminded, like _père_Goriot's. ] This interpretation may be condemned as fantastic, but thetext, it appears to me, will bear no other. This is the whole speech (inthe Globe text):

 And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never! Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir. Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips, Look there, look there!

The transition at 'Do you see this?' from despair to something more thanhope is exactly the same as in the preceding passage at the word 'Ha!':

 A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all! I might have saved her; now she's gone for ever! Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little. Ha! What is't thou say'st? Her voice was ever soft, Gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman. 

As to my other remarks, I will ask the reader to notice that the passagefrom Lear's entrance with the body of Cordelia to the stage-direction_He dies_ (which probably comes a few lines too soon) is 54 lines inlength, and that 30 of them represent the interval during which he hasabsolutely forgotten Cordelia. (It begins when he looks up at theCaptain's words, line 275. ) To make Lear during this interval turncontinually in anguish to the corpse, is to act the passage in a mannerirreconcilable with the text, and insufferable in its effect. I speakfrom experience. I have seen the passage acted thus, and my sympathieswere so exhausted long before Lear's death that his last speech, themost pathetic speech ever written, left me disappointed and weary. ]

[Footnote 163: The Quartos give the 'Never' only thrice (surelywrongly), and all the actors I have heard have preferred this easiertask. I ought perhaps to add that the Quartos give the words 'Break, heart; I prithee, break!' to Lear, not Kent. They and the Folio are atodds throughout the last sixty lines of King Lear, and all good moderntexts are eclectic. ]

[Footnote 164: The connection of these sufferings with the sin ofearlier days (not, it should be noticed, of youth) is almost thrust uponour notice by the levity of Gloster's own reference to the subject inthe first scene, and by Edgar's often quoted words 'The gods are just, 'etc. The following collocation, also, may be intentional (III. Iv. 116):

 _Fool_. Now a little fire in a wild field were like an old lecher's heart; a small spark, all the rest on's body cold. Look, here comes a walking fire. [_Enter_ GLOSTER with a torch. ]

Pope destroyed the collocation by transferring the stage-direction to apoint some dozen lines later. ]

[Footnote 165: The passages are here printed together (III. Iv. 28 ff. And IV. I. 67 ff. ):

 _Lear. _ Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp; Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, That thou mayst shake the superflux to them, And show the heavens just. 

 _Glo. _ Here, take this purse, thou whom the heavens' plagues Have humbled to all strokes: that I am wretched Makes thee the happier: heavens, deal so still! Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man, That slaves your ordinance, that will not see Because he doth not feel, feel your power quickly; So distribution should undo excess, And each man have enough. ]

[Footnote 166: Schmidt's idea--based partly on the omission from theFolios at I. Ii. 103 (see Furness' Variorum) of the words 'To his fatherthat so tenderly and entirely loves him'--that Gloster loved neither ofhis sons, is surely an entire mistake. See, not to speak of generalimpressions, III. Iv. 171 ff. ]

[Footnote 167: Imagination demands for Lear, even more than for Othello, majesty of stature and mien. Tourgénief felt this and made his 'Lear ofthe Steppes' a _gigantic_ peasant. If Shakespeare's texts give noexpress authority for ideas like these, the reason probably is that hewrote primarily for the theatre, where the principal actor might not bea large man. ]

[Footnote 168: He is not present, of course, till France and Burgundyenter; but while he is present he says not a word beyond 'Here's Franceand Burgundy, my noble lord. ' For some remarks on the possibility thatShakespeare imagined him as having encouraged Lear in his idea ofdividing the kingdom see Note T. It must be remembered that Cornwall wasGloster's 'arch and patron. ']

[Footnote 169: In this she stands alone among the more notablecharacters of the play. Doubtless Regan's exclamation 'O the blest gods'means nothing, but the fact that it is given to her means something. Forsome further remarks on Goneril see Note T. I may add that touches ofGoneril reappear in the heroine of the next tragedy, _Macbeth_; and thatwe are sometimes reminded of her again by the character of the Queen in_Cymbeline_, who bewitched the feeble King by her beauty, and marriedhim for greatness while she abhorred his person (_Cymbeline_, V. V. 62f. , 31 f. ); who tried to poison her step-daughter and intended to poisonher husband; who died despairing because she could not execute all theevil she purposed; and who inspirited her husband to defy the Romans bywords that still stir the blood (_Cymbeline_, III. I. 14 f. Cf. _KingLear_, IV. Ii. 50 f. ). ]

[Footnote 170: I. Ii. 1 f. Shakespeare seems to have in mind the ideaexpressed in the speech of Ulysses about the dependence of the world ondegree, order, system, custom, and about the chaos which would resultfrom the free action of appetite, the 'universal wolf' (_Troilus andCr. _ I. Iii. 83 f. ). Cf. The contrast between 'particular will' and 'themoral laws of nature and of nations, ' II. Ii. 53, 185 ('nature' here ofcourse is the opposite of the 'nature' of Edmund's speech). ]

[Footnote 171: The line last quoted is continued by Edmund in the Foliosthus: 'Th' hast spoken right; 'tis true, ' but in the Quartos thus: 'Thouhast spoken truth, ' which leaves the line imperfect. This, and theimperfect line 'Make instruments to plague us, ' suggest that Shakespearewrote at first simply, Make instruments to plague us. 

 _Edm. _ Th' hast spoken truth. 

The Quartos show other variations which seem to point to the fact thatthe MS. Was here difficult to make out. ]

[Footnote 172: IV. I. 1-9. I am indebted here to Koppel, _Verbesserungsvorschläge zu den Erläuterungen und der Textlesung desLear_ (1899). ]

[Footnote 173: See I. I. 142 ff. Kent speaks, not of the _injustice_ ofLear's action, but of its 'folly, ' its 'hideous rashness. ' When the Kingexclaims 'Kent, on thy life, no more, ' he answers:

 My life I never held but as a pawn To wage against thy enemies; nor fear to lose it, _Thy safety being the motive_. 

(The first Folio omits 'a, ' and in the next line reads 'nere' for 'nor. 'Perhaps the first line should read 'My life I ne'er held but as pawn towage. ')]

[Footnote 174: See II. Ii. 162 to end. The light-heartedness disappears, of course, as Lear's misfortunes thicken. ]

[Footnote 175: This difference, however, must not be pressed too far;nor must we take Kent's retort, Now by Apollo, king, Thou swear'st thy gods in vain, for a sign of disbelief. He twice speaks of the gods in another manner(I. I. 185, III. Vi. 5), and he was accustomed to think of Lear in his'prayers' (I. I. 144). ]

[Footnote 176: The 'clown' in _Antony and Cleopatra_ is merely an oldpeasant. There is a fool in _Timon of Athens_, however, and he appearsin a scene (II. Ii. ) generally attributed to Shakespeare. His talksometimes reminds one of Lear's fool; and Kent's remark, 'This is notaltogether fool, my lord, ' is repeated in _Timon_, II. Ii. 122, 'Thouart not altogether a fool. ']

[Footnote 177: [This is no obstacle. There could hardly be a stagetradition hostile to his youth, since he does not appear in Tate'sversion, which alone was acted during the century and a half beforeMacready's production. I had forgotten this; and my memory must alsohave been at fault regarding an engraving to which I referred in thefirst edition. Both mistakes were pointed out by Mr. Archer. ]]

[Footnote 178: In parts of what follows I am indebted to remarks byCowden Clarke, quoted by Furness on I. Iv. 91. ]

[Footnote 179: See also Note T. ]

[Footnote 180: 'Our last and least' (according to the Folio reading). Lear speaks again of 'this little seeming substance. ' He can carry herdead body in his arms. ]

[Footnote 181: Perhaps then the 'low sound' is not merely metaphoricalin Kent's speech in I. I. 153 f. :

 answer my life my judgment, Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least; Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound Reverbs no hollowness. ]

[Footnote 182: I. I. 80. 'More ponderous' is the reading of the Folios, 'more richer' that of the Quartos. The latter is usually preferred, andMr. Aldis Wright says 'more ponderous' has the appearance of being aplayer's correction to avoid a piece of imaginary bad grammar. Does itnot sound more like the author's improvement of a phrase that he thoughta little flat? And, apart from that, is it not significant that itexpresses the same idea of weight that appears in the phrase 'I cannotheave my heart into my mouth'?]

[Footnote 183: Cf. Cornwall's satirical remarks on Kent's 'plainness' inII. Ii. 101 ff. , --a plainness which did no service to Kent's master. (Asa matter of fact, Cordelia had said nothing about 'plainness. ')]

[Footnote 184: Who, like Kent, hastens on the quarrel with Goneril. ]

[Footnote 185: I do not wish to complicate the discussion by examiningthe differences, in degree or otherwise, in the various cases, or byintroducing numerous qualifications; and therefore I do not add thenames of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. ]

[Footnote 186: It follows from the above that, if this idea were madeexplicit and accompanied our reading of a tragedy throughout, it wouldconfuse or even destroy the tragic impression. So would the constantpresence of Christian beliefs. The reader most attached to these beliefsholds them in temporary suspension while he is immersed in aShakespearean tragedy. Such tragedy assumes that the world, as it ispresented, is the truth, though it also provokes feelings which implythat this world is not the whole truth, and therefore not the truth. ]

[Footnote 187: Though Cordelia, of course, does not occupy the positionof the hero. ]

[Footnote 188: _E. G. _ in _King Lear_ the servants, and the old man whosuccours Gloster and brings to the naked beggar 'the best 'parel that hehas, come on't what will, ' _i. E. _ whatever vengeance Regan can inflict. Cf. The Steward and the Servants in _Timon_. Cf. There also (V. I. 23), 'Promising is the very air o' the time . .. Performance is ever theduller for his act; and, _but in the plainer and simpler kind ofpeople_, the deed of saying [performance of promises] is quite out ofuse. ' Shakespeare's feeling on this subject, though apparently speciallykeen at this time of his life, is much the same throughout (cf. Adam in_As You Like It_). He has no respect for the plainer and simpler kind ofpeople as politicians, but a great respect and regard for their hearts. ]

[Footnote 189: 'I stumbled when I saw, ' says Gloster. ]

[Footnote 190: Our advantages give us a blind confidence in oursecurity. Cf. _Timon_, IV. Iii. 76, _Alc. _ I have heard in some sort of thy miseries. 

 _Tim. _ Thou saw'st them when I had prosperity. ]

[Footnote 191: Biblical ideas seem to have been floating inShakespeare's mind. Cf. The words of Kent, when Lear enters withCordelia's body, 'Is this the promised end?' and Edgar's answer, 'Orimage of that horror?' The 'promised end' is certainly the end of theworld (cf. With 'image' 'the great doom's image, ' _Macbeth_, II. Iii. 83); and the next words, Albany's 'Fall and cease, ' _may_ be addressedto the heavens or stars, not to Lear. It seems probable that in writingGloster's speech about the predicted horrors to follow 'these lateeclipses' Shakespeare had a vague recollection of the passage in_Matthew_ xxiv. , or of that in _Mark_ xiii. , about the tribulationswhich were to be the sign of 'the end of the world. ' (I do not mean, ofcourse, that the 'prediction' of I. Ii. 119 is the prediction to befound in one of these passages. )]

[Footnote 192: Cf. _Hamlet_, III. I. 181:

 This something-settled matter in his heart, Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus From fashion of himself. ]

[Footnote 193: I believe the criticism of _King Lear_ which hasinfluenced me most is that in Prof. Dowden's _Shakspere, his Mind andArt_ (though, when I wrote my lectures, I had not read that criticismfor many years); and I am glad that this acknowledgment gives me theopportunity of repeating in print an opinion which I have oftenexpressed to students, that anyone entering on the study of Shakespeare, and unable or unwilling to read much criticism, would do best to takeProf. Dowden for his guide. ]

LECTURE IX

MACBETH

_Macbeth_, it is probable, was the last-written of the four greattragedies, and immediately preceded _Antony and Cleopatra_. [194] In thatplay Shakespeare's final style appears for the first time completelyformed, and the transition to this style is much more decidedly visiblein _Macbeth_ than in _King Lear_. Yet in certain respects _Macbeth_recalls _Hamlet_ rather than _Othello_ or _King Lear_. In the heroes ofboth plays the passage from thought to a critical resolution and actionis difficult, and excites the keenest interest. In neither play, as in_Othello_ and _King Lear_, is painful pathos one of the main effects. Evil, again, though it shows in _Macbeth_ a prodigious energy, is notthe icy or stony inhumanity of Iago or Goneril; and, as in _Hamlet_, itis pursued by remorse. Finally, Shakespeare no longer restricts theaction to purely human agencies, as in the two preceding tragedies;portents once more fill the heavens, ghosts rise from their graves, anunearthly light flickers about the head of the doomed man. The specialpopularity of _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_ is due in part to some of thesecommon characteristics, notably to the fascination of the supernatural, the absence of the spectacle of extreme undeserved suffering, theabsence of characters which horrify and repel and yet are destitute ofgrandeur. The reader who looks unwillingly at Iago gazes at Lady Macbethin awe, because though she is dreadful she is also sublime. The wholetragedy is sublime. 

In this, however, and in other respects, _Macbeth_ makes an impressionquite different from that of _Hamlet_. The dimensions of the principalcharacters, the rate of movement in the action, the supernatural effect, the style, the versification, are all changed; and they are all changedin much the same manner. In many parts of _Macbeth_ there is in thelanguage a peculiar compression, pregnancy, energy, even violence; theharmonious grace and even flow, often conspicuous in _Hamlet_, havealmost disappeared. The cruel characters, built on a scale at least aslarge as that of _Othello_, seem to attain at times an almost superhumanstature. The diction has in places a huge and rugged grandeur, whichdegenerates here and there into tumidity. The solemn majesty of theroyal Ghost in _Hamlet_, appearing in armour and standing silent in themoonlight, is exchanged for shapes of horror, dimly seen in the murkyair or revealed by the glare of the caldron fire in a dark cavern, orfor the ghastly face of Banquo badged with blood and staring with blankeyes. The other three tragedies all open with conversations which leadinto the action: here the action bursts into wild life amidst the soundsof a thunder-storm and the echoes of a distant battle. It hurriesthrough seven very brief scenes of mounting suspense to a terriblecrisis, which is reached, in the murder of Duncan, at the beginning ofthe Second Act. Pausing a moment and changing its shape, it hastes againwith scarcely diminished speed to fresh horrors. And even when the speedof the outward action is slackened, the same effect is continued inanother form: we are shown a soul tortured by an agony which admits nota moment's repose, and rushing in frenzy towards its doom. _Macbeth_ isvery much shorter than the other three tragedies, but our experience intraversing it is so crowded and intense that it leaves an impression notof brevity but of speed. It is the most vehement, the most concentrated, perhaps we may say the most tremendous, of the tragedies. 

1

A Shakespearean tragedy, as a rule, has a special tone or atmosphere ofits own, quite perceptible, however difficult to describe. The effect ofthis atmosphere is marked with unusual strength in _Macbeth_. It is dueto a variety of influences which combine with those just noticed, sothat, acting and reacting, they form a whole; and the desolation of theblasted heath, the design of the Witches, the guilt in the hero's soul, the darkness of the night, seem to emanate from one and the same source. This effect is strengthened by a multitude of small touches, which atthe moment may be little noticed but still leave their mark on theimagination. We may approach the consideration of the characters and theaction by distinguishing some of the ingredients of this general effect. 

Darkness, we may even say blackness, broods over this tragedy. It isremarkable that almost all the scenes which at once recur to memory takeplace either at night or in some dark spot. The vision of the dagger, the murder of Duncan, the murder of Banquo, the sleep-walking of LadyMacbeth, all come in night-scenes. The Witches dance in the thick air ofa storm, or, 'black and midnight hags, ' receive Macbeth in a cavern. Theblackness of night is to the hero a thing of fear, even of horror; andthat which he feels becomes the spirit of the play. The faintglimmerings of the western sky at twilight are here menacing: it is thehour when the traveller hastens to reach safety in his inn, and whenBanquo rides homeward to meet his assassins; the hour when 'lightthickens, ' when 'night's black agents to their prey do rouse, ' when thewolf begins to howl, and the owl to scream, and withered murder stealsforth to his work. Macbeth bids the stars hide their fires that his'black' desires may be concealed; Lady Macbeth calls on thick night tocome, palled in the dunnest smoke of hell. The moon is down and no starsshine when Banquo, dreading the dreams of the coming night, goesunwillingly to bed, and leaves Macbeth to wait for the summons of thelittle bell. When the next day should dawn, its light is 'strangled, 'and 'darkness does the face of earth entomb. ' In the whole drama the sunseems to shine only twice: first, in the beautiful but ironical passagewhere Duncan sees the swallows flitting round the castle of death; and, afterwards, when at the close the avenging army gathers to rid the earthof its shame. Of the many slighter touches which deepen this effect Inotice only one. The failure of nature in Lady Macbeth is marked by herfear of darkness; 'she has light by her continually. ' And in the onephrase of fear that escapes her lips even in sleep, it is of thedarkness of the place of torment that she speaks. [195]

The atmosphere of _Macbeth_, however, is not that of unrelievedblackness. On the contrary, as compared with _King Lear_ and its colddim gloom, _Macbeth_ leaves a decided impression of colour; it is reallythe impression of a black night broken by flashes of light and colour, sometimes vivid and even glaring. They are the lights and colours of thethunder-storm in the first scene; of the dagger hanging before Macbeth'seyes and glittering alone in the midnight air; of the torch borne by theservant when he and his lord come upon Banquo crossing the castle-courtto his room; of the torch, again, which Fleance carried to light hisfather to death, and which was dashed out by one of the murderers; ofthe torches that flared in the hall on the face of the Ghost and theblanched cheeks of Macbeth; of the flames beneath the boiling caldronfrom which the apparitions in the cavern rose; of the taper which showedto the Doctor and Gentlewoman the wasted face and blank eyes of LadyMacbeth. And, above all, the colour is the colour of blood. It cannot bean accident that the image of blood is forced upon us continually, notmerely by the events themselves, but by full descriptions, and even byreiteration of the word in unlikely parts of the dialogue. The Witches, after their first wild appearance, have hardly quitted the stage whenthere staggers onto it a 'bloody man, ' gashed with wounds. His tale isof a hero whose 'brandished steel smoked with bloody execution, ' 'carvedout a passage' to his enemy, and 'unseam'd him from the nave to thechaps. ' And then he tells of a second battle so bloody that thecombatants seemed as if they 'meant to bathe in reeking wounds. ' Whatmetaphors! What a dreadful image is that with which Lady Macbeth greetsus almost as she enters, when she prays the spirits of cruelty so tothicken her blood that pity cannot flow along her veins! What picturesare those of the murderer appearing at the door of the banquet-room withBanquo's 'blood upon his face'; of Banquo himself 'with twenty trenchedgashes on his head, ' or 'blood-bolter'd' and smiling in derision at hismurderer; of Macbeth, gazing at his hand, and watching it dye the wholegreen ocean red; of Lady Macbeth, gazing at hers, and stretching it awayfrom her face to escape the smell of blood that all the perfumes ofArabia will not subdue! The most horrible lines in the whole tragedy arethose of her shuddering cry, 'Yet who would have thought the old man tohave had so much blood in him?' And it is not only at such moments thatthese images occur. Even in the quiet conversation of Malcolm andMacduff, Macbeth is imagined as holding a bloody sceptre, and Scotlandas a country bleeding and receiving every day a new gash added to herwounds. It is as if the poet saw the whole story through an ensanguinedmist, and as if it stained the very blackness of the night. WhenMacbeth, before Banquo's murder, invokes night to scarf up the tendereye of pitiful day, and to tear in pieces the great bond that keeps himpale, even the invisible hand that is to tear the bond is imagined ascovered with blood. 

Let us observe another point. The vividness, magnitude, and violence ofthe imagery in some of these passages are characteristic of _Macbeth_almost throughout; and their influence contributes to form itsatmosphere. Images like those of the babe torn smiling from the breastand dashed to death; of pouring the sweet milk of concord into hell; ofthe earth shaking in fever; of the frame of things disjointed; ofsorrows striking heaven on the face, so that it resounds and yells outlike syllables of dolour; of the mind lying in restless ecstasy on arack; of the mind full of scorpions; of the tale told by an idiot, fullof sound and fury;--all keep the imagination moving on a 'wild andviolent sea, ' while it is scarcely for a moment permitted to dwell onthoughts of peace and beauty. In its language, as in its action, thedrama is full of tumult and storm. Whenever the Witches are present wesee and hear a thunder-storm: when they are absent we hear ofship-wrecking storms and direful thunders; of tempests that blow downtrees and churches, castles, palaces and pyramids; of the frightfulhurricane of the night when Duncan was murdered; of the blast on whichpity rides like a new-born babe, or on which Heaven's cherubim arehorsed. There is thus something magnificently appropriate in the cry'Blow, wind! Come, wrack!' with which Macbeth, turning from the sight ofthe moving wood of Birnam, bursts from his castle. He was borne to histhrone on a whirlwind, and the fate he goes to meet comes on the wingsof storm. 

Now all these agencies--darkness, the lights and colours that illuminateit, the storm that rushes through it, the violent and giganticimages--conspire with the appearances of the Witches and the Ghost toawaken horror, and in some degree also a supernatural dread. And to thiseffect other influences contribute. The pictures called up by the merewords of the Witches stir the same feelings, --those, for example, of thespell-bound sailor driven tempest-tost for nine times nine weary weeks, and never visited by sleep night or day; of the drop of poisonous foamthat forms on the moon, and, falling to earth, is collected forpernicious ends; of the sweltering venom of the toad, the finger of thebabe killed at its birth by its own mother, the tricklings from themurderer's gibbet. In Nature, again, something is felt to be at work, sympathetic with human guilt and supernatural malice. She labours withportents. 

 Lamentings heard in the air, strange screams of death, And prophesying with accents terrible, burst from her. The owl clamours all through the night; Duncan's horsesdevour each other in frenzy; the dawn comes, but no light with it. Common sights and sounds, the crying of crickets, the croak of theraven, the light thickening after sunset, the home-coming of the rooks, are all ominous. Then, as if to deepen these impressions, Shakespearehas concentrated attention on the obscurer regions of man's being, onphenomena which make it seem that he is in the power of secret forceslurking below, and independent of his consciousness and will: such asthe relapse of Macbeth from conversation into a reverie, during which hegazes fascinated at the image of murder drawing closer and closer; thewriting on his face of strange things he never meant to show; thepressure of imagination heightening into illusion, like the vision of adagger in the air, at first bright, then suddenly splashed with blood, or the sound of a voice that cried 'Sleep no more' and would not besilenced. [196] To these are added other, and constant, allusions tosleep, man's strange half-conscious life; to the misery of itswithholding; to the terrible dreams of remorse; to the cursed thoughtsfrom which Banquo is free by day, but which tempt him in his sleep: andagain to abnormal disturbances of sleep; in the two men, of whom oneduring the murder of Duncan laughed in his sleep, and the other raised acry of murder; and in Lady Macbeth, who rises to re-enact insomnambulism those scenes the memory of which is pushing her on tomadness or suicide. All this has one effect, to excite supernaturalalarm and, even more, a dread of the presence of evil not only in itsrecognised seat but all through and around our mysterious nature. Perhaps there is no other work equal to _Macbeth_ in the production ofthis effect. [197]

It is enhanced--to take a last point--by the use of a literaryexpedient. Not even in _Richard III. _, which in this, as in otherrespects, has resemblances to _Macbeth_, is there so much of Irony. I donot refer to irony in the ordinary sense; to speeches, for example, where the speaker is intentionally ironical, like that of Lennox in III. Vi. I refer to irony on the part of the author himself, to ironicaljuxtapositions of persons and events, and especially to the 'Sophocleanirony' by which a speaker is made to use words bearing to the audience, in addition to his own meaning, a further and ominous sense, hidden fromhimself and, usually, from the other persons on the stage. The veryfirst words uttered by Macbeth, So foul and fair a day I have not seen, are an example to which attention has often been drawn; for they startlethe reader by recalling the words of the Witches in the first scene, Fair is foul, and foul is fair. 

When Macbeth, emerging from his murderous reverie, turns to the noblessaying, 'Let us toward the King, ' his words are innocent, but to thereader have a double meaning. Duncan's comment on the treachery ofCawdor, There's no art To find the mind's construction in the face: He was a gentleman on whom I built An absolute trust, is interrupted[198] by the entrance of the traitor Macbeth, who isgreeted with effusive gratitude and a like 'absolute trust. ' I havealready referred to the ironical effect of the beautiful lines in whichDuncan and Banquo describe the castle they are about to enter. To thereader Lady Macbeth's light words, A little water clears us of this deed: How easy is it then, summon up the picture of the sleep-walking scene. The idea of thePorter's speech, in which he imagines himself the keeper of hell-gate, shows the same irony. So does the contrast between the obvious and thehidden meanings of the apparitions of the armed head, the bloody child, and the child with the tree in his hand. It would be easy to add furtherexamples. Perhaps the most striking is the answer which Banquo, as herides away, never to return alive, gives to Macbeth's reminder, 'Failnot our feast. ' 'My lord, I will not, ' he replies, and he keeps hispromise. It cannot be by accident that Shakespeare so frequently in thisplay uses a device which contributes to excite the vague fear of hiddenforces operating on minds unconscious of their influence. [199]

2

But of course he had for this purpose an agency more potent than any yetconsidered. It would be almost an impertinence to attempt to describeanew the influence of the Witch-scenes on the imagination of thereader. [200] Nor do I believe that among different readers thisinfluence differs greatly except in degree. But when critics begin toanalyse the imaginative effect, and still more when, going behind it, they try to determine the truth which lay for Shakespeare or lies for usin these creations, they too often offer us results which, eitherthrough perversion or through inadequacy, fail to correspond with thateffect. This happens in opposite ways. On the one hand the Witches, whose contribution to the 'atmosphere' of Macbeth can hardly beexaggerated, are credited with far too great an influence upon theaction; sometimes they are described as goddesses, or even as fates, whom Macbeth is powerless to resist. And this is perversion. On theother hand, we are told that, great as is their influence on the action, it is so because they are merely symbolic representations of theunconscious or half-conscious guilt in Macbeth himself. And this isinadequate. The few remarks I have to make may take the form of acriticism on these views. 

(1) As to the former, Shakespeare took, as material for his purposes, the ideas about witch-craft that he found existing in people around himand in books like Reginald Scot's _Discovery_ (1584). And he used theseideas without changing their substance at all. He selected and improved, avoiding the merely ridiculous, dismissing (unlike Middleton) thesexually loathsome or stimulating, rehandling and heightening whatevercould touch the imagination with fear, horror, and mysteriousattraction. The Witches, that is to say, are not goddesses, or fates, or, in any way whatever, supernatural beings. They are old women, poorand ragged, skinny and hideous, full of vulgar spite, occupied inkilling their neighbours' swine or revenging themselves on sailors'wives who have refused them chestnuts. If Banquo considers their beardsa proof that they are not women, that only shows his ignorance: Sir HughEvans would have known better. [201] There is not a syllable in _Macbeth_to imply that they are anything but women. But, again in accordance withthe popular ideas, they have received from evil spirits certainsupernatural powers. They can 'raise haile, tempests, and hurtfullweather; as lightening, thunder etc. ' They can 'passe from place toplace in the aire invisible. ' They can 'keepe divels and spirits in thelikenesse of todes and cats, ' Paddock or Graymalkin. They can'transferre corne in the blade from one place to another. ' They can'manifest unto others things hidden and lost, and foreshew things tocome, and see them as though they were present. ' The reader will applythese phrases and sentences at once to passages in _Macbeth_. They areall taken from Scot's first chapter, where he is retailing the currentsuperstitions of his time; and, in regard to the Witches, Shakespearementions scarcely anything, if anything, that was not to be found, ofcourse in a more prosaic shape, either in Scot or in some other easilyaccessible authority. [202] He read, to be sure, in Holinshed, his mainsource for the story of Macbeth, that, according to the common opinion, the 'women' who met Macbeth 'were eyther the weird sisters, that is (asye would say) ye Goddesses of destinee, or els some Nimphes or Feiries. 'But what does that matter? What he read in his authority was absolutelynothing to his audience, and remains nothing to us, unless he _used_what he read. And he did not use this idea. He used nothing but thephrase 'weird sisters, '[203] which certainly no more suggested to aLondon audience the Parcae of one mythology or the Norns of another thanit does to-day. His Witches owe all their power to the spirits; they are'_instruments_ of darkness'; the spirits are their 'masters' (IV. I. 63). Fancy the fates having masters! Even if the passages where Hecateappears are Shakespeare's, [204] that will not help the Witches; for theyare subject to Hecate, who is herself a goddess or superior devil, not afate. [205]

Next, while the influence of the Witches' prophecies on Macbeth is verygreat, it is quite clearly shown to be an influence and nothing more. There is no sign whatever in the play that Shakespeare meant the actionsof Macbeth to be forced on him by an external power, whether that of theWitches, or of their 'masters, ' or of Hecate. It is needless thereforeto insist that such a conception would be in contradiction with hiswhole tragic practice. The prophecies of the Witches are presentedsimply as dangerous circumstances with which Macbeth has to deal: theyare dramatically on the same level as the story of the Ghost in_Hamlet_, or the falsehoods told by Iago to Othello. Macbeth is, in theordinary sense, perfectly free in regard to them: and if we speak ofdegrees of freedom, he is even more free than Hamlet, who was crippledby melancholy when the Ghost appeared to him. That the influence of thefirst prophecies upon him came as much from himself as from them, ismade abundantly clear by the obviously intentional contrast between himand Banquo. Banquo, ambitious but perfectly honest, is scarcely evenstartled by them, and he remains throughout the scene indifferent tothem. But when Macbeth heard them he was not an innocent man. Preciselyhow far his mind was guilty may be a question; but no innocent man wouldhave started, as he did, with a start of _fear_ at the mere prophecy ofa crown, or have conceived thereupon _immediately_ the thought ofmurder. Either this thought was not new to him, [206] or he had cherishedat least some vaguer dishonourable dream, the instantaneous recurrenceof which, at the moment of his hearing the prophecy, revealed to him aninward and terrifying guilt. In either case not only was he free toaccept or resist the temptation, but the temptation was already withinhim. We are admitting too much, therefore, when we compare him withOthello, for Othello's mind was perfectly free from suspicion when histemptation came to him. And we are admitting, again, too much when weuse the word 'temptation' in reference to the first prophecies of theWitches. Speaking strictly we must affirm that he was tempted only byhimself. _He_ speaks indeed of their 'supernatural soliciting'; but infact they did not solicit. They merely announced events: they hailed himas Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor, and King hereafter. No connectionof these announcements with any action of his was even hinted by them. For all that appears, the natural death of an old man might havefulfilled the prophecy any day. [207] In any case, the idea of fulfillingit by murder was entirely his own. [208]

When Macbeth sees the Witches again, after the murders of Duncan andBanquo, we observe, however, a striking change. They no longer need togo and meet him; he seeks them out. He has committed himself to hiscourse of evil. Now accordingly they do 'solicit. ' They prophesy, butthey also give advice: they bid him be bloody, bold, and secure. We haveno hope that he will reject their advice; but so far are they fromhaving, even now, any power to compel him to accept it, that they makecareful preparations to deceive him into doing so. And, almost as thoughto intimate how entirely the responsibility for his deeds still lieswith Macbeth, Shakespeare makes his first act after this interview onefor which his tempters gave him not a hint--the slaughter of Macduff'swife and children. 

To all this we must add that Macbeth himself nowhere betrays a suspicionthat his action is, or has been, thrust on him by an external power. Hecurses the Witches for deceiving him, but he never attempts to shift tothem the burden of his guilt. Neither has Shakespeare placed in themouth of any other character in this play such fatalistic expressions asmay be found in _King Lear_ and occasionally elsewhere. He appearsactually to have taken pains to make the natural psychological genesisof Macbeth's crimes perfectly clear, and it was a most unfortunatenotion of Schlegel's that the Witches were required because naturalagencies would have seemed too weak to drive such a man as Macbeth tohis first murder. 

'Still, ' it may be said, 'the Witches did foreknow Macbeth's future; andwhat is foreknown is fixed; and how can a man be responsible when hisfuture is fixed?' With this question, as a speculative one, we have noconcern here; but, in so far as it relates to the play, I answer, first, that not one of the things foreknown is an action. This is just as trueof the later prophecies as of the first. That Macbeth will be harmed bynone of woman born, and will never be vanquished till Birnam Wood shallcome against him, involves (so far as we are informed) no action of his. It may be doubted, indeed, whether Shakespeare would have introducedprophecies of Macbeth's deeds, even if it had been convenient to do so;he would probably have felt that to do so would interfere with theinterest of the inward struggle and suffering. And, in the second place, _Macbeth_ was not written for students of metaphysics or theology, butfor people at large; and, however it may be with prophecies of actions, prophecies of mere events do not suggest to people at large any sort ofdifficulty about responsibility. Many people, perhaps most, habituallythink of their 'future' as something fixed, and of themselves as 'free. 'The Witches nowadays take a room in Bond Street and charge a guinea; andwhen the victim enters they hail him the possessor of £1000 a year, orprophesy to him of journeys, wives, and children. But though he isstruck dumb by their prescience, it does not even cross his mind that heis going to lose his glorious 'freedom'--not though journeys andmarriages imply much more agency on his part than anything foretold toMacbeth. This whole difficulty is undramatic; and I may add thatShakespeare nowhere shows, like Chaucer, any interest in speculativeproblems concerning foreknowledge, predestination and freedom. 

(2) We may deal more briefly with the opposite interpretation. Accordingto it the Witches and their prophecies are to be taken merely assymbolical representations of thoughts and desires which have slumberedin Macbeth's breast and now rise into consciousness and confront him. With this idea, which springs from the wish to get rid of a mereexternal supernaturalism, and to find a psychological and spiritualmeaning in that which the groundlings probably received as hard facts, one may feel sympathy. But it is evident that it is rather a'philosophy' of the Witches than an immediate dramatic apprehension ofthem; and even so it will be found both incomplete and, in otherrespects, inadequate. 

It is incomplete because it cannot possibly be applied to all the facts. Let us grant that it will apply to the most important prophecy, that ofthe crown; and that the later warning which Macbeth receives, to bewareof Macduff, also answers to something in his own breast and 'harps hisfear aright' But there we have to stop. Macbeth had evidently nosuspicion of that treachery in Cawdor through which he himself becameThane; and who will suggest that he had any idea, however subconscious, about Birnam Wood or the man not born of woman? It may be held--andrightly, I think--that the prophecies which answer to nothing inward, the prophecies which are merely supernatural, produce, now at any rate, much less imaginative effect than the others, --even that they are in_Macbeth_ an element which was of an age and not for all time; but stillthey are there, and they are essential to the plot. [209] And as thetheory under consideration will not apply to them at all, it is notlikely that it gives an adequate account even of those prophecies towhich it can in some measure be applied. 

It is inadequate here chiefly because it is much too narrow. The Witchesand their prophecies, if they are to be rationalised or takensymbolically, must represent not only the evil slumbering in the hero'ssoul, but all those obscurer influences of the evil around him in theworld which aid his own ambition and the incitements of his wife. Suchinfluences, even if we put aside all belief in evil 'spirits, ' are ascertain, momentous, and terrifying facts as the presence of inchoateevil in the soul itself; and if we exclude all reference to these factsfrom our idea of the Witches, it will be greatly impoverished and willcertainly fail to correspond with the imaginative effect. The union ofthe outward and inward here may be compared with something of the samekind in Greek poetry. [210] In the first Book of the _Iliad_ we are toldthat, when Agamemnon threatened to take Briseis from Achilles, 'griefcame upon Peleus' son, and his heart within his shaggy breast wasdivided in counsel, whether to draw his keen blade from his thigh andset the company aside and so slay Atreides, or to assuage his anger andcurb his soul. While yet he doubted thereof in heart and soul, and wasdrawing his great sword from his sheath, Athene came to him from heaven, sent forth of the white-armed goddess Hera, whose heart loved both alikeand had care for them. She stood behind Peleus' son and caught him byhis golden hair, to him only visible, and of the rest no man beheldher. ' And at her bidding he mastered his wrath, 'and stayed his heavyhand on the silver hilt, and thrust the great sword back into thesheath, and was not disobedient to the saying of Athene. '[211] Thesuccour of the goddess here only strengthens an inward movement in themind of Achilles, but we should lose something besides a poetic effectif for that reason we struck her out of the account. We should lose theidea that the inward powers of the soul answer in their essence tovaster powers without, which support them and assure the effect of theirexertion. So it is in _Macbeth_. [212] The words of the Witches are fatalto the hero only because there is in him something which leaps intolight at the sound of them; but they are at the same time the witness offorces which never cease to work in the world around him, and, on theinstant of his surrender to them, entangle him inextricably in the webof Fate. If the inward connection is once realised (and Shakespeare hasleft us no excuse for missing it), we need not fear, and indeed shallscarcely be able, to exaggerate the effect of the Witch-scenes inheightening and deepening the sense of fear, horror, and mystery whichpervades the atmosphere of the tragedy. 

3

From this murky background stand out the two great terrible figures, whodwarf all the remaining characters of the drama. Both are sublime, andboth inspire, far more than the other tragic heroes, the feeling of awe. They are never detached in imagination from the atmosphere whichsurrounds them and adds to their grandeur and terror. It is, as it were, continued into their souls. For within them is all that we feltwithout--the darkness of night, lit with the flame of tempest and thehues of blood, and haunted by wild and direful shapes, 'murderingministers, ' spirits of remorse, and maddening visions of peace lost andjudgment to come. The way to be untrue to Shakespeare here, as always, is to relax the tension of imagination, to conventionalise, to conceiveMacbeth, for example, as a half-hearted cowardly criminal, and LadyMacbeth as a whole-hearted fiend. 

These two characters are fired by one and the same passion of ambition;and to a considerable extent they are alike. The disposition of each ishigh, proud, and commanding. They are born to rule, if not to reign. They are peremptory or contemptuous to their inferiors. They are notchildren of light, like Brutus and Hamlet; they are of the world. Weobserve in them no love of country, and no interest in the welfare ofanyone outside their family. Their habitual thoughts and aims are, and, we imagine, long have been, all of station and power. And though in boththere is something, and in one much, of what is higher--honour, conscience, humanity--they do not live consciously in the light of thesethings or speak their language. Not that they are egoists, like Iago;or, if they are egoists, theirs is an _egoïsme à deux_. They have noseparate ambitions. [213] They support and love one another. They suffertogether. And if, as time goes on, they drift a little apart, they arenot vulgar souls, to be alienated and recriminate when they experiencethe fruitlessness of their ambition. They remain to the end tragic, evengrand. 

So far there is much likeness between them. Otherwise they arecontrasted, and the action is built upon this contrast. Their attitudestowards the projected murder of Duncan are quite different; and itproduces in them equally different effects. In consequence, they appearin the earlier part of the play as of equal importance, if indeed LadyMacbeth does not overshadow her husband; but afterwards she retires moreand more into the background, and he becomes unmistakably the leadingfigure. His is indeed far the more complex character: and I will speakof it first. 

Macbeth, the cousin of a King mild, just, and beloved, but now too oldto lead his army, is introduced to us as a general of extraordinaryprowess, who has covered himself with glory in putting down a rebellionand repelling the invasion of a foreign army. In these conflicts heshowed great personal courage, a quality which he continues to displaythroughout the drama in regard to all plain dangers. It is difficult tobe sure of his customary demeanour, for in the play we see him either inwhat appears to be an exceptional relation to his wife, or else in thethroes of remorse and desperation; but from his behaviour during hisjourney home after the war, from his _later_ conversations with LadyMacbeth, and from his language to the murderers of Banquo and to others, we imagine him as a great warrior, somewhat masterful, rough, andabrupt, a man to inspire some fear and much admiration. He was thought'honest, ' or honourable; he was trusted, apparently, by everyone;Macduff, a man of the highest integrity, 'loved him well. ' And therewas, in fact, much good in him. We have no warrant, I think, fordescribing him, with many writers, as of a 'noble' nature, like Hamletor Othello;[214] but he had a keen sense both of honour and of the worthof a good name. The phrase, again, 'too much of the milk of humankindness, ' is applied to him in impatience by his wife, who did notfully understand him; but certainly he was far from devoid of humanityand pity. 

At the same time he was exceedingly ambitious. He must have been so bytemper. The tendency must have been greatly strengthened by hismarriage. When we see him, it has been further stimulated by hisremarkable success and by the consciousness of exceptional powers andmerit. It becomes a passion. The course of action suggested by it isextremely perilous: it sets his good name, his position, and even hislife on the hazard. It is also abhorrent to his better feelings. Theirdefeat in the struggle with ambition leaves him utterly wretched, andwould have kept him so, however complete had been his outward successand security. On the other hand, his passion for power and his instinctof self-assertion are so vehement that no inward misery could persuadehim to relinquish the fruits of crime, or to advance from remorse torepentance. 

In the character as so far sketched there is nothing very peculiar, though the strength of the forces contending in it is unusual. But thereis in Macbeth one marked peculiarity, the true apprehension of which isthe key to Shakespeare's conception. [215] This bold ambitious man ofaction has, within certain limits, the imagination of a poet, --animagination on the one hand extremely sensitive to impressions of acertain kind, and, on the other, productive of violent disturbance bothof mind and body. Through it he is kept in contact with supernaturalimpressions and is liable to supernatural fears. And through it, especially, come to him the intimations of conscience and honour. Macbeth's better nature--to put the matter for clearness' sake toobroadly--instead of speaking to him in the overt language of moralideas, commands, and prohibitions, incorporates itself in images whichalarm and horrify. His imagination is thus the best of him, somethingusually deeper and higher than his conscious thoughts; and if he hadobeyed it he would have been safe. But his wife quite misunderstands it, and he himself understands it only in part. The terrifying images whichdeter him from crime and follow its commission, and which are really theprotest of his deepest self, seem to his wife the creations of merenervous fear, and are sometimes referred by himself to the dread ofvengeance or the restlessness of insecurity. [216] His conscious orreflective mind, that is, moves chiefly among considerations of outwardsuccess and failure, while his inner being is convulsed by conscience. And his inability to understand himself is repeated and exaggerated inthe interpretations of actors and critics, who represent him as acoward, cold-blooded, calculating, and pitiless, who shrinks from crimesimply because it is dangerous, and suffers afterwards simply because heis not safe. In reality his courage is frightful. He strides from crimeto crime, though his soul never ceases to bar his advance with shapes ofterror, or to clamour in his ears that he is murdering his peace andcasting away his 'eternal jewel. '

It is of the first importance to realise the strength, and also (whathas not been so clearly recognised) the limits, of Macbeth'simagination. It is not the universal meditative imagination of Hamlet. He came to see in man, as Hamlet sometimes did, the 'quintessence ofdust'; but he must always have been incapable of Hamlet's reflections onman's noble reason and infinite faculty, or of seeing with Hamlet's eyes'this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted withgolden fire. ' Nor could he feel, like Othello, the romance of war or theinfinity of love. He shows no sign of any unusual sensitiveness to theglory or beauty in the world or the soul; and it is partly for thisreason that we have no inclination to love him, and that we regard himwith more of awe than of pity. His imagination is excitable and intense, but narrow. That which stimulates it is, almost solely, that whichthrills with sudden, startling, and often supernatural fear. [217] Thereis a famous passage late in the play (V. V. 10) which is here verysignificant, because it refers to a time before his conscience wasburdened, and so shows his native disposition:

 The time has been, my senses would have cool'd To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair Would at a dismal treatise rise and stir As life were in't. 

This 'time' must have been in his youth, or at least before we see him. And, in the drama, everything which terrifies him is of this character, only it has now a deeper and a moral significance. Palpable dangersleave him unmoved or fill him with fire. He does himself mere justicewhen he asserts he 'dare do all that may become a man, ' or when heexclaims to Banquo's ghost, What man dare, I dare: Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear, The arm'd rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger; Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves Shall never tremble. 

What appals him is always the image of his own guilty heart or bloodydeed, or some image which derives from them its terror or gloom. These, when they arise, hold him spell-bound and possess him wholly, like ahypnotic trance which is at the same time the ecstasy of a poet. As thefirst 'horrid image' of Duncan's murder--of himself murderingDuncan--rises from unconsciousness and confronts him, his hair stands onend and the outward scene vanishes from his eyes. Why? For fear of'consequences'? The idea is ridiculous. Or because the deed is bloody?The man who with his 'smoking' steel 'carved out his passage' to therebel leader, and 'unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps, ' wouldhardly be frightened by blood. How could fear of consequences make thedagger he is to use hang suddenly glittering before him in the air, andthen as suddenly dash it with gouts of blood? Even when he _talks_ ofconsequences, and declares that if he were safe against them he would'jump the life to come, ' his imagination bears witness against him, andshows us that what really holds him back is the hideous vileness of thedeed:

 He's here in double trust; First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, Strong both against the deed; then, as his host, Who should against his murderer shut the door, Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking-off; And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind. 

It may be said that he is here thinking of the horror that others willfeel at the deed--thinking therefore of consequences. Yes, but could herealise thus how horrible the deed would look to others if it were notequally horrible to himself?

It is the same when the murder is done. He is well-nigh mad with horror, but it is not the horror of detection. It is not he who thinks ofwashing his hands or getting his nightgown on. He has brought away thedaggers he should have left on the pillows of the grooms, but what doeshe care for that? What _he_ thinks of is that, when he heard one of themen awaked from sleep say 'God bless us, ' he could not say 'Amen'; forhis imagination presents to him the parching of his throat as animmediate judgment from heaven. His wife heard the owl scream and thecrickets cry; but what _he_ heard was the voice that first cried'Macbeth doth murder sleep, ' and then, a minute later, with a change oftense, denounced on him, as if his three names gave him threepersonalities to suffer in, the doom of sleeplessness:

 Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more. 

There comes a sound of knocking. It should be perfectly familiar to him;but he knows not whence, or from what world, it comes. He looks down athis hands, and starts violently: 'What hands are here?' For they seemalive, they move, they mean to pluck out his eyes. He looks at one ofthem again; it does not move; but the blood upon it is enough to dye thewhole ocean red. What has all this to do with fear of 'consequences'? Itis his soul speaking in the only shape in which it can speak freely, that of imagination. 

So long as Macbeth's imagination is active, we watch him fascinated; wefeel suspense, horror, awe; in which are latent, also, admiration andsympathy. But so soon as it is quiescent these feelings vanish. He is nolonger 'infirm of purpose': he becomes domineering, even brutal, or hebecomes a cool pitiless hypocrite. He is generally said to be a very badactor, but this is not wholly true. Whenever his imagination stirs, heacts badly. It so possesses him, and is so much stronger than hisreason, that his face betrays him, and his voice utters the mostimprobable untruths[218] or the most artificial rhetoric[219] But whenit is asleep he is firm, self-controlled and practical, as in theconversation where he skilfully elicits from Banquo that informationabout his movements which is required for the successful arrangement ofhis murder. [220] Here he is hateful; and so he is in the conversationwith the murderers, who are not professional cut-throats but oldsoldiers, and whom, without a vestige of remorse, he beguiles withcalumnies against Banquo and with such appeals as his wife had used tohim. [221] On the other hand, we feel much pity as well as anxiety in thescene (I. Vii. ) where she overcomes his opposition to the murder; and wefeel it (though his imagination is not specially active) because thisscene shows us how little he understands himself. This is his greatmisfortune here. Not that he fails to realise in reflection the basenessof the deed (the soliloquy with which the scene opens shows that he doesnot). But he has never, to put it pedantically, accepted as theprinciple of his conduct the morality which takes shape in hisimaginative fears. Had he done so, and said plainly to his wife, 'Thething is vile, and, however much I have sworn to do it, I will not, ' shewould have been helpless; for all her arguments proceed on theassumption that there is for them no such point of view. Macbeth doesapproach this position once, when, resenting the accusation ofcowardice, he answers, I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none. 

She feels in an instant that everything is at stake, and, ignoring thepoint, overwhelms him with indignant and contemptuous personal reproach. But he yields to it because he is himself half-ashamed of that answer ofhis, and because, for want of habit, the simple idea which it expresseshas no hold on him comparable to the force it acquires when it becomesincarnate in visionary fears and warnings. 

Yet these were so insistent, and they offered to his ambition aresistance so strong, that it is impossible to regard him as fallingthrough the blindness or delusion of passion. On the contrary, hehimself feels with such intensity the enormity of his purpose that, itseems clear, neither his ambition nor yet the prophecy of the Witcheswould ever without the aid of Lady Macbeth have overcome this feeling. As it is, the deed is done in horror and without the faintest desire orsense of glory, --done, one may almost say, as if it were an appallingduty; and, the instant it is finished, its futility is revealed toMacbeth as clearly as its vileness had been revealed beforehand. As hestaggers from the scene he mutters in despair, Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou could'st. 

When, half an hour later, he returns with Lennox from the room of themurder, he breaks out:

 Had I but died an hour before this chance, I had lived a blessed time; for from this instant There's nothing serious in mortality: All is but toys: renown and grace is dead; The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees Is left this vault to brag of. 

This is no mere acting. The language here has none of the falserhetoric of his merely hypocritical speeches. It is meant to deceive, but it utters at the same time his profoundest feeling. And this he canhenceforth never hide from himself for long. However he may try to drownit in further enormities, he hears it murmuring, Duncan is in his grave: After life's fitful fever he sleeps well:

or, better be with the dead:

or, I have lived long enough:

and it speaks its last words on the last day of his life:

 Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. 

How strange that this judgment on life, the despair of a man who hadknowingly made mortal war on his own soul, should be frequently quotedas Shakespeare's own judgment, and should even be adduced, in seriouscriticism, as a proof of his pessimism!

It remains to look a little more fully at the history of Macbeth afterthe murder of Duncan. Unlike his first struggle this history exciteslittle suspense or anxiety on his account: we have now no hope for him. But it is an engrossing spectacle, and psychologically it is perhaps themost remarkable exhibition of the _development_ of a character to befound in Shakespeare's tragedies. 

That heart-sickness which comes from Macbeth's perception of thefutility of his crime, and which never leaves him for long, is not, however, his habitual state. It could not be so, for two reasons. In thefirst place the consciousness of guilt is stronger in him than theconsciousness of failure; and it keeps him in a perpetual agony ofrestlessness, and forbids him simply to droop and pine. His mind is'full of scorpions. ' He cannot sleep. He 'keeps alone, ' moody andsavage. 'All that is within him does condemn itself for being there. 'There is a fever in his blood which urges him to ceaseless action in thesearch for oblivion. And, in the second place, ambition, the love ofpower, the instinct of self-assertion, are much too potent in Macbeth topermit him to resign, even in spirit, the prize for which he has putrancours in the vessel of his peace. The 'will to live' is mighty inhim. The forces which impelled him to aim at the crown re-assertthemselves. He faces the world, and his own conscience, desperate, butnever dreaming of acknowledging defeat. He will see 'the frame of thingsdisjoint' first. He challenges fate into the lists. 

The result is frightful. He speaks no more, as before Duncan's murder, of honour or pity. That sleepless torture, he tells himself, is nothingbut the sense of insecurity and the fear of retaliation. If only he weresafe, it would vanish. And he looks about for the cause of his fear; andhis eye falls on Banquo. Banquo, who cannot fail to suspect him, has notfled or turned against him: Banquo has become his chief counsellor. Why?Because, he answers, the kingdom was promised to Banquo's children. Banquo, then, is waiting to attack him, to make a way for them. The'bloody instructions' he himself taught when he murdered Duncan, areabout to return, as he said they would, to plague the inventor. _This_then, he tells himself, is the fear that will not let him sleep; and itwill die with Banquo. There is no hesitation now, and no remorse: he hasnearly learned his lesson. He hastens feverishly, not to murder Banquo, but to procure his murder: some strange idea is in his mind that thethought of the dead man will not haunt him, like the memory of Duncan, if the deed is done by other hands. [222] The deed is done: but, insteadof peace descending on him, from the depths of his nature hishalf-murdered conscience rises; his deed confronts him in the apparitionof Banquo's Ghost, and the horror of the night of his first murderreturns. But, alas, _it_ has less power, and _he_ has more will. Agonised and trembling, he still faces this rebel image, and it yields:

 Why, so: being gone, I am a man again. 

Yes, but his secret is in the hands of the assembled lords. And, worse, this deed is as futile as the first. For, though Banquo is dead and evenhis Ghost is conquered, that inner torture is unassuaged. But he willnot bear it. His guests have hardly left him when he turns roughly tohis wife:

 How say'st thou, that Macduff denies his person At our great bidding?

Macduff it is that spoils his sleep. He shall perish, --he and aught elsethat bars the road to peace. 

 For mine own good All causes shall give way: I am in blood Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o'er: Strange things I have in head that will to hand, Which must be acted ere they may be scann'd. 

She answers, sick at heart, You lack the season of all natures, sleep. 

No doubt: but he has found the way to it now:

 Come, we'll to sleep. My strange and self abuse Is the initiate fear that wants hard use; We are yet but young in deed. 

What a change from the man who thought of Duncan's virtues, and of pitylike a naked new-born babe! What a frightful clearness ofself-consciousness in this descent to hell, and yet what a furious forcein the instinct of life and self-assertion that drives him on!

He goes to seek the Witches. He will know, by the worst means, theworst. He has no longer any awe of them. 

 How now, you secret, black and midnight hags!

--so he greets them, and at once he demands and threatens. They tell himhe is right to fear Macduff. They tell him to fear nothing, for none ofwoman born can harm him. He feels that the two statements are atvariance; infatuated, suspects no double meaning; but, that he may'sleep in spite of thunder, ' determines not to spare Macduff. But hisheart throbs to know one thing, and he forces from the Witches thevision of Banquo's children crowned. The old intolerable thoughtreturns, 'for Banquo's issue have I filed my mind'; and with it, for allthe absolute security apparently promised him, there returns that inwardfever. Will nothing quiet it? Nothing but destruction. Macduff, onecomes to tell him, has escaped him; but that does not matter: he canstill destroy:[223]

 And even now, To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done: The castle of Macduff I will surprise; Seize upon Fife; give to the edge o' the sword His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls That trace him in's line. No boasting like a fool; This deed I'll do before this purpose cool. But no more sights!

No, he need fear no more 'sights. ' The Witches have done their work, and after this purposeless butchery his own imagination will trouble himno more. [224] He has dealt his last blow at the conscience and pitywhich spoke through it. 

The whole flood of evil in his nature is now let loose. He becomes anopen tyrant, dreaded by everyone about him, and a terror to his country. She 'sinks beneath the yoke. '

 Each new morn New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows Strike heaven on the face. 

She weeps, she bleeds, 'and each new day a gash is added to her wounds. 'She is not the mother of her children, but their grave;

 where nothing, But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile: Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air Are made, not mark'd. 

For this wild rage and furious cruelty we are prepared; but vices ofanother kind start up as he plunges on his downward way. 

 I grant him bloody, Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful, Sudden, malicious, says Malcolm; and two of these epithets surprise us. Who would haveexpected avarice or lechery[225] in Macbeth? His ruin seems complete. 

Yet it is never complete. To the end he never totally loses oursympathy; we never feel towards him as we do to those who appear theborn children of darkness. There remains something sublime in thedefiance with which, even when cheated of his last hope, he faces earthand hell and heaven. Nor would any soul to whom evil was congenial becapable of that heart-sickness which overcomes him when he thinks of the'honour, love, obedience, troops of friends' which 'he must not look tohave' (and which Iago would never have cared to have), and contrastswith them

 Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath, Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not, (and which Iago would have accepted with indifference). Neither can Iagree with those who find in his reception of the news of his wife'sdeath proof of alienation or utter carelessness. There is no proof ofthese in the words, She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word, spoken as they are by a man already in some measure prepared for suchnews, and now transported by the frenzy of his last fight for life. Hehas no time now to feel. [226] Only, as he thinks of the morrow when timeto feel will come--if anything comes, the vanity of all hopes andforward-lookings sinks deep into his soul with an infinite weariness, and he murmurs, To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. 

In the very depths a gleam of his native love of goodness, and with it atouch of tragic grandeur, rests upon him. The evil he has desperatelyembraced continues to madden or to wither his inmost heart. Noexperience in the world could bring him to glory in it or make his peacewith it, or to forget what he once was and Iago and Goneril never were. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 194: See note BB. ]

[Footnote 195: 'Hell is murky' (V. I. 35). This, surely, is not meantfor a scornful repetition of something said long ago by Macbeth. Hewould hardly in those days have used an argument or expressed a fearthat could provoke nothing but contempt. ]

[Footnote 196: Whether Banquo's ghost is a mere illusion, like thedagger, is discussed in Note FF. ]

[Footnote 197: In parts of this paragraph I am indebted to Hunter's_Illustrations of Shakespeare_. ]

[Footnote 198: The line is a foot short. ]

[Footnote 199: It should be observed that in some cases the irony wouldescape an audience ignorant of the story and watching the play for thefirst time, --another indication that Shakespeare did not write solelyfor immediate stage purposes. ]

[Footnote 200: Their influence on spectators is, I believe, veryinferior. These scenes, like the Storm-scenes in _King Lear_, belongproperly to the world of imagination. ]

[Footnote 201: 'By yea and no, I think the 'oman is a witch indeed: Ilike not when a 'oman has a great peard' (_Merry Wives_, IV. Ii. 202). ]

[Footnote 202: Even the metaphor in the lines (II. Iii. 127), What should be spoken here, where our fate, Hid in an auger-hole, may rush and seize us?

was probably suggested by the words in Scot's first chapter, 'They cango in and out at awger-holes. ']

[Footnote 203: Once, 'weird women. ' Whether Shakespeare knew that'weird' signified 'fate' we cannot tell, but it is probable that he did. The word occurs six times in _Macbeth_ (it does not occur elsewhere inShakespeare). The first three times it is spelt in the Folio _weyward_, the last three _weyard_. This may suggest a miswriting or misprinting of_wayward_; but, as that word is always spelt in the Folio either rightlyor _waiward_, it is more likely that the _weyward_ and _weyard_ of_Macbeth_ are the copyist's or printer's misreading of Shakespeare's_weird_ or _weyrd_. ]

[Footnote 204: The doubt as to these passages (see Note Z) does notarise from the mere appearance of this figure. The idea of Hecate'sconnection with witches appears also at II. I. 52, and she is mentionedagain at III. Ii. 41 (cf. _Mid. Night's Dream_, V. I. 391, for herconnection with fairies). It is part of the common traditional notion ofthe heathen gods being now devils. Scot refers to it several times. Seethe notes in the Clarendon Press edition on III. V. 1, or those inFurness's Variorum. 

Of course in the popular notion the witch's spirits are devils orservants of Satan. If Shakespeare openly introduces this idea only insuch phrases as 'the instruments of darkness' and 'what! can the devilspeak true?' the reason is probably his unwillingness to give too muchprominence to distinctively religious ideas. ]

[Footnote 205: If this paragraph is true, some of the statements even ofLamb and of Coleridge about the Witches are, taken literally, incorrect. What these critics, and notably the former, describe so well is thepoetic aspect abstracted from the remainder; and in describing this theyattribute to the Witches themselves what belongs really to the complexof Witches, Spirits, and Hecate. For the purposes of imagination, nodoubt, this inaccuracy is of small consequence; and it is these purposesthat matter. [I have not attempted to fulfil them. ]]

[Footnote 206: See Note CC. ]

[Footnote 207: The proclamation of Malcolm as Duncan's successor (I. Iv. ) changes the position, but the design of murder is prior to this. ]

[Footnote 208: Schlegel's assertion that the first thought of the murdercomes from the Witches is thus in flat contradiction with the text. (Thesentence in which he asserts this is, I may observe, badly mistranslatedin the English version, which, wherever I have consulted the original, shows itself untrustworthy. It ought to be revised, for Schlegel is wellworth reading. )]

[Footnote 209: It is noticeable that Dr. Forman, who saw the play in1610 and wrote a sketch of it in his journal, says nothing about thelater prophecies. Perhaps he despised them as mere stuff for thegroundlings. The reader will find, I think, that the great poetic effectof Act IV. Sc. I. Depends much more on the 'charm' which precedesMacbeth's entrance, and on Macbeth himself, than on the predictions. ]

[Footnote 210: This comparison was suggested by a passage in Hegel's_Aesthetik_, i. 291 ff. ]

[Footnote 211: _Il. _ i. 188 ff. (Leaf's translation). ]

[Footnote 212: The supernaturalism of the modern poet, indeed, is more'external' than that of the ancient. We have already had evidence ofthis, and shall find more when we come to the character of Banquo. ]

[Footnote 213: The assertion that Lady Macbeth sought a crown forherself, or sought anything for herself, apart from her husband, isabsolutely unjustified by anything in the play. It is based on asentence of Holinshed's which Shakespeare did _not_ use. ]

[Footnote 214: The word is used of him (I. Ii. 67), but not in a waythat decides this question or even bears on it. ]

[Footnote 215: This view, thus generally stated, is not original, but Icannot say who first stated it. ]

[Footnote 216: The latter, and more important, point was put quiteclearly by Coleridge. ]

[Footnote 217: It is the consequent insistence on the idea of fear, andthe frequent repetition of the word, that have principally led tomisinterpretation. ]

[Footnote 218: _E. G. _ I. Iii. 149, where he excuses his abstraction bysaying that his 'dull brain was wrought with things forgotten, ' whennothing could be more natural than that he should be thinking of his newhonour. ]

[Footnote 219: _E. G. _ in I. Iv. This is so also in II. Iii. 114 ff. , though here there is some real imaginative excitement mingled with therhetorical antitheses and balanced clauses and forced bombast. ]

[Footnote 220: III. I. Lady Macbeth herself could not more naturallyhave introduced at intervals the questions 'Ride you this afternoon?'(l. 19), 'Is't far you ride?' (l. 24), 'Goes Fleance with you?' (l. 36). ]

[Footnote 221: We feel here, however, an underlying subdued frenzy whichawakes some sympathy. There is an almost unendurable impatienceexpressed even in the rhythm of many of the lines; _e. G. _:

 Well then, now Have you consider'd of my speeches? Know That it was he in the times past which held you So under fortune, which you thought had been Our innocent self: this I made good to you In our last conference, pass'd in probation with you, How you were borne in hand, how cross'd, the instruments, Who wrought with them, and all things else that might To half a soul and to a notion crazed Say, 'Thus did Banquo. '

This effect is heard to the end of the play in Macbeth's less poeticspeeches, and leaves the same impression of burning energy, though notof imaginative exaltation, as his great speeches. In these we findeither violent, huge, sublime imagery, or a torrent of figurativeexpressions (as in the famous lines about 'the innocent sleep'). Ourimpressions as to the diction of the play are largely derived from thesespeeches of the hero, but not wholly so. The writing almost throughoutleaves an impression of intense, almost feverish, activity. ]

[Footnote 222: See his first words to the Ghost: 'Thou canst not say Idid it. ']

[Footnote 223:

 For only in destroying I find ease To my relentless thoughts. --_Paradise Lost_, ix. 129. 

Milton's portrait of Satan's misery here, and at the beginning of BookIV. , might well have been suggested by _Macbeth_. Coleridge, afterquoting Duncan's speech, I. Iv. 35 ff. , says: 'It is a fancy; but I cannever read this, and the following speeches of Macbeth, withoutinvoluntarily thinking of the Miltonic Messiah and Satan. ' I doubt if itwas a mere fancy. (It will be remembered that Milton thought at one timeof writing a tragedy on Macbeth. )]

[Footnote 224: The immediate reference in 'But no more sights' isdoubtless to the visions called up by the Witches; but one of these, the'blood-bolter'd Banquo, ' recalls to him the vision of the precedingnight, of which he had said, You make me strange Even to the disposition that I owe, When now I think you can behold such _sights_, And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks, When mine is blanch'd with fear. ]

[Footnote 225: 'Luxurious' and 'luxury' are used by Shakespeare only inthis older sense. It must be remembered that these lines are spoken byMalcolm, but it seems likely that they are meant to be taken as truethroughout. ]

[Footnote 226: I do not at all suggest that his love for his wiferemains what it was when he greeted her with the words 'My dearest love, Duncan comes here to-night. ' He has greatly changed; she has ceased tohelp him, sunk in her own despair; and there is no intensity of anxietyin the questions he puts to the doctor about her. But his love for herwas probably never unselfish, never the love of Brutus, who, in somewhatsimilar circumstances, uses, on the death of Cassius, words which remindus of Macbeth's:

 I shall find time, Cassius, I shall find time. 

For the opposite strain of feeling cf. Sonnet 90:

 Then hate me if thou wilt; if ever, now, Now while the world is bent my deeds to cross. ]

LECTURE X

MACBETH

1

To regard _Macbeth_ as a play, like the love-tragedies _Romeo andJuliet_ and _Antony and Cleopatra_, in which there are two centralcharacters of equal importance, is certainly a mistake. But Shakespearehimself is in a measure responsible for it, because the first half of_Macbeth_ is greater than the second, and in the first half Lady Macbethnot only appears more than in the second but exerts the ultimatedeciding influence on the action. And, in the opening Act at least, LadyMacbeth is the most commanding and perhaps the most awe-inspiring figurethat Shakespeare drew. Sharing, as we have seen, certain traits with herhusband, she is at once clearly distinguished from him by aninflexibility of will, which appears to hold imagination, feeling, andconscience completely in check. To her the prophecy of things that willbe becomes instantaneously the determination that they shall be:

 Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be That thou art promised. 

She knows her husband's weakness, how he scruples 'to catch the nearestway' to the object he desires; and she sets herself without a trace ofdoubt or conflict to counteract this weakness. To her there is noseparation between will and deed; and, as the deed falls in part to her, she is sure it will be done:

 The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements. 

On the moment of Macbeth's rejoining her, after braving infinite dangersand winning infinite praise, without a syllable on these subjects or aword of affection, she goes straight to her purpose and permits him tospeak of nothing else. She takes the superior position and assumes thedirection of affairs, --appears to assume it even more than she reallycan, that she may spur him on. She animates him by picturing the deed asheroic, 'this night's _great_ business, ' or 'our _great_ quell, ' whileshe ignores its cruelty and faithlessness. She bears down his faintresistance by presenting him with a prepared scheme which may removefrom him the terror and danger of deliberation. She rouses him with ataunt no man can bear, and least of all a soldier, --the word 'coward. 'She appeals even to his love for her:

 from this time Such I account thy love;

--such, that is, as the protestations of a drunkard. Her reasonings aremere sophisms; they could persuade no man. It is not by them, it is bypersonal appeals, through the admiration she extorts from him, andthrough sheer force of will, that she impels him to the deed. Her eyesare fixed upon the crown and the means to it; she does not attend to theconsequences. Her plan of laying the guilt upon the chamberlains isinvented on the spur of the moment, and simply to satisfy her husband. Her true mind is heard in the ringing cry with which she answers hisquestion, 'Will it not be received . .. That they have done it?'

 Who _dares_ receive it other?

And this is repeated in the sleep-walking scene: 'What need we fear whoknows it, when none can call our power to account?' Her passionatecourage sweeps him off his feet. His decision is taken in a moment ofenthusiasm:

 Bring forth men-children only; For thy undaunted mettle should compose Nothing but males. 

And even when passion has quite died away her will remains supreme. Inpresence of overwhelming horror and danger, in the murder scene and thebanquet scene, her self-control is perfect. When the truth of what shehas done dawns on her, no word of complaint, scarcely a word of her ownsuffering, not a single word of her own as apart from his, escapes herwhen others are by. She helps him, but never asks his help. She leans onnothing but herself. And from the beginning to the end--though she makesonce or twice a slip in acting her part--her will never fails her. Itsgrasp upon her nature may destroy her, but it is never relaxed. We aresure that she never betrayed her husband or herself by a word or even alook, save in sleep. However appalling she may be, she is sublime. 

In the earlier scenes of the play this aspect of Lady Macbeth'scharacter is far the most prominent. And if she seems invincible sheseems also inhuman. We find no trace of pity for the kind old king; noconsciousness of the treachery and baseness of the murder; no sense ofthe value of the lives of the wretched men on whom the guilt is to belaid; no shrinking even from the condemnation or hatred of the world. Yet if the Lady Macbeth of these scenes were really utterly inhuman, ora 'fiend-like queen, ' as Malcolm calls her, the Lady Macbeth of thesleep-walking scene would be an impossibility. The one woman could neverbecome the other. And in fact, if we look below the surface, there isevidence enough in the earlier scenes of preparation for the later. I donot mean that Lady Macbeth was naturally humane. There is nothing in theplay to show this, and several passages subsequent to the murder-scenesupply proof to the contrary. One is that where she exclaims, on beinginformed of Duncan's murder, Woe, alas! What, in our house?

This mistake in acting shows that she does not even know what thenatural feeling in such circumstances would be; and Banquo's curtanswer, 'Too cruel anywhere, ' is almost a reproof of her insensibility. But, admitting this, we have in the first place to remember, inimagining the opening scenes, that she is deliberately bent oncounteracting the 'human kindness' of her husband, and also that she isevidently not merely inflexibly determined but in a condition ofabnormal excitability. That exaltation in the project which is soentirely lacking in Macbeth is strongly marked in her. When she tries tohelp him by representing their enterprise as heroic, she is deceivingherself as much as him. Their attainment of the crown presents itself toher, perhaps has long presented itself, as something so glorious, andshe has fixed her will upon it so completely, that for the time she seesthe enterprise in no other light than that of its greatness. When shesoliloquises, Yet do I fear thy nature: It is too full o' the milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great; Art not without ambition, but without The illness should attend it; what thou wouldst highly, That wouldst thou holily, one sees that 'ambition' and 'great' and 'highly' and even 'illness' areto her simply terms of praise, and 'holily' and 'human kindness' simplyterms of blame. Moral distinctions do not in this exaltation exist forher; or rather they are inverted: 'good' means to her the crown andwhatever is required to obtain it, 'evil' whatever stands in the way ofits attainment. This attitude of mind is evident even when she is alone, though it becomes still more pronounced when she has to work upon herhusband. And it persists until her end is attained. But, without beingexactly forced, it betrays a strain which could not long endure. 

Besides this, in these earlier scenes the traces of feminine weaknessand human feeling, which account for her later failure, are not absent. Her will, it is clear, was exerted to overpower not only her husband'sresistance but some resistance in herself. Imagine Goneril uttering thefamous words, Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had done 't. 

They are spoken, I think, without any sentiment--impatiently, as thoughshe regretted her weakness: but it was there. And in reality, quiteapart from this recollection of her father, she could never have donethe murder if her husband had failed. She had to nerve herself with wineto give her 'boldness' enough to go through her minor part. Thatappalling invocation to the spirits of evil, to unsex her and fill herfrom the crown to the toe topfull of direst cruelty, tells the same taleof determination to crush the inward protest. Goneril had no need ofsuch a prayer. In the utterance of the frightful lines, I have given suck, and know How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this, her voice should doubtless rise until it reaches, in 'dash'd the brainsout, ' an almost hysterical scream. [227] These lines show unmistakablythat strained exaltation which, as soon as the end is reached, vanishes, never to return. 

The greatness of Lady Macbeth lies almost wholly in courage and force ofwill. It is an error to regard her as remarkable on the intellectualside. In acting a part she shows immense self-control, but not muchskill. Whatever may be thought of the plan of attributing the murder ofDuncan to the chamberlains, to lay their bloody daggers on theirpillows, as if they were determined to advertise their guilt, was amistake which can be accounted for only by the excitement of the moment. But the limitations of her mind appear most in the point where she ismost strongly contrasted with Macbeth, --in her comparative dulness ofimagination. I say 'comparative, ' for she sometimes uses highly poeticlanguage, as indeed does everyone in Shakespeare who has any greatnessof soul. Nor is she perhaps less imaginative than the majority of hisheroines. But as compared with her husband she has little imagination. It is not _simply_ that she suppresses what she has. To her, thingsremain at the most terrible moment precisely what they were at thecalmest, plain facts which stand in a given relation to a certain deed, not visions which tremble and flicker in the light of other worlds. Theprobability that the old king will sleep soundly after his long journeyto Inverness is to her simply a fortunate circumstance; but one canfancy the shoot of horror across Macbeth's face as she mentions it. Sheuses familiar and prosaic illustrations, like

 Letting 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would, ' Like the poor cat i' the adage, (the cat who wanted fish but did not like to wet her feet); or, We fail? But screw your courage to the sticking-place, And we'll not fail;[228]

or, Was the hope drunk Wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it slept since? And wakes it now, to look so green and pale At what it did so freely?

The Witches are practically nothing to her. She feels no sympathy inNature with her guilty purpose, and would never bid the earth not hearher steps, which way they walk. The noises before the murder, and duringit, are heard by her as simple facts, and are referred to their truesources. The knocking has no mystery for her: it comes from 'the southentry. ' She calculates on the drunkenness of the grooms, compares thedifferent effects of wine on herself and on them, and listens to theirsnoring. To her the blood upon her husband's hands suggests only thetaunt, My hands are of your colour, but I shame To wear a heart so white;

and the blood to her is merely 'this filthy witness, '--words impossibleto her husband, to whom it suggested something quite other than sensuousdisgust or practical danger. The literalism of her mind appears fully intwo contemptuous speeches where she dismisses his imaginings; in themurder scene:

 Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers! The sleeping and the dead Are but as pictures: 'tis the eye of childhood That fears a painted devil;

and in the banquet scene:

 O these flaws and starts, Impostors to true fear, would well become A woman's story at a winter's fire, Authorised by her grandam. Shame itself! Why do you make such faces? When all's done, You look but on a stool. 

Even in the awful scene where her imagination breaks loose in sleep sheuses no such images as Macbeth's. It is the direct appeal of the factsto sense that has fastened on her memory. The ghastly realism of 'Yetwho would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?' or'Here's the smell of the blood still, ' is wholly unlike him. Her mostpoetical words, 'All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this littlehand, ' are equally unlike his words about great Neptune's ocean. Hers, like some of her other speeches, are the more moving, from their greatersimplicity and because they seem to tell of that self-restraint insuffering which is so totally lacking in him; but there is in themcomparatively little of imagination. If we consider most of the passagesto which I have referred, we shall find that the quality which moves ouradmiration is courage or force of will. 

This want of imagination, though it helps to make Lady Macbeth strongfor immediate action, is fatal to her. If she does not feel beforehandthe cruelty of Duncan's murder, this is mainly because she hardlyimagines the act, or at most imagines its outward show, 'the motion of amuscle this way or that. ' Nor does she in the least foresee those inwardconsequences which reveal themselves immediately in her husband, andless quickly in herself. It is often said that she understands him well. Had she done so, she never would have urged him on. She knows that he isgiven to strange fancies; but, not realising what they spring from, shehas no idea either that they may gain such power as to ruin the scheme, or that, while they mean present weakness, they mean also perception ofthe future. At one point in the murder scene the force of hisimagination impresses her, and for a moment she is startled; a lightthreatens to break on her:

 These deeds must not be thought After these ways: so, it will make us mad, she says, with a sudden and great seriousness. And when he goes pantingon, 'Methought I heard a voice cry, "Sleep no more, "' . .. She breaks in, 'What do you mean?' half-doubting whether this was not a real voice thathe heard. Then, almost directly, she recovers herself, convinced of thevanity of his fancy. Nor does she understand herself any better thanhim. She never suspects that these deeds _must_ be thought after theseways; that her facile realism, A little water clears us of this deed, will one day be answered by herself, 'Will these hands ne'er be clean?'or that the fatal commonplace, 'What's done is done, ' will make way forher last despairing sentence, 'What's done cannot be undone. '

Hence the development of her character--perhaps it would be morestrictly accurate to say, the change in her state of mind--is bothinevitable, and the opposite of the development we traced in Macbeth. When the murder has been done, the discovery of its hideousness, firstreflected in the faces of her guests, comes to Lady Macbeth with theshock of a sudden disclosure, and at once her nature begins to sink. Thefirst intimation of the change is given when, in the scene of thediscovery, she faints. [229] When next we see her, Queen of Scotland, theglory of her dream has faded. She enters, disillusioned, and weary withwant of sleep: she has thrown away everything and gained nothing:

 Nought's had, all's spent, Where our desire is got without content: 'Tis safer to be that which we destroy Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy. 

Henceforth she has no initiative: the stem of her being seems to be cutthrough. Her husband, physically the stronger, maddened by pangs he hadforeseen, but still flaming with life, comes into the foreground, andshe retires. Her will remains, and she does her best to help him; but herarely needs her help. Her chief anxiety appears to be that he shouldnot betray his misery. He plans the murder of Banquo without herknowledge (not in order to spare her, I think, for he never shows loveof this quality, but merely because he does not need her now); and evenwhen she is told vaguely of his intention she appears but littleinterested. In the sudden emergency of the banquet scene she makes aprodigious and magnificent effort; her strength, and with it herascendancy, returns, and she saves her husband at least from an opendisclosure. But after this she takes no part whatever in the action. Weonly know from her shuddering words in the sleep-walking scene, 'TheThane of Fife had a wife: where is she now?' that she has even learnedof her husband's worst crime; and in all the horrors of his tyranny overScotland she has, so far as we hear, no part. Disillusionment anddespair prey upon her more and more. That she should seek any relief inspeech, or should ask for sympathy, would seem to her mere weakness, andwould be to Macbeth's defiant fury an irritation. Thinking of the changein him, we imagine the bond between them slackened, and Lady Macbethleft much alone. She sinks slowly downward. She cannot bear darkness, and has light by her continually: 'tis her command. At last her nature, not her will, gives way. The secrets of the past find vent in a disorderof sleep, the beginning perhaps of madness. What the doctor fears isclear. He reports to her husband no great physical mischief, but bidsher attendant to remove from her all means by which she could harmherself, and to keep eyes on her constantly. It is in vain. Her death isannounced by a cry from her women so sudden and direful that it wouldthrill her husband with horror if he were any longer capable of fear. Inthe last words of the play Malcolm tells us it is believed in thehostile army that she died by her own hand. And (not to speak of theindications just referred to) it is in accordance with her characterthat even in her weakest hour she should cut short by one determinedstroke the agony of her life. 

The sinking of Lady Macbeth's nature, and the marked change in herdemeanour to her husband, are most strikingly shown in the conclusion ofthe banquet scene; and from this point pathos is mingled with awe. Theguests are gone. She is completely exhausted, and answers Macbeth inlistless, submissive words which seem to come with difficulty. Howstrange sounds the reply 'Did you send to him, sir?' to his imperiousquestion about Macduff! And when he goes on, 'waxing desperate inimagination, ' to speak of new deeds of blood, she seems to sicken at thethought, and there is a deep pathos in that answer which tells at onceof her care for him and of the misery she herself has silently endured, You lack the season of all natures, sleep. 

We begin to think of her now less as the awful instigator of murder thanas a woman with much that is grand in her, and much that is piteous. Strange and almost ludicrous as the statement may sound, [230] she is, upto her light, a perfect wife. She gives her husband the best she has;and the fact that she never uses to him the terms of affection which, upto this point in the play, he employs to her, is certainly no indicationof want of love. She urges, appeals, reproaches, for a practical end, but she never recriminates. The harshness of her taunts is free frommere personal feeling, and also from any deep or more than momentarycontempt. She despises what she thinks the weakness which stands in theway of her husband's ambition; but she does not despise _him_. Sheevidently admires him and thinks him a great man, for whom the throne isthe proper place. Her commanding attitude in the moments of hishesitation or fear is probably confined to them. If we consider thepeculiar circumstances of the earlier scenes and the banquet scene, andif we examine the language of the wife and husband at other times, weshall come, I think, to the conclusion that their habitual relations arebetter represented by the later scenes than by the earlier, thoughnaturally they are not truly represented by either. Her ambition for herhusband and herself (there was no distinction to her mind) proved fatalto him, far more so than the prophecies of the Witches; but even whenshe pushed him into murder she believed she was helping him to do whathe merely lacked the nerve to attempt; and her part in the crime was somuch less open-eyed than his, that, if the impossible and undramatictask of estimating degrees of culpability were forced on us, we shouldsurely have to assign the larger share to Macbeth. 

'Lady Macbeth, ' says Dr. Johnson, 'is merely detested'; and for a longtime critics generally spoke of her as though she were Malcolm's'fiend-like queen. ' In natural reaction we tend to insist, as I havebeen doing, on the other and less obvious side; and in the criticism ofthe last century there is even a tendency to sentimentalise thecharacter. But it can hardly be doubted that Shakespeare meant thepredominant impression to be one of awe, grandeur, and horror, and thathe never meant this impression to be lost, however it might be modified, as Lady Macbeth's activity diminishes and her misery increases. I cannotbelieve that, when she said of Banquo and Fleance, But in them nature's copy's not eterne, she meant only that they would some day die; or that she felt anysurprise when Macbeth replied, There's comfort yet: they are assailable;

though I am sure no light came into her eyes when he added thosedreadful words, 'Then be thou jocund. ' She was listless. She herselfwould not have moved a finger against Banquo. But she thought his death, and his son's death, might ease her husband's mind, and she suggestedthe murders indifferently and without remorse. The sleep-walking scene, again, inspires pity, but its main effect is one of awe. There is greathorror in the references to blood, but it cannot be said that there ismore than horror; and Campbell was surely right when, in alluding toMrs. Jameson's analysis, he insisted that in Lady Macbeth's misery thereis no trace of contrition. [231] Doubtless she would have given the worldto undo what she had done; and the thought of it killed her; but, regarding her from the tragic point of view, we may truly say she wastoo great to repent. [232]

2

The main interest of the character of Banquo arises from the changesthat take place in him, and from the influence of the Witches upon him. And it is curious that Shakespeare's intention here is so frequentlymissed. Banquo being at first strongly contrasted with Macbeth, as aninnocent man with a guilty, it seems to be supposed that this contrastmust be continued to his death; while, in reality, though it is neverremoved, it is gradually diminished. Banquo in fact may be describedmuch more truly than Macbeth as the victim of the Witches. If we followhis story this will be evident. 

He bore a part only less distinguished than Macbeth's in the battlesagainst Sweno and Macdonwald. He and Macbeth are called 'our captains, 'and when they meet the Witches they are traversing the 'blastedheath'[233] alone together. Banquo accosts the strange shapes withoutthe slightest fear. They lay their fingers on their lips, as if tosignify that they will not, or must not, speak to _him_. To Macbeth'sbrief appeal, 'Speak, if you can: what are you?' they at once reply, notby saying what they are, but by hailing him Thane of Glamis, Thane ofCawdor, and King hereafter. Banquo is greatly surprised that his partnershould start as if in fear, and observes that he is at once 'rapt'; andhe bids the Witches, if they know the future, to prophesy to _him_, whoneither begs their favour nor fears their hate. Macbeth, looking back ata later time, remembers Banquo's daring, and how

 he chid the sisters, When first they put the name of king upon me, And bade them speak to him. 

'Chid' is an exaggeration; but Banquo is evidently a bold man, probablyan ambitious one, and certainly has no lurking guilt in his ambition. Onhearing the predictions concerning himself and his descendants he makesno answer, and when the Witches are about to vanish he shows none ofMacbeth's feverish anxiety to know more. On their vanishing he is simplyamazed, wonders if they were anything but hallucinations, makes noreference to the predictions till Macbeth mentions them, and thenanswers lightly. 

When Ross and Angus, entering, announce to Macbeth that he has been madeThane of Cawdor, Banquo exclaims, aside, to himself or Macbeth, 'What!can the devil speak true?' He now believes that the Witches were realbeings and the 'instruments of darkness. ' When Macbeth, turning to him, whispers, Do you not hope your children shall be kings, When those that gave the Thane of Cawdor to me Promised no less to them?

he draws with the boldness of innocence the inference which is reallyoccupying Macbeth, and answers, That, trusted home, Might yet enkindle you unto the crown Besides the thane of Cawdor. 

Here he still speaks, I think, in a free, off-hand, even jesting, [234]manner ('enkindle' meaning merely 'excite you to _hope_ for'). But then, possibly from noticing something in Macbeth's face, he becomes graver, and goes on, with a significant 'but, '

 But 'tis strange: And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, The instruments of darkness tell us truths, Win us with honest trifles, to betray's In deepest consequence. 

He afterwards observes for the second time that his partner is 'rapt';but he explains his abstraction naturally and sincerely by referring tothe surprise of his new honours; and at the close of the scene, whenMacbeth proposes that they shall discuss the predictions together atsome later time, he answers in the cheerful, rather bluff manner, whichhe has used almost throughout, 'Very gladly. ' Nor was there any reasonwhy Macbeth's rejoinder, 'Till then, enough, ' should excite misgivingsin him, though it implied a request for silence, and though the wholebehaviour of his partner during the scene must have looked verysuspicious to him when the prediction of the crown was made good throughthe murder of Duncan. 

In the next scene Macbeth and Banquo join the King, who welcomes themboth with the kindest expressions of gratitude and with promises offavours to come. Macbeth has indeed already received a noble reward. Banquo, who is said by the King to have 'no less deserved, ' receives asyet mere thanks. His brief and frank acknowledgment is contrasted withMacbeth's laboured rhetoric; and, as Macbeth goes out, Banquo turns withhearty praises of him to the King. 

And when next we see him, approaching Macbeth's castle in company withDuncan, there is still no sign of change. Indeed he gains on us. It ishe who speaks the beautiful lines, This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle: Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed, The air is delicate;

--lines which tell of that freedom of heart, and that sympathetic senseof peace and beauty, which the Macbeth of the tragedy could never feel. 

But now Banquo's sky begins to darken. At the opening of the Second Actwe see him with Fleance crossing the court of the castle on his way tobed. The blackness of the moonless, starless night seems to oppress him. And he is oppressed by something else. 

 A heavy summons lies like lead upon me, And yet I would not sleep: merciful powers, Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature Gives way to in repose!

On Macbeth's entrance we know what Banquo means: he says toMacbeth--and it is the first time he refers to the subject unprovoked, I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters. 

His will is still untouched: he would repel the 'cursed thoughts'; andthey are mere thoughts, not intentions. But still they are 'thoughts, 'something more, probably, than mere recollections; and they bring withthem an undefined sense of guilt. The poison has begun to work. 

The passage that follows Banquo's words to Macbeth is difficult tointerpret:

 I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters: To you they have show'd some truth. 

 _Macb. _ I think not of them: Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve, We would spend it in some words upon that business, If you would grant the time. 

 _Ban. _ At your kind'st leisure. 

 _Macb. _ If you shall cleave to my consent, when 'tis, It shall make honour for you. 

 _Ban. _ So I lose none In seeking to augment it, but still keep My bosom franchised and allegiance clear, I shall be counsell'd. 

 _Macb. _ Good repose the while!

 _Ban. _ Thanks, sir: the like to you!

Macbeth's first idea is, apparently, simply to free himself from anysuspicion which the discovery of the murder might suggest, by showinghimself, just before it, quite indifferent to the predictions, andmerely looking forward to a conversation about them at some future time. But why does he go on, 'If you shall cleave, ' etc. ? Perhaps he foreseesthat, on the discovery, Banquo cannot fail to suspect him, and thinks itsafest to prepare the way at once for an understanding with him (in theoriginal story he makes Banquo his accomplice _before_ the murder). Banquo's answer shows three things, --that he fears a treasonableproposal, that he has no idea of accepting it, and that he has no fearof Macbeth to restrain him from showing what is in his mind. 

Duncan is murdered. In the scene of discovery Banquo of course appears, and his behaviour is significant. When he enters, and Macduff cries outto him, O Banquo, Banquo, Our royal master's murdered, and Lady Macbeth, who has entered a moment before, exclaims, Woe, alas! What, in our house?

his answer, Too cruel anywhere, shows, as I have pointed out, repulsion, and we may be pretty sure thathe suspects the truth at once. After a few words to Macduff he remainsabsolutely silent while the scene is continued for nearly forty lines. He is watching Macbeth and listening as he tells how he put thechamberlains to death in a frenzy of loyal rage. At last Banquo appearsto have made up his mind. On Lady Macbeth's fainting he proposes thatthey shall all retire, and that they shall afterwards meet, And question this most bloody piece of work To know it further. Fears and scruples[235] shake us: In the great hand of God I stand, and thence Against the undivulged pretence[236] I fight Of treasonous malice. 

His solemn language here reminds us of his grave words about 'theinstruments of darkness, ' and of his later prayer to the 'mercifulpowers. ' He is profoundly shocked, full of indignation, and determinedto play the part of a brave and honest man. 

But he plays no such part. When next we see him, on the last day of hislife, we find that he has yielded to evil. The Witches and his ownambition have conquered him. He alone of the lords knew of theprophecies, but he has said nothing of them. He has acquiesced inMacbeth's accession, and in the official theory that Duncan's sons hadsuborned the chamberlains to murder him. Doubtless, unlike Macduff, hewas present at Scone to see the new king invested. He has, not formallybut in effect, 'cloven to' Macbeth's 'consent'; he is knit to him by 'amost indissoluble tie'; his advice in council has been 'most grave andprosperous'; he is to be the 'chief guest' at that night's supper. Andhis soliloquy tells us why:

 Thou hast it now: king, Cawdor, Glamis, all, As the weird women promised, and, I fear, Thou play'dst most foully for't: yet it was said It should not stand in thy posterity, But that myself should be the root and father Of many kings. If there come truth from them-- As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine-- Why, by the verities on thee made good, May they not be my oracles as well, And set me up in hope? But hush! no more. 

This 'hush! no more' is not the dismissal of 'cursed thoughts': it onlymeans that he hears the trumpets announcing the entrance of the King andQueen. 

His punishment comes swiftly, much more swiftly than Macbeth's, andsaves him from any further fall. He is a very fearless man, and still sofar honourable that he has no thought of acting to bring about thefulfilment of the prophecy which has beguiled him. And therefore he hasno fear of Macbeth. But he little understands him. To Macbeth'stormented mind Banquo's conduct appears highly suspicious. _Why_ hasthis bold and circumspect[237] man kept his secret and become his chiefadviser? In order to make good _his_ part of the predictions afterMacbeth's own precedent. Banquo, he is sure, will suddenly and secretlyattack him. It is not the far-off accession of Banquo's descendants thathe fears; it is (so he tells himself) swift murder; not that the 'barrensceptre' will some day droop from his dying hand, but that it will be'wrenched' away now (III. I. 62). [238] So he kills Banquo. But theBanquo he kills is not the innocent soldier who met the Witches anddaffed their prophecies aside, nor the man who prayed to be deliveredfrom the temptation of his dreams. 

_Macbeth_ leaves on most readers a profound impression of the misery ofa guilty conscience and the retribution of crime. And the strength ofthis impression is one of the reasons why the tragedy is admired byreaders who shrink from _Othello_ and are made unhappy by _Lear_. Butwhat Shakespeare perhaps felt even more deeply, when he wrote this play, was the _incalculability_ of evil, --that in meddling with it humanbeings do they know not what. The soul, he seems to feel, is a thing ofsuch inconceivable depth, complexity, and delicacy, that when youintroduce into it, or suffer to develop in it, any change, andparticularly the change called evil, you can form only the vaguest ideaof the reaction you will provoke. All you can be sure of is that it willnot be what you expected, and that you cannot possibly escape it. Banquo's story, if truly apprehended, produces this impression quite asstrongly as the more terrific stories of the chief characters, andperhaps even more clearly, inasmuch as he is nearer to average humannature, has obviously at first a quiet conscience, and uses with evidentsincerity the language of religion. 

3

Apart from his story Banquo's character is not very interesting, nor isit, I think, perfectly individual. And this holds good of the rest ofthe minor characters. They are sketched lightly, and are seldomdeveloped further than the strict purposes of the action required. Fromthis point of view they are inferior to several of the less importantfigures in each of the other three tragedies. The scene in which LadyMacduff and her child appear, and the passage where their slaughter isreported to Macduff, have much dramatic value, but in neither case isthe effect due to any great extent to the special characters of thepersons concerned. Neither they, nor Duncan, nor Malcolm, nor evenBanquo himself, have been imagined intensely, and therefore they do notproduce that sense of unique personality which Shakespeare could conveyin a much smaller number of lines than he gives to most of them. [239]And this is of course even more the case with persons like Ross, Angus, and Lennox, though each of these has distinguishable features. I doubtif any other great play of Shakespeare's contains so many speeches whicha student of the play, if they were quoted to him, would be puzzled toassign to the speakers. Let the reader turn, for instance, to the secondscene of the Fifth Act, and ask himself why the names of the personsshould not be interchanged in all the ways mathematically possible. Canhe find, again, any signs of character by which to distinguish thespeeches of Ross and Angus in Act I. Scenes ii. And iii. , or todetermine that Malcolm must have spoken I. Iv. 2-11? Most of thiswriting, we may almost say, is simply Shakespeare's writing, not that ofShakespeare become another person. And can anything like the sameproportion of such writing be found in _Hamlet_, _Othello_, or _KingLear_?

Is it possible to guess the reason of this characteristic of _Macbeth_?I cannot believe it is due to the presence of a second hand. Thewriting, mangled by the printer and perhaps by 'the players, ' seems tobe sometimes obviously Shakespeare's, sometimes sufficientlyShakespearean to repel any attack not based on external evidence. It maybe, as the shortness of the play has suggested to some, that Shakespearewas hurried, and, throwing all his weight on the principal characters, did not exert himself in dealing with the rest. But there is anotherpossibility which may be worth considering. _Macbeth_ is distinguishedby its simplicity, --by grandeur in simplicity, no doubt, but still bysimplicity. The two great figures indeed can hardly be called simple, except in comparison with such characters as Hamlet and Iago; but inalmost every other respect the tragedy has this quality. Its plot isquite plain. It has very little intermixture of humour. It has littlepathos except of the sternest kind. The style, for Shakespeare, has notmuch variety, being generally kept at a higher pitch than in the otherthree tragedies; and there is much less than usual of the interchange ofverse and prose. [240] All this makes for simplicity of effect. And, thisbeing so, is it not possible that Shakespeare instinctively felt, orconsciously feared, that to give much individuality or attraction to thesubordinate figures would diminish this effect, and so, like a goodartist, sacrificed a part to the whole? And was he wrong? He hascertainly avoided the overloading which distresses us in _King Lear_, and has produced a tragedy utterly unlike it, not much less great as adramatic poem, and as a drama superior. 

I would add, though without much confidence, another suggestion. Thesimplicity of _Macbeth_ is one of the reasons why many readers feelthat, in spite of its being intensely 'romantic, ' it is less unlike aclassical tragedy than _Hamlet_ or _Othello_ or _King Lear_. And it ispossible that this effect is, in a sense, the result of design. I do notmean that Shakespeare intended to imitate a classical tragedy; I meanonly that he may have seen in the bloody story of Macbeth a subjectsuitable for treatment in a manner somewhat nearer to that of Seneca, orof the English Senecan plays familiar to him in his youth, than was themanner of his own mature tragedies. The Witches doubtless are'romantic, ' but so is the witch-craft in Seneca's _Medea_ and _HerculesOetaeus_; indeed it is difficult to read the account of Medea'spreparations (670-739) without being reminded of the incantations in_Macbeth_. Banquo's Ghost again is 'romantic, ' but so are Seneca'sghosts. For the swelling of the style in some of the greatpassages--however immeasurably superior these may be to anything inSeneca--and certainly for the turgid bombast which occasionally appearsin _Macbeth_, and which seems to have horrified Jonson, Shakespearemight easily have found a model in Seneca. Did he not think that thiswas the high Roman manner? Does not the Sergeant's speech, as Coleridgeobserved, recall the style of the 'passionate speech' of the Player in_Hamlet_, --a speech, be it observed, on a Roman subject?[241] And is itentirely an accident that parallels between Seneca and Shakespeare seemto be more frequent in _Macbeth_ than in any other of his undoubtedlygenuine works except perhaps _Richard III. _, a tragedy unquestionablyinfluenced either by Seneca or by English Senecan plays?[242] If thereis anything in these suggestions, and if we suppose that Shakespearemeant to give to his play a certain classical tinge, he might naturallycarry out this idea in respect to the characters, as well as in otherrespects, by concentrating almost the whole interest on the importantfigures and leaving the others comparatively shadowy. 

4

_Macbeth_ being more simple than the other tragedies, and broader andmore massive in effect, three passages in it are of great importance assecuring variety in tone, and also as affording relief from the feelingsexcited by the Witch-scenes and the principal characters. They are thepassage where the Porter appears, the conversation between Lady Macduffand her little boy, and the passage where Macduff receives the news ofthe slaughter of his wife and babes. Yet the first of these, we are toldeven by Coleridge, is unworthy of Shakespeare and is not his; and thesecond, with the rest of the scene which contains it, appears to beusually omitted in stage representations of _Macbeth_. 

I question if either this scene or the exhibition of Macduff's grief isrequired to heighten our abhorrence of Macbeth's cruelty. They have atechnical value in helping to give the last stage of the action the formof a conflict between Macbeth and Macduff. But their chief function isof another kind. It is to touch the heart with a sense of beauty andpathos, to open the springs of love and of tears. Shakespeare is lovedfor the sweetness of his humanity, and because he makes this kind ofappeal with such irresistible persuasion; and the reason why _Macbeth_, though admired as much as any work of his, is scarcely loved, is thatthe characters who predominate cannot make this kind of appeal, and atno point are able to inspire unmingled sympathy. The two passages inquestion supply this want in such measure as Shakespeare thoughtadvisable in _Macbeth_, and the play would suffer greatly from theirexcision. The second, on the stage, is extremely moving, and Macbeth'sreception of the news of his wife's death may be intended to recall itby way of contrast. The first brings a relief even greater, because herethe element of beauty is more marked, and because humour is mingled withpathos. In both we escape from the oppression of huge sins andsufferings into the presence of the wholesome affections of unambitioushearts; and, though both scenes are painful and one dreadful, oursympathies can flow unchecked. [243]

Lady Macduff is a simple wife and mother, who has no thought foranything beyond her home. Her love for her children shows her at oncethat her husband's flight exposes them to terrible danger. She is in anagony of fear for them, and full of indignation against him. It does noteven occur to her that he has acted from public spirit, or that there issuch a thing. 

 What had he done to make him fly the land?

He must have been mad to do it. He fled for fear. He does not love hiswife and children. He is a traitor. The poor soul is almost besideherself--and with too good reason. But when the murderer bursts in withthe question 'Where is your husband?' she becomes in a moment the wife, and the great noble's wife:

 I hope, in no place so unsanctified Where such as thou may'st find him. 

What did Shakespeare mean us to think of Macduff's flight, for whichMacduff has been much blamed by others beside his wife? Certainly notthat fear for himself, or want of love for his family, had anything todo with it. His love for his country, so strongly marked in the scenewith Malcolm, is evidently his one motive. 

 He is noble, wise, judicious, and best knows The fits o' the season, says Ross. That his flight was 'noble' is beyond doubt. That it was notwise or judicious in the interest of his family is no less clear. Butthat does not show that it was wrong; and, even if it were, to representits consequences as a judgment on him for his want of due considerationis equally monstrous and ludicrous. [244] The further question whether hedid fail in due consideration, or whether for his country's sake hedeliberately risked a danger which he fully realised, would inShakespeare's theatre have been answered at once by Macduff's expressionand demeanour on hearing Malcolm's words, Why in that rawness left you wife and child, Those precious motives, those strong knots of love, Without leave-taking?

It cannot be decided with certainty from the mere text; but, withoutgoing into the considerations on each side, I may express the opinionthat Macduff knew well what he was doing, and that he fled withoutleave-taking for fear his purpose should give way. Perhaps he said tohimself, with Coriolanus, Not of a woman's tenderness to be, Requires nor child nor woman's face to see. 

Little Macduff suggests a few words on Shakespeare's boys (there arescarcely any little girls). It is somewhat curious that nearly all ofthem appear in tragic or semi-tragic dramas. I remember but twoexceptions: little William Page, who said his _Hic, haec, hoc_ to SirHugh Evans; and the page before whom Falstaff walked like a sow thathath overwhelmed all her litter but one; and it is to be feared thateven this page, if he is the Boy of _Henry V. _, came to an ill end, being killed with the luggage. 

 So wise so young, they say, do ne'er live long, as Richard observed of the little Prince of Wales. Of too many of thesechildren (some of the 'boys, ' _e. G. _ those in _Cymbeline_, are lads, notchildren) the saying comes true. They are pathetic figures, the more sobecause they so often appear in company with their unhappy mothers, andcan never be thought of apart from them. Perhaps Arthur is even thefirst creation in which Shakespeare's power of pathos showed itselfmature;[245] and the last of his children, Mamillius, assuredly provesthat it never decayed. They are almost all of them noble figures, too, --affectionate, frank, brave, high-spirited, 'of an open and freenature' like Shakespeare's best men. And almost all of them, again, areamusing and charming as well as pathetic; comical in their mingledacuteness and _naïveté_, charming in their confidence in themselves andthe world, and in the seriousness with which they receive the jocosityof their elders, who commonly address them as strong men, greatwarriors, or profound politicians. 

Little Macduff exemplifies most of these remarks. There is nothing inthe scene of a transcendent kind, like the passage about Mamillius'never-finished 'Winter's Tale' of the man who dwelt by a churchyard, orthe passage about his death, or that about little Marcius and thebutterfly, or the audacity which introduces him, at the supreme momentof the tragedy, outdoing the appeals of Volumnia and Virgilia by thestatement, 'A shall not tread on me: I'll run away till I'm bigger, but then I'll fight. 

Still one does not easily forget little Macduff's delightful andwell-justified confidence in his ability to defeat his mother inargument; or the deep impression she made on him when she spoke of hisfather as a 'traitor'; or his immediate response when he heard themurderer call his father by the same name, --

 Thou liest, thou shag-haired villain. 

Nor am I sure that, if the son of Coriolanus had been murdered, his lastwords to his mother would have been, 'Run away, I pray you. '

I may add two remarks. The presence of this child is one of the thingsin which _Macbeth_ reminds us of _Richard III. _ And he is perhaps theonly person in the tragedy who provokes a smile. I say 'perhaps, ' forthough the anxiety of the Doctor to escape from the company of hispatient's husband makes one smile, I am not sure that it was meant to. 

5

The Porter does not make me smile: the moment is too terrific. He isgrotesque; no doubt the contrast he affords is humorous as well asghastly; I dare say the groundlings roared with laughter at his coarsestremarks. But they are not comic enough to allow one to forget for amoment what has preceded and what must follow. And I am far fromcomplaining of this. I believe that it is what Shakespeare intended, andthat he despised the groundlings if they laughed. Of course he couldhave written without the least difficulty speeches five times ashumorous; but he knew better. The Grave-diggers make us laugh: the oldCountryman who brings the asps to Cleopatra makes us smile at least. Butthe Grave-digger scene does not come at a moment of extreme tension; andit is long. Our distress for Ophelia is not so absorbing that we refuseto be interested in the man who digs her grave, or even continuethroughout the long conversation to remember always with pain that thegrave is hers. It is fitting, therefore, that he should be madedecidedly humorous. The passage in _Antony and Cleopatra_ is much nearerto the passage in _Macbeth_, and seems to have been forgotten by thosewho say that there is nothing in Shakespeare resembling thatpassage. [246] The old Countryman comes at a moment of tragic exaltation, and the dialogue is appropriately brief. But the moment, though tragic, is emphatically one of exaltation. We have not been feeling horror, norare we feeling a dreadful suspense. We are going to see Cleopatra die, but she is to die gloriously and to triumph over Octavius. And thereforeour amusement at the old Countryman and the contrast he affords to thesehigh passions, is untroubled, and it was right to make him really comic. But the Porter's case is quite different. We cannot forget how theknocking that makes him grumble sounded to Macbeth, or that within a fewminutes of his opening the gate Duncan will be discovered in his blood;nor can we help feeling that in pretending to be porter of hell-gate heis terribly near the truth. To give him language so humorous that itwould ask us almost to lose the sense of these things would have been afatal mistake, --the kind of mistake that means want of dramaticimagination. And that was not the sort of error into which Shakespearefell. 

To doubt the genuineness of the passage, then, on the ground that it isnot humorous enough for Shakespeare, seems to me to show this want. Itis to judge the passage as though it were a separate composition, instead of conceiving it in the fulness of its relations to itssurroundings in a stage-play. Taken by itself, I admit, it would bear noindubitable mark of Shakespeare's authorship, not even in the phrase'the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire, ' which Coleridge thoughtShakespeare might have added to an interpolation of 'the players. ' Andif there were reason (as in my judgment there is not) to suppose thatShakespeare thus permitted an interpolation, or that he collaboratedwith another author, I could believe that he left 'the players' or hiscollaborator to write the words of the passage. But that anyone exceptthe author of the scene of Duncan's murder _conceived_ the passage, isincredible. [247]

 * * * * *

The speeches of the Porter, a low comic character, are in prose. So isthe letter of Macbeth to his wife. In both these cases Shakespearefollows his general rule or custom. The only other prose-speeches occurin the sleep-walking scene, and here the use of prose may seem strange. For in great tragic scenes we expect the more poetic medium ofexpression, and this is one of the most famous of such scenes. Besides, unless I mistake, Lady Macbeth is the only one of Shakespeare's greattragic characters who on a last appearance is denied the dignity ofverse. 

Yet in this scene also he adheres to his custom. Somnambulism is anabnormal condition, and it is his general rule to assign prose topersons whose state of mind is abnormal. Thus, to illustrate from thesefour plays, Hamlet when playing the madman speaks prose, but insoliloquy, in talking with Horatio, and in pleading with his mother, hespeaks verse. [248] Ophelia in her madness either sings snatches of songsor speaks prose. Almost all Lear's speeches, after he has becomedefinitely insane, are in prose: where he wakes from sleep recovered, the verse returns. The prose enters with that speech which closes withhis trying to tear off his clothes; but he speaks in verse--some of itvery irregular--in the Timon-like speeches where his intellect suddenlyin his madness seems to regain the force of his best days (IV. Vi. ). Othello, in IV. I. , speaks in verse till the moment when Iago tells himthat Cassio has confessed. There follow ten lines of prose--exclamationsand mutterings of bewildered horror--and he falls to the groundunconscious. 

The idea underlying this custom of Shakespeare's evidently is that theregular rhythm of verse would be inappropriate where the mind issupposed to have lost its balance and to be at the mercy of chanceimpressions coming from without (as sometimes with Lear), or of ideasemerging from its unconscious depths and pursuing one another across itspassive surface. The somnambulism of Lady Macbeth is such a condition. There is no rational connection in the sequence of images and ideas. Thesight of blood on her hand, the sound of the clock striking the hour forDuncan's murder, the hesitation of her husband before that hour came, the vision of the old man in his blood, the idea of the murdered wife ofMacduff, the sight of the hand again, Macbeth's 'flaws and starts' atthe sight of Banquo's ghost, the smell on her hand, the washing of handsafter Duncan's murder again, her husband's fear of the buried Banquo, the sound of the knocking at the gate--these possess her, one afteranother, in this chance order. It is not much less accidental than theorder of Ophelia's ideas; the great difference is that with Opheliatotal insanity has effaced or greatly weakened the emotional force ofthe ideas, whereas to Lady Macbeth each new image or perception comesladen with anguish. There is, again, scarcely a sign of the exaltationof disordered imagination; we are conscious rather of an intensesuffering which forces its way into light against resistance, and speaksa language for the most part strikingly bare in its diction and simplein its construction. This language stands in strong contrast with thatof Macbeth in the surrounding scenes, full of a feverish and almostfurious excitement, and seems to express a far more desolating misery. 

The effect is extraordinarily impressive. The soaring pride and power ofLady Macbeth's first speeches return on our memory, and the change isfelt with a breathless awe. Any attempt, even by Shakespeare, to drawout the moral enfolded in this awe, would but weaken it. For the moment, too, all the language of poetry--even of Macbeth's poetry--seems to betouched with unreality, and these brief toneless sentences seem the onlyvoice of truth. [249]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 227: So Mrs. Siddons is said to have given the passage. ]

[Footnote 228: Surely the usual interpretation of 'We fail?' as aquestion of contemptuous astonishment, is right. 'We fail!' givespractically the same sense, but alters the punctuation of the first twoFolios. In either case, 'But, ' I think, means 'Only. ' On the other handthe proposal to read 'We fail. ' with a full stop, as expressive ofsublime acceptance of the possibility, seems to me, however attractiveat first sight, quite out of harmony with Lady Macbeth's mood throughoutthese scenes. ]

[Footnote 229: See Note DD. ]

[Footnote 230: It is not new. ]

[Footnote 231: The words about Lady Macduff are of course significant ofnatural human feeling, and may have been introduced expressly to markit, but they do not, I think, show any fundamental change in LadyMacbeth, for at no time would she have suggested or approved a_purposeless_ atrocity. It is perhaps characteristic that this humanfeeling should show itself most clearly in reference to an act for whichshe was not directly responsible, and in regard to which therefore shedoes not feel the instinct of self-assertion. ]

[Footnote 232: The tendency to sentimentalise Lady Macbeth is partly dueto Mrs. Siddons's fancy that she was a small, fair, blue-eyed woman, 'perhaps even fragile. ' Dr. Bucknill, who was unaquainted with thisfancy, independently determined that she was 'beautiful and delicate, ''unoppressed by weight of flesh, ' 'probably small, ' but 'a tawny orbrown blonde, ' with grey eyes: and Brandes affirms that she was lean, slight, and hard. They know much more than Shakespeare, who tells usabsolutely nothing on these subjects. That Lady Macbeth, after takingpart in a murder, was so exhausted as to faint, will hardly demonstrateher fragility. That she must have been blue-eyed, fair, or red-haired, because she was a Celt, is a bold inference, and it is an idle dreamthat Shakespeare had any idea of making her or her husbandcharacteristically Celtic. The only evidence ever offered to prove thatshe was small is the sentence, 'All the perfumes of Arabia will notsweeten this little hand'; and Goliath might have called his hand'little' in contrast with all the perfumes of Arabia. One might as wellpropose to prove that Othello was a small man by quoting, I have seen the day, That, with this little arm and this good sword, I have made my way through more impediments Than twenty times your stop. 

The reader is at liberty to imagine Lady Macbeth's person in the waythat pleases him best, or to leave it, as Shakespeare very likely did, unimagined. 

Perhaps it may be well to add that there is not the faintest trace inthe play of the idea occasionally met with, and to some extent embodiedin Madame Bernhardt's impersonation of Lady Macbeth, that her hold uponher husband lay in seductive attractions deliberately exercised. Shakespeare was not unskilled or squeamish in indicating such ideas. ]

[Footnote 233: That it is Macbeth who feels the harmony between thedesolation of the heath and the figures who appear on it is acharacteristic touch. ]

[Footnote 234: So, in Holinshed, 'Banquho jested with him and sayde, nowMakbeth thou haste obtayned those things which the twoo former sistersprophesied, there remayneth onely for thee to purchase that which thethird sayd should come to passe. ']

[Footnote 235: =doubts. ]

[Footnote 236: =design. ]

[Footnote 237:

 'tis much he dares, And, to that dauntless temper of his mind, He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour To act in safety. ]

[Footnote 238: So when he hears that Fleance has escaped he is not muchtroubled (III. Iv. 29):

 the worm that's fled Hath nature that in time will venom breed, No teeth for the present. 

I have repeated above what I have said before, because the meaning ofMacbeth's soliloquy is frequently misconceived. ]

[Footnote 239: Virgilia in _Coriolanus_ is a famous example. She speaksabout thirty-five lines. ]

[Footnote 240: The percentage of prose is, roughly, in _Hamlet_ 30-2/3, in _Othello_ 16-1/3, in _King Lear_ 27-1/2, in _Macbeth_ 8-1/2. ]

[Footnote 241: Cf. Note F. There are also in _Macbeth_ several shorterpassages which recall the Player's speech. Cf. 'Fortune . .. Showed likea rebel's whore' (I. Ii. 14) with 'Out! out! thou strumpet Fortune!' Theform 'eterne' occurs in Shakespeare only in _Macbeth_, III. Ii. 38, andin the 'proof eterne' of the Player's speech. Cf. 'So, as a paintedtyrant, Pyrrhus stood, ' with _Macbeth_, V. Viii. 26; 'the ruggedPyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast, ' with 'the rugged Russian bear . .. Orthe Hyrcan tiger' (_Macbeth_, III. Iv. 100); 'like a neutral to his willand matter' with _Macbeth_, I. V. 47. The words 'Till he unseam'd himfrom the nave to the chaps, ' in the Serjeant's speech, recall the words'Then from the navel to the throat at once He ript old Priam, ' in _DidoQueen of Carthage_, where these words follow those others, about Priamfalling with the mere wind of Pyrrhus' sword, which seem to havesuggested 'the whiff and wind of his fell sword' in the Player'sspeech. ]

[Footnote 242: See Cunliffe, _The Influence of Seneca on ElizabethanTragedy_. The most famous of these parallels is that between 'Will allgreat Neptune's Ocean, ' etc. , and the following passages:

 Quis eluet me Tanais? aut quae barbaris Maeotis undis Pontico incumbens mari? Non ipse toto magnus Oceano pater Tantum expiarit sceleris. (_Hipp. _ 715. )

 Quis Tanais, aut quis Nilus, aut quis Persica Violentus unda Tigris, aut Rhenus ferox, Tagusve Ibera turbidus gaza fluens, Abluere dextram poterit? Arctoum licet Maeotis in me gelida transfundat mare, Et tota Tethys per meas currat manus, Haerebit altum facinus. (_Herc. Furens_, 1323. )

(The reader will remember Othello's 'Pontic sea' with its 'violentpace. ') Medea's incantation in Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, vii. 197 ff. , which certainly suggested Prospero's speech, _Tempest_, V. I. 33 ff. , should be compared with Seneca, _Herc. Oet. _, 452 ff. , 'Artibusmagicis, ' etc. It is of course highly probable that Shakespeare readsome Seneca at school. I may add that in the _Hippolytus_, beside thepassage quoted above, there are others which might have furnished himwith suggestions. Cf. For instance _Hipp. _, 30 ff. , with the lines aboutthe Spartan hounds in _Mids. Night's Dream_, IV. I. 117 ff. , andHippolytus' speech, beginning 483, with the Duke's speech in _As YouLike It_, II. I. ]

[Footnote 243: Cf. Coleridge's note on the Lady Macduff scene. ]

[Footnote 244: It is nothing to the purpose that Macduff himself says, Sinful Macduff, They were all struck for thee! naught that I am, Not for their own demerits, but for mine, Fell slaughter on their souls. 

There is no reason to suppose that the sin and demerit he speaks of isthat of leaving his home. And even if it were, it is Macduff thatspeaks, not Shakespeare, any more than Shakespeare speaks in thepreceding sentence, Did heaven look on, And would not take their part?

And yet Brandes (ii. 104) hears in these words 'the voice of revolt . .. That sounds later through the despairing philosophy of _King Lear_. ' Itsounds a good deal earlier too; _e. G. _ in _Tit. And. _, IV. I. 81, and _2Henry VI. _, II. I. 154. The idea is a commonplace of Elizabethantragedy. ]

[Footnote 245: And the idea that it was the death of his son Hamnet, aged eleven, that brought this power to maturity is one of the moreplausible attempts to find in his dramas a reflection of his privatehistory. It implies however as late a date as 1596 for _King John_. ]

[Footnote 246: Even if this were true, the retort is obvious thatneither is there anything resembling the murder-scene in _Macbeth_. ]

[Footnote 247: I have confined myself to the single aspect of thisquestion on which I had what seemed something new to say. ProfessorHales's defence of the passage on fuller grounds, in the admirable paperreprinted in his _Notes and Essays on Shakespeare_, seems to me quiteconclusive. I may add two notes. (1) The references in the Porter'sspeeches to 'equivocation, ' which have naturally, and probably rightly, been taken as allusions to the Jesuit Garnet's appeal to the doctrine ofequivocation in defence of his perjury when, on trial for participationin the Gunpowder Plot, do not stand alone in _Macbeth_. The laterprophecies of the Witches Macbeth calls 'the equivocation of the fiendThat lies like truth' (V. V. 43); and the Porter's remarks about theequivocator who 'could swear in both the scales against either scale, who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate toheaven, ' may be compared with the following dialogue (IV. Ii. 45):

 _Son. _ What is a traitor?

 _Lady Macduff. _ Why, one that swears and lies. 

 _Son. _ And be all traitors that do so?

 _Lady Macduff. _ Everyone that does so is a traitor, and must be hanged. 

Garnet, as a matter of fact, _was_ hanged in May, 1606; and it is to befeared that the audience applauded this passage. 

(2) The Porter's soliloquy on the different applicants for admittancehas, in idea and manner, a marked resemblance to Pompey's soliloquy onthe inhabitants of the prison, in _Measure for Measure_, IV. Iii. 1 ff. ;and the dialogue between him and Abhorson on the 'mystery' of hanging(IV. Ii. 22 ff. ) is of just the same kind as the Porter's dialogue withMacduff about drink. ]

[Footnote 248: In the last Act, however, he speaks in verse even in thequarrel with Laertes at Ophelia's grave. It would be plausible toexplain this either from his imitating what he thinks the rant ofLaertes, or by supposing that his 'towering passion' made him forget toact the madman. But in the final scene also he speaks in verse in thepresence of all. This again might be accounted for by saying that he issupposed to be in a lucid interval, as indeed his own language at 239ff. Implies. But the probability is that Shakespeare's real reason forbreaking his rule here was simply that he did not choose to depriveHamlet of verse on his last appearance. I wonder the disuse of prose inthese two scenes has not been observed, and used as an argument, bythose who think that Hamlet, with the commission in his pocket, is nowresolute. ]

[Footnote 249: The verse-speech of the Doctor, which closes this scene, lowers the tension towards that of the next scene. His introductoryconversation with the Gentlewoman is written in prose (sometimes verynear verse), partly, perhaps, from its familiar character, but chieflybecause Lady Macbeth is to speak in prose. ]

NOTE A. 

EVENTS BEFORE THE OPENING OF THE ACTION IN _HAMLET_. 

In Hamlet's first soliloquy he speaks of his father as being 'but twomonths dead, --nay, not so much, not two. ' He goes on to refer to thelove between his father and mother, and then says (I. Ii. 145):

 and yet, within a month-- Let me not think on't--Frailty, thy name is woman!-- A little month, or ere those shoes were old With which she follow'd my poor father's body, Like Niobe, all tears, why she, even she-- O God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason, Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle. 

It seems hence to be usually assumed that at this time--the time whenthe action begins--Hamlet's mother has been married a little less than amonth. 

On this assumption difficulties, however, arise, though I have not foundthem referred to. Why has the Ghost waited nearly a month since themarriage before showing itself? Why has the King waited nearly a monthbefore appearing in public for the first time, as he evidently does inthis scene? And why has Laertes waited nearly a month since thecoronation before asking leave to return to France (I. Ii. 53)?

To this it might be replied that the marriage and the coronation wereseparated by some weeks; that, while the former occurred nearly a monthbefore the time of this scene, the latter has only just taken place; andthat what the Ghost cannot bear is, not the mere marriage, but theaccession of an incestuous murderer to the throne. But anyone who willread the King's speech at the opening of the scene will certainlyconclude that the marriage has only just been celebrated, and also thatit is conceived as involving the accession of Claudius to the throne. Gertrude is described as the 'imperial jointress' of the State, and theKing says that the lords consented to the marriage, but makes noseparate mention of his election. 

The solution of the difficulty is to be found in the lines quoted above. The marriage followed, within a month, not the _death_ of Hamlet'sfather, but the _funeral_. And this makes all clear. The death happenednearly two months ago. The funeral did not succeed it immediately, but(say) in a fortnight or three weeks. And the marriage and coronation, coming rather less than a month after the funeral, have just takenplace. So that the Ghost has not waited at all; nor has the King, norLaertes. 

On this hypothesis it follows that Hamlet's agonised soliloquy is notuttered nearly a month after the marriage which has so horrified him, but quite soon after it (though presumably he would know rather earlierwhat was coming). And from this hypothesis we get also a partialexplanation of two other difficulties, (_a_) When Horatio, at the end ofthe soliloquy, enters and greets Hamlet, it is evident that he andHamlet have not recently met at Elsinore. Yet Horatio came to Elsinorefor the funeral (I. Ii. 176). Now even if the funeral took place somethree weeks ago, it seems rather strange that Hamlet, however absorbedin grief and however withdrawn from the Court, has not met Horatio; butif the funeral took place some seven weeks ago, the difficulty isconsiderably greater. (_b_) We are twice told that Hamlet has '_oflate_' been seeking the society of Ophelia and protesting his love forher (I. Iii. 91, 99). It always seemed to me, on the usual view of thechronology, rather difficult (though not, of course, impossible) tounderstand this, considering the state of feeling produced in him by hismother's marriage, and in particular the shock it appears to have givento his faith in woman. But if the marriage has only just been celebratedthe words 'of late' would naturally refer to a time before it. This timepresumably would be subsequent to the death of Hamlet's father, but itis not so hard to fancy that Hamlet may have sought relief from mere_grief_ in his love for Ophelia. 

But here another question arises; May not the words 'of late' include, or even wholly refer to, [250] a time prior to the death of Hamlet'sfather? And this question would be answered universally, I suppose, inthe negative, on the ground that Hamlet was not at Court but atWittenberg when his father died. I will deal with this idea in aseparate note, and will only add here that, though it is quite possiblethat Shakespeare never imagined any of these matters clearly, and soproduced these unimportant difficulties, we ought not to assume thiswithout examination. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 250: This is intrinsically not probable, and is the moreimprobable because in Q1 Hamlet's letter to Ophelia (which must havebeen written before the action of the play begins) is signed 'Thine everthe most unhappy Prince _Hamlet_. ' 'Unhappy' _might_ be meant todescribe an unsuccessful lover, but it probably shows that the letterwas written after his father's death. ]

NOTE B. 

WHERE WAS HAMLET AT THE TIME OF HIS FATHER'S DEATH?

The answer will at once be given: 'At the University of Wittenberg. Forthe king says to him (I. Ii. 112):

 For your intent In going back to school in Wittenberg, It is most retrograde to our desire. 

The Queen also prays him not to go to Wittenberg: and he consents toremain. '

Now I quite agree that the obvious interpretation of this passage isthat universally accepted, that Hamlet, like Horatio, was at Wittenbergwhen his father died; and I do not say that it is wrong. But it involvesdifficulties, and ought not to be regarded as certain. 

(1) One of these difficulties has long been recognised. Hamlet, according to the evidence of Act V. , Scene i. , is thirty years of age;and that is a very late age for a university student. One solution isfound (by those who admit that Hamlet _was_ thirty) in a passage inNash's _Pierce Penniless_: 'For fashion sake some [Danes] will put theirchildren to schoole, but they set them not to it till they are fourteeneyears old, so that you shall see a great boy with a beard learne hisA. B. C. And sit weeping under the rod when he is thirty years old. 'Another solution, as we saw (p. 105), is found in Hamlet's character. Heis a philosopher who lingers on at the University from love of hisstudies there. 

(2) But there is a more formidable difficulty, which seems to haveescaped notice. Horatio certainly came from Wittenberg to the funeral. And observe how he and Hamlet meet (I. Ii. 160). 

 _Hor. _ Hail to your lordship!

 _Ham. _ I am glad to see you well: Horatio, --or I do forget myself. 

 _Hor. _ The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever. 

 _Ham. _ Sir, my good friend; I'll change that name with you: And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio? Marcellus?

 _Mar. _ My good lord--

 _Ham. _ I am very glad to see you. Good even, sir. [251] But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?

 _Hor. _ A truant disposition, good my lord. 

 _Ham. _ I would not hear your enemy say so, Nor shall you do my ear that violence, To make it truster of your own report Against yourself: I know you are no truant. But what is your affair in Elsinore? We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart. 

 _Hor. _ My lord, I came to see your father's funeral. 

 _Ham. _ I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student; I think it was to see my mother's wedding. 

Is not this passing strange? Hamlet and Horatio are supposed to befellow-students at Wittenberg, and to have left it for Elsinore lessthan two months ago. Yet Hamlet hardly recognises Horatio at first, andspeaks as if he himself lived at Elsinore (I refer to his bitter jest, 'We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart'). Who would dream thatHamlet had himself just come from Wittenberg, if it were not for theprevious words about his going back there?

How can this be explained on the usual view? Only, I presume, bysupposing that Hamlet is so sunk in melancholy that he really doesalmost 'forget himself'[252] and forget everything else, so that heactually is in doubt who Horatio is. And this, though not impossible, ishard to believe. 

'Oh no, ' it may be answered, 'for he is doubtful about Marcellus too;and yet, if he were living at Elsinore, he must have seen Marcellusoften. ' But he is _not_ doubtful about Marcellus. That note ofinterrogation after 'Marcellus' is Capell's conjecture: it is not in anyQuarto or any Folio. The fact is that he knows perfectly well the manwho lives at Elsinore, but is confused by the appearance of the friendwho comes from Wittenberg. 

(3) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are sent for, to wean Hamlet from hismelancholy and to worm his secret out of him, because he has known themfrom his youth and is fond of them (II. Ii. 1 ff. ). They come _to_Denmark (II. Ii. 247 f. ): they come therefore _from_ some other country. Where do they come from? They are, we hear, Hamlet's 'school-fellows'(III. Iv. 202). And in the first Quarto we are directly told that theywere with him at Wittenberg:

 _Ham. _ What, Gilderstone, and Rossencraft, Welcome, kind school-fellows, to Elsanore. 

 _Gil. _ We thank your grace, and would be very glad You were as when we were at Wittenberg. 

Now let the reader look at Hamlet's first greeting of them in thereceived text, and let him ask himself whether it is the greeting of aman to fellow-students whom he left two months ago: whether it is notrather, like his greeting of Horatio, the welcome of an oldfellow-student who has not seen his visitors for a considerable time(II. Ii. 226 f. ). 

(4) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern tell Hamlet of the players who arecoming. He asks what players they are, and is told, 'Even those you werewont to take such delight in, the tragedians of the city. ' He asks, 'Dothey hold the same estimation they did when I was in the city?'Evidently he has not been in the city for some time. And this is stillmore evident when the players come in, and he talks of one having growna beard, and another having perhaps cracked his voice, since they lastmet. What then is this city, where he has not been for some time, butwhere (it would appear) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern live? It is not inDenmark ('Comest thou to beard me in Denmark?'). It would seem to beWittenberg. [253]

All these passages, it should be observed, are consistent with oneanother. And the conclusion they point to is that Hamlet has left theUniversity for some years and has been living at Court. This again isconsistent with his being thirty years of age, and with his beingmentioned as a soldier and a courtier as well as a scholar (III. I. 159). And it is inconsistent, I believe, with nothing in the play, unless with the mention of his 'going back to school in Wittenberg. ' Butit is not really inconsistent with that. The idea may quite well be thatHamlet, feeling it impossible to continue at Court after his mother'smarriage and Claudius' accession, thinks of the University where, yearsago, he was so happy, and contemplates a return to it. If this wereShakespeare's meaning he might easily fail to notice that the expression'going back to school in Wittenberg' would naturally suggest that Hamlethad only just left 'school. '

I do not see how to account for these passages except on thishypothesis. But it in its turn involves a certain difficulty. Horatio, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern seem to be of about the same age as Hamlet. How then do _they_ come to be at Wittenberg? I had thought that thisquestion might be answered in the following way. If 'the city' isWittenberg, Shakespeare would regard it as a place like London, and wemight suppose that Horatio, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were livingthere, though they had ceased to be students. But this can hardly betrue of Horatio, who, when he (to spare Hamlet's feelings) talks ofbeing 'a truant, ' must mean a truant from his University. The onlysolution I can suggest is that, in the story or play which Shakespeareused, Hamlet and the others were all at the time of the murder youngstudents at Wittenberg, and that when he determined to make them oldermen (or to make Hamlet, at any rate, older), he did not take troubleenough to carry this idea through all the necessary detail, and so leftsome inconsistencies. But in any case the difficulty in the view which Isuggest seems to me not nearly so great as those which the usual viewhas to meet. [254]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 251: These three words are evidently addressed to Bernardo. ]

[Footnote 252: Cf. Antonio in his melancholy (_Merchant of Venice_, I. I. 6), And such a want-wit sadness makes of me That I have much ado to know myself. ]

[Footnote 253: In _Der Bestrafte Brudermord_ it _is_ Wittenberg. Hamletsays to the actors: 'Were you not, a few years ago, at the University ofWittenberg? I think I saw you act there': Furness's _Variorum_, ii. 129. But it is very doubtful whether this play is anything but an adaptationand enlargement of _Hamlet_ as it existed in the stage represented byQ1. ]

[Footnote 254: It is perhaps worth while to note that in _Der BestrafteBrudermord_ Hamlet is said to have been 'in Germany' at the time of hisfather's murder. ]

NOTE C. 

HAMLET'S AGE. 

The chief arguments on this question may be found in Furness's _VariorumHamlet_, vol. I. , pp. 391 ff. I will merely explain my position briefly. 

Even if the general impression I received from the play were that Hamletwas a youth of eighteen or twenty, I should feel quite unable to set itagainst the evidence of the statements in V. I. Which show him to beexactly thirty, unless these statements seemed to be casual. But theyhave to my mind, on the contrary, the appearance of being expresslyinserted in order to fix Hamlet's age; and the fact that they differdecidedly from the statements in Q1 confirms that idea. So does the factthat the Player King speaks of having been married thirty years (III. Ii. 165), where again the number differs from that in Q1. 

If V. I. Did not contain those decisive statements, I believe myimpression as to Hamlet's age would be uncertain. His being severaltimes called 'young' would not influence me much (nor at all when he iscalled 'young' simply to distinguish him from his father, _as he is inthe very passage which shows him to be thirty_). But I think wenaturally take him to be about as old as Laertes, Rosencrantz andGuildenstern, and take them to be less than thirty. Further, thelanguage used by Laertes and Polonius to Ophelia in I. Iii. Wouldcertainly, by itself, lead one to imagine Hamlet as a good deal lessthan thirty; and the impression it makes is not, to me, altogethereffaced by the fact that Henry V. At his accession is said to be in 'thevery May-morn of his youth, '--an expression which corresponds closelywith those used by Laertes to Ophelia. In some passages, again, there isan air of boyish petulance. On the other side, however, we should haveto set (1) the maturity of Hamlet's thought; (2) his manner, on thewhole, to other men and to his mother, which, I think, is far fromsuggesting the idea of a mere youth; (3) such a passage as his words toHoratio at III. Ii. 59 ff. , which imply that both he and Horatio haveseen a good deal of life (this passage has in Q1 nothing correspondingto the most significant lines). I have shown in Note B that it is veryunsafe to argue to Hamlet's youth from the words about his going back toWittenberg. 

On the whole I agree with Prof. Dowden that, apart from the statementsin V. I. , one would naturally take Hamlet to be a man of about five andtwenty. 

It has been suggested that in the old play Hamlet was a mere lad; thatShakespeare, when he began to work on it, [255] had not determined tomake Hamlet older; that, as he went on, he did so determine; and thatthis is the reason why the earlier part of the play makes (if it doesso) a different impression from the later. I see nothing very improbablein this idea, but I must point out that it is a mistake to appeal insupport of it to the passage in V. I. As found in Q1; for that passagedoes not in the least show that the author (if correctly reported)imagined Hamlet as a lad. I set out the statements in Q2 and Q1. 

Q2 says:

 (1) The grave-digger came to his business on the day when old Hamlet defeated Fortinbras:

 (2) On that day young Hamlet was born:

 (3) The grave-digger has, at the time of speaking, been sexton for thirty years:

 (4) Yorick's skull has been in the earth twenty-three years:

 (5) Yorick used to carry young Hamlet on his back. 

This is all explicit and connected, and yields the result that Hamlet isnow thirty. 

Q1 says:

 (1) Yorick's skull has been in the ground a dozen years:

 (2) It has been in the ground ever since old Hamlet overcame Fortinbras:

 (3) Yorick used to carry young Hamlet on his back. 

From this nothing whatever follows as to Hamlet's age, except that he ismore than twelve![256] Evidently the writer (if correctly reported) hasno intention of telling us how old Hamlet is. That he did not imaginehim as very young appears from his making him say that he has noted'this seven year' (in Q2 'three years') that the toe of the peasantcomes near the heel of the courtier. The fact that the Player-King in Q1speaks of having been married forty years shows that here too the writerhas not any reference to Hamlet's age in his mind. [257]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 255: Of course we do not know that he did work on it. ]

[Footnote 256: I find that I have been anticipated in this remark by H. Türck (_Jahrbuch_ for 1900, p. 267 ff. )]

[Footnote 257: I do not know if it has been observed that in the openingof the Player-King's speech, as given in Q2 and the Folio (it is quitedifferent in Q1), there seems to be a reminiscence of Greene's_Alphonsus King of Arragon_, Act IV. , lines 33 ff. (Dyce's _Greene andPeele_, p. 239):

 Thrice ten times Phoebus with his golden beams Hath compassed the circle of the sky, Thrice ten times Ceres hath her workmen hir'd, And fill'd her barns with fruitful crops of corn, Since first in priesthood I did lead my life. ]

NOTE D. 

'MY TABLES--MEET IT IS I SET IT DOWN. '

This passage has occasioned much difficulty, and to many readers seemseven absurd. And it has been suggested that it, with much thatimmediately follows it, was adopted by Shakespeare, with very littlechange, from the old play. 

It is surely in the highest degree improbable that, at such a criticalpoint, when he had to show the first effect on Hamlet of the disclosuresmade by the Ghost, Shakespeare would write slackly or be content withanything that did not satisfy his own imagination. But it is notsurprising that we should find some difficulty in following hisimagination at such a point. 

Let us look at the whole speech. The Ghost leaves Hamlet with the words, 'Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me'; and he breaks out:

 O all you host of heaven! O earth! what else? And shall I couple hell? O, fie! Hold, hold, my heart; And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee! Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat In this distracted globe. Remember thee! Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, That youth and observation copied there; And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmix'd with baser matter: yes, by heaven! O most pernicious woman! O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! My tables--meet it is I set it down, That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain; At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark: [_Writing_ So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word; It is 'Adieu, adieu! remember me. ' I have sworn 't. 

The man who speaks thus was, we must remember, already well-nighoverwhelmed with sorrow and disgust when the Ghost appeared to him. Hehas now suffered a tremendous shock. He has learned that his mother wasnot merely what he supposed but an adulteress, and that his father wasmurdered by her paramour. This knowledge too has come to him in such away as, quite apart from the _matter_ of the communication, might makeany human reason totter. And, finally, a terrible charge has been laidupon him. Is it strange, then, that he should say what is strange? Why, there would be nothing to wonder at if his mind collapsed on the spot. 

Now it is just this that he himself fears. In the midst of the firsttremendous outburst, he checks himself suddenly with the exclamation 'O, fie!' (cf. The precisely similar use of this interjection, II. Ii. 617). He must not let himself feel: he has to live. He must not let his heartbreak in pieces ('hold' means 'hold together'), his muscles turn intothose of a trembling old man, his brain dissolve--as they threaten in aninstant to do. For, if they do, how can he--_remember_? He goes onreiterating this 'remember' (the 'word' of the Ghost). He is, literally, afraid that he will _forget_--that his mind will lose the messageentrusted to it. Instinctively, then, he feels that, if he _is_ toremember, he must wipe from his memory everything it already contains;and the image of his past life rises before him, of all his joy inthought and observation and the stores they have accumulated in hismemory. All that is done with for ever: nothing is to remain for him onthe 'table' but the command, 'remember me. ' He swears it; 'yes, byheaven!' That done, suddenly the repressed passion breaks out, and, mostcharacteristically, he thinks _first_ of his mother; then of his uncle, the smooth-spoken scoundrel who has just been smiling on him and callinghim 'son. ' And in bitter desperate irony he snatches his tables from hisbreast (they are suggested to him by the phrases he has just used, 'table of my memory, ' 'book and volume'). After all, he _will_ use themonce again; and, perhaps with a wild laugh, he writes with tremblingfingers his last observation: 'One may smile, and smile, and be avillain. '

But that, I believe, is not merely a desperate jest. It springs fromthat _fear of forgetting_. A time will come, he feels, when all thisappalling experience of the last half-hour will be incredible to him, will seem a mere nightmare, will even, conceivably, quite vanish fromhis mind. Let him have something in black and white that will bring itback and _force_ him to remember and believe. What is there so unnaturalin this, if you substitute a note-book or diary for the 'tables'?[258]

But why should he write that particular note, and not rather his 'word, ''Adieu, adieu! remember me'? I should answer, first, that a grotesquejest at such a moment is thoroughly characteristic of Hamlet (see p. 151), and that the jocose 'So, uncle, there you are!' shows his state ofmind; and, secondly, that loathing of his uncle is vehement in histhought at this moment. Possibly, too, he might remember that 'tables'are stealable, and that if the appearance of the Ghost should bereported, a mere observation on the smiling of villains could not betrayanything of his communication with the Ghost. What follows shows thatthe instinct of secrecy is strong in him. 

It seems likely, I may add, that Shakespeare here was influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by recollection of a place in _TitusAndronicus_ (IV. I. ). In that horrible play Chiron and Demetrius, afteroutraging Lavinia, cut out her tongue and cut off her hands, in orderthat she may be unable to reveal the outrage. She reveals it, however, by taking a staff in her mouth, guiding it with her arms, and writing inthe sand, 'Stuprum. Chiron. Demetrius. ' Titus soon afterwards says:

 I will go get a leaf of brass, And with a gad of steel will write these words, And lay it by. The angry northern wind Will blow these sands, like Sibyl's leaves, abroad, And where's your lesson then?

Perhaps in the old _Hamlet_, which may have been a play something like_Titus Andronicus_, Hamlet at this point did write something of theGhost's message in his tables. In any case Shakespeare, whether he wrote_Titus Andronicus_ or only revised an older play on the subject, mightwell recall this incident, as he frequently reproduces other things inthat drama. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 258: The reader will observe that this suggestion of a_further_ reason for his making the note may be rejected without therest of the interpretation being affected. ]

NOTE E. 

THE GHOST IN THE CELLARAGE. 

 It has been thought that the whole of the last part of I. V. , from the entrance of Horatio and Marcellus, follows the old play closely, and that Shakespeare is condescending to the groundlings. 

 Here again, whether or no he took a suggestion from the old play, I see no reason to think that he wrote down to his public. So far as Hamlet's state of mind is concerned, there is not a trace of this. Anyone who has a difficulty in understanding it should read Coleridge's note. What appears grotesque is the part taken by the Ghost, and Hamlet's consequent removal from one part of the stage to another. But, as to the former, should we feel anything grotesque in the four injunctions 'Swear!' if it were not that they come from under the stage--a fact which to an Elizabethan audience, perfectly indifferent to what is absurdly called stage illusion, was probably not in the least grotesque? And as to the latter, if we knew the Ghost-lore of the time better than we do, perhaps we should see nothing odd in Hamlet's insisting on moving away and proposing the oath afresh when the Ghost intervenes. 

 But, further, it is to be observed that he does not merely propose the oath afresh. He first makes Horatio and Marcellus swear never to make known what they have _seen_. Then, on shifting his ground, he makes them swear never to speak of what they have _heard_. Then, moving again, he makes them swear that, if he should think fit to play the antic, they will give no sign of knowing aught of him. The oath is now complete; and, when the Ghost commands them to swear the last time, Hamlet suddenly becomes perfectly serious and bids it rest. [In Fletcher's _Woman's Prize_, V. Iii. , a passage pointed out to me by Mr. C. J. Wilkinson, a man taking an oath shifts his ground. ]

 NOTE F. 

 THE PLAYER'S SPEECH IN _HAMLET_. 

 There are two extreme views about this speech. According to one, Shakespeare quoted it from some play, or composed it for the occasion, simply and solely in order to ridicule, through it, the bombastic style of dramatists contemporary with himself or slightly older; just as he ridicules in _2 Henry IV. _ Tamburlaine's rant about the kings who draw his chariot, or puts fragments of similar bombast into the mouth of Pistol. According to Coleridge, on the other hand, this idea is 'below criticism. ' No sort of ridicule was intended. 'The lines, as epic narrative, are superb. ' It is true that the language is 'too poetical--the language of lyric vehemence and epic pomp, and not of the drama'; but this is due to the fact that Shakespeare had to distinguish the style of the speech from that of his own dramatic dialogue. 

 In essentials I think that what Coleridge says[259] is true. He goes too far, it seems to me, when he describes the language of the speech as merely 'too poetical'; for with much that is fine there is intermingled a good deal that, in epic as in drama, must be called bombast. But I do not believe Shakespeare meant it for bombast. 

 I will briefly put the arguments which point to this conclusion. Warburton long ago stated some of them fully and cogently, but he misinterpreted here and there, and some arguments have to be added to his. 

 1. If the speech was meant to be ridiculous, it follows either that Hamlet in praising it spoke ironically, or that Shakespeare, in making Hamlet praise it sincerely, himself wrote ironically. And both these consequences are almost incredible. 

 Let us see what Hamlet says. He asks the player to recite 'a passionate speech'; and, being requested to choose one, he refers to a speech he once heard the player declaim. This speech, he says, was never 'acted' or was acted only once; for the play pleased not the million. But he, and others whose opinion was of more importance than his, thought it an excellent play, well constructed, and composed with equal skill and temperance. One of these other judges commended it because it contained neither piquant indecencies nor affectations of phrase, but showed 'an honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. '[260] In this play Hamlet 'chiefly loved' one speech; and he asks for a part of it. 

 Let the reader now refer to the passage I have just summarised; let him consider its tone and manner; and let him ask himself if Hamlet can possibly be speaking ironically. I am sure he will answer No. And then let him observe what follows. The speech is declaimed. Polonius interrupting it with an objection to its length, Hamlet snubs him, bids the player proceed, and adds, 'He's for a jig or a tale of bawdry: or he sleeps. ' 'He, ' that is, 'shares the taste of the million for sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury, and is wearied by an honest method. '[261] Polonius later interrupts again, for he thinks the emotion of the player too absurd; but Hamlet respects it; and afterwards, when he is alone (and therefore can hardly be ironical), in contrasting this emotion with his own insensibility, he betrays no consciousness that there was anything unfitting in the speech that caused it. 

 So far I have chiefly followed Warburton, but there is an important point which seems not to have been observed. All Hamlet's praise of the speech is in the closest agreement with his conduct and words elsewhere. His later advice to the player (III. Ii. ) is on precisely the same lines. He is to play to the judicious, not to the crowd, whose opinion is worthless. He is to observe, like the author of Aeneas' speech, the 'modesty' of nature. He must not tear a 'passion' to tatters, to split the ears of the incompetent, but in the very tempest of passion is to keep a temperance and smoothness. The million, we gather from the first passage, cares nothing for construction; and so, we learn in the second passage, the barren spectators want to laugh at the clown instead of attending to some necessary question of the play. Hamlet's hatred of exaggeration is marked in both passages. And so (as already pointed out, p. 133) in the play-scene, when his own lines are going to be delivered, he impatiently calls out to the actor to leave his damnable faces and begin; and at the grave of Ophelia he is furious with what he thinks the exaggeration of Laertes, burlesques his language, and breaks off with the words, Nay, an thou'lt mouth, I'll rant as well as thou. 

Now if Hamlet's praise of the Aeneas and Dido play and speech isironical, his later advice to the player must surely be ironical too:and who will maintain that? And if in the one passage Hamlet is seriousbut Shakespeare ironical, then in the other passage all those famousremarks about drama and acting, which have been cherished asShakespeare's by all the world, express the opposite of Shakespeare'sopinion: and who will maintain that? And if Hamlet and Shakespeare areboth serious--and nothing else is credible--then, to Hamlet andShakespeare, the speeches of Laertes and Hamlet at Ophelia's grave arerant, but the speech of Aeneas to Dido is not rant. Is it not evidentthat he meant it for an exalted narrative speech of 'passion, ' in astyle which, though he may not have adopted it, he still approved anddespised the million for not approving, --a speech to be delivered withtemperance or modesty, but not too tamely neither? Is he not aiming hereto do precisely what Marlowe aimed to do when he proposed to lead theaudience

 From jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits, And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay, to 'stately' themes which beget 'high astounding terms'? And is itstrange that, like Marlowe in _Tamburlaine_, he adopted a style marredin places by that which _we_ think bombast, but which the author meantto be more 'handsome than fine'?

2. If this is so, we can easily understand how it comes about that thespeech of Aeneas contains lines which are unquestionably grand and freefrom any suspicion of bombast, and others which, though not free fromthat suspicion, are nevertheless highly poetic. To the first classcertainly belongs the passage beginning, 'But as we often see. ' To thesecond belongs the description of Pyrrhus, covered with blood that was

 Baked and impasted with the parching streets, That lend a tyrannous and damned light To their lord's murder;

and again the picture of Pyrrhus standing like a tyrant in a picture, with his uplifted arm arrested in act to strike by the crash of thefalling towers of Ilium. It is surely impossible to say that these linesare _merely_ absurd and not in the least grand; and with them I shouldjoin the passage about Fortune's wheel, and the concluding lines. 

But how can the insertion of these passages possibly be explained on thehypothesis that Shakespeare meant the speech to be ridiculous?

3. 'Still, ' it may be answered, 'Shakespeare _must_ have been consciousof the bombast in some of these passages. How could he help seeing it?And, if he saw it, he cannot have meant seriously to praise the speech. 'But why must he have seen it? Did Marlowe know when he wrotebombastically? Or Marston? Or Heywood? Does not Shakespeare elsewherewrite bombast? The truth is that the two defects of style in the speechare the very defects we do find in his writings. When he wished to makehis style exceptionally high and passionate he always ran some risk ofbombast. And he was even more prone to the fault which in this speechseems to me the more marked, a use of metaphors which sound to our ears'conceited' or grotesque. To me at any rate the metaphors in 'now is hetotal gules' and 'mincing with his sword her husband's limbs' are moredisturbing than any of the bombast. But, as regards this second defect, there are many places in Shakespeare worse than the speech of Aeneas;and, as regards the first, though in his undoubtedly genuine works thereis no passage so faulty, there is also no passage of quite the samespecies (for his narrative poems do not aim at epic grandeur), and thereare many passages where bombast of the same kind, though not of the samedegree, occurs. 

Let the reader ask himself, for instance, how the following lines wouldstrike him if he came on them for the first time out of their context:

 Whip me, ye devils, From the possession of this heavenly sight! Blow me about in winds! Roast me in sulphur! Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire!

Are Pyrrhus's 'total gules' any worse than Duncan's 'silver skin lacedwith his golden blood, ' or so bad as the chamberlains' daggers'unmannerly breech'd with gore'?[262] If 'to bathe in reeking wounds, 'and 'spongy officers, ' and even 'alarum'd by his sentinel the wolf, Whose howl's his watch, ' and other such phrases in _Macbeth_, hadoccurred in the speech of Aeneas, we should certainly have been toldthat they were meant for burlesque. I open _Troilus and Cressida_(because, like the speech of Aeneas, it has to do with the story ofTroy), and I read, in a perfectly serious context (IV. V. 6 f. ):

 Thou, trumpet, there's thy purse. Now crack thy lungs, and split thy brazen pipe: Blow, villain, till thy sphered bias cheek Outswell the colic of puff'd Aquilon: Come, stretch thy chest, and let thy eyes spout blood; Thou blow'st for Hector. 

'Splendid!' one cries. Yes, but if you are told it is also bombastic, can you deny it? I read again (V. V. 7):

 bastard Margarelon Hath Doreus prisoner, And stands colossus-wise, waving his beam, Upon the pashed corses of the kings. 

Or, to turn to earlier but still undoubted works, Shakespeare wrote in_Romeo and Juliet_, here will I remain With worms that are thy chamber-maids;

and in _King John_, And pick strong matter of revolt and wrath Out of the bloody finger-ends of John;

and in _Lucrece_, And, bubbling from her breast, it doth divide In two slow rivers, that the crimson blood Circles her body in on every side, Who, like a late-sack'd island, vastly stood Bare and unpeopled in this fearful flood. Some of her blood still pure and red remain'd, And some look'd black, and that false Tarquin stain'd. 

Is it so very unlikely that the poet who wrote thus might, aiming at apeculiarly heightened and passionate style, write the speech of Aeneas?

4. But, pursuing this line of argument, we must go further. There isreally scarcely one idea, and there is but little phraseology, in thespeech that cannot be paralleled from Shakespeare's own works. He merelyexaggerates a little here what he has done elsewhere. I will concludethis Note by showing that this is so as regards almost all the passagesmost objected to, as well as some others. (1) 'The Hyrcanian beast' isMacbeth's 'Hyrcan tiger' (III. Iv. 101), who also occurs in _3 Hen. VI. _I. Iv. 155. (2) With 'total gules' Steevens compared _Timon_ IV. Iii. 59(an undoubtedly Shakespearean passage), With man's blood paint the ground, gules, gules. 

(3) With 'baked and impasted' cf. _John_ III. Iii. 42, 'If that surlyspirit melancholy Had baked thy blood. ' In the questionable _Tit. And. _V. Ii. 201 we have, 'in that paste let their vile heads be baked' (apaste made of blood and bones, _ib. _ 188), and in the undoubted _RichardII. _ III. Ii. 154 (quoted by Caldecott) Richard refers to the ground

 Which serves as paste and cover to our bones. 

(4) 'O'er-sized with coagulate gore' finds an exact parallel in the'blood-siz'd field' of the _Two Noble Kinsmen_, I. I. 99, a scene which, whether written by Shakespeare (as I fully believe) or by another poet, was certainly written in all seriousness. (5) 'With eyes likecarbuncles' has been much ridiculed, but Milton (_P. L. _ ix. 500) gives'carbuncle eyes' to Satan turned into a serpent (Steevens), and why arethey more outrageous than ruby lips and cheeks (_J. C. _ III. I. 260, _Macb. _ III. Iv. 115, _Cym. _ II. Ii. 17)? (6) Priam falling with themere wind of Pyrrhus's sword is paralleled, not only in _Dido Queen ofCarthage_, but in _Tr. And Cr. _ V. Iii. 40 (Warburton). (7) With Pyrrhusstanding like a painted tyrant cf. _Macb. _ V. Viii. 25 (Delius). (8) Theforging of Mars's armour occurs again in _Tr. And Cr. _ IV. V. 255, whereHector swears by the forge that stithied Mars his helm, just as Hamlethimself alludes to Vulcan's stithy (III. Ii. 89). (9) The idea of'strumpet Fortune' is common: _e. G. _ _Macb. _ I. Ii. 15, 'Fortune . .. Show'd like a rebel's whore. ' (10) With the 'rant' about her wheelWarburton compares _Ant. And Cl. _ IV. Xv. 43, where Cleopatra would

 rail so high That the false huswife Fortune break her wheel. 

(11. ) Pyrrhus minces with his sword Priam's limbs, and Timon (IV. Iii. 122) bids Alcibiades 'mince' the babe without remorse. '[263]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 259: It is impossible to tell whether Coleridge formed hisview independently, or adopted it from Schlegel. For there is no recordof his having expressed his opinion prior to the time of his readingSchlegel's _Lectures_; and, whatever he said to the contrary, hisborrowings from Schlegel are demonstrable. ]

[Footnote 260: Clark and Wright well compare Polonius' antithesis of'rich, not gaudy': though I doubt if 'handsome' implies richness. ]

[Footnote 261: Is it not possible that 'mobled queen, ' to which Hamletseems to object, and which Polonius praises, is meant for an example ofthe second fault of affected phraseology, from which the play was saidto be free, and an instance of which therefore surprises Hamlet?]

[Footnote 262: The extravagance of these phrases is doubtlessintentional (for Macbeth in using them is trying to act a part), but the_absurdity_ of the second can hardly be so. ]

[Footnote 263: Steevens observes that Heywood uses the phrase 'guledwith slaughter, ' and I find in his _Iron Age_ various passagesindicating that he knew the speech of Aeneas (cf. P. 140 for anothersign that he knew _Hamlet_). The two parts of the _Iron Age_ werepublished in 1632, but are said, in the preface to the Second, to have'been long since writ. ' I refer to the pages of vol. 3 of Pearson's_Heywood_ (1874). (1) p. 329, Troilus 'lyeth imbak'd In his cold blood. '(2) p. 341, of Achilles' armour:

 _Vulcan_ that wrought it out of gadds of Steele With his _Ciclopian_ hammers, never made Such noise upon his Anvile forging it, Than these my arm'd fists in _Ulisses_ wracke. 

(3) p. 357, 'till _Hecub's_ reverent lockes Be gul'd in slaughter. ' (4)p. 357, '_Scamander_ plaines Ore-spread with intrailes bak'd in bloodand dust. ' (5) p. 378, 'We'll rost them at the scorching flames of_Troy_. ' (6) p. 379, 'tragicke slaughter, clad in gules and sables'(cf. 'sable arms' in the speech in _Hamlet_). (7) p. 384, 'these lockes, now knotted all, As bak't in blood. ' Of these, all but (1) and (2) arein Part II. Part I. Has many passages which recall _Troilus andCressida_. Mr. Fleay's speculation as to its date will be found in his_Chronicle History of the English Drama_, i. P. 285. 

For the same writer's ingenious theory (which is of course incapable ofproof) regarding the relation of the player's speech in _Hamlet_ toMarlowe and Nash's _Dido_, see Furness's Variorum _Hamlet_. ]

NOTE G. 

HAMLET'S APOLOGY TO LAERTES. 

Johnson, in commenting on the passage (V. Ii. 237-255), says: 'I wishHamlet had made some other defence; it is unsuitable to the character ofa good or a brave man to shelter himself in falsehood. ' And Seymour(according to Furness) thought the falsehood so ignoble that he rejectedlines 239-250 as an interpolation!

I wish first to remark that we are mistaken when we suppose that Hamletis here apologising specially for his behaviour to Laertes at Ophelia'sgrave. We naturally suppose this because he has told Horatio that he issorry he 'forgot himself' on that occasion, and that he will courtLaertes' favours (V. Ii. 75 ff. ). But what he says in that very passageshows that he is thinking chiefly of the greater wrong he has doneLaertes by depriving him of his father:

 For, by the image of my cause, I see The portraiture of his. 

And it is also evident in the last words of the apology itself that heis referring in it to the deaths of Polonius and Ophelia:

 Sir, in this audience, Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil Free me so far in your most generous thoughts, _That I have shot mine arrow o'er the house, And hurt my brother. _

But now, as to the falsehood. The charge is not to be set aside lightly;and, for my part, I confess that, while rejecting of course Johnson'snotion that Shakespeare wanted to paint 'a good man, ' I have momentarilyshared Johnson's wish that Hamlet had made 'some other defence' thanthat of madness. But I think the wish proceeds from failure to imaginethe situation. 

In the first place, _what_ other defence can we wish Hamlet to havemade? I can think of none. He cannot tell the truth. He cannot say toLaertes, 'I meant to stab the King, not your father. ' He cannot explainwhy he was unkind to Ophelia. Even on the false supposition that he isreferring simply to his behaviour at the grave, he can hardly say, Isuppose, 'You ranted so abominably that you put me into a toweringpassion. ' _Whatever_ he said, it would have to be more or less untrue. 

Next, what moral difference is there between feigning insanity andasserting it? If we are to blame Hamlet for the second, why not equallyfor the first?

And, finally, even if he were referring simply to his behaviour at thegrave, his excuse, besides falling in with his whole plan of feigninginsanity, would be as near the truth as any he could devise. For we arenot to take the account he gives to Horatio, that he was put in apassion by the bravery of Laertes' grief, as the whole truth. His ravingover the grave is not _mere_ acting. On the contrary, that passage isthe best card that the believers in Hamlet's madness have to play. He isreally almost beside himself with grief as well as anger, half-maddenedby the impossibility of explaining to Laertes how he has come to do whathe has done, full of wild rage and then of sick despair at this wretchedworld which drives him to such deeds and such misery. It is the samerage and despair that mingle with other feelings in his outbreak toOphelia in the Nunnery-scene. But of all this, even if he were clearlyconscious of it, he cannot speak to Horatio; for his love to Ophelia isa subject on which he has never opened his lips to his friend. 

If we realise the situation, then, we shall, I think, repress the wishthat Hamlet had 'made some other defence' than that of madness. We shallfeel only tragic sympathy. 

 * * * * *

As I have referred to Hamlet's apology, I will add a remark on it from adifferent point of view. It forms another refutation of the theory thatHamlet has delayed his vengeance till he could publicly convict theKing, and that he has come back to Denmark because now, with theevidence of the commission in his pocket, he can safely accuse him. Ifthat were so, what better opportunity could he possibly find than thisoccasion, where he has to express his sorrow to Laertes for the grievouswrongs which he has unintentionally inflicted on him?

NOTE H. 

THE EXCHANGE OF RAPIERS. 

I am not going to discuss the question how this exchange ought to bemanaged. I wish merely to point out that the stage-direction fails toshow the sequence of speeches and events. The passage is as follows(Globe text):

 _Ham. _ Come, for the third, Laertes: you but dally; I pray you, pass with your best violence; I am afeard you make a wanton of me. 

 _Laer. _ Say you so? come on. [_They play. _

 _Osr. _ Nothing, neither way. 

 _Laer. _ Have at you now!

 [_Laertes wounds Hamlet; then, in scuffling, they change rapiers, and Hamlet wounds Laertes. _[264]

 _King. _ Part them; they are incensed. 

 _Ham. _ Nay, come, again. _The Queen falls. _[265]

 _Osr. _ Look to the Queen there, ho!

 _Hor. _ They bleed on both sides. How is it, my lord?

 _Osr. _ How is't, Laertes?

The words 'and Hamlet wounds Laertes' in Rowe's stage-direction destroythe point of the words given to the King in the text. If Laertes isalready wounded, why should the King care whether the fencers are partedor not? What makes him cry out is that, while he sees his purposeeffected as regards Hamlet, he also sees Laertes in danger through theexchange of foils in the scuffle. Now it is not to be supposed thatLaertes is particularly dear to him; but he sees instantaneously that, if Laertes escapes the poisoned foil, he will certainly hold his tongueabout the plot against Hamlet, while, if he is wounded, he may confessthe truth; for it is no doubt quite evident to the King that Laertes hasfenced tamely because his conscience is greatly troubled by thetreachery he is about to practise. The King therefore, as soon as hesees the exchange of foils, cries out, 'Part them; they are incensed. 'But Hamlet's blood is up. 'Nay, come, again, ' he calls to Laertes, whocannot refuse to play, and _now_ is wounded by Hamlet. At the very samemoment the Queen falls to the ground; and ruin rushes on the King fromthe right hand and the left. 

The passage, therefore, should be printed thus:

 _Laer. _ Have at you now!

 [_Laertes wounds Hamlet; then, in scuffling, they change rapiers. _

 _King. _ Part them; they are incensed. 

 _Ham. _ Nay, come, again. 

 [_They play, and Hamlet wounds Laertes. The Queen falls. _

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 264: So Rowe. The direction in Q1 is negligible, the textbeing different. Q2 etc. Have nothing, Ff. Simply 'In scuffling theychange rapiers. ']

[Footnote 265: Capell. The Quartos and Folios have no directions. ]

NOTE I. 

THE DURATION OF THE ACTION IN _OTHELLO_. 

The quite unusual difficulties regarding this subject have led to muchdiscussion, a synopsis of which may be found in Furness's Variorumedition, pp. 358-72. Without detailing the facts I will briefly set outthe main difficulty, which is that, according to one set of indications(which I will call A), Desdemona was murdered within a day or two of herarrival in Cyprus, while, according to another set (which I will callB), some time elapsed between her arrival and the catastrophe. Let ustake A first, and run through the play. 

(A) Act I. Opens on the night of Othello's marriage. On that night he isdespatched to Cyprus, leaving Desdemona to follow him. 

In Act II. Sc. I. , there arrive at Cyprus, first, in one ship, Cassio;then, in another, Desdemona, Iago, and Emilia; then, in another, Othello(Othello, Cassio, and Desdemona being in three different ships, it doesnot matter, for our purpose, how long the voyage lasted). On the nightfollowing these arrivals in Cyprus the marriage is consummated (II. Iii. 9), Cassio is cashiered, and, on Iago's advice, he resolves to askDesdemona's intercession 'betimes in the morning' (II. Iii. 335). 

In Act III. Sc. Iii. (the Temptation scene), he does so: Desdemona doesintercede: Iago begins to poison Othello's mind: the handkerchief islost, found by Emilia, and given to Iago: he determines to leave it inCassio's room, and, renewing his attack on Othello, asserts that he hasseen the handkerchief in Cassio's hand: Othello bids him kill Cassiowithin three days, and resolves to kill Desdemona himself. All thisoccurs in one unbroken scene, and evidently on the day after the arrivalin Cyprus (see III. I. 33). 

In the scene (iv. ) following the Temptation scene Desdemona sends to bidCassio come, as she has interceded for him: Othello enters, tests herabout the handkerchief, and departs in anger: Cassio, arriving, is toldof the change in Othello, and, being left _solus_, is accosted byBianca, whom he requests to copy the work on the handkerchief which hehas just found in his room (ll. 188 f. ). All this is naturally taken tohappen in the later part of the day on which the events of III. I. -iii. Took place, _i. E. _ the day after the arrival in Cyprus: but I shallreturn to this point. 

In IV. I. Iago tells Othello that Cassio has confessed, and, placingOthello where he can watch, he proceeds on Cassio's entrance to rallyhim about Bianca; and Othello, not being near enough to hear what issaid, believes that Cassio is laughing at his conquest of Desdemona. Cassio here says that Bianca haunts him and 'was here _even now_'; andBianca herself, coming in, reproaches him about the handkerchief 'yougave me _even now_. ' There is therefore no appreciable time between III. Iv. And IV. I. In this same scene Bianca bids Cassio come to supper_to-night_; and Lodovico, arriving, is asked to sup with Othello_to-night_. In IV. Ii. Iago persuades Roderigo to kill Cassio _thatnight_ as he comes from Bianca's. In IV. Iii. Lodovico, after supper, takes his leave, and Othello bids Desdemona go to bed on the instant anddismiss her attendant. 

In Act V. , _that night_, the attempted assassination of Cassio, and themurder of Desdemona, take place. 

From all this, then, it seems clear that the time between the arrival inCyprus and the catastrophe is certainly not more than a few days, andmost probably only about a day and a half: or, to put it otherwise, thatmost probably Othello kills his wife about twenty-four hours after theconsummation of their marriage!

The only _possible_ place, it will be seen, where time can elapse isbetween III. Iii. And III. Iv. And here Mr. Fleay would imagine a gap ofat least a week. The reader will find that this supposition involves thefollowing results, (_a_) Desdemona has allowed at least a week to elapsewithout telling Cassio that she has interceded for him. (_b_) Othello, after being convinced of her guilt, after resolving to kill her, andafter ordering Iago to kill Cassio within three days, has allowed atleast a week to elapse without even questioning her about thehandkerchief, and has so behaved during all this time that she istotally unconscious of any change in his feelings. (_c_) Desdemona, whoreserves the handkerchief evermore about her to kiss and talk to (III. Iii. 295), has lost it for at least a week before she is conscious ofthe loss. (_d_) Iago has waited at least a week to leave thehandkerchief in Cassio's chamber; for Cassio has evidently only justfound it, and wants the work on it copied before the owner makesinquiries for it. These are all gross absurdities. It is certain thatonly a short time, most probable that not even a night, elapses betweenIII. Iii. And III. Iv. 

(B) Now this idea that Othello killed his wife, probably withintwenty-four hours, certainly within a few days, of the consummation ofhis marriage, contradicts the impression produced by the play on alluncritical readers and spectators. It is also in flat contradiction witha large number of time-indications in the play itself. It is needless tomention more than a few. (_a_) Bianca complains that Cassio has keptaway from her for a week (III. Iv. 173). Cassio and the rest havetherefore been more than a week in Cyprus, and, we should naturallyinfer, considerably more. (_b_) The ground on which Iago buildsthroughout is the probability of Desdemona's having got tired of theMoor; she is accused of having repeatedly committed adultery with Cassio(_e. G. _ V. Ii. 210); these facts and a great many others, such asOthello's language in III. Iii. 338 ff. , are utterly absurd on thesupposition that he murders his wife within a day or two of the nightwhen he consummated his marriage. (_c_) Iago's account of Cassio's dreamimplies (and indeed states) that he had been sleeping with Cassio'lately, ' _i. E. _ after arriving at Cyprus: yet, according to A, he hadonly spent one night in Cyprus, and we are expressly told that Cassionever went to bed on that night. Iago doubtless was a liar, but Othellowas not an absolute idiot. 

 * * * * *

Thus (1) one set of time-indications clearly shows that Othello murderedhis wife within a few days, probably a day and a half, of his arrival inCyprus and the consummation of his marriage; (2) another set oftime-indications implies quite as clearly that some little time musthave elapsed, probably a few weeks; and this last is certainly theimpression of a reader who has not closely examined the play. 

It is impossible to escape this result. The suggestion that the imputedintrigue of Cassio and Desdemona took place at Venice before themarriage, not at Cyprus after it, is quite futile. There is no positiveevidence whatever for it; if the reader will merely refer to thedifficulties mentioned under B above, he will see that it leaves almostall of them absolutely untouched; and Iago's accusation is uniformly oneof adultery. 

How then is this extraordinary contradiction to be explained? It canhardly be one of the casual inconsistencies, due to forgetfulness, whichare found in Shakespeare's other tragedies; for the scheme of timeindicated under A seems deliberate and self-consistent, and the schemeindicated under B seems, if less deliberate, equally self-consistent. This does not look as if a single scheme had been so vaguely imaginedthat inconsistencies arose in working it out; it points to some othersource of contradiction. 

'Christopher North, ' who dealt very fully with the question, elaborateda doctrine of Double Time, Short and Long. To do justice to this theoryin a few words is impossible, but its essence is the notion thatShakespeare, consciously or unconsciously, wanted to produce on thespectator (for he did not aim at readers) two impressions. He wanted thespectator to feel a passionate and vehement haste in the action; but healso wanted him to feel that the action was fairly probable. Consciouslyor unconsciously he used Short Time (the scheme of A) for the firstpurpose, and Long Time (the scheme of B) for the second. The spectatoris affected in the required manner by both, though without distinctlynoticing the indications of the two schemes. 

The notion underlying this theory is probably true, but the theoryitself can hardly stand. Passing minor matters by, I would ask thereader to consider the following remarks. (_a_) If, as seems to bemaintained, the spectator does not notice the indications of 'ShortTime' at all, how can they possibly affect him? The passion, vehemenceand haste of Othello affect him, because he perceives them; but if hedoes not perceive the hints which show the duration of the action fromthe arrival in Cyprus to the murder, these hints have simply noexistence for him and are perfectly useless. The theory, therefore, doesnot explain the existence of 'Short Time. ' (_b_) It is not the case that'Short Time' is wanted only to produce an impression of vehemence andhaste, and 'Long Time' for probability. The 'Short Time' is equallywanted for probability: for it is grossly improbable that Iago'sintrigue should not break down if Othello spends a week or weeks betweenthe successful temptation and his execution of justice. (_c_) And thisbrings me to the most important point, which appears to have escapednotice. The place where 'Long Time' is wanted is not _within_ Iago'sintrigue. 'Long Time' is required simply and solely because the intrigueand its circumstances presuppose a marriage consummated, and an adulterypossible, for (let us say) some weeks. But, granted that lapse betweenthe marriage and the temptation, there is no reason whatever why morethan a few days or even one day should elapse between this temptationand the murder. The whole trouble arises because the temptation beginson the morning after the consummated marriage. Let some three weekselapse between the first night at Cyprus and the temptation; let thebrawl which ends in the disgrace of Cassio occur not on that night butthree weeks later; or again let it occur that night, but let three weekselapse before the intercession of Desdemona and the temptation of Iagobegin. All will then be clear. Cassio has time to make acquaintance withBianca, and to neglect her: the Senate has time to hear of the perditionof the Turkish fleet and to recall Othello: the accusations of Iagocease to be ridiculous; and the headlong speed of the action after thetemptation has begun is quite in place. Now, too, there is no reason whywe should not be affected by the hints of time ('to-day, ' 'to-night, ''even now'), which we _do_ perceive (though we do not calculate themout). And, lastly, this supposition corresponds with our naturalimpression, which is that the temptation and what follows it take placesome little while after the marriage, but occupy, themselves, a veryshort time. 

Now, of course, the supposition just described is no fact. As the playstands, it is quite certain that there is no space of three weeks, oranything like it, either between the arrival in Cyprus and the brawl, orbetween the brawl and the temptation. And I draw attention to thesupposition chiefly to show that quite a small change would remove thedifficulties, and to insist that there is nothing wrong at all in regardto the time from the temptation onward. How to account for the existingcontradictions I do not at all profess to know, and I will merelymention two possibilities. 

Possibly, as Mr. Daniel observes, the play has been tampered with. Wehave no text earlier than 1622, six years after Shakespeare's death. Itmay be suggested, then, that in the play, as Shakespeare wrote it, therewas a gap of some weeks between the arrival in Cyprus and Cassio'sbrawl, or (less probably) between the brawl and the temptation. Perhapsthere was a scene indicating the lapse of time. Perhaps it was dull, orthe play was a little too long, or devotees of the unity of time madesport of a second breach of that unity coming just after the breachcaused by the voyage. Perhaps accordingly the owners of the playaltered, or hired a dramatist to alter, the arrangement at this point, and this was unwittingly done in such a way as to produce thecontradictions we are engaged on. There is nothing intrinsicallyunlikely in this idea; and certainly, I think, the amount of suchcorruption of Shakespeare's texts by the players is usually ratherunderrated than otherwise. But I cannot say I see any signs of foreignalteration in the text, though it is somewhat odd that Roderigo, whomakes no complaint on the day of the arrival in Cyprus when he is beingpersuaded to draw Cassio into a quarrel that night, should, directlyafter the quarrel (II. Iii. 370), complain that he is making no advancein his pursuit of Desdemona, and should speak as though he had been inCyprus long enough to have spent nearly all the money he brought fromVenice. 

Or, possibly, Shakespeare's original plan was to allow some time toelapse after the arrival at Cyprus, but when he reached the point hefound it troublesome to indicate this lapse in an interesting way, andconvenient to produce Cassio's fall by means of the rejoicings on thenight of the arrival, and then almost necessary to let the request forintercession, and the temptation, follow on the next day. And perhaps hesaid to himself, No one in the theatre will notice that all this makesan impossible position: and I can make all safe by using language thatimplies that Othello has after all been married for some time. If so, probably he was right. I do not think anyone does notice theimpossibilities either in the theatre or in a casual reading of theplay. 

Either of these suppositions is possible: neither is, to me, probable. The first seems the less unlikely. If the second is true, Shakespearedid in _Othello_ what he seems to do in no other play. I can believethat he may have done so; but I find it very hard to believe that heproduced this impossible situation without knowing it. It is one thingto read a drama or see it, quite another to construct and compose it, and he appears to have imagined the action in _Othello_ with even morethan his usual intensity. 

NOTE J. 

THE 'ADDITIONS' TO _OTHELLO_ IN THE FIRST FOLIO. THE PONTIC SEA. 

The first printed _Othello_ is the first Quarto (Q1), 1622; the secondis the first Folio (F1), 1623. These two texts are two distinct versionsof the play. Q1 contains many oaths and expletives where less'objectionable' expressions occur in F1. Partly for this reason it isbelieved to represent the _earlier_ text, perhaps the text as it stoodbefore the Act of 1605 against profanity on the stage. Its readings arefrequently superior to those of F1, but it wants many lines that appearin F1, which probably represents the acting version in 1623. I give alist of the longer passages absent from Q1:

 (_a_) I. I. 122-138. 'If't' . .. 'yourself:'

 (_b_) I. Ii 72-77. 'Judge' . .. 'thee'

 (_c_) I. Iii. 24-30. 'For' . .. 'profitless. '

 (_d_) III. Iii. 383-390. '_Oth. _ By' . .. 'satisfied! _Iago. _'

 (_e_) III. Iii. 453-460. 'Iago. ' . .. 'heaven, '

 (_f_) IV. I. 38-44. 'To confess' . .. 'devil!'

 (_g_) IV. Ii. 73-76, 'Committed!' . .. 'committed!'

 (_h_) IV. Ii. 151-164. 'Here' . .. 'make me. '

 (_i_) IV. Iii. 31-53. 'I have' . .. 'not next' and 55-57. '_Des. _ [_Singing_]' . .. 'men. '

 (_j_) IV. Iii. 60-63. 'I have' . .. 'question. '

 (_k_) IV. Iii. 87-104. 'But I' . .. 'us so. '

 (_l_) V. Ii. 151-154. 'O mistress' . .. 'Iago. '

 (_m_) V. Ii. 185-193. 'My mistress' . .. 'villany!'

 (_n_) V. Ii. 266-272. 'Be not' . .. 'wench!'

Were these passages after-thoughts, composed after the versionrepresented by Q1 was written? Or were they in the version representedby Q1, and only omitted in printing, whether accidentally or becausethey were also omitted in the theatre? Or were some of themafter-thoughts, and others in the original version?

I will take them in order. (_a_) can hardly be an after-thought. Up tothat point Roderigo had hardly said anything, for Iago had alwaysinterposed; and it is very unlikely that Roderigo would now deliver butfour lines, and speak at once of 'she' instead of 'your daughter. 'Probably this 'omission' represents a 'cut' in stage performance. (_b_)This may also be the case here. In our texts the omission of the passagewould make nonsense, but in Q1 the 'cut' (if a cut) has been mended, awkwardly enough, by the substitution of 'Such' for 'For' in line 78. Inany case, the lines cannot be an addition. (_c_) cannot be anafter-thought, for the sentence is unfinished without it; and that itwas not meant to be interrupted is clear, because in Q1 line 31 begins'And, ' not 'Nay'; the Duke might say 'Nay' if he were cutting theprevious speaker short, but not 'And. ' (_d_) is surely no addition. Ifthe lines are cut out, not only is the metre spoilt, but the obviousreason for Iago's words, 'I see, Sir, you are eaten up with passion, 'disappears, and so does the reference of his word 'satisfied' in 393 toOthello's 'satisfied' in 390. (_e_) is the famous passage about thePontic Sea, and I reserve it for the present. (_f_) As Pope observes, 'no hint of this trash in the first edition, ' the 'trash' including thewords 'Nature would not invest herself in such shadowing passion withoutsome instruction. It is not words that shake me thus'! There is nothingto prove these lines to be original or an after-thought. The omission of(_g_) is clearly a printer's error, due to the fact that lines 72 and 76both end with the word 'committed. ' No conclusion can be formed as to(_h_), nor perhaps (_i_), which includes the whole of Desdemona's song;but if (_j_) is removed the reference in 'such a deed' in 64 isdestroyed. (_k_) is Emilia's long speech about husbands. It cannot wellbe an after-thought, for 105-6 evidently refer to 103-4 (even the word'uses' in 105 refers to 'use' in 103). (_l_) is no after-thought, for'if he says so' in 155 must point back to 'my husband say that she wasfalse!' in 152. (_m_) might be an after-thought, but, if so, in thefirst version the ending 'to speak' occurred twice within three lines, and the reason for Iago's sudden alarm in 193 is much less obvious. If(_n_) is an addition the original collocation was:

 but O vain boast! Who can control his fate? 'Tis not so now. Pale as thy smock!

which does not sound probable. 

Thus, as it seems to me, in the great majority of cases there is more orless reason to think that the passages wanting in Q1 were neverthelessparts of the original play, and I cannot in any one case see anypositive ground for supposing a subsequent addition. I think that mostof the gaps in Q1 were accidents of printing (like many other smallergaps in Q1), but that probably one or two were 'cuts'--_e. G. _ Emilia'slong speech (_k_). The omission of (_i_) might be due to the state ofthe MS. : the words of the song may have been left out of the dialogue, as appearing on a separate page with the musical notes, or may have beeninserted in such an illegible way as to baffle the printer. 

I come now to (_e_), the famous passage about the Pontic Sea. Popesupposed that it formed part of the original version, but approved ofits omission, as he considered it 'an unnatural excursion in thisplace. ' Mr. Swinburne thinks it an after-thought, but defends it. 'Inother lips indeed than Othello's, at the crowning minute of culminantagony, the rush of imaginative reminiscence which brings back upon hiseyes and ears the lightning foam and tideless thunder of the Pontic Seamight seem a thing less natural than sublime. But Othello has thepassion of a poet closed in as it were and shut up behind the passion ofa hero' (_Study of Shakespeare_, p. 184). I quote these words all themore gladly because they will remind the reader of my lectures of mydebt to Mr. Swinburne here; and I will only add that the reminiscencehere is of _precisely the same character_ as the reminiscences of theArabian trees and the base Indian in Othello's final speech. But I findit almost impossible to believe that Shakespeare _ever_ wrote thepassage without the words about the Pontic Sea. It seems to me almost animperative demand of imagination that Iago's set speech, if I may usethe phrase, should be preceded by a speech of somewhat the samedimensions, the contrast of which should heighten the horror of itshypocrisy; it seems to me that Shakespeare must have felt this; and itis difficult to me to think that he ever made the lines, In the due reverence of a sacred vow I here engage my words, follow directly on the one word 'Never' (however impressive that word inits isolation might be). And as I can find no _other_ 'omission' in Q1which appears to point to a subsequent addition, I conclude that this'omission' _was_ an omission, probably accidental, conceivably due to astupid 'cut. ' Indeed it is nothing but Mr. Swinburne's opinion thatprevents my feeling certainty on the point. 

Finally, I may draw attention to certain facts which may be mereaccidents, but may possibly be significant. Passages (_b_) and (_c_)consist respectively of six and seven lines; that is, they are almost ofthe same length, and in a MS. Might well fill exactly the same amount ofspace. Passage (_d_) is eight lines long; so is passage (_e_). Now, taking at random two editions of Shakespeare, the Globe and that ofDelius, I find that (_b_) and (_c_) are 6-1/4 inches apart in the Globe, 8 in Delius; and that (_d_) and (_e_) are separated by 7-3/8 inches inthe Globe, by 8-3/4 in Delius. In other words, there is about the samedistance in each case between two passages of about equal dimensions. 

The idea suggested by these facts is that the MS. From which Q1 wasprinted was mutilated in various places; that (_b_) and (_c_) occupiedthe bottom inches of two successive pages, and that these inches weretorn away; and that this was also the case with (_d_) and (_e_). 

This speculation has amused me and may amuse some reader. I do not knowenough of Elizabethan manuscripts to judge of its plausibility. 

NOTE K. 

OTHELLO'S COURTSHIP. 

It is curious that in the First Act two impressions are produced whichhave afterwards to be corrected. 

1. We must not suppose that Othello's account of his courtship in hisfamous speech before the Senate is intended to be exhaustive. He isaccused of having used drugs or charms in order to win Desdemona; andtherefore his purpose in his defence is merely to show that hiswitchcraft was the story of his life. It is no part of his business totrouble the Senators with the details of his courtship, and he socondenses his narrative of it that it almost appears as though there wasno courtship at all, and as though Desdemona never imagined that he wasin love with her until she had practically confessed her love for him. Hence she has been praised by some for her courage, and blamed by othersfor her forwardness. 

But at III. Iii. 70 f. Matters are presented in quite a new light. Therewe find the following words of hers:

 What! Michael Cassio, That came a-wooing with you, and so many a time, When I have spoke of you dispraisingly, Hath ta'en your part. 

It seems, then, she understood why Othello came so often to her father'shouse, and was perfectly secure of his love before she gave him thatvery broad 'hint to speak. ' I may add that those who find fault with herforget that it was necessary for her to take the first open step. Shewas the daughter of a Venetian grandee, and Othello was a black soldierof fortune. 

2. We learn from the lines just quoted that Cassio used to accompanyOthello in his visits to the house; and from III. Iii. 93 f. We learnthat he knew of Othello's love from first to last and 'went between' thelovers 'very oft. ' Yet in Act I. It appears that, while Iago on thenight of the marriage knows about it and knows where to find Othello (I. I. 158 f. ), Cassio, even if he knows where to find Othello (which isdoubtful: see I. Ii. 44), seems to know nothing about the marriage. SeeI. Ii. 49:

 _Cas. _ Ancient, what makes he here?

 _Iago. _ 'Faith, he to-night hath boarded a land carack: If it prove lawful prize, he's made for ever. 

 _Cas. _ I do not understand. 

 _Iago. _ He's married. 

 _Cas. _ To who?

It is possible that Cassio does know, and only pretends ignorancebecause he has not been informed by Othello that Iago also knows. Andthis idea is consistent with Iago's apparent ignorance of Cassio's partin the courtship (III. Iii. 93). And of course, if this were so, a wordfrom Shakespeare to the actor who played Cassio would enable him to makeall clear to the audience. The alternative, and perhaps more probable, explanation would be that, in writing Act I. , Shakespeare had not yetthought of making Cassio Othello's confidant, and that, after writingAct III. , he neglected to alter the passage in Act I. In that case thefurther information which Act III. Gives regarding Othello's courtshipwould probably also be an after-thought. 

NOTE L. 

OTHELLO IN THE TEMPTATION SCENE. 

One reason why some readers think Othello 'easily jealous' is that theycompletely misinterpret him in the early part of this scene. They fancythat he is alarmed and suspicious the moment he hears Iago mutter 'Ha! Ilike not that, ' as he sees Cassio leaving Desdemona (III. Iii. 35). But, in fact, it takes a long time for Iago to excite surprise, curiosity, and then grave concern--by no means yet jealousy--even about Cassio; andit is still longer before Othello understands that Iago is suggestingdoubts about Desdemona too. ('Wronged' in 143 certainly does not referto her, as 154 and 162 show. ) Nor, even at 171, is the exclamation 'Omisery' meant for an expression of Othello's own present feelings; ashis next speech clearly shows, it expresses an _imagined_ feeling, asalso the speech which elicits it professes to do (for Iago would nothave dared here to apply the term 'cuckold' to Othello). In fact it isnot until Iago hints that Othello, as a foreigner, might easily bedeceived, that he is seriously disturbed about Desdemona. 

Salvini played this passage, as might be expected, with entireunderstanding. Nor have I ever seen it seriously misinterpreted on thestage. I gather from the Furness Variorum that Fechter and Edwin Boothtook the same view as Salvini. Actors have to ask themselves what wasthe precise state of mind expressed by the words they have to repeat. But many readers never think of asking such a question. 

The lines which probably do most to lead hasty or unimaginative readersastray are those at 90, where, on Desdemona's departure, Othelloexclaims to himself:

 Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul But I do love thee! and when I love thee not, Chaos is come again. 

He is supposed to mean by the last words that his love is _now_suspended by suspicion, whereas in fact, in his bliss, he has so totallyforgotten Iago's 'Ha! I like not that, ' that the tempter has to beginall over again. The meaning is, 'If ever I love thee not, Chaos willhave come again. ' The feeling of insecurity is due to the excess of_joy_, as in the wonderful words after he rejoins Desdemona at Cyprus(II. I. 191):

 If it were now to die, 'Twere now to be most happy: for, I fear My soul hath her content so absolute That not another comfort like to this Succeeds in unknown fate. 

If any reader boggles at the use of the present in 'Chaos _is_ comeagain, ' let him observe 'succeeds' in the lines just quoted, or let himlook at the parallel passage in _Venus and Adonis_, 1019:

 For, he being dead, with him is beauty slain; And, beauty dead, black Chaos comes again. 

Venus does not know that Adonis is dead when she speaks thus. 

NOTE M. 

QUESTIONS AS TO _OTHELLO_, ACT IV. SCENE I. 

(1) The first part of the scene is hard to understand, and thecommentators give little help. I take the idea to be as follows. Iagosees that he must renew his attack on Othello; for, on the one hand, Othello, in spite of the resolution he had arrived at to put Desdemonato death, has taken the step, without consulting Iago, of testing her inthe matter of Iago's report about the handkerchief; and, on the otherhand, he now seems to have fallen into a dazed lethargic state, and mustbe stimulated to action. Iago's plan seems to be to remind Othello ofeverything that would madden him again, but to do so by professing tomake light of the whole affair, and by urging Othello to put the bestconstruction on the facts, or at any rate to acquiesce. So he says, ineffect: 'After all, if she did kiss Cassio, that might mean little. Nay, she might even go much further without meaning any harm. [266] Of coursethere is the handkerchief (10); but then why should she _not_ give itaway?' Then, affecting to renounce this hopeless attempt to disguise histrue opinion, he goes on: 'However, _I_ cannot, as your friend, pretendthat I really regard her as innocent: the fact is, Cassio boasted to mein so many words of his conquest. [Here he is interrupted by Othello'sswoon. ] But, after all, why make such a fuss? You share the fate of mostmarried men, and you have the advantage of not being deceived in thematter. ' It must have been a great pleasure to Iago to express his realcynicism thus, with the certainty that he would not be taken seriouslyand would advance his plot by it. At 208-210 he recurs to the same planof maddening Othello by suggesting that, if he is so fond of Desdemona, he had better let the matter be, for it concerns no one but him. Thisspeech follows Othello's exclamation 'O Iago, the pity of it, ' and thisis perhaps the moment when we most of all long to destroy Iago. 

(2) At 216 Othello tells Iago to get him some poison, that he may killDesdemona that night. Iago objects: 'Do it not with poison: strangle herin her bed, even the bed she hath contaminated?' Why does he object topoison? Because through the sale of the poison he himself would beinvolved? Possibly. Perhaps his idea was that, Desdemona being killed byOthello, and Cassio killed by Roderigo, he would then admit that he hadinformed Othello of the adultery, and perhaps even that he hadundertaken Cassio's death; but he would declare that he never meant tofulfil his promise as to Cassio, and that he had nothing to do withDesdemona's death (he seems to be preparing for this at 285). His buyingpoison might wreck this plan. But it may be that his objection to poisonsprings merely from contempt for Othello's intellect. He can trust himto use violence, but thinks he may bungle anything that requiresadroitness. 

(3) When the conversation breaks off here (225) Iago has brought Othelloback to the position reached at the end of the Temptation scene (III. Iii. ). Cassio and Desdemona are to be killed; and, in addition, the timeis hastened; it is to be 'to-night, ' not 'within three days. '

The constructional idea clearly is that, after the Temptation scene, Othello tends to relapse and wait, which is terribly dangerous to Iago, who therefore in this scene quickens his purpose. Yet Othello relapsesagain. He has declared that he will not expostulate with her (IV. I. 217). But he cannot keep his word, and there follows the scene ofaccusation. Its _dramatic_ purposes are obvious, but Othello seems tohave no purpose in it. He asks no questions, or, rather, none that showsthe least glimpse of doubt or hope. He is merely torturing himself. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 266: The reader who is puzzled by this passage should refer tothe conversation at the end of the thirtieth tale in the _Heptameron_. ]

NOTE N. 

TWO PASSAGES IN THE LAST SCENE OF _OTHELLO_. 

(1) V. Ii. 71 f. Desdemona demands that Cassio be sent for to 'confess'the truth that she never gave him the handkerchief. Othello answers thatCassio _has_ confessed the truth--has confessed the adultery. Thedialogue goes on:

 _Des. _ He will not say so. 

 _Oth. _ No, his mouth is stopp'd: Honest Iago hath ta'en order for 't. 

 _Des. _ O! my fear interprets: what, is he dead?

 _Oth. _ Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all. 

 _Des. _ Alas! he is _betray'd_ and _I_ undone. 

It is a ghastly idea, but I believe Shakespeare means that, at themention of Iago's name, Desdemona suddenly sees that _he_ is the villainwhose existence he had declared to be impossible when, an hour before, Emilia had suggested that someone had poisoned Othello's mind. But herwords rouse Othello to such furious indignation ('Out, strumpet! Weep'stthou for him to my face?') that 'it is too late. '

(2) V. Ii. 286 f. 

 _Oth. _ I look down towards his feet; but that's a fable. If that thou be'st a devil, I cannot kill thee. [_Wounds Iago. _

 _Lod. _ Wrench his sword from him. 

 _Iago. _ I bleed, sir, but not killed. 

Are Iago's strange words meant to show his absorption of interest inhimself amidst so much anguish? I think rather he is meant to bealluding to Othello's words, and saying, with a cold contemptuous smile, 'You see he is right; I _am_ a devil. '

NOTE O. 

OTHELLO ON DESDEMONA'S LAST WORDS. 

I have said that the last scene of _Othello_, though terribly painful, contains almost nothing to diminish the admiration and love whichheighten our pity for the hero (p. 198). I said 'almost' in view of thefollowing passage (V. Ii. 123 ff. ):

 _Emil. _ O, who hath done this deed?

 _Des. _ Nobody; I myself. Farewell: Commend me to my kind lord: O, farewell! [_Dies. _

 _Oth. _ Why, how should she be murdered?[267]

 _Emil. _ Alas, who knows?

 _Oth. _ You heard her say herself, it was not I. 

 _Emil. _ She said so: I must needs report the truth. 

 _Oth. _ She's, like a liar, gone to burning hell: 'Twas I that kill'd her. 

 _Emil. _ O, the more angel she, And you the blacker devil!

 _Oth. _ She turn'd to folly, and she was a whore. 

This is a strange passage. What did Shakespeare mean us to feel? One isastonished that Othello should not be startled, nay thunder-struck, whenhe hears such dying words coming from the lips of an obdurateadulteress. One is shocked by the moral blindness or obliquity whichtakes them only as a further sign of her worthlessness. Here alone, Ithink, in the scene sympathy with Othello quite disappears. DidShakespeare mean us to feel thus, and to realise how completely confusedand perverted Othello's mind has become? I suppose so: and yet Othello'swords continue to strike me as very strange, and also as not _like_Othello, --especially as at this point he was not in anger, much lessenraged. It has sometimes occurred to me that there is a touch ofpersonal animus in the passage. One remembers the place in _Hamlet_(written but a little while before) where Hamlet thinks he is unwillingto kill the King at his prayers, for fear they may take him to heaven;and one remembers Shakespeare's irony, how he shows that those prayersdo _not_ go to heaven, and that the soul of this praying murderer is atthat moment as murderous as ever (see p. 171), just as here the soul ofthe lying Desdemona is angelic _in_ its lie. Is it conceivable that inboth passages he was intentionally striking at conventional 'religious'ideas; and, in particular, that the belief that a man's everlasting fateis decided by the occupation of his last moment excited in himindignation as well as contempt? I admit that this fancy seemsun-Shakespearean, and yet it comes back on me whenever I read thispassage. [The words 'I suppose so' (l. 3 above) gave my conclusion; butI wish to withdraw the whole Note]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 267: He alludes to her cry, 'O falsely, falsely murder'd!']

NOTE P. 

DID EMILIA SUSPECT IAGO?

I have answered No (p. 216), and have no doubt about the matter; but atone time I was puzzled, as perhaps others have been, by a single phraseof Emilia's. It occurs in the conversation between her and Iago andDesdemona (IV. Ii. 130 f. ):

 I will be hang'd if some eternal villain, Some busy and insinuating rogue, Some cogging, cozening slave, _to get some office_, Have not devised this slander; I'll be hang'd else. 

Emilia, it may be said, knew that Cassio was the suspected man, so thatshe must be thinking of _his_ office, and must mean that Iago haspoisoned Othello's mind in order to prevent his reinstatement and to getthe lieutenancy for himself. And, it may be said, she speaksindefinitely so that Iago alone may understand her (for Desdemona doesnot know that Cassio is the suspected man). Hence too, it may be said, when, at V. Ii. 190, she exclaims, Villany, villany, villany! I think upon't, I think: I smell't: O villany! _I thought so then:_--I'll kill myself for grief;

she refers in the words italicised to the occasion of the passage in IV. Ii. , and is reproaching herself for not having taken steps on hersuspicion of Iago. 

I have explained in the text why I think it impossible to suppose thatEmilia suspected her husband; and I do not think anyone who follows herspeeches in V. Ii. , and who realises that, if she did suspect him, shemust have been simply _pretending_ surprise when Othello told her thatIago was his informant, will feel any doubt. Her idea in the lines atIV. Ii. 130 is, I believe, merely that someone is trying to establish aground for asking a favour from Othello in return for information whichnearly concerns him. It does not follow that, because she knew Cassiowas suspected, she must have been referring to Cassio's office. She wasa stupid woman, and, even if she had not been, she would not put two andtwo together so easily as the reader of the play. 

In the line, I thought so then: I'll kill myself for grief, I think she certainly refers to IV. Ii. 130 f. And also IV. Ii. 15(Steevens's idea that she is thinking of the time when she let Iago takethe handkerchief is absurd). If 'I'll kill myself for grief' is to betaken in close connection with the preceding words (which is notcertain), she may mean that she reproaches herself for not having actedon her general suspicion, or (less probably) that she reproaches herselffor not having suspected that Iago was the rogue. 

With regard to my view that she failed to think of the handkerchief whenshe saw how angry Othello was, those who believe that she did think ofit will of course also believe that she suspected Iago. But in additionto other difficulties, they will have to suppose that her astonishment, when Othello at last mentioned the handkerchief, was mere acting. Andanyone who can believe this seems to me beyond argument. [I regret thatI cannot now discuss some suggestions made to me in regard to thesubjects of Notes O and P. ]

NOTE Q. 

IAGO'S SUSPICION REGARDING CASSIO AND EMILIA. 

The one expression of this suspicion appears in a very curious manner. Iago, soliloquising, says (II. I. 311):

 Which thing to do, If this poor trash of Venice, whom I trash For his quick hunting, stand the putting on, I'll have our Michael Cassio on the hip, Abuse him to the Moor in the rank [F. Right] garb-- For I fear Cassio with my night-cap too-- Make the Moor thank me, etc. 

Why '_For_ I fear Cassio, ' etc. ? He can hardly be giving himself anadditional reason for involving Cassio; the parenthesis must beexplanatory of the preceding line or some part of it. I think itexplains 'rank garb' or 'right garb, ' and the meaning is, 'For Cassio_is_ what I shall accuse him of being, a seducer of wives. ' He isreturning to the thought with which the soliloquy begins, 'That Cassioloves her, I do well believe it. ' In saying this he is unconsciouslytrying to believe that Cassio would at any rate _like_ to be anadulterer, so that it is not so very abominable to say that he _is_ one. And the idea 'I suspect him with Emilia' is a second and strongerattempt of the same kind. The idea probably was born and died in onemoment. It is a curious example of Iago's secret subjection to morality. 

NOTE R. 

REMINISCENCES OF _OTHELLO_ IN _KING LEAR_. 

The following is a list, made without any special search, and doubtlessincomplete, of words and phrases in _King Lear_ which recall words andphrases in _Othello_, and many of which occur only in these two plays:

 'waterish, ' I. I. 261, appears only here and in _O. _ III. Iii. 15. 

 'fortune's alms, ' I. I. 281, appears only here and in _O. _ III. Iv. 122. 

 'decline' seems to be used of the advance of age only in I. Ii. 78 and _O. _ III. Iii. 265. 

 'slack' in 'if when they chanced to slack you, ' II. Iv. 248, has no exact parallel in Shakespeare, but recalls 'they slack their duties, ' _O. _ IV. Iii. 88. 

 'allowance' (=authorisation), I. Iv. 228, is used thus only in _K. L. _, _O. _ I. I. 128, and two places in _Hamlet_ and _Hen. VIII. _

 'besort, ' vb. , I. Iv. 272, does not occur elsewhere, but 'besort, ' sb. , occurs in _O. _ I. Iii. 239 and nowhere else. 

 Edmund's 'Look, sir, I bleed, ' II. I. 43, sounds like an echo of Iago's 'I bleed, sir, but not killed, ' _O. _ V. Ii. 288. 

 'potential, ' II. I. 78, appears only here, in _O. _ I. Ii. 13, and in the _Lover's Complaint_ (which, I think, is certainly not an early poem). 

 'poise' in 'occasions of some poise, ' II. I. 122, is exactly like 'poise' in 'full of poise and difficult weight, ' _O. _ III. Iii. 82, and not exactly like 'poise' in the three other places where it occurs. 

 'conjunct, ' used only in II. Ii. 125 (Q), V. I. 12, recalls 'conjunctive, ' used only in _H_. IV. Vii. 14, _O. _ I. Iii. 374 (F). 

 'grime, ' vb. , used only in II. Iii. 9, recalls 'begrime, ' used only in _O. _ III. Iii. 387 and _Lucrece_. 

 'unbonneted, ' III. I. 14, appears only here and in _O. _ I. Ii. 23. 

 'delicate, ' III. Iv. 12, IV. Iii. 15, IV. Vi. 188, is not a rare word with Shakespeare; he uses it about thirty times in his plays. But it is worth notice that it occurs six times in _O. _

 'commit, ' used intr. For 'commit adultery, ' appears only in III. Iv. 83, but cf. The famous iteration in _O. _ IV. Ii. 72 f. 

 'stand in hard cure, ' III. Vi. 107, seems to have no parallel except _O. _ II. I. 51, 'stand in bold cure. '

 'secure'=make careless, IV. I. 22, appears only here and in _O. _ I. Iii. 10 and (not quite the same sense) _Tim. _ II. Ii. 185. 

 Albany's 'perforce must wither, ' IV. Ii. 35, recalls Othello's 'It must needs wither, ' V. Ii. 15. 

 'deficient, ' IV. Vi. 23, occurs only here and in _O. _ I. Iii. 63. 

 'the safer sense, ' IV. Vi. 81, recalls 'my blood begins my safer guides to rules, ' _O. _ II. Iii. 205. 

 'fitchew, ' IV. Vi. 124, is used only here, in _O. _ IV. I. 150, and in _T. C. _ V. I. 67 (where it has not the same significance). 

 Lear's 'I have seen the day, with my good biting falchion I would have made them skip, ' V. Iii. 276, recalls Othello's 'I have seen the day, That with this little arm and this good sword, ' etc. , V. Ii. 261. 

The fact that more than half of the above occur in the first two Acts of_King Lear_ may possibly be significant: for the farther removedShakespeare was from the time of the composition of _Othello_, the lesslikely would be the recurrence of ideas or words used in that play. 

NOTE S. 

_KING LEAR_ AND _TIMON OF ATHENS_. 

That these two plays are near akin in character, and probably in date, is recognised by many critics now; and I will merely add here a fewreferences to the points of resemblance mentioned in the text (p. 246), and a few notes on other points. 

(1) The likeness between Timon's curses and some of the speeches of Learin his madness is, in one respect, curious. It is natural that Timon, speaking to Alcibiades and two courtezans, should inveigh in particularagainst sexual vices and corruption, as he does in the terrific passageIV. Iii. 82-166; but why should Lear refer at length, and with the sameloathing, to this particular subject (IV. Vi. 112-132)? It almost looksas if Shakespeare were expressing feelings which oppressed him at thisperiod of his life. 

The idea may be a mere fancy, but it has seemed to me that thispre-occupation, and sometimes this oppression, are traceable in otherplays of the period from about 1602 to 1605 (_Hamlet_, _Measure forMeasure_, _Troilus and Cressida_, _All's Well_, _Othello_); while inearlier plays the subject is handled less, and without disgust, and inlater plays (e. G. _Antony and Cleopatra_, _The Winter's Tale_, _Cymbeline_) it is also handled, however freely, without this air ofrepulsion (I omit _Pericles_ because the authorship of thebrothel-scenes is doubtful). 

(2) For references to the lower animals, similar to those in _KingLear_, see especially _Timon_, I. I. 259; II. Ii. 180; III. Vi. 103 f. ;IV. I. 2, 36; IV. Iii. 49 f. , 177 ff. , 325 ff. (surely a passage writtenor, at the least, rewritten by Shakespeare), 392, 426 f. I ignore theconstant abuse of the dog in the conversations where Apemantus appears. 

(3) Further points of resemblance are noted in the text at pp. 246, 247, 310, 326, 327, and many likenesses in word, phrase and idea might beadded, of the type of the parallel 'Thine Do comfort and not burn, '_Lear_, II. Iv. 176, and 'Thou sun, that comfort'st, burn!' _Timon_, V. I. 134. 

(4) The likeness in style and versification (so far as the purelyShakespearean parts of _Timon_ are concerned) is surely unmistakable, but some readers may like to see an example. Lear speaks here (IV. Vi. 164 ff. ):

 Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand! Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back; Thou hotly lust'st to use her in that kind For which thou whipp'st her. The usurer hangs the cozener. Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold, And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it. None does offend, none, I say, none; I'll able 'em: Take that of me, my friend, who have the power To seal the accuser's lips. Get thee glass eyes; And, like a scurvy politician, seem To see the things thou dost not. 

And Timon speaks here (IV. Iii. 1 ff. ):

 O blessed breeding sun, draw from the earth Rotten humidity; below thy sister's orb Infect the air! Twinn'd brothers of one womb, Whose procreation, residence, and birth, Scarce is dividant, touch them with several fortunes, The greater scorns the lesser: not nature, To whom all sores lay siege, can bear great fortune, But by contempt of nature. Raise me this beggar, and deny't that lord: The senator shall bear contempt hereditary, The beggar native honour. It is the pasture lards the rother's sides, The want that makes him lean. Who dares, who dares. In purity of manhood stand upright And say 'This man's a flatterer'? if one be, So are they all: for every grise of fortune Is smooth'd by that below: the learned pate Ducks to the golden fool: all is oblique; There's nothing level in our cursed natures, But direct villany. 

The reader may wish to know whether metrical tests throw any light onthe chronological position of _Timon_; and he will find such informationas I can give in Note BB. But he will bear in mind that results arrivedat by applying these tests to the whole play can have little value, since it is practically certain that Shakespeare did not write the wholeplay. It seems to consist (1) of parts that are purely Shakespearean(the text, however, being here, as elsewhere, very corrupt); (2) ofparts untouched or very slightly touched by him; (3) of parts where agood deal is Shakespeare's but not all (_e. G. _, in my opinion, III. V. , which I cannot believe, with Mr. Fleay, to be wholly, or almost wholly, by another writer). The tests ought to be applied not only to the wholeplay but separately to (1), about which there is little difference ofopinion. This has not been done: but Dr. Ingram has applied one test, and I have applied another, to the parts assigned by Mr. Fleay toShakespeare (see Note BB. ). [268] The result is to place _Timon_ between_King Lear_ and _Macbeth_ (a result which happens to coincide with thatof the application of the main tests to the whole play): and this resultcorresponds, I believe, with the general impression which we derive fromthe three dramas in regard to versification. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 268: These are I. I. ; II. I. ; II. Ii. , except 194-204; in III. Vi. Timon's verse speech; IV. I. ; IV. Ii. 1-28; IV. Iii. , except292-362, 399-413, 454-543; V. I. , except 1-50; V. Ii. ; V. Iv. I am notto be taken as accepting this division throughout. ]

NOTE T. 

DID SHAKESPEARE SHORTEN _KING LEAR_?

I have remarked in the text (pp. 256 ff. ) on the unusual number ofimprobabilities, inconsistencies, etc. , in _King Lear_. The list ofexamples given might easily be lengthened. Thus (_a_) in IV. Iii. Kentrefers to a letter which he confided to the Gentleman for Cordelia; butin III. I. He had given to the Gentleman not a letter but a message. (_b_) In III. I. Again he says Cordelia will inform the Gentleman whothe sender of the message was; but from IV. Iii. It is evident that shehas done no such thing, nor does the Gentleman show any curiosity on thesubject. (_c_) In the same scene (III. I. ) Kent and the Gentlemanarrange that whichever finds the King first shall halloo to the other;but when Kent finds the King he does not halloo. These are all examplesof mere carelessness as to matters which would escape attention in thetheatre, --matters introduced not because they are essential to the plot, but in order to give an air of verisimilitude to the conversation. Andhere is perhaps another instance. When Lear determines to leave Goneriland go to Regan he says, 'call my train together' (I. Iv. 275). When hearrives at Gloster's house Kent asks why he comes with so small a train, and the Fool gives a reply which intimates that the rest have desertedhim (II. Iv. 63 ff. ). He and his daughters, however, seem unaware of anydiminution; and, when Lear 'calls to horse' and leaves Gloster's house, the doors are shut against him partly on the excuse that he is 'attendedwith a desperate train' (308). Nevertheless in the storm he has noknights with him, and in III. Vii. 15 ff. We hear that 'some five or sixand thirty of his knights'[269] are 'hot questrists after him, ' asthough the real reason of his leaving Goneril with so small a train wasthat he had hurried away so quickly that many of his knights wereunaware of his departure. 

This prevalence of vagueness or inconsistency is probably due tocarelessness; but it may possibly be due to another cause. There are, ithas sometimes struck me, slight indications that the details of the plotwere originally more full and more clearly imagined than one wouldsuppose from the play as we have it; and some of the defects to which Ihave drawn attention might have arisen if Shakespeare, finding hismatter too bulky, had (_a_) omitted to write some things originallyintended, and (_b_), after finishing his play, had reduced it byexcision, and had not, in these omissions and excisions, takensufficient pains to remove the obscurities and inconsistenciesoccasioned by them. 

Thus, to take examples of (_b_), Lear's 'What, fifty of my followers ata clap!' (I. Iv. 315) is very easily explained if we suppose that in thepreceding conversation, as originally written, Goneril had mentioned thenumber. Again the curious absence of any indication why Burgundy shouldhave the first choice of Cordelia's hand might easily be due to the samecause. So might the ignorance in which we are left as to the fate of theFool, and several more of the defects noticed in the text. 

To illustrate the other point (_a_), that Shakespeare may have omittedto write some things which he had originally intended, the play wouldobviously gain something if it appeared that, at a time shortly beforethat of the action, Gloster had encouraged the King in his idea ofdividing the kingdom, while Kent had tried to dissuade him. And thereare one or two passages which suggest that this is what Shakespeareimagined. If it were so, there would be additional point in the Fool'sreference to the lord who counselled Lear to give away his land (I. Iv. 154), and in Gloster's reflection (III. Iv. 168), His daughters seek his death: ah, that good Kent! He said it would be thus:

('said, ' of course, not to the King but to Gloster and perhaps others ofthe council). Thus too the plots would be still more closely joined. Then also we should at once understand the opening of the play. ToKent's words, 'I thought the King had more affected the Duke of Albanythan Cornwall, ' Gloster answers, 'It did always seem so to us. ' Who arethe 'us' from whom Kent is excluded? I do not know, for there is no signthat Kent has been absent. But if Kent, in consequence of hisopposition, had fallen out of favour and absented himself from thecouncil, it would be clear. So, besides, would be the strange suddennesswith which, after Gloster's answer, Kent changes the subject; he wouldbe avoiding, in presence of Gloster's son, any further reference to asubject on which he and Gloster had differed. That Kent, I may add, hadalready the strongest opinion about Goneril and Regan is clear from hisextremely bold words (I. I. 165), Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow Upon thy foul disease. 

Did Lear remember this phrase when he called Goneril 'a disease that'sin my flesh' (II. Iv. 225)?

Again, the observant reader may have noticed that Goneril is not onlyrepresented as the fiercer and more determined of the two sisters butalso strikes one as the more sensual. And with this may be connected oneor two somewhat curious points: Kent's comparison of Goneril to thefigure of Vanity in the Morality plays (II. Ii. 38); the Fool'sapparently quite irrelevant remark (though his remarks are scarcely everso), 'For there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass'(III. Ii. 35); Kent's reference to Oswald (long before there is any signof Goneril's intrigue with Edmund) as 'one that would be a bawd in wayof good service' (II. Ii. 20); and Edgar's words to the corpse of Oswald(IV. Vi. 257), also spoken before he knew anything of the intrigue withEdmund, I know thee well: a serviceable villain; As duteous to the vices of thy mistress As badness would desire. 

Perhaps Shakespeare had conceived Goneril as a woman who before hermarriage had shown signs of sensual vice; but the distinct indicationsof this idea were crowded out of his exposition when he came to writeit, or, being inserted, were afterwards excised. I will not go on tohint that Edgar had Oswald in his mind when (III. Iv. 87) he describedthe serving-man who 'served the lust of his mistress' heart, and did theact of darkness with her'; and still less that Lear can have had Gonerilin his mind in the declamation against lechery referred to in Note S. 

I do not mean to imply, by writing this note, that I believe in thehypotheses suggested in it. On the contrary I think it more probablethat the defects referred to arose from carelessness and other causes. But this is not, to me, certain; and the reader who rejects thehypotheses may be glad to have his attention called to the points whichsuggested them. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 269: It has been suggested that 'his' means 'Gloster's'; but'him' all through the speech evidently means Lear. ]

NOTE U. 

MOVEMENTS OF THE DRAMATIS PERSONÆ IN ACT II. OF _KING LEAR_. 

I have referred in the text to the obscurity of the play on thissubject, and I will set out the movements here. 

When Lear is ill-treated by Goneril his first thought is to seek refugewith Regan (I. Iv. 274 f. , 327 f. ). Goneril, accordingly, who hadforeseen this, and, even before the quarrel, had determined to write toRegan (I. Iii. 25), now sends Oswald off to her, telling her not toreceive Lear and his hundred knights (I. Iv. 354 f. ). In consequence ofthis letter Regan and Cornwall immediately leave their home and ride bynight to Gloster's house, sending word on that they are coming (II. I. 1ff. , 81, 120 ff. ). Lear, on his part, just before leaving Goneril'shouse, sends Kent with a letter to Regan, and tells him to be quick, orLear will be there before him. And we find that Kent reaches Regan anddelivers his letter before Oswald, Goneril's messenger. Both themessengers are taken on by Cornwall and Regan to Gloster's house. 

In II. Iv. Lear arrives at Gloster's house, having, it would seem, failed to find Regan at her own home. And, later, Goneril arrives atGloster's house, in accordance with an intimation which she had sent inher letter to Regan (II. Iv. 186 f. ). 

Thus all the principal persons except Cordelia and Albany are broughttogether; and the crises of the double action--the expulsion of Lear andthe blinding and expulsion of Gloster--are reached in Act III. And thisis what was required. 

But it needs the closest attention to follow these movements. And, apartfrom this, difficulties remain. 

1. Goneril, in despatching Oswald with the letter to Regan, tells him tohasten his return (I. Iv. 363). Lear again is surprised to find that_his_ messenger has not been sent back (II. Iv. 1 f. , 36 f. ). Yetapparently both Goneril and Lear themselves start at once, so that theirmessengers _could_ not return in time. It may be said that they expectedto meet them coming back, but there is no indication of this in thetext. 

2. Lear, in despatching Kent, says (I. V. 1):

 Go you before to Gloster with these letters. Acquaint my daughter no further with anything you know than comes from her demand out of the letter. 

This would seem to imply that Lear knew that Regan and Cornwall were atGloster's house, and meant either to go there (so Koppel) or to summonher back to her own home to receive him. Yet this is clearly not so, forKent goes straight to Regan's house (II. I. 124, II. Iv. 1, 27 ff. , 114ff. ). 

Hence it is generally supposed that by 'Gloster, ' in the passage justquoted, Lear means not the Earl but the _place_; that Regan's home wasthere; and that Gloster's castle was somewhere not very far off. This isto some extent confirmed by the fact that Cornwall is the 'arch' orpatron of Gloster (II. I. 60 f. , 112 ff. ). But Gloster's home or housemust not be imagined quite close to Cornwall's, for it takes a night toride from the one to the other, and Gloster's house is in the middle ofa solitary heath with scarce a bush for many miles about (II. Iv. 304). 

The plural 'these letters' in the passage quoted need give no trouble, for the plural is often used by Shakespeare for a single letter; and thenatural conjecture that Lear sent one letter to Regan and another toGloster is not confirmed by anything in the text. 

The only difficulty is that, as Koppel points out, 'Gloster' is nowhereelse used in the play for the place (except in the phrase 'Earl ofGloster' or 'my lord of Gloster'); and--what is more important--that itwould unquestionably be taken by the audience to stand in this passagefor the Earl, especially as there has been no previous indication thatCornwall lived at Gloster. One can only suppose that Shakespeare forgotthat he had given no such indication, and so wrote what was sure to bemisunderstood, --unless we suppose that 'Gloster' is a mere slip of thepen, or even a misprint, for 'Regan. ' But, apart from otherconsiderations, Lear would hardly have spoken to a servant of 'Regan, 'and, if he had, the next words would have run 'Acquaint her, ' not'Acquaint my daughter. '

NOTE V. 

SUSPECTED INTERPOLATIONS IN _KING LEAR_. 

There are three passages in _King Lear_ which have been held to beadditions made by 'the players. '

The first consists of the two lines of indecent doggerel spoken by theFool at the end of Act I. ; the second, of the Fool's prophecy in rhymeat the end of III. Ii. ; the third, of Edgar's soliloquy at the end ofIII. Vi. 

It is suspicious (1) that all three passages occur at the ends ofscenes, the place where an addition is most easily made; and (2) that ineach case the speaker remains behind alone to utter the words after theother persons have gone off. 

I postpone discussion of the several passages until I have calledattention to the fact that, if these passages are genuine, the number ofscenes which end with a soliloquy is larger in _King Lear_ than in anyother undoubted tragedy. Thus, taking the tragedies in their probablechronological order (and ignoring the very short scenes into which abattle is sometimes divided), [270] I find that there are in _Romeo andJuliet_ four such scenes, in _Julius Cæsar_ two, in _Hamlet_ six, in_Othello_ four, [271] in _King Lear_ seven, [272] in _Macbeth_ two, [273]in _Antony and Cleopatra_ three, in _Coriolanus_ one. The differencebetween _King Lear_ and the plays that come nearest to it is really muchgreater than it appears from this list, for in _Hamlet_ four of the sixsoliloquies, and in _Othello_ three of the four, are long speeches, while most of those in _King Lear_ are quite short. 

Of course I do not attach any great importance to the fact just noticed, but it should not be left entirely out of account in forming an opinionas to the genuineness of the three doubted passages. 

(_a_) The first of these, I. V. 54-5, I decidedly believe to bespurious. (1) The scene ends quite in Shakespeare's manner without it. (2) It does not seem likely that at the _end_ of the scene Shakespearewould have introduced anything _violently_ incongruous with theimmediately preceding words, Oh let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! Keep me in temper: I would not be mad!

(3) Even if he had done so, it is very unlikely that the incongruouswords would have been grossly indecent. (4) Even if they had been, surely they would not have been _irrelevantly_ indecent and evidentlyaddressed to the audience, two faults which are not in Shakespeare'sway. (5) The lines are doggerel. Doggerel is not uncommon in theearliest plays; there are a few lines even in the _Merchant of Venice_, a line and a half, perhaps, in _As You Like It_; but I do not think itoccurs later, not even where, in an early play, it would certainly havebeen found, _e. G. _ in the mouth of the Clown in _All's Well_. The bestthat can be said for these lines is that they appear in the Quartos, _i. E. _ in reports, however vile, of the play as performed within two orthree years of its composition. 

(_b_) I believe, almost as decidedly, that the second passage, III. Ii. 79 ff. , is spurious. (1) The scene ends characteristically without thelines. (2) They are addressed directly to the audience. (3) They destroythe pathetic and beautiful effect of the immediately preceding words ofthe Fool, and also of Lear's solicitude for him. (4) They involve theabsurdity that the shivering timid Fool would allow his master andprotector, Lear and Kent, to go away into the storm and darkness, leaving him alone. (5) It is also somewhat against them that they do notappear in the Quartos. At the same time I do not think one wouldhesitate to accept them if they occurred at any natural place _within_the dialogue. 

(_c_) On the other hand I see no sufficient reason for doubting thegenuineness of Edgar's soliloquy at the end of III. Vi. (1) Those whodoubt it appear not to perceive that _some_ words of soliloquy arewanted; for it is evidently intended that, when Kent and Gloster bearthe King away, they should leave the Bedlam behind. Naturally they doso. He is only accidentally connected with the King; he was taken toshelter with him merely to gratify his whim, and as the King is nowasleep there is no occasion to retain the Bedlam; Kent, we know, shrankfrom him, 'shunn'd [his] abhorr'd society' (V. Iii. 210). So he is leftto return to the hovel where he was first found. When the others depart, then, he must be left behind, and surely would not go off without aword. (2) If his speech is spurious, therefore, it has been substitutedfor some genuine speech; and surely that is a supposition not to beentertained except under compulsion. (3) There is no such compulsion inthe speech. It is not very good, no doubt; but the use of rhymed andsomewhat antithetic lines in a gnomic passage is quite in Shakespeare'smanner, _more_ in his manner than, for example, the rhymed passages inI. I. 183-190, 257-269, 281-4, which nobody doubts; quite like manyplaces in _All's Well_, or the concluding lines of _King Lear_ itself. (4) The lines are in spirit of one kind with Edgar's fine lines at thebeginning of Act IV. (5) Some of them, as Delius observes, emphasize theparallelism between the stories of Lear and Gloster. (6) The fact thatthe Folio omits the lines is, of course, nothing against them. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 270: I ignore them partly because they are not significant forthe present purpose, but mainly because it is impossible to accept thedivision of battle-scenes in our modern texts, while to depart from itis to introduce intolerable inconvenience in reference. The only properplan in Elizabethan drama is to consider a scene ended as soon as noperson is left on the stage, and to pay no regard to the question oflocality, --a question theatrically insignificant and undetermined inmost scenes of an Elizabethan play, in consequence of the absence ofmovable scenery. In dealing with battles the modern editors seem to havegone on the principle (which they could not possibly apply generally)that, so long as the place is not changed, you have only one scene. Hence in _Macbeth_, Act V. , they have included in their Scene vii. Threedistinct scenes; yet in _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act III. , following theright division for a wrong reason, they have two scenes (viii. And ix. ), each less than four lines long. ]

[Footnote 271: One of these (V. I. ) is not marked as such, but it isevident that the last line and a half form a soliloquy of one remainingcharacter, just as much as some of the soliloquies marked as such inother plays. ]

[Footnote 272: According to modern editions, eight, Act II. , scene ii. , being an instance. But it is quite ridiculous to reckon as three sceneswhat are marked as scenes ii. , iii. , iv. Kent is on the lower stage thewhole time, Edgar in the so-called scene iii. Being on the upper stageor balcony. The editors were misled by their ignorance of the stagearrangements. ]

[Footnote 273: Perhaps three, for V. Iii. Is perhaps an instance, thoughnot so marked. ]

NOTE W. 

THE STAGING OF THE SCENE OF LEAR'S REUNION WITH CORDELIA. 

As Koppel has shown, the usual modern stage-directions[274] for thisscene (IV. Vii. ) are utterly wrong and do what they can to defeat thepoet's purpose. 

It is evident from the text that the scene shows the _first_ meeting ofCordelia and Kent, and _first_ meeting of Cordelia and Lear, since theyparted in I. I. Kent and Cordelia indeed are doubtless supposed to haveexchanged a few words before they come on the stage; but Cordelia hasnot seen her father at all until the moment before she begins (line 26), 'O my dear father!' Hence the tone of the first part of the scene, thatbetween Cordelia and Kent, is kept low, in order that the latter part, between Cordelia and Lear, may have its full effect. 

The modern stage-direction at the beginning of the scene, as found, forexample, in the Cambridge and Globe editions, is as follows:

 'SCENE vii. --A tent in the French camp. LEAR on a bed asleep, soft music playing; _Gentleman_, and others attending. 

 Enter CORDELIA, KENT, and _Doctor_. '

At line 25, where the Doctor says 'Please you, draw near, ' Cordelia issupposed to approach the bed, which is imagined by some editors visiblethroughout at the back of the stage, by others as behind a curtain atthe back, this curtain being drawn open at line 25. 

Now, to pass by the fact that these arrangements are in flatcontradiction with the stage-directions of the Quartos and the Folio, consider their effect upon the scene. In the first place, the reader atonce assumes that Cordelia has already seen her father; for otherwise itis inconceivable that she would quietly talk with Kent while he waswithin a few yards of her. The edge of the later passage where sheaddresses him is therefore blunted. In the second place, through Lear'spresence the reader's interest in Lear and his meeting with Cordelia isat once excited so strongly that he hardly attends at all to theconversation of Cordelia and Kent; and so this effect is blunted too. Thirdly, at line 57, where Cordelia says, O, look upon me, sir, And hold your hands in benediction o'er me! No, sir, you must not kneel, the poor old King must be supposed either to try to get out of bed, oractually to do so, or to kneel, or to try to kneel, on the bed. Fourthly, consider what happens at line 81. 

 _Doctor. _ Desire him to _go in_; trouble him no more Till further settling. 

 _Cor. _ Will't please your highness _walk?_

 _Lear. _ You must bear with me; Pray you now, forget and forgive; I am old and foolish. [_Exeunt all but Kent and Gentleman_. 

If Lear is in a tent containing his bed, why in the world, when thedoctor thinks he can bear no more emotion, is he made to walk out of thetent? A pretty doctor!

But turn now to the original texts. Of course they say nothing about theplace. The stage-direction at the beginning runs, in the Quartos, 'EnterCordelia, Kent, and Doctor;' in the Folio, 'Enter Cordelia, Kent, andGentleman. ' They differ about the Gentleman and the Doctor, and theFolio later wrongly gives to the Gentleman the Doctor's speeches as wellas his own. This is a minor matter. But they agree in _making no mentionof Lear_. He is not on the stage at all. Thus Cordelia, and the reader, can give their whole attention to Kent. 

Her conversation with Kent finished, she turns (line 12) to the Doctorand asks 'How does the King?'[275] The Doctor tells her that Lear isstill asleep, and asks leave to wake him. Cordelia assents and asks ifhe is 'arrayed, ' which does not mean whether he has a night-gown on, butwhether they have taken away his crown of furrow-weeds, and tended himduly after his mad wanderings in the fields. The Gentleman says that inhis sleep 'fresh garments' (not a night-gown) have been put on him. TheDoctor then asks Cordelia to be present when her father is waked. Sheassents, and the Doctor says, 'Please you, draw near. Louder the musicthere. ' The next words are Cordelia's, 'O my dear father!'

What has happened? At the words 'is he arrayed?' according to the Folio, '_Enter Lear in a chair carried by Servants. _' The moment of thisentrance, as so often in the original editions, is doubtless too soon. It should probably come at the words 'Please you, draw near, ' which_may_, as Koppel suggests, be addressed to the bearers. But that thestage-direction is otherwise right there cannot be a doubt (and that theQuartos omit it is no argument against it, seeing that, according totheir directions, Lear never enters at all). 

This arrangement (1) allows Kent his proper place in the scene, (2)makes it clear that Cordelia has not seen her father before, (3) makesher first sight of him a theatrical crisis in the best sense, (4) makesit quite natural that he should kneel, (5) makes it obvious why heshould leave the stage again when he shows signs of exhaustion, and (6)is the only arrangement which has the slightest authority, for 'Lear ona bed asleep' was never heard of till Capell proposed it. The ruinouschange of the staging was probably suggested by the version of thatunhappy Tate. 

Of course the chair arrangement is primitive, but the Elizabethans didnot care about such things. What they cared for was dramatic effect. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 274: There are exceptions: _e. G. _, in the editions of Deliusand Mr. W. J. Craig. ]

[Footnote 275: And it is possible that, as Koppel suggests, the Doctorshould properly enter at this point; for if Kent, as he says, wishes toremain unknown, it seems strange that he and Cordelia should talk asthey do before a third person. This change however is not necessary, forthe Doctor might naturally stand out of hearing till he was addressed;and it is better not to go against the stage-direction withoutnecessity. ]

NOTE X. 

THE BATTLE IN _KING LEAR_. 

I found my impression of the extraordinary ineffectiveness of thisbattle (p. 255) confirmed by a paper of James Spedding (_New ShakspereSociety Transactions_, 1877, or Furness's _King Lear_, p. 312 f. ); buthis opinion that this is the one technical defect in _King Lear_ seemscertainly incorrect, and his view that this defect is not due toShakespeare himself will not, I think, bear scrutiny. 

To make Spedding's view quite clear I may remind the reader that in thepreceding scene the two British armies, that of Edmund and Regan, andthat of Albany and Goneril, have entered with drum and colours, and havedeparted. Scene ii. Is as follows (Globe):

 SCENE II. --_A field between the two camps. 

 Alarum within. Enter, with drum and colours_, LEAR, CORDELIA, _and_ Soldiers, _over the stage; and exeunt. _ _Enter_ EDGAR _and_ GLOSTER. 

 _Edg. _ Here, father, take the shadow of this tree For your good host; pray that the right may thrive: If ever I return to you again, I'll bring you comfort. 

 _Glo. _ Grace go with you, sir!

 [_Exit_ Edgar

 _Alarum and retreat within. _ _Re-enter_ EDGAR. 

 _Edg. _ Away, old man; give me thy hand; away! King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter ta'en: Give me thy hand; come on. 

 _Glo. _ No farther, sir; a man may rot even here. 

 _Edg. _ What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is all: come on. 

 _Glo. _ And that's true too. [_Exeunt_. 

The battle, it will be seen, is represented only by military musicwithin the tiring-house, which formed the back of the stage. 'Thescene, ' says Spedding, 'does not change; but 'alarums' are heard, andafterwards a 'retreat, ' and on the same field over which that great armyhas this moment passed, fresh and full of hope, re-appears, with tidingsthat all is lost, the same man who last left the stage to follow andfight in it. [276] That Shakespeare meant the scene to stand thus, no onewho has the true faith will believe. '

Spedding's suggestion is that things are here run together whichShakespeare meant to keep apart. Shakespeare, he thinks, continued ActIV. To the '_exit_ Edgar' after l. 4 of the above passage. Thus, justbefore the close of the Act, the two British armies and the French armyhad passed across the stage, and the interest of the audience in thebattle about to be fought was raised to a high pitch. Then, after ashort interval, Act V. Opened with the noise of battle in the distance, followed by the entrance of Edgar to announce the defeat of Cordelia'sarmy. The battle, thus, though not fought on the stage, was shown andfelt to be an event of the greatest importance. 

Apart from the main objection of the entire want of evidence of so greata change having been made, there are other objections to this idea andto the reasoning on which it is based. (1) The pause at the end of thepresent Fourth Act is far from 'faulty, ' as Spedding alleges it to be;that Act ends with the most melting scene Shakespeare ever wrote; and apause after it, and before the business of the battle, was perfectlyright. (2) The Fourth Act is already much longer than the Fifth (aboutfourteen columns of the Globe edition against about eight and a half), and Spedding's change would give the Fourth nearly sixteen columns, andthe Fifth less than seven. (3) Spedding's proposal requires a muchgreater alteration in the existing text than he supposed. It does notsimply shift the division of the two Acts, it requires the disappearanceand re-entrance of the blind Gloster. Gloster, as the text stands, isalone on the stage while the battle is being fought at a distance, andthe reference to the tree shows that he was on the main or lower stage. The main stage had no front curtain; and therefore, if Act IV. Is to endwhere Spedding wished it to end, Gloster must go off unaided at itsclose, and come on again unaided for Act V. And this means that the_whole_ arrangement of the present Act V. Sc. Ii. Must be changed. IfSpedding had been aware of this it is not likely that he would havebroached his theory. [277]

It is curious that he does not allude to the one circumstance whichthrows some little suspicion on the existing text. I mean thecontradiction between Edgar's statement that, if ever he returns to hisfather again, he will bring him comfort, and the fact that immediatelyafterwards he returns to bring him discomfort. It is possible to explainthis psychologically, of course, but the passage is not one in which weshould expect psychological subtlety. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 276: Where did Spedding find this? I find no trace of it, andsurely Edgar would not have risked his life in the battle, when he had, in case of defeat, to appear and fight Edmund. He does not appear'armed, ' according to the Folio, till V. Iii. 117. ]

[Footnote 277: Spedding supposed that there was a front curtain, andthis idea, coming down from Malone and Collier, is still found inEnglish works of authority. But it may be stated without hesitation thatthere is no positive evidence at all for the existence of such acurtain, and abundant evidence against it. ]

NOTE Y. 

SOME DIFFICULT PASSAGES IN _KING LEAR_. 

The following are notes on some passages where I have not been able toaccept any of the current interpretations, or on which I wish to expressan opinion or represent a little-known view. 

1. _Kent's soliloquy at the end of_ II. Ii. 

(_a_) In this speech the application of the words 'Nothing, almost seesmiracles but misery' seems not to have been understood. The 'misery' issurely not that of Kent but that of Lear, who has come 'out of heaven'sbenediction to the warm sun, ' _i. E. _ to misery. This, says Kent, is justthe situation where something like miraculous help may be looked for;and he finds the sign of it in the fact that a letter from Cordelia hasjust reached him; for his course since his banishment has been soobscured that it is only by the rarest good fortune (something like amiracle) that Cordelia has got intelligence of it. We may suppose thatthis intelligence came from one of Albany's or Cornwall's servants, someof whom are, he says (III. I. 23), to France the spies and speculations Intelligent of our state. 

(_b_) The words 'and shall find time, ' etc. , have been much discussed. Some have thought that they are detached phrases from the letter whichKent is reading: but Kent has just implied by his address to the sunthat he has no light to read the letter by. [278] It has also beensuggested that the anacoluthon is meant to represent Kent's sleepiness, which prevents him from finishing the sentence, and induces him todismiss his thoughts and yield to his drowsiness. But I remember nothinglike this elsewhere in Shakespeare, and it seems much more probable thatthe passage is corrupt, perhaps from the loss of a line containing wordslike 'to rescue us' before 'From this enormous state' (with 'state' cf. 'our state' in the lines quoted above). 

When we reach III. I. We find that Kent has now read the letter; heknows that a force is coming from France and indeed has already 'secretfeet' in some of the harbours. So he sends the Gentleman to Dover. 

2. _The Fool's Song in_ II. Iv. 

At II. Iv. 62 Kent asks why the King comes with so small a train. TheFool answers, in effect, that most of his followers have deserted himbecause they see that his fortunes are sinking. He proceeds to adviseKent ironically to follow their example, though he confesses he does notintend to follow it himself. 'Let go thy hold when a great wheel runsdown a hill, lest it break thy neck with following it: but the great onethat goes up the hill, let him draw thee after. When a wise man givesthee better counsel, give me mine again: I would have none but knavesfollow it, since a fool gives it. 

 That sir which serves and seeks for gain, And follows but for form, Will pack when it begins to rain, And leave thee in the storm. But I will tarry; the fool will stay, And let the wise man fly: The knave turns fool that runs away; The fool no knave, perdy. 

The last two lines have caused difficulty. Johnson wanted to read, The fool turns knave that runs away, The knave no fool, perdy;

_i. E. _ if I ran away, I should prove myself to be a knave and a wiseman, but, being a fool, I stay, as no knave or wise man would. Those whorightly defend the existing reading misunderstand it, I think. Shakespeare is not pointing out, in 'The knave turns fool that runsaway, ' that the wise knave who runs away is really a 'fool with acircumbendibus, ' 'moral miscalculator as well as moral coward. ' The Foolis referring to his own words, 'I would have none but knaves follow [myadvice to desert the King], since a fool gives it'; and the last twolines of his song mean, 'The knave who runs away follows the advicegiven by a fool; but I, the fool, shall not follow my own advice byturning knave. '

For the ideas compare the striking passage in _Timon_, I. I. 64 ff. 

3. '_Decline your head. _'

At IV. Ii. 18 Goneril, dismissing Edmund in the presence of Oswald, says:

 This trusty servant Shall pass between us: ere long you are like to hear, If you dare venture in your own behalf, A mistress's command. Wear this; spare speech; Decline your head: this kiss, if it durst speak, Would stretch thy spirits up into the air. 

I copy Furness's note on 'Decline': 'STEEVENS thinks that Goneril bidsEdmund decline his head that she might, while giving him a kiss, appearto Oswald merely to be whispering to him. But this, WRIGHT says, isgiving Goneril credit for too much delicacy, and Oswald was a"serviceable villain. " DELIUS suggests that perhaps she wishes to put achain around his neck. '

Surely 'Decline your head' is connected, not with 'Wear this' (whatever'this' may be), but with 'this kiss, ' etc. Edmund is a good deal tallerthan Goneril, and must stoop to be kissed. 

4. _Self-cover'd_. 

At IV. Ii. 59 Albany, horrified at the passions of anger, hate, andcontempt expressed in his wife's face, breaks out:

 See thyself, devil! Proper deformity seems not in the fiend So horrid as in woman. 

 _Gon. _ O vain fool!

 _Alb. _ Thou changed and self-cover'd thing, for shame, Be-monster not thy feature. Were't my fitness To let these hands obey my blood, They are apt enough to dislocate and tear Thy flesh and bones: howe'er thou art a fiend, A woman's shape doth shield thee. 

The passage has been much discussed, mainly because of the strangeexpression 'self-cover'd, ' for which of course emendations have beenproposed. The general meaning is clear. Albany tells his wife that sheis a devil in a woman's shape, and warns her not to cast off that shapeby be-monstering her feature (appearance), since it is this shape alonethat protects her from his wrath. Almost all commentators go astraybecause they imagine that, in the words 'thou changed and self-cover'dthing, ' Albany is speaking to Goneril as a _woman_ who has been changedinto a fiend. Really he is addressing her as a fiend which has changedits own shape and assumed that of a woman; and I suggest that'self-cover'd' means either 'which hast covered or concealed thyself, 'or 'whose self is covered' [so Craig in Arden edition], not (what ofcourse it ought to mean) 'which hast been covered _by_ thyself. '

Possibly the last lines of this passage (which does not appear in theFolios) should be arranged thus:

 To let these hands obey my blood, they're apt enough To dislocate and tear thy flesh and bones: Howe'er thou art a fiend, a woman's shape Doth shield thee. 

 _Gon. _ Marry, your manhood now--

 _Alb. _ What news?

5. _The stage-directions at_ V. I. 37, 39. 

In V. I. There first enter Edmund, Regan, and their army or soldiers:then, at line 18, Albany, Goneril, and their army or soldiers. Edmundand Albany speak very stiffly to one another, and Goneril bids themdefer their private quarrels and attend to business. Then follows thispassage (according to the modern texts):

 _Alb. _ Let's then determine With the ancient of war on our proceedings. 

 _Edm. _ I shall attend you presently at your tent. 

 _Reg. _ Sister, you'll go with us?

 _Gon. _ No. 

 _Reg. _ 'Tis most convenient: pray you, go with us. 

 _Gon. _ [_Aside_] O, ho, I know the riddle. --I will go. 

 _As they are going out, enter_ EDGAR _disguised. _

 _Edg. _ If e'er your grace had speech with man so poor, Hear me one word. 

 _Alb. _ I'll overtake you. Speak. 

 [_Exeunt all but_ ALBANY _and_ EDGAR. 

It would appear from this that all the leading persons are to go to aCouncil of War with the ancient (plural) in Albany's tent; and they aregoing out, followed by their armies, when Edgar comes in. Why in theworld, then, should Goneril propose (as she apparently does) to absentherself from the Council; and why, still more, should Regan object toher doing so? This is a question which always perplexed me, and I couldnot believe in the only answers I ever found suggested, viz. , that Reganwanted to keep Edmund and Goneril together in order that she mightobserve them (Moberly, quoted in Furness), or that she could not bear tolose sight of Goneril, for fear Goneril should effect a meeting withEdmund after the Council (Delius, if I understand him). 

But I find in Koppel what seems to be the solution(Verbesserungsvorschläge, p. 127 f. ). He points out that the modernstage-directions are wrong. For the modern direction 'As they are goingout, enter Edgar disguised, ' the Ff. Read, 'Exeunt both the armies. Enter Edgar. ' For 'Exeunt all but Albany and Edgar' the Ff. Havenothing, but Q1 has 'exeunt' after 'word. ' For the first directionKoppel would read, 'Exeunt Regan, Goneril, Gentlemen, and Soldiers': forthe second he would read, after 'overtake you, ' 'Exit Edmund. '

This makes all clear. Albany proposes a Council of War. Edmund assents, and says he will come at once to Albany's tent for that purpose. TheCouncil will consist of Albany, Edmund, and the ancient of war. Regan, accordingly, is going away with her soldiers; but she observes thatGoneril shows no sign of moving with _her_ soldiers; and she at oncesuspects that Goneril means to attend the Council in order to be withEdmund. Full of jealousy, she invites Goneril to go with _her_. Gonerilrefuses, but then, seeing Regan's motive, contemptuously and ironicallyconsents (I doubt if 'O ho, I know the riddle' should be 'aside, ' as inmodern editions, following Capell). Accordingly the two sisters go out, followed by their soldiers; and Edmund and Albany are just going out, ina different direction, to Albany's tent when Edgar enters. His wordscause Albany to stay; Albany says to Edmund, as Edmund leaves, 'I'llovertake you'; and then, turning to Edgar, bids him 'speak. '

6. V. Iii. 151 ff. 

When Edmund falls in combat with the disguised Edgar, Albany producesthe letter from Goneril to Edmund, which Edgar had found in Oswald'spocket and had handed over to Albany. This letter suggested to Edmundthe murder of Albany. The passage in the Globe edition is as follows:

 _Gon. _ This is practice, Gloucester: By the law of arms thou wast not bound to answer An unknown opposite: thou art not vanquish'd, But cozen'd and beguiled. 

 _Alb. _ Shut your mouth, dame, Or with this paper shall I stop it: Hold, sir; Thou worse than any name, read thy own evil: No tearing, lady; I perceive you know it. [_Gives the letter to Edmund. _

 _Gon. _ Say, if I do, the laws are mine, not thine: Who can arraign me for't?

 _Alb. _ Most monstrous! oh! Know'st thou this paper?

 _Gon. _ Ask me not what I know. [_Exit. _

 _Alb. _ Go after her: she's desperate: govern her. 

 _Edm. _ What you have charged me with, that have I done; And more, much more; the time will bring it out. 'Tis past, and so am I. But what art thou That hast this fortune on me?

The first of the stage-directions is not in the Qq. Or Ff. : it wasinserted by Johnson. The second ('Exit') is both in the Qq. And in theFf. , but the latter place it after the words 'arraign me for't. ' Andthey give the words 'Ask me not what I know' to Edmund, not to Goneril, as in the Qq. (followed by the Globe). 

I will not go into the various views of these lines, but will simply saywhat seems to me most probable. It does not matter much where preciselyGoneril's 'exit' comes; but I believe the Folios are right in giving thewords 'Ask me not what I know' to Edmund. It has been pointed out byKnight that the question 'Know'st thou this paper?' cannot very well beaddressed to Goneril, for Albany has already said to her, 'I perceiveyou know it. ' It is possible to get over this difficulty by saying thatAlbany wants her confession: but there is another fact which seems tohave passed unnoticed. When Albany is undoubtedly speaking to his wife, he uses the plural pronoun, 'Shut _your_ mouth, dame, ' 'No tearing, lady; I perceive _you_ know it. ' When then he asks 'Know'st _thou_ thispaper?' he is probably _not_ speaking to her. 

I should take the passage thus. At 'Hold, sir, ' [omitted in Qq. ] Albanyholds the letter out towards Edmund for him to see, or possibly gives itto him. [279] The next line, with its 'thou, ' is addressed to Edmund, whose 'reciprocal vows' are mentioned in the letter. Goneril snatches atit to tear it up: and Albany, who does not know whether Edmund ever sawthe letter or not, says to her 'I perceive _you_ know it, ' the 'you'being emphatic (her very wish to tear it showed she knew what was init). She practically admits her knowledge, defies him, and goes out tokill herself. He exclaims in horror at her, and, turning again toEdmund, asks if _he_ knows it. Edmund, who of course does not know it, refuses to answer (like Iago), not (like Iago) out of defiance, but fromchivalry towards Goneril; and, having refused to answer _this_ charge, he goes on to admit the charges brought against himself previously byAlbany (82 f. ) and Edgar (130 f. ). I should explain the change from'you' to 'thou' in his speech by supposing that at first he is speakingto Albany and Edgar together. 

7. V. Iii. 278. 

Lear, looking at Kent, asks, Who are you? Mine eyes are not o' the best: I'll tell you straight. 

 _Kent. _ If fortune brag of two she loved _and_ hated (Qq. _or_), One of them we behold. 

Kent is not answering Lear, nor is he speaking of himself. He isspeaking of Lear. The best interpretation is probably that of Malone, according to which Kent means, 'We see the man most hated by Fortune, whoever may be the man she has loved best'; and perhaps it is supportedby the variation of the text in the Qq. , though their texts are so badin this scene that their support is worth little. But it occurs to me aspossible that the meaning is rather: 'Did Fortune ever show the extremes_both_ of her love _and_ of her hatred to any other man as she has shownthem to this man?'

8. _The last lines. _

 _Alb. _ Bear them from hence. Our present business Is general woe. [_To Kent and Edgar_] Friends of my soul, you twain Rule in this realm, and the gored state sustain. 

 _Kent. _ I have a journey, sir, shortly to go; My master calls me, I must not say no. 

 _Alb. _ The weight of this sad time we must obey; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most: we that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long. 

So the Globe. The stage-direction (right, of course) is Johnson's. Thelast four lines are given by the Ff. To Edgar, by the Qq. To Albany. TheQq. Read '_have_ borne most. '

To whom ought the last four lines to be given, and what do they mean? Itis proper that the principal person should speak last, and this is infavour of Albany. But in this scene at any rate the Ff. , which give thespeech to Edgar, have the better text (though Ff. 2, 3, 4, make Kent dieafter his two lines!); Kent has answered Albany, but Edgar has not; andthe lines seem to be rather more appropriate to Edgar. For the 'gentlereproof' of Kent's despondency (if this phrase of Halliwell's is right)is like Edgar; and, although we have no reason to suppose that Albanywas not young, there is nothing to prove his youth. 

As to the meaning of the last two lines (a poor conclusion to such aplay) I should suppose that 'the oldest' is not Lear, but 'the oldest ofus, ' viz. , Kent, the one survivor of the old generation: and this is themore probable if there _is_ a reference to him in the preceding lines. The last words seem to mean, 'We that are young shall never see so much_and yet_ live so long'; _i. E. _ if we suffer so much, we shall not bearit as he has. If the Qq. 'have' is right, the reference is to Lear, Gloster and Kent. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 278: The 'beacon' which he bids approach is not the moon, asPope supposed. The moon was up and shining some time ago (II. Ii. 35), and lines 1 and 141-2 imply that not much of the night is left. ]

[Footnote 279: 'Hold' can mean 'take'; but the word 'this' in line 160('Know'st thou this paper?') favours the idea that the paper is still inAlbany's hand. ]

NOTE Z. 

SUSPECTED INTERPOLATIONS IN _MACBETH_. 

I have assumed in the text that almost the whole of _Macbeth_ isgenuine; and, to avoid the repetition of arguments to be found in otherbooks, [280] I shall leave this opinion unsupported. But among thepassages that have been questioned or rejected there are two which seemto me open to serious doubt. They are those in which Hecate appears:viz. The whole of III. V. ; and IV. I. 39-43. 

These passages have been suspected (1) because they containstage-directions for two songs which have been found in Middleton's_Witch_; (2) because they can be excised without leaving the least traceof their excision; and (3) because they contain lines incongruous withthe spirit and atmosphere of the rest of the Witch-scenes: _e. G. _ III. V. 10 f. :

 all you have done Hath been but for a wayward son, Spiteful and wrathful, who, as others do, Loves for his own ends, not for you;

and IV. I. 41, 2:

 And now about the cauldron sing, Like elves and fairies in a ring. 

The idea of sexual relation in the first passage, and the trivialdaintiness of the second (with which cf. III. V. 34, Hark! I am call'd; my little spirit, see, Sits in a foggy cloud, and stays for me)

suit Middleton's Witches quite well, but Shakespeare's not at all; andit is difficult to believe that, if Shakespeare had meant to introduce apersonage supreme over the Witches, he would have made her sounimpressive as this Hecate. (It may be added that the originalstage-direction at IV. I. 39, 'Enter Hecat and the other three Witches, 'is suspicious. )

I doubt if the second and third of these arguments, taken alone, wouldjustify a very serious suspicion of interpolation; but the fact, mentioned under (1), that the play has here been meddled with, treblestheir weight. And it gives some weight to the further fact that thesepassages resemble one another, and differ from the bulk of the otherWitch passages, in being iambic in rhythm. (It must, however, beremembered that, supposing Shakespeare _did_ mean to introduce Hecate, he might naturally use a special rhythm for the parts where sheappeared. )

The same rhythm appears in a third passage which has been doubted: IV. I. 125-132. But this is not _quite_ on a level with the other two; for(1), though it is possible to suppose the Witches, as well as theApparitions, to vanish at 124, and Macbeth's speech to run straight onto 133, the cut is not so clean as in the other cases; (2) it is not atall clear that Hecate (the most suspicious element) is supposed to bepresent. The original stage-direction at 133 is merely 'The WitchesDance, and vanish'; and even if Hecate had been present before, shemight have vanished at 43, as Dyce makes her do. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 280: _E. G. _ Mr. Chambers's excellent little edition in theWarwick series. ]

NOTE AA. 

HAS _MACBETH_ BEEN ABRIDGED?

_Macbeth_ is a very short play, the shortest of all Shakespeare's exceptthe _Comedy of Errors_. It contains only 1993 lines, while _King Lear_contains 3298, _Othello_ 3324, and _Hamlet_ 3924. The next shortest ofthe tragedies is _Julius Caesar_, which has 2440 lines. (The figures areMr. Fleay's. I may remark that for our present purpose we want thenumber of the lines in the first Folio, not those in modern compositetexts. )

Is there any reason to think that the play has been shortened? I willbriefly consider this question, so far as it can be considered apartfrom the wider one whether Shakespeare's play was re-handled byMiddleton or some one else. 

That the play, as we have it, is _slightly_ shorter than the playShakespeare wrote seems not improbable. (1) We have no Quarto of_Macbeth_; and generally, where we have a Quarto or Quartos of a play, we find them longer than the Folio text. (2) There are perhaps a fewsigns of omission in our text (over and above the plentiful signs ofcorruption). I will give one example (I. Iv. 33-43). Macbeth and Banquo, returning from their victories, enter the presence of Duncan (14), whoreceives them with compliments and thanks, which they acknowledge. Hethen speaks as follows:

 My plenteous joys, Wanton in fulness, seek to hide themselves In drops of sorrow. Sons, kinsmen, thanes, And you whose places are the nearest, know, We will establish our estate upon Our eldest, Malcolm, whom we name hereafter The Prince of Cumberland; which honour must Not unaccompanied invest him only, But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine On all deservers. From hence to Inverness, And bind us further to you. 

Here the transition to the naming of Malcolm, for which there has beenno preparation, is extremely sudden; and the matter, considering itsimportance, is disposed of very briefly. But the abruptness and brevityof the sentence in which Duncan invites himself to Macbeth's castle arestill more striking. For not a word has yet been said on the subject;nor is it possible to suppose that Duncan had conveyed his intention bymessage, for in that case Macbeth would of course have informed his wifeof it in his letter (written in the interval between scenes iii. Andiv. ). It is difficult not to suspect some omission or curtailment here. On the other hand Shakespeare may have determined to sacrificeeverything possible to the effect of rapidity in the First Act; and hemay also have wished, by the suddenness and brevity of Duncan'sself-invitation, to startle both Macbeth and the audience, and to makethe latter feel that Fate is hurrying the King and the murderer to theirdoom. 

And that any _extensive_ omissions have been made seems not likely. (1)There is no internal evidence of the omission of anything essential tothe plot. (2) Forman, who saw the play in 1610, mentions nothing whichwe do not find in our play; for his statement that Macbeth was made Dukeof Northumberland is obviously due to a confused recollection ofMalcolm's being made Duke of Cumberland. (3) Whereabouts could suchomissions occur? Only in the first part, for the rest is full enough. And surely anyone who wanted to cut the play down would have operated, say, on Macbeth's talk with Banquo's murderers, or on III. Vi. , or onthe very long dialogue of Malcolm and Macduff, instead of reducing themost exciting part of the drama. We might indeed suppose thatShakespeare himself originally wrote the first part more at length, andmade the murder of Duncan come in the Third Act, and then _himself_reduced his matter so as to bring the murder back to its present place, perceiving in a flash of genius the extraordinary effect that might thusbe produced. But, even if this idea suited those who believe in arehandling of the play, what probability is there in it?

Thus it seems most likely that the play always was an extremely shortone. Can we, then, at all account for its shortness? It is possible, inthe first place, that it was not composed originally for the publicstage, but for some private, perhaps royal, occasion, when time waslimited. And the presence of the passage about touching for the evil(IV. Iii. 140 ff. ) supports this idea. We must remember, secondly, thatsome of the scenes would take longer to perform than ordinary scenes ofmere dialogue and action; _e. G. _ the Witch-scenes, and the Battle-scenesin the last Act, for a broad-sword combat was an occasion for anexhibition of skill. [281] And, lastly, Shakespeare may well have feltthat a play constructed and written like _Macbeth_, a play in which akind of fever-heat is felt almost from beginning to end, and whichoffers very little relief by means of humorous or pathetic scenes, oughtto be short, and would be unbearable if it lasted so long as _Hamlet_ oreven _King Lear_. And in fact I do not think that, in reading, we _feelMacbeth_ to be short: certainly we are astonished when we hear that itis about half as long as _Hamlet_. Perhaps in the Shakespearean theatretoo it appeared to occupy a longer time than the clock recorded. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 281: These two considerations should also be borne in mind inregard to the exceptional shortness of the _Midsummer Night's Dream_ andthe _Tempest_. Both contain scenes which, even on the Elizabethan stage, would take an unusual time to perform. And it has been supposed of eachthat it was composed to grace some wedding. ]

NOTE BB. 

THE DATE OF _MACBETH_. METRICAL TESTS. 

Dr. Forman saw _Macbeth_ performed at the Globe in 1610. The question ishow much earlier its composition or first appearance is to be put. 

It is agreed that the date is not earlier than that of the accession ofJames I. In 1603. The style and versification would make an earlier datealmost impossible. And we have the allusions to 'two-fold balls andtreble sceptres' and to the descent of Scottish kings from Banquo; theundramatic description of touching for the King's Evil (James performedthis ceremony); and the dramatic use of witchcraft, a matter on whichJames considered himself an authority. 

Some of these references would have their fullest effect early inJames's reign. And on this ground, and on account both of resemblancesin the characters of Hamlet and Macbeth, and of the use of thesupernatural in the two plays, it has been held that _Macbeth_ was thetragedy that came next after _Hamlet_, or, at any rate, next after_Othello_. 

These arguments seem to me to have no force when set against those thatpoint to a later date (about 1606) and place _Macbeth_ after _KingLear_. [282] And, as I have already observed, the probability is that italso comes after Shakespeare's part of _Timon_, and immediately before_Antony and Cleopatra_ and _Coriolanus_. 

I will first refer briefly to some of the older arguments in favour ofthis later date, and then more at length to those based onversification. 

(1) In II. Iii. 4-5, 'Here's a farmer that hang'd himself on theexpectation of plenty, ' Malone found a reference to the exceptionallylow price of wheat in 1606. 

(2) In the reference in the same speech to the equivocator who couldswear in both scales and committed treason enough for God's sake, hefound an allusion to the trial of the Jesuit Garnet, in the spring of1606, for complicity in the Gunpowder Treason and Plot. Garnet protestedon his soul and salvation that he had not held a certain conversation, then was obliged to confess that he had, and thereupon 'fell into alarge discourse defending equivocation. ' This argument, which I havebarely sketched, seems to me much weightier than the first; and itsweight is increased by the further references to perjury and treasonpointed out on p. 397. 

(3) Halliwell observed what appears to be an allusion to _Macbeth_ inthe comedy of the _Puritan_, 4to, 1607: 'we'll ha' the ghost i' th'white sheet sit at upper end o' th' table'; and Malone had referred to aless striking parallel in _Caesar and Pompey_, also pub. 1607:

 Why, think you, lords, that 'tis _ambition's spur_ That _pricketh_ Caesar to these high attempts?

He also found a significance in the references in _Macbeth_ to thegenius of Mark Antony being rebuked by Caesar, and to the insane rootthat takes the reason prisoner, as showing that Shakespeare, whilewriting _Macbeth_, was reading Plutarch's _Lives_, with a view to hisnext play _Antony and Cleopatra_ (S. R. 1608). 

(4) To these last arguments, which by themselves would be of littleweight, I may add another, of which the same may be said. Marston'sreminiscences of Shakespeare are only too obvious. In his _DutchCourtezan_, 1605, I have noticed passages which recall _Othello_ and_King Lear_, but nothing that even faintly recalls _Macbeth_. But inreading _Sophonisba_, 1606, I was several times reminded of _Macbeth_(as well as, more decidedly, of _Othello_). I note the parallels forwhat they are worth. 

With _Sophonisba_, Act I. Sc. Ii. :

 Upon whose tops the Roman eagles stretch'd Their large spread wings, which fann'd the evening aire To us cold breath, cf. _Macbeth_ I. Ii. 49:

 Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky And fan our people cold. 

Cf. _Sophonisba_, a page later: 'yet doubtful stood the fight, ' with_Macbeth_, I. Ii. 7, 'Doubtful it stood' ['Doubtful long it stood'?] Inthe same scene of _Macbeth_ the hero in fight is compared to an eagle, and his foes to sparrows; and in _Soph. _ III. Ii. Massinissa in fight iscompared to a falcon, and his foes to fowls and lesser birds. I shouldnot note this were it not that all these reminiscences (if they aresuch) recall one and the same scene. In _Sophonisba_ also there is atremendous description of the witch Erictho (IV. I. ), who says to theperson consulting her, 'I know thy thoughts, ' as the Witch says toMacbeth, of the Armed Head, 'He knows thy thought. '

(5) The resemblances between _Othello_ and _King Lear_ pointed out onpp. 244-5 and in Note R. Form, when taken in conjunction with otherindications, an argument of some strength in favour of the idea that_King Lear_ followed directly on _Othello_. 

(6) There remains the evidence of style and especially of metre. I willnot add to what has been said in the text concerning the former; but Iwish to refer more fully to the latter, in so far as it can berepresented by the application of metrical tests. It is impossible toargue here the whole question of these tests. I will only say that, while I am aware, and quite admit the force, of what can be said againstthe independent, rash, or incompetent use of them, I am fully convincedof their value when they are properly used. 

Of these tests, that of rhyme and that of feminine endings, discreetlyemployed, are of use in broadly distinguishing Shakespeare's plays intotwo groups, earlier and later, and also in marking out the very latestdramas; and the feminine-ending test is of service in distinguishingShakespeare's part in _Henry VIII. _ and the _Two Noble Kinsmen_. Butneither of these tests has any power to separate plays composed within afew years of one another. There is significance in the fact that the_Winter's Tale_, the _Tempest_, _Henry VIII. _, contain hardly any rhymedfive-foot lines; but none, probably, in the fact that _Macbeth_ shows ahigher percentage of such lines than _King Lear_, _Othello_, or_Hamlet_. The percentages of feminine endings, again, in the fourtragedies, are almost conclusive against their being early plays, andwould tend to show that they were not among the latest; but thedifferences in their respective percentages, which would place them inthe chronological order _Hamlet_, _Macbeth_, _Othello_, _King Lear_(König), or _Macbeth_, _Hamlet_, _Othello_, _King Lear_ (Hertzberg), areof scarcely any account. [283] Nearly all scholars, I think, would acceptthese statements. 

The really useful tests, in regard to plays which admittedly are notwidely separated, are three which concern the endings of speeches andlines. It is practically certain that Shakespeare made his verseprogressively less formal, by making the speeches end more and moreoften within a line and not at the close of it; by making the senseoverflow more and more often from one line into another; and, at last, by sometimes placing at the end of a line a word on which scarcely anystress can be laid. The corresponding tests may be called theSpeech-ending test, the Overflow test, and the Light and Weak Endingtest. 

I. The Speech-ending test has been used by König, [284] and I will firstgive some of his results. But I regret to say that I am unable todiscover certainly the rule he has gone by. He omits speeches which arerhymed throughout, or which end with a rhymed couplet. And he countsonly speeches which are 'mehrzeilig. ' I suppose this means that hecounts any speech consisting of two lines or more, but omits not onlyone-line speeches, but speeches containing more than one line but lessthan two; but I am not sure. 

In the plays admitted by everyone to be early the percentage of speechesending with an incomplete line is quite small. In the _Comedy ofErrors_, for example, it is only 0. 6. It advances to 12. 1 in _KingJohn_, 18. 3 in _Henry V. _, and 21. 6 in _As You Like It_. It risesquickly soon after, and in no play written (according to general belief)after about 1600 or 1601 is it less than 30. In the admittedly latestplays it rises much higher, the figures being as follows:--_Antony_77. 5, _Cor. _ 79, _Temp. _ 84. 5, _Cym. _ 85, _Win. Tale_ 87. 6, _HenryVIII. _ (parts assigned to Shakespeare by Spedding) 89. Going back, now, to the four tragedies, we find the following figures: _Othello_ 41. 4, _Hamlet_ 51. 6, _Lear_ 60. 9, _Macbeth_ 77. 2. These figures place_Macbeth_ decidedly last, with a percentage practically equal to that of_Antony_, the first of the final group. 

I will now give my own figures for these tragedies, as they differsomewhat from König's, probably because my method differs. (1) I haveincluded speeches rhymed or ending with rhymes, mainly because I findthat Shakespeare will sometimes (in later plays) end a speech which ispartly rhymed with an incomplete line (_e. G. Ham. _ III. Ii. 187, and thelast words of the play: or _Macb. _ V. I. 87, V. Ii. 31). And if suchspeeches are reckoned, as they surely must be (for they may be, and are, highly significant), those speeches which end with complete rhymed linesmust also be reckoned. (2) I have counted any speech exceeding a line inlength, however little the excess may be; _e. G. _

 I'll fight till from my bones my flesh be hacked. Give me my armour:

considering that the incomplete line here may be just as significant asan incomplete line ending a longer speech. If a speech begins within aline and ends brokenly, of course I have not counted it when it isequivalent to a five-foot line; _e. G. _

 Wife, children, servants, all That could be found:

but I do count such a speech (they are very rare) as

 My lord, I do not know: But truly I do fear it:

for the same reason that I count

 You know not Whether it was his wisdom or his fear. 

Of the speeches thus counted, those which end somewhere within the lineI find to be in _Othello_ about 54 per cent. ; in _Hamlet_ about 57; in_King Lear_ about 69; in _Macbeth_ about 75. [285] The order is the sameas König's, but the figures differ a good deal. I presume in the lastthree cases this comes from the difference in method; but I thinkKönig's figures for _Othello_ cannot be right, for I have tried severalmethods and find that the result is in no case far from the result of myown, and I am almost inclined to conjecture that König's 41. 4 is reallythe percentage of speeches ending with the close of a line, which wouldgive 58. 6 for the percentage of the broken-ended speeches. [286]

We shall find that other tests also would put _Othello_ before _Hamlet_, though close to it. This may be due to 'accident'--_i. E. _ a cause orcauses unknown to us; but I have sometimes wondered whether the lastrevision of _Hamlet_ may not have succeeded the composition of_Othello_. In this connection the following fact may be worth notice. Itis well known that the differences of the Second Quarto of _Hamlet_ fromthe First are much greater in the last three Acts than in the firsttwo--so much so that the editors of the Cambridge Shakespeare suggestedthat Q1 represents an old play, of which Shakespeare's rehandling hadnot then proceeded much beyond the Second Act, while Q2 represents hislater completed rehandling. If that were so, the composition of the lastthree Acts would be a good deal later than that of the first two (thoughof course the first two would be revised at the time of the compositionof the last three). Now I find that the percentage of speeches endingwith a broken line is about 50 for the first two Acts, but about 62 forthe last three. It is lowest in the first Act, and in the first twoscenes of it is less than 32. The percentage for the last two Acts isabout 65. 

II. The Enjambement or Overflow test is also known as the End-stoppedand Run-on line test. A line may be called 'end-stopped' when the sense, as well as the metre, would naturally make one pause at its close;'run-on' when the mere sense would lead one to pass to the next linewithout any pause. [287] This distinction is in a great majority of casesquite easy to draw: in others it is difficult. The reader cannot judgeby rules of grammar, or by marks of punctuation (for there is a distinctpause at the end of many a line where most editors print no stop): hemust trust his ear. And readers will differ, one making a distinct pausewhere another does not. This, however, does not matter greatly, so longas the reader is consistent; for the important point is not the precisenumber of run-on lines in a play, but the difference in this matterbetween one play and another. Thus one may disagree with König in hisestimate of many instances, but one can see that he is consistent. 

In Shakespeare's early plays, 'overflows' are rare. In the _Comedy ofErrors_, for example, their percentage is 12. 9 according to König[288](who excludes rhymed lines and some others). In the generally admittedlast plays they are comparatively frequent. Thus, according to König, the percentage in the _Winter's Tale_ is 37. 5, in the _Tempest_ 41. 5, in_Antony_ 43. 3, in _Coriolanus_ 45. 9, in _Cymbeline_ 46, in the parts of_Henry VIII. _ assigned by Spedding to Shakespeare 53. 18. König's resultsfor the four tragedies are as follows: _Othello_, 19. 5; _Hamlet_, 23. 1;_King Lear_, 29. 3; _Macbeth_, 36. 6; (_Timon_, the whole play, 32. 5). _Macbeth_ here again, therefore, stands decidedly last: indeed it standsnear the first of the latest plays. 

And no one who has ever attended to the versification of _Macbeth_ willbe surprised at these figures. It is almost obvious, I should say, thatShakespeare is passing from one system to another. Some passages showlittle change, but in others the change is almost complete. If thereader will compare two somewhat similar soliloquies, 'To be or not tobe' and 'If it were done when 'tis done, ' he will recognise this atonce. Or let him search the previous plays, even _King Lear_, for twelveconsecutive lines like these:

 If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly: if the assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease success; that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We 'ld jump the life to come. But in these cases We still have judgement here; that we but teach Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice To our own lips. 

Or let him try to parallel the following (III. Vi. 37 f. ):

 and this report Hath so exasperate the king that he Prepares for some attempt of war. 

 _Len. _ Sent he to Macduff?

 _Lord. _ He did: and with an absolute 'Sir, not I, ' The cloudy messenger turns me his back And hums, as who should say 'You'll rue the time That clogs me with this answer. '

 _Len. _ And that well might Advise him to a caution, to hold what distance His wisdom can provide. Some holy angel Fly to the court of England, and unfold His message ere he come, that a swift blessing May soon return to this our suffering country Under a hand accurs'd!

or this (IV. Iii. 118 f. ):

 Macduff, this noble passion, Child of integrity, hath from my soul Wiped the black scruples, reconciled my thoughts To thy good truth and honour. Devilish Macbeth By many of these trains hath sought to win me Into his power, and modest wisdom plucks me From over-credulous haste: but God above Deal between thee and me! for even now I put myself to thy direction, and Unspeak mine own detraction, here abjure The taints and blames I laid upon myself, For strangers to my nature. 

I pass to another point. In the last illustration the reader willobserve not only that 'overflows' abound, but that they follow oneanother in an unbroken series of nine lines. So long a series could not, probably, be found outside _Macbeth_ and the last plays. A series of twoor three is not uncommon; but a series of more than three is rare in theearly plays, and far from common in the plays of the second period(König). 

I thought it might be useful for our present purpose, to count theseries of four and upwards in the four tragedies, in the parts of_Timon_ attributed by Mr. Fleay to Shakespeare, and in _Coriolanus_, aplay of the last period. I have not excluded rhymed lines in the twoplaces where they occur, and perhaps I may say that my idea of an'overflow' is more exacting than König's. The reader will understand thefollowing table at once if I say that, according to it, _Othello_contains three passages where a series of four successive overflowinglines occurs, and two passages where a series of five such lines occurs:

----------------------------------------------------------------- 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 No. Of Lines (Fleay). -----------------------------------------------------------------Othello, 3 2 -- -- -- -- -- 2, 758Hamlet, 7 -- -- -- -- -- -- 2, 571Lear, 6 2 -- -- -- -- -- 2, 312Timon, 7 2 1 1 -- -- -- 1, 031 (?)Macbeth, 7 5 1 1 -- 1 -- 1, 706Coriolanus, 16 14 7 1 2 -- 1 2, 563-----------------------------------------------------------------

(The figures for _Macbeth_ and _Timon_ in the last column must be bornein mind. I observed nothing in the non-Shakespeare part of _Timon_ thatwould come into the table, but I did not make a careful search. I feltsome doubt as to two of the four series in _Othello_ and again in_Hamlet_, and also whether the ten-series in _Coriolanus_ should not beput in column 7). 

III. _The light and weak ending test. _

We have just seen that in some cases a doubt is felt whether there is an'overflow' or not. The fact is that the 'overflow' has many degrees ofintensity. If we take, for example, the passage last quoted, and if withKönig we consider the line

 The taints and blames I laid upon myself

to be run-on (as I do not), we shall at least consider the overflow tobe much less distinct than those in the lines

 but God above Deal between thee and me! for even now I put myself to thy direction, and Unspeak my own detraction, here abjure

And of these four lines the third runs on into its successor at much thegreatest speed. 

'Above, ' 'now, ' 'abjure, ' are not light or weak endings: 'and' is a weakending. Prof. Ingram gave the name weak ending to certain words on whichit is scarcely possible to dwell at all, and which, therefore, precipitate the line which they close into the following. Light endingsare certain words which have the same effect in a slighter degree. Forexample, _and_, _from_, _in_, _of_, are weak endings; _am_, _are_, _I_, _he_, are light endings. 

The test founded on this distinction is, within its limits, the mostsatisfactory of all, partly because the work of its author can beabsolutely trusted. The result of its application is briefly as follows. Until quite a late date light and weak endings occur in Shakespeare'sworks in such small numbers as hardly to be worth consideration. [289]But in the well-defined group of last plays the numbers both of lightand of weak endings increase greatly, and, on the whole, the increaseapparently is progressive (I say apparently, because the order in whichthe last plays are generally placed depends to some extent on the testitself). I give Prof. Ingram's table of these plays, premising that in_Pericles_, _Two Noble Kinsmen_, and _Henry VIII. _ he uses only thoseparts of the plays which are attributed by certain authorities toShakespeare (_New Shakspere Soc. Trans. _, 1874). 

------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Light | | Percentage | Percentage | Percentage |endings. | Weak. | of light in | of weak in | of | | | verse lines. | verse lines. | both. ------------------------------------------------------------------------Antony & | | | | | Cleopatra, | 71 | 28 | 2. 53 | 1. | 3. 53Coriolanus, | 60 | 44 | 2. 34 | 1. 71 | 4. 05Pericles, | 20 | 10 | 2. 78 | 1. 39 | 4. 17Tempest, | 42 | 25 | 2. 88 | 1. 71 | 4. 59Cymbeline, | 78 | 52 | 2. 90 | 1. 93 | 4. 83Winter's Tale, | 57 | 43 | 3. 12 | 2. 36 | 5. 48Two Noble | | | | | Kinsmen, | 50 | 34 | 3. 63 | 2. 47 | 6. 10Henry VIII. , | 45 | 37 | 3. 93 | 3. 23 | 7. 16------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, let us turn to our four tragedies (with _Timon_). Here again wehave one doubtful play, and I give the figures for the whole of _Timon_, and again for the parts of _Timon_ assigned to Shakespeare by Mr. Fleay, both as they appear in his amended text and as they appear in the Globe(perhaps the better text). 

----------------------------------------- | Light. | Weak. -----------------------------------------Hamlet, | 8 | 0Othello, | 2 | 0Lear, | 5 | 1Timon (whole), | 16 | 5 (Sh. In Fleay), | 14 | 7 (Sh. In Globe), | 13 | 2Macbeth, | 21 | 2-----------------------------------------

Now here the figures for the first three plays tell us practicallynothing. The tendency to a freer use of these endings is not visible. Asto _Timon_, the number of weak endings, I think, tells us little, forprobably only two or three are Shakespeare's; but the rise in the numberof light endings is so marked as to be significant. And most significantis this rise in the case of _Macbeth_, which, like Shakespeare's part of_Timon_, is much shorter than the preceding plays. It strongly confirmsthe impression that in _Macbeth_ we have the transition to Shakespeare'slast style, and that the play is the latest of the five tragedies. [290]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 282: The fact that _King Lear_ was performed at Court onDecember 26, 1606, is of course very far from showing that it had neverbeen performed before. ]

[Footnote 283: I have not tried to discover the source of the differencebetween these two reckonings. ]

[Footnote 284: _Der Vers in Shakspere's Dramen_, 1888. ]

[Footnote 285: In the parts of _Timon_ (Globe text) assigned by Mr. Fleay to Shakespeare, I find the percentage to be about 74. 5. Königgives 62. 8 as the percentage in the whole of the play. ]

[Footnote 286: I have noted also what must be a mistake in the case ofPericles. König gives 17. 1 as the percentage of the speeches with brokenends. I was astounded to see the figure, considering the style in theundoubtedly Shakespearean parts; and I find that, on my method, in ActsIII. , IV. , V. The percentage is about 71, in the first two Acts (whichshow very slight, if any, traces of Shakespeare's hand) about 19. Icannot imagine the origin of the mistake here. ]

[Footnote 287: I put the matter thus, instead of saying that, with arun-on line, one does pass to the next line without any pause, because, in common with many others, I should not in any case whatever _wholly_ignore the fact that one line ends and another begins. ]

[Footnote 288: These overflows are what König calls 'schroffeEnjambements, ' which he considers to correspond with Furnivall's 'run-onlines. ']

[Footnote 289: The number of light endings, however, in _Julius Caesar_(10) and _All's Well_ (12) is worth notice. ]

[Footnote 290: The Editors of the Cambridge Shakespeare might appeal insupport of their view, that parts of Act V. Are not Shakespeare's, tothe fact that the last of the light endings occurs at IV. Iii. 165. ]

NOTE CC. 

WHEN WAS THE MURDER OF DUNCAN FIRST PLOTTED?

A good many readers probably think that, when Macbeth first met theWitches, he was perfectly innocent; but a much larger number would saythat he had already harboured a vaguely guilty ambition, though he hadnot faced the idea of murder. And I think there can be no doubt thatthis is the obvious and natural interpretation of the scene. Only it isalmost necessary to go rather further, and to suppose that his guiltyambition, whatever its precise form, was known to his wife and shared byher. Otherwise, surely, she would not, on reading his letter, soinstantaneously assume that the King must be murdered in their castle;nor would Macbeth, as soon as he meets her, be aware (as he evidentlyis) that this thought is in her mind. 

But there is a famous passage in _Macbeth_ which, closely considered, seems to require us to go further still, and to suppose that, at sometime before the action of the play begins, the husband and wife hadexplicitly discussed the idea of murdering Duncan at some favourableopportunity, and had agreed to execute this idea. Attention seems tohave been first drawn to this passage by Koester in vol. I. Of the_Jahrbücher d. Deutschen Shakespeare-gesellschaft_, and on it is basedthe interpretation of the play in Werder's very able _Vorlesungen überMacbeth_. 

The passage occurs in I. Vii. , where Lady Macbeth is urging her husbandto the deed:

 _Macb. _ Prithee, peace: I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none. 

 _Lady M. _ What beast was't, then, That made you break this enterprise to me? When you durst do it, then you were a man; And, to be more than what you were, you would Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place Did then adhere, and yet you would make both: They have made themselves, and that their fitness now Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this. 

Here Lady Macbeth asserts (1) that Macbeth proposed the murder to her:(2) that he did so at a time when there was no opportunity to attackDuncan, no 'adherence' of 'time' and 'place': (3) that he declared hewou'd _make_ an opportunity, and swore to carry out the murder. 

Now it is possible that Macbeth's 'swearing' might have occurred in aninterview off the stage between scenes v. And vi. , or scenes vi. Andvii. ; and, if in that interview Lady Macbeth had with difficulty workedher husband up to a resolution, her irritation at his relapse, in sc. Vii. , would be very natural. But, as for Macbeth's first proposal ofmurder, it certainly does not occur in our play, nor could it possiblyoccur in any interview off the stage; for when Macbeth and his wifefirst meet, 'time' and 'place' _do_ adhere; 'they have made themselves. 'The conclusion would seem to be, either that the proposal of the murder, and probably the oath, occurred in a scene at the very beginning of theplay, which scene has been lost or cut out; or else that Macbethproposed, and swore to execute, the murder at some time prior to theaction of the play. [291] The first of these hypotheses is mostimprobable, and we seem driven to adopt the second, unless we consent toburden Shakespeare with a careless mistake in a very critical passage. 

And, apart from unwillingness to do this, we can find a good deal to sayin favour of the idea of a plan formed at a past time. It would explainMacbeth's start of fear at the prophecy of the kingdom. It would explainwhy Lady Macbeth, on receiving his letter, immediately resolves onaction; and why, on their meeting, each knows that murder is in the mindof the other. And it is in harmony with her remarks on his probableshrinking from the act, to which, _ex hypothesi_, she had alreadythought it necessary to make him pledge himself by an oath. 

Yet I find it very difficult to believe in this interpretation. It isnot merely that the interest of Macbeth's struggle with himself and withhis wife would be seriously diminished if we felt he had been throughall this before. I think this would be so; but there are two moreimportant objections. In the first place the violent agitation describedin the words, If good, why do I yield to that suggestion Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, would surely not be natural, even in Macbeth, if the idea of murder werealready quite familiar to him through conversation with his wife, and ifhe had already done more than 'yield' to it. It is not as if the Witcheshad told him that Duncan was coming to his house. In that case theperception that the moment had come to execute a merely general designmight well appal him. But all that he hears is that he will one day beKing--a statement which, supposing this general design, would not pointto any immediate action. [292] And, in the second place, it is hard tobelieve that, if Shakespeare really had imagined the murder planned andsworn to before the action of the play, he would have written the firstsix scenes in such a manner that practically all readers imagine quiteanother state of affairs, and _continue to imagine it_ even after theyhave read in scene vii. The passage which is troubling us. Is it likely, to put it otherwise, that his idea was one which nobody seems to havedivined till late in the nineteenth century? And for what possiblereason could he refrain from making this idea clear to his audience, ashe might so easily have done in the third scene?[293] It seems very muchmore likely that he himself imagined the matter as nearly all hisreaders do. 

But, in that case, what are we to say of this passage? I will answerfirst by explaining the way in which I understood it before I was awarethat it had caused so much difficulty. I supposed that an interview hadtaken place after scene v. , a scene which shows Macbeth shrinking, andin which his last words were 'we will speak further. ' In this interview, I supposed, his wife had so wrought upon him that he had at last yieldedand pledged himself by oath to do the murder. As for her statement thathe had 'broken the enterprise' to her, I took it to refer to his letterto her, --a letter written when time and place did not adhere, for he didnot yet know that Duncan was coming to visit him. In the letter he doesnot, of course, openly 'break the enterprise' to her, and it is notlikely that he would do such a thing in a letter; but if they had hadambitious conversations, in which each felt that some half-formed guiltyidea was floating in the mind of the other, she might naturally take thewords of the letter as indicating much more than they said; and then inher passionate contempt at his hesitation, and her passionate eagernessto overcome it, she might easily accuse him, doubtless withexaggeration, and probably with conscious exaggeration, of havingactually proposed the murder. And Macbeth, knowing that when he wrotethe letter he really had been thinking of murder, and indifferent toanything except the question whether murder should be done, would easilylet her statement pass unchallenged. 

This interpretation still seems to me not unnatural. The alternative(unless we adopt the idea of an agreement prior to the action of theplay) is to suppose that Lady Macbeth refers throughout the passage tosome interview subsequent to her husband's return, and that, in makingher do so, Shakespeare simply forgot her speeches on welcoming Macbethhome, and also forgot that at any such interview 'time' and 'place' did'adhere. ' It is easy to understand such forgetfulness in a spectator andeven in a reader; but it is less easy to imagine it in a poet whoseconception of the two characters throughout these scenes was evidentlyso burningly vivid. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 291: The 'swearing' _might_ of course, on this view, occur offthe stage within the play; but there is no occasion to suppose this ifwe are obliged to put the proposal outside the play. ]

[Footnote 292: To this it might be answered that the effect of theprediction was to make him feel, 'Then I shall succeed if I carry outthe plan of murder, ' and so make him yield to the idea over again. Towhich I can only reply, anticipating the next argument, 'How is it thatShakespeare wrote the speech in such a way that practically everybodysupposes the idea of murder to be occurring to Macbeth for the firsttime?']

[Footnote 293: It might be answered here again that the actor, instructed by Shakespeare, could act the start of fear so as to conveyquite clearly the idea of definite guilt. And this is true; but we oughtto do our best to interpret the text before we have recourse to thiskind of suggestion. ]

NOTE DD. 

DID LADY MACBETH REALLY FAINT?

In the scene of confusion where the murder of Duncan is discovered, Macbeth and Lennox return from the royal chamber; Lennox describes thegrooms who, as it seemed, had done the deed:

 Their hands and faces were all badged with blood; So were their daggers, which unwiped we found Upon their pillows: They stared, and were distracted; no man's life Was to be trusted with them. 

 _Macb. _ O, yet I do repent me of my fury That I did kill them. 

 _Macd. _ Wherefore did you so?

 _Macb. _ Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man: The expedition of my violent love Outrun the pauser, reason. Here lay Duncan, His silver skin laced with his golden blood; And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature For ruin's wasteful entrance: there, the murderers, Steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers Unmannerly breech'd with gore: who could refrain, That had a heart to love, and in that heart Courage to make's love known?

At this point Lady Macbeth exclaims, 'Help me hence, ho!' Her husbandtakes no notice, but Macduff calls out 'Look to the lady. ' This, after afew words 'aside' between Malcolm and Donalbain, is repeated by Banquo, and, very shortly after, all except Duncan's sons _exeunt_. (Thestage-direction 'Lady Macbeth is carried out, ' after Banquo'sexclamation 'Look to the lady, ' is not in the Ff. And was introduced byRowe. If the Ff. Are right, she can hardly have fainted _away_. But thepoint has no importance here. )

Does Lady Macbeth really turn faint, or does she pretend? The latterseems to have been the general view, and Whately pointed out thatMacbeth's indifference betrays his consciousness that the faint was notreal. But to this it may be answered that, if he believed it to be real, he would equally show indifference, in order to display his horror atthe murder. And Miss Helen Faucit and others have held that there was nopretence. 

In favour of the pretence it may be said (1) that Lady Macbeth, whoherself took back the daggers, saw the old King in his blood, andsmeared the grooms, was not the woman to faint at a mere description;(2) that she saw her husband over-acting his part, and saw the faces ofthe lords, and wished to end the scene, --which she succeeded in doing. 

But to the last argument it may be replied that she would not willinglyhave run the risk of leaving her husband to act his part alone. And forother reasons (indicated above, p. 373 f. ) I decidedly believe that sheis meant really to faint. She was no Goneril. She knew that she couldnot kill the King herself; and she never expected to have to carry backthe daggers, see the bloody corpse, and smear the faces and hands of thegrooms. But Macbeth's agony greatly alarmed her, and she was driven tothe scene of horror to complete his task; and what an impression it madeon her we know from that sentence uttered in her sleep, 'Yet who wouldhave thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?' She had now, further, gone through the ordeal of the discovery. Is it not quitenatural that the reaction should come, and that it should come just whenMacbeth's description recalls the scene which had cost her the greatesteffort? Is it not likely, besides, that the expression on the faces ofthe lords would force her to realise, what before the murder she hadrefused to consider, the horror and the suspicion it must excite? It isnoticeable, also, that she is far from carrying out her intention ofbearing a part in making their 'griefs and clamours roar upon his death'(I. Vii. 78). She has left it all to her husband, and, after utteringbut two sentences, the second of which is answered very curtly byBanquo, for some time (an interval of 33 lines) she has said nothing. Ibelieve Shakespeare means this interval to be occupied in desperateefforts on her part to prevent herself from giving way, as she sees forthe first time something of the truth to which she was formerly soblind, and which will destroy her in the end. 

It should be observed that at the close of the Banquet scene, where shehas gone through much less, she is evidently exhausted. 

Shakespeare, of course, knew whether he meant the faint to be real: butI am not aware if an actor of the part could show the audience whetherit was real or pretended. If he could, he would doubtless receiveinstructions from the author. 

NOTE EE. 

DURATION OF THE ACTION IN _MACBETH_. MACBETH'S AGE. 'HE HAS NOCHILDREN. '

1. The duration of the action cannot well be more than a few months. Onthe day following the murder of Duncan his sons fly and Macbeth goes toScone to be invested (II. Iv. ). Between this scene and Act III. Aninterval must be supposed, sufficient for news to arrive of Malcolmbeing in England and Donalbain in Ireland, and for Banquo to have shownhimself a good counsellor. But the interval is evidently not long:_e. G. _ Banquo's first words are 'Thou hast it now' (III. I. 1). Banquois murdered on the day when he speaks these words. Macbeth's visit tothe Witches takes place the next day (III. Iv. 132). At the end of thisvisit (IV. I. ) he hears of Macduff's flight to England, and determinesto have Macduff's wife and children slaughtered without delay; and thisis the subject of the next scene (IV. Ii. ). No great interval, then, canbe supposed between this scene and the next, where Macduff, arrived atthe English court, hears what has happened at his castle. At the end ofthat scene (IV. Iii. 237) Malcolm says that 'Macbeth is ripe forshaking, and the powers above put on their instruments': and the eventsof Act V. Evidently follow with little delay, and occupy but a shorttime. Holinshed's Macbeth appears to have reigned seventeen years:Shakespeare's may perhaps be allowed as many weeks. 

But, naturally, Shakespeare creates some difficulties through wishing toproduce different impressions in different parts of the play. The maineffect is that of fiery speed, and it would be impossible to imagine thetorment of Macbeth's mind lasting through a number of years, even ifShakespeare had been willing to allow him years of outward success. Hence the brevity of the action. On the other hand time is wanted forthe degeneration of his character hinted at in IV. Iii. 57 f. , for thedevelopment of his tyranny, for his attempts to entrap Malcolm (_ib. _117 f. ), and perhaps for the deepening of his feeling that his life hadpassed into the sere and yellow leaf. Shakespeare, as we have seen, scarcely provides time for all this, but at certain points he producesan impression that a longer time has elapsed than he has provided for, and he puts most of the indications of this longer time into a scene(IV. Iii. ) which by its quietness contrasts strongly with almost all therest of the play. 

2. There is no unmistakable indication of the ages of the two principalcharacters; but the question, though of no great importance, has aninterest. I believe most readers imagine Macbeth as a man between fortyand fifty, and his wife as younger but not young. In many cases thisimpression is doubtless due to the custom of the theatre (which, if itcan be shown to go back far, should have much weight), but it is sharedby readers who have never seen the play performed, and is thenpresumably due to a number of slight influences probably incapable ofcomplete analysis. Such readers would say, 'The hero and heroine do notspeak like young people, nor like old ones'; but, though I think this isso, it can hardly be demonstrated. Perhaps however the following smallindications, mostly of a different kind, tend to the same result. 

(1) There is no positive sign of youth. (2) A young man would not belikely to lead the army. (3) Macbeth is 'cousin' to an old man. [294] (4)Macbeth calls Malcolm 'young, ' and speaks of him scornfully as 'the boyMalcolm. ' He is probably therefore considerably his senior. But Malcolmis evidently not really a boy (see I. Ii. 3 f. As well as the laterActs). (5) One gets the impression (possibly without reason) thatMacbeth and Banquo are of about the same age; and Banquo's son, the boyFleance, is evidently not a mere child. (On the other hand the childrenof Macduff, who is clearly a good deal older than Malcolm, are allyoung; and I do not think there is any sign that Macbeth is older thanMacduff. ) (6) When Lady Macbeth, in the banquet scene, says, Sit, worthy friends: my lord is often thus, And hath been from his youth, we naturally imagine him some way removed from his youth. (7) LadyMacbeth saw a resemblance to her father in the aged king. (8) Macbethsays, I have lived long enough: my way[295] of life Is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf: And that which should accompany old age, As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, I may not look to have. 

It is, surely, of the old age of the soul that he speaks in the secondline, but still the lines would hardly be spoken under any circumstancesby a man less than middle-aged. 

On the other hand I suppose no one ever imagined Macbeth, or onconsideration could imagine him, as _more_ than middle-aged when theaction begins. And in addition the reader may observe, if he finds itnecessary, that Macbeth looks forward to having children (I. Vii. 72), and that his terms of endearment ('dearest love, ' 'dearest chuck') andhis language in public ('sweet remembrancer') do not suggest that hiswife and he are old; they even suggest that she at least is scarcelymiddle-aged. But this discussion tends to grow ludicrous. 

For Shakespeare's audience these mysteries were revealed by a glance atthe actors, like the fact that Duncan was an old man, which the text, Ithink, does not disclose till V. I. 44. 

3. Whether Macbeth had children or (as seems usually to be supposed) hadnone, is quite immaterial. But it is material that, if he had none, helooked forward to having one; for otherwise there would be no point inthe following words in his soliloquy about Banquo (III. I. 58 f. ):

 Then prophet-like They hail'd him father to a line of kings: Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown, And put a barren sceptre in my gripe, Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand, No son of mine succeeding. If't be so, For Banquo's issue have I filed my mind. 

And he is determined that it shall not 'be so':

 Rather than so, come, fate, into the list And champion me to the utterance!

Obviously he contemplates a son of his succeeding, if only he can getrid of Banquo and Fleance. What he fears is that Banquo will kill him;in which case, supposing he has a son, that son will not be allowed tosucceed him, and, supposing he has none, he will be unable to beget one. 

I hope this is clear; and nothing else matters. Lady Macbeth's child (I. Vii. 54) may be alive or may be dead. It may even be, or have been, herchild by a former husband; though, if Shakespeare had followed historyin making Macbeth marry a widow (as some writers gravely assume) hewould probably have told us so. It may be that Macbeth had many childrenor that he had none. We cannot say, and it does not concern the play. But the interpretation of a statement on which some critics build, 'Hehas no children, ' has an interest of another kind, and I proceed toconsider it. 

These words occur at IV. Iii. 216. Malcolm and Macduff are talking atthe English Court, and Ross, arriving from Scotland, brings news toMacduff of Macbeth's revenge on him. It is necessary to quote a goodmany lines:

 _Ross. _ Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes Savagely slaughter'd: to relate the manner, Were, on the quarry of these murder'd deer, To add the death of you. 

 _Mal. _ Merciful heaven! What, man! ne'er pull your hat upon your brows; Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break. 

 _Macd. _ My children too?

 _Ross. _ Wife, children, servants, all That could be found. 

 _Macd. _ And I must be from thence! My wife kill'd too?

 _Ross. _ I have said. 

 _Mal. _ Be comforted: Let's makes us medicines of our great revenge, To cure this deadly grief. 

 _Macd. _ He has no children. All my pretty ones? Did you say all? O hell-kite! All? What, all my pretty chickens and their dam At one fell swoop?

 _Mal_. Dispute it like a man. 

 _Macd. _ I shall do so; But I must also feel it as a man: I cannot but remember such things were, That were most precious to me. --

Three interpretations have been offered of the words 'He has nochildren. '

(_a_) They refer to Malcolm, who, if he had children of his own, wouldnot at such a moment suggest revenge, or talk of curing such a grief. Cf. _King John_, III. Iv. 91, where Pandulph says to Constance, You hold too heinous a respect of grief, and Constance answers, He talks to me that never had a son. 

(_b_) They refer to Macbeth, who has no children, and on whom thereforeMacduff cannot take an adequate revenge. 

(_c_) They refer to Macbeth, who, if he himself had children, couldnever have ordered the slaughter of children. Cf. _3 Henry VI. _ V. V. 63, where Margaret says to the murderers of Prince Edward, You have no children, butchers! if you had, The thought of them would have stirred up remorse. 

I cannot think interpretation (_b_) the most natural. The whole idea ofthe passage is that Macduff must feel _grief_ first and before he canfeel anything else, _e. G. _ the desire for vengeance. As he says directlyafter, he cannot at once 'dispute' it like a man, but must 'feel' it asa man; and it is not till ten lines later that he is able to pass to thethought of revenge. Macduff is not the man to conceive at any time theidea of killing children in retaliation; and that he contemplates it_here_, even as a suggestion, I find it hard to believe. 

For the same main reason interpretation (_a_) seems to me far moreprobable than (_c_). What could be more consonant with the naturalcourse of the thought, as developed in the lines which follow, than thatMacduff, being told to think of revenge, not grief, should answer, 'Noone who was himself a father would ask that of me in the very firstmoment of loss'? But the thought supposed by interpretation (_c_) hasnot this natural connection. 

It has been objected to interpretation (_a_) that, according to it, Macduff would naturally say 'You have no children, ' not 'He has nochildren. ' But what Macduff does is precisely what Constance does in theline quoted from _King John_. And it should be noted that, all throughthe passage down to this point, and indeed in the fifteen lines whichprecede our quotation, Macduff listens only to Ross. His questions 'Mychildren too?' 'My wife killed too?' show that he cannot fully realisewhat he is told. When Malcolm interrupts, therefore, he puts aside hissuggestion with four words spoken to himself, or (less probably) to Ross(his relative, who knew his wife and children), and continues hisagonised questions and exclamations. Surely it is not likely that atthat moment the idea of (_c_), an idea which there is nothing tosuggest, would occur to him. 

In favour of (_c_) as against (_a_) I see no argument except that thewords of Macduff almost repeat those of Margaret; and this fact does notseem to me to have much weight. It shows only that Shakespeare mighteasily use the words in the sense of (_c_) if that sense were suitableto the occasion. It is not unlikely, again, I think, that the words cameto him here because he had used them many years before;[296] but it doesnot follow that he knew he was repeating them; or that, if he did, heremembered the sense they had previously borne; or that, if he didremember it, he might not use them now in another sense. 

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 294: So in Holinshed, as well as in the play, where however'cousin' need not have its specific meaning. ]

[Footnote 295: 'May, ' Johnson conjectured, without necessity. ]

[Footnote 296: As this point occurs here, I may observe thatShakespeare's later tragedies contain many such reminiscences of thetragic plays of his young days. For instance, cf. _Titus Andronicus_, I. I. 150 f. :

 In peace and honour rest you here, my sons, * * * * *

 Secure from worldly chances and mishaps! Here lurks no treason, here no envy swells, Here grow no damned drugs: here are no storms, No noise, but silence and eternal sleep, with _Macbeth_, III. Ii. 22 f. :

 Duncan is in his grave; After life's fitful fever he sleeps well; Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, Can touch him further. 

In writing IV. I. Shakespeare can hardly have failed to remember theconjuring of the Spirit, and the ambiguous oracles, in _2 Henry VI. _ I. Iv. The 'Hyrcan tiger' of _Macbeth_ III. Iv. 101, which is also alludedto in _Hamlet_, appears first in _3 Henry VI. _ I. Iv. 155. Cf. _RichardIII. _ II. I. 92, 'Nearer in bloody thoughts, but not in blood, ' with_Macbeth_ II. Iii. 146, 'the near in blood, the nearer bloody'; _RichardIII. _ IV. Ii. 64, 'But I am in So far in blood that sin will pluck onsin, ' with _Macbeth_ III. Iv. 136, 'I am in blood stepp'd in so far, 'etc. These are but a few instances. (It makes no difference whetherShakespeare was author or reviser of _Titus_ and _Henry VI. _). ]

NOTE FF. 

THE GHOST OF BANQUO. 

I do not think the suggestions that the Ghost on its first appearance isBanquo's, and on its second Duncan's, or _vice versâ_, are worthdiscussion. But the question whether Shakespeare meant the Ghost to bereal or a mere hallucination, has some interest, and I have not seen itfully examined. 

The following reasons may be given for the hallucination view:

(1) We remember that Macbeth has already seen one hallucination, that ofthe dagger; and if we failed to remember it Lady Macbeth would remind usof it here:

 This is the very painting of your fear; This is the air-drawn dagger which, you said, Led you to Duncan. 

(2) The Ghost seems to be created by Macbeth's imagination; for hiswords, now they rise again With twenty mortal murders on their crowns, describe it, and they echo what the murderer had said to him a littlebefore, Safe in a ditch he bides With twenty trenched gashes on his head. 

(3) It vanishes the second time on his making a violent effort andasserting its unreality:

 Hence, horrible shadow! Unreal mockery, hence!

This is not quite so the first time, but then too its disappearancefollows on his defying it:

 Why what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too. 

So, apparently, the dagger vanishes when he exclaims, 'There's no suchthing!'

(4) At the end of the scene Macbeth himself seems to regard it as anillusion:

 My strange and self-abuse Is the initiate fear that wants hard use. 

(5) It does not speak, like the Ghost in _Hamlet_ even on its lastappearance, and like the Ghost in _Julius Caesar_. 

(6) It is visible only to Macbeth. 

I should attach no weight to (6) taken alone (see p. 140). Of (3) it maybe remarked that Brutus himself seems to attribute the vanishing ofCaesar's Ghost to his taking courage: 'now I have taken heart thouvanishest:' yet he certainly holds it to be real. It may also beremarked on (5) that Caesar's Ghost says nothing that Brutus' ownforebodings might not have conjured up. And further it may be asked why, if the Ghost of Banquo was meant for an illusion, it was represented onthe stage, as the stage-directions and Forman's account show it to havebeen. 

On the whole, and with some doubt, I think that Shakespeare (1) meantthe judicious to take the Ghost for an hallucination, but (2) knew thatthe bulk of the audience would take it for a reality. And I am more sureof (2) than of (1). 

INDEX

The titles of plays are in italics. So are the numbers of the pagescontaining the main discussion of a character. The titles of the Notesare not repeated in the Index. 

Aaron, 200, 211. 

Abnormal mental conditions, 13, 398. 

Accident, in tragedy, 7, 14-16, 26, 28; in _Hamlet_, 143, 173; in _Othello_, 181-2; in _King Lear_, 253, 325. 

Act, difficulty in Fourth, 57-8; the five Acts, 49. 

Action, tragic, 11, 12, 31; and character, 12, 19; a conflict, 16-19. 

Adversity and prosperity in _King Lear_, 326-7. 

Albany, _297-8_. 

Antonio, 110, 404. 

_Antony and Cleopatra_, 3, 7, 45, 80; conflict, 17-8; crisis, 53, 55, 66; humour in catastrophe, 62, 395-6; battle-scenes, 62-3; extended catastrophe, 64; faulty construction, 71, 260; passion in, 82; evil in, 83-4; versification, 87, Note BB. 

Antony, 22, 29, 63, 83-4. 

_Arden of Feversham_, 9. 

Ariel, 264. 

Aristotle, 16, 22. 

Art, Shakespeare's, conscious, 68-9; defects in, 71-78. 

Arthur, 294. 

_As You Like It_, 71, 267, 390. 

Atmosphere in tragedy, 333. 

Banquo, 343, _379-86_. 

Barbara, the maid, 175. 

Battle-scene, 62, 451, 469; in _King Lear_, 255, Note X. 

Beast and man, in _King Lear_, 266-8; in _Timon_, 453. 

Bernhardt, Mme. , 379. 

Biblical ideas, in _King Lear_, 328. 

Bombast, 73, 75-6, 389, Note F. 

Brandes, G. , 379, 393. 

Brutus, 7, 14, 22, 27, 32, 81-2, 101, 364. 

Caliban, 264. 

Cassio, 211-3, _238-9_, 433-4. 

Catastrophe, humour before, 61-2; battle-scenes in, 62; false hope before, 63; extended, 62; in _Antony_ and _Coriolanus_, 83-4. See _Hamlet_, etc. 

Character, and plot, 12; is destiny, 13; tragic, 19-23. 

Chaucer, 8, 346. 

Children, in the plays, 293-5. 

Cleopatra, 7, 20, 84, 178, 208. 

Coleridge, 104-5, 107, 109, 127, 165, 200, 201, 209, 223, 226, 228, 249, 343, 353, 362, 389, 391, 392, 397, 412, 413. 

Comedy, 15, 41. 

Conflict, tragic, 16-9; originates in evil, 34; oscillating movement in, 50; crisis in, 51-5; descending movement of, 55-62. 

Conscience. See Hamlet. 

Cordelia, 29, 32, 203-6, 250, 290, 314, _315-26_, Note W. 

_Coriolanus_, 3, 9, 43, 394-5; crisis, 53; hero off stage, 57; counter-stroke, 58; humour, 61; passion, 82; catastrophe, 83-4; versification, Note BB. 

Coriolanus, 20, 29, 83-4, 196. 

Cornwall, 298-9. 

Crisis. See Conflict. 

Curtain, no front, in Shakespeare's theatre, 185, 458. 

_Cymbeline_, 7, 21, 72, 80, Note BB; Queen in, 300. 

Desdemona, 32, 165, 179, 193, 197, _201-6_, 323, 433, 437-9. 

Disillusionment, in tragedies, 175. 

Dog, the, Shakespeare and, 268. 

Don John, 110, 210. 

Double action in _King Lear_, 255-6, 262. 

Dowden, E. , 82, 105, 330, 408. 

Dragging, 57-8, 64. 

Drunkenness, invective against, 238. 

Edgar, _305-7_, 453, 465. 

Edmund, 210, 245, 253, _300-3_, Notes P, Q. See Iago. 

Emilia, 214-6, 237, _239-42_, Note P. 

Emotional tension, variations of, 48-9. 

Evil, origin of conflict, 34; negative, 35; in earlier and later tragedies, 82-3; poetic portrayal of, 207-8; aspects of, specially impressive to Shakespeare, 232-3; in _King Lear_, 298, 303-4, 327; in _Tempest_, 328-30; in _Macbeth_, 331, 386. 

Exposition, 41-7. 

Fate, Fatality, 10, 26-30, 45, 59, 177, 181, 287, 340-6. 

Fleay, F. G. , 419, 424, 445, 467, 479. 

Fool in _King Lear_, the, 258, _311-5_, 322, 447, Note V. 

Fools, Shakespeare's, 310. 

Forman, Dr. , 468, 493. 

Fortinbras, 90. 

Fortune, 9, 10. 

Freytag, G. , 40, 63. 

Furness, H. H. , 199, 200. 

Garnet and equivocation, 397, 470-1. 

Ghost, Banquo's, 332, 335, 338, 361, Note FF. 

Ghost, Caesar's, Note FF. 

Ghost in _Hamlet_, 97, 100, 118, 120, 125, 126, 134, 136, 138-40, _173-4_. 

Ghosts, not hallucinations because appearing only to one in a company, 140. 

Gloster, 272, _293-6_, 447. 

Gnomic speeches, 74, 453. 

Goethe, 101, 127, 165, 208. 

Goneril, 245, _299-300_, 331, 370, 447-8. 

Greek tragedy, 7, 16, 30, 33, 182, 276-9, 282. 

Greene, 409. 

Hales, J. W. , 397. 

_Hamlet_, exposition, 43-7; conflict, 17, 47, 50-1; crisis and counter-stroke, 52, 58-60, 136-7; dragging, 57; humour, and false hope, before catastrophe, 61, 63; obscurities, 73; undramatic passages, 72, 74; place among tragedies, 80-8; position of hero, 89-92; not simply tragedy of thought, 82, 113, 127; in the Romantic Revival, 92, 127-8; lapse of time in, 129, 141; accident, 15, 143, 173; religious ideas, 144-5, 147-8, 172-4; player's speech, 389-90, Note F; grave-digger, 395-6; last scene, 256. See Notes A to H, and BB. 

Hamlet, only tragic character in play, 90; contrasted with Laertes and Fortinbras, 90, 106; failure of early criticism of, 91; supposed unintelligible, 93-4; external view, 94-7; 'conscience' view, 97-101; sentimental view, 101-4; Schlegel-Coleridge view, 104-8, 116, 123, 126-7; temperament, 109-10; moral idealism, 110-3; reflective genius, 113-5; connection of this with inaction, 115-7; origin of melancholy, 117-20; its nature and effects, 120-7, 103, 158; its diminution, 143-4; his 'insanity, ' 121-2, 421; in Act II. 129-31, 155-6; in III. I. 131-3, 157, 421; in play-scene, 133-4; spares King, 134-6, 100, 439; with Queen, 136-8; kills Polonius, 136-7, 104; with Ghost, 138-40; leaving Denmark, 140-1; state after return, 143-5, 421; in grave-yard, 145-6, 153, 158, 421-2; in catastrophe, 102, 146-8, 151, 420-1; and Ophelia, 103, 112, 119, 145-6, 152-9, 402, 420-1; letter to Ophelia, 150, 403; trick of repetition, 148-9; word-play and humour, 149-52, 411; aesthetic feeling, 133, 415; and Iago, 208, 217, 222, 226; other references, 9, 14, 20, 22, 28, 316, 353, Notes A to H. 

Hanmer, 91. 

Hazlitt, 209, 223, 228, 231, 243, 248. 

Hecate, 342, Note Z. 

Hegel, 16, 348. 

_2 Henry VI. _, 492. 

_3 Henry VI. _, 222, 418, 490, 492. 

_Henry VIII. _, 80, 472, 479. 

Heredity, 30, 266, 303. 

Hero, tragic, 7; of 'high degree, ' 9-11; contributes to catastrophe, 12; nature of, 19-23, 37; error of, 21, 34; unlucky, 28; place of, in construction, 53-55; absence of, from stage, 57; in earlier and later plays, 81-2, 176; in _King Lear_, 280; feeling at death of, 147-8, 174, 198, 324. 

Heywood, 140, 419. 

Historical tragedies, 3, 53, 71. 

Homer, 348. 

Horatio, 99, 112, 310, Notes A, B, C. 

Humour, constructional use of, 61; Hamlet's, 149-52; in _Othello_, 177; in _Macbeth_, 395. 

Hunter, J. , 199, 338. 

Iachimo, 21, 210. 

Iago, and evil, 207, 232-3; false views of, 208-11, 223-7; danger of accepting his own evidence, 211-2, 222-5; how he appeared to others, 213-5; and to Emilia, 215-6, 439-40; inferences hence, 217-8; further analysis, 218-22; source of his action, 222-31; his tragedy, 218, 222, 232; not merely evil, 233-5; nor of supreme intellect, 236; cause of failure, 236-7; and Edmund, 245, 300-1, 464; and Hamlet, 208, 217, 222, 226; other references, 21, 28, 32, 192, 193, 196, 364, Notes L, M, P, Q. 

Improbability, not always a defect, 69; in _King Lear_, 249, 256-7. 

Inconsistencies, 73; real or supposed, in _Hamlet_, 408; in _Othello_, Note I; in _King Lear_, 256, Note T; in _Macbeth_, Notes CC, EE. 

Ingram, Prof. , 478. 

Insanity in tragedy, 13; Ophelia's, 164-5, 399; Lear's, 288-90. 

Intrigue in tragedy, 12, 67, 179. 

Irony, 182, 338. 

Isabella, 316, 317, 321. 

Jameson, Mrs. , 165, 204, 379. 

Jealousy in Othello, 178, 194, Note L. 

Job, 11. 

Johnson, 31, 91, 294, 298, 304, 377, 420. 

Jonson, 69, 282, 389. 

Juliet, 7, 204, 210. 

_Julius Caesar_, 3, 7, 9, 33, 34, 479; conflict, 17-8; exposition, 43-5; crisis, 52; dragging, 57; counter-stroke, 58; quarrel-scene, 60-1; battle-scenes, 62; and _Hamlet_, 80-2; style, 85-6. 

Justice in tragedy, idea of, 31-33, 279, 318. 

Kean, 99, 243-4. 

Kent, _307-10_, 314, 321, 447, Note W. 

King Claudius, 28, 102, 133, 137, 142, _168-72_, 402, 422. 

_King John_, 394, 490-1. 

_King Lear_, exposition, 44, 46-7; conflict, 17, 53-4; scenes of high and low tension, 49; dragging, 57; false hope before catastrophe, 63; battle-scene, 62, 456-8; soliloquy in, 72, 222; place among tragedies, 82, 88, see Tate; Tate's, 243-4; two-fold character, 244-6; not wholly dramatic, 247; opening scene, 71, 249-51, 258, 319-21, 447; blinding of Gloster, 185, 251; catastrophe, 250-4, 271, 290-3, 309, 322-6; structural defects, 254-6; improbabilities, etc. , 256-8; vagueness of locality, 259-60; poetic value of defects, 261; double action, 262; characterisation, 263; tendency to symbolism, 264-5; idea of monstrosity, 265-6; beast and man, 266-8; storm-scenes, 269-70, 286-7, 315; question of government of world, in, 271-3; supposed pessimism, 273-9, 284-5, 303-4, 322-30; accident and fatality, 15, 250-4, 287-8; intrigue in, 179; evil in, 298, 303-4; preaching patience, 330; and _Othello_, 176-7, 179, 181, 244-5, 441-3; and _Timon_, 245-7, 310, 326-7, 443-5; other references, 8, 10, 61, 181, Notes R to Y, and BB. 

König, G. , Note BB. 

Koppel, R. , 306, 450, 453, 462. 

Laertes, 90, 111, 142, 422. 

Lamb, 202, 243, 248, 253, 255, 269, 343. 

Language, Shakespeare's, defects of, 73, 75, 416. 

Lear, 13, 14, 20, 28, 29, 32, 249-51, _280-93_, 293-5, Note W. 

Leontes, 21, 194. 

_Macbeth_, exposition, 43, 45-6; conflict, 17-9, 48, 52; crisis, 59, 60; pathos and humour, 61, 391, 395-7; battle-scenes, 62; extended catastrophe, 64; defects in construction, 57, 71; place among tragedies, 82, 87-8, Note BB; religious ideas, 172-4; atmosphere of, 333; effects of darkness, 333-4, colour, 334-6, storm, 336-7, supernatural, etc. , 337-8, irony, 338-40; Witches, 340-9, 362, 379-86; imagery, 336, 357; minor characters, 387; simplicity, 388; Senecan effect, 389-90; bombast, 389, 417; prose, 388, 397-400; relief-scenes, 391; sleep-walking scene, 378, 398, 400; references to Gunpowder Plot, 397, 470-1; all genuine? 388, 391, 395-7, Note Z; and _Hamlet_, 331-2; and _Richard III. _, 338, 390, 395, 492; other references, 7, 8, 386, and Notes Z to FF. 

Macbeth, 13, 14, 20, 22, 28, 32, 63, 172, 343-5, _349-65_, 380, 383, 386, Notes CC, EE. 

Macbeth, Lady, 13, 28, 32, 349-50, 358, 364, _366-79_, 398-400, Notes CC, DD. 

Macduff, 387, 391-2, 490-1. 

Macduff, Lady, 61, 387, 391-2. 

Macduff, little, 393-5. 

Mackenzie, 91. 

Marlowe, 211, 415-6. 

Marston's possible reminiscences of Shakespeare's plays, 471-2. 

_Measure for Measure_, 76, 78, 275, 397. 

Mediaeval idea of tragedy, 8, 9. 

Melancholy, Shakespeare's representations of, 110, 121. See Hamlet. 

Mephistopheles, 208. 

_Merchant of Venice_, 21, 200. 

Metrical tests, Notes S, BB. 

Middleton, 466. 

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, 390, 469. 

Milton, 207, 362, 418. 

Monstrosity, idea of, in _King Lear_, 265-6. 

Moral order in tragedy, idea of, 26, 31-9. 

Moulton, R. G. , 40. 

Negro? Othello a, 198-202. 

Opening scene in tragedy, 43-4. 

Ophelia, 14, 61, 112, _160-5_, 204, 399. See Hamlet. 

Oswald, 298, 448. 

_Othello_, exposition, 44-5; conflict, 17, 18, 48; peculiar construction, 54-5, 64-7, 177; inconsistencies, 73; place among tragedies, 82, 83, 88; and _Hamlet_, 175-6; and _King Lear_, 176-7, 179, 181, 244-5, 441-3; distinctive effect, and its causes, 176-80; accident in, 15, 181-2; objections to, considered, 183-5; point of inferiority to other three tragedies, 185-6; elements of reconciliation in catastrophe, 198, 242; other references, 9, 61, Notes I to R, and BB. 

Othello, 9, 20, 21, 22, 28, 29, 32, 176, 178, 179, _186-98_, 198-202, 211, 212, Notes K to O. 

Pathos, and tragedy, 14, 103, 160, 203, 281-2; constructional use of, 60-1. 

Peele, 200. 

_Pericles_, 474. 

Period, Shakespeare's tragic, 79-89, 275-6. 

Pessimism, supposed, in _King Lear_, 275-9, 327; in _Macbeth_, 359, 393. 

Plays, Shakespeare's, list of, in periods, 79. 

Plot, 12. See Action, Intrigue. 

'Poetic justice, ' 31-2. 

Poor, goodness of the, in _King Lear_ and _Timon_, 326. 

Posthumus, 21. 

Problems, probably non-existent for original audience, 73, 157, 159, 315, 393, 483, 486, 488. 

Prose, in the tragedies, 388, 397-400. 

Queen Gertrude, 104, 118, 134, 136-8, 161, 164, _166-8_. 

Reconciliation, feeling of, in tragedy, 31, 36, 84, 147-8, 174, 198, 242, 322-6. 

Regan, _299-300_. 

Religion, in Edgar, 306, Horatio, 310, Banquo, 387. 

_Richard II. _, 3, 10, 17, 18, 42. 

Richard II. , 20, 22, 150, 152. 

_Richard III. _, 3, 18, 42, 62, 82; and _Macbeth_, 338, 390, 395, 492. 

Richard III. , 14, 20, 22, 32, 63, 152, 207, 210, 217, 218, 233, 301. 

_Romeo and Juliet_, 3, 7, 9, 15; conflict, 17, 18, 34; exposition, 41-5; crisis, 52; counter-stroke, 58. 

Romeo, 22, 29, 150, 210. 

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, 137, 405-6. 

Rules of drama, Shakespeare's supposed ignorance of, 69. 

Salvini, 434. 

Satan, Milton's, 207, 362. 

Scenery, no, in Shakespeare's theatre, 49, 71, 451. 

Scenes, their number, length, tone, 49; wrong divisions of, 451. 

Schlegel, 82, 104, 105, 116, 123, 127, 254, 262, 344, 345, 413. 

Scot on Witch-craft, 341. 

Seneca, 389-90. 

Shakespeare the man, 6, 81, 83, 185-6, 246, 275-6, 282, 285, 327-30, 359, 393, 414-5. 

Shylock, 21. 

Siddons, Mrs. , 371, 379. 

Soliloquy, 72; of villains, 222; scenes ending with, 451. 

Sonnets, Shakespeare's, 264, 364. 

Spedding, J. , 255, 476, Note X. 

Stage-directions, wrong modern, 260, 285, 422, 453-6, 462. 

Style in the tragedies, 85-9, 332, 336, 357. 

Suffering, tragic, 7, 8, 11. 

Supernatural, the, in tragedy, 14, 181, 295-6, 331-2. See Ghost, Witch. 

Swinburne, A. C. , 80, 179, 191, 209, 218, 223, 228, 231, 276-8, 431. 

Symonds, J. A. , 10. 

Tate's version of _King Lear_, 243, 251-3, 313. 

Temperament, 110, 282, 306. 

_Tempest_, 42, 80, 185, 264, 328-30, 469; Note BB. 

Theological ideas in tragedy, 25, 144, 147, 279; in _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_, 171-4, 439; not in _Othello_, 181, 439; in _King Lear_, 271-3, 296. 

Time, short and long, theory of, 426-7. 

_Timon of Athens_, 4, 9, 81-3, 88, 245-7, 266, 270, 275, 310, 326-7, 443-5, 460; Note BB. 

Timon, 9, 82, 112. 

_Titus Andronicus_, 4, 200, 211, 411, 491. 

Tourgénief, 11, 295. 

Toussaint, 198. 

Tragedy, Shakespearean; parts, 41, 51; earlier and later, 18, 176; pure and historical, 3, 71. See Accident, Action, Hero, Period, Reconciliation, etc. 

Transmigration of souls, 267. 

_Troilus and Cressida_, 7, 185-6, 268, 275-6, 302, 417, 419. 

_Twelfth Night_, 70, 267. 

_Two Noble Kinsmen_, 418, 472, 479. 

Ultimate power in tragedy, 24-39, 171-4, 271-9. See Fate, Moral Order, Reconciliation, Theological. 

Undramatic speeches, 74, 106. 

Versification. See Style and Metrical tests. 

Virgilia, 387. 

Waste, tragic, 23, 37. 

Werder, K. , 94, 172, 480. 

_Winter's Tale_, 21, Note BB. 

Witches, the, and Macbeth, _340-9_, 362; and Banquo, 379-87. 

Wittenberg, Hamlet at, 403-6. 

Wordsworth, 30, 198. 

_Yorkshire Tragedy_, 10. 

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Oxford Lectures on Poetry

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A. C. BRADLEY, LL. D. , Litt. D. 

_ATHENÆUM. _--"A remarkable achievement. .. . It is probable that thisvolume will attain a permanence for which critical literature generallycannot hope. Very many of the things that are said here are finallysaid; they exhaust their subject. Of one thing we are certain--thatthere is no work in English devoted to the interpretation of poeticexperience which can claim the delicacy and sureness of Mr. Bradley's. "

_SPECTATOR. _--"In reviewing Professor Bradley's previous book on_Shakespearean Tragedy_ we declared our opinion that it was probably thebest Shakespearean criticism since Coleridge. The new volume shows thesame complete sanity of judgment, the same subtlety, the same persuasiveand eloquent exposition. "

_TIMES. _--"Nothing higher need be said of the present volume than it isnot unworthy to be the sequel to _Shakespearean Tragedy_. "

_DAILY TELEGRAPH. _--"This is not a book to be written about in a hastyreview of a thousand words. It is one to be perused and appreciated atleisure--to be returned to again and again, partly because of itssupreme interest, partly because it provokes, as all good books shoulddo, a certain antagonism, partly because it is itself the product of acareful, scholarly mind, basing conclusions on a scrupulous perusal ofdocuments and authorities. .. . The whole book is so full of good thingsthat it is impossible to make any adequate selection. In an age which isnot supposed to be very much interested in literary criticism, a booklike Mr. Bradley's is of no little significance and importance. "

_SATURDAY REVIEW. _--"The writer of these admirable lectures may claimwhat is rare even in this age of criticism--a note of his own. In typehe belongs to those critics of the best order, whose view of literatureis part and parcel of their view of life. His lectures on poetry aretherefore what they profess to be: not scraps of textual comment, norstudies in the craft of verse-making, but broad considerations of poetryas a mode of spiritual revelation. An accomplished style and signs ofcareful reading we may justly demand from any professor who sets out tolecture in literature. Mr. Bradley has them in full measure. But he hasalso not a little of that priceless quality so seldom found in theprofessional or professorial critic--the capacity of naïve vision andadmiration. Here he is in a line with the really stimulating essayists, the artists in criticism. "

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A Commentary on Tennyson's 'In Memoriam'

BY

A. C. BRADLEY, LL. D. , Litt. D. 

_THE SATURDAY REVIEW. _--"Here we find a model of what a commentary on agreat work should be, every page instinct with thoughtfulness; completesympathy and appreciation; the most reverent care shown in the attemptedinterpretation of passages whose meaning to a large degree evades, andwill always evade, readers of 'In Memoriam. ' It is clear to us that Mr. Bradley has devoted long time and thought to his work, and that he haspublished the result of his labours simply to help those who, likehimself, have been and are in difficulties as to the drift of variouspassages. He is not of course the first who has addressed himself to theinterpretation of 'In Memoriam'--in this spirit . .. But Mr. Bradley'scommentary is sure to take rank as the most searching and scholarly ofany. "

_THE PILOT. _--"In re-studying 'In Memoriam' with Dr. Bradley's aid, wehave found his interpretation helpful in numerous passages. The notesare prefaced by a long introduction dealing with the origin, composition, and structure of the poem, the ideas used in it, the metreand the debt to other poems. All of these are good, but more interestingthan any of them is a section entitled, 'The Way of the Soul, ' reviewingthe spiritual experience which 'In Memoriam' records. This is quiteadmirable throughout, and proves conclusively that Dr. Bradley's keendesire to fathom the exact meaning of every phrase has only quickenedhis appreciation of the poem as a whole. "

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