 CHAPTER X of CHARACTERS OF SHAKESPIR'S PLAYS by William Haslett. This is that Hamlet the Dane, whom we read of in our youth, in whom we seem almost to remember in our after-years, he who made that famous soliloquy in life, who gave the advice to the players, who thought, this goodly frame, the earth, a sterile promontory, and this brave or hanging firmament there, this majestic roof fretted with golden fire, a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors, whom man delighted not, nor woman neither. He who talked with the gravediggers, and moralized on Yorick's skull, the school fellow of Rosencross and Guildenstern at Wittenberg, the friend of Horatio, the lover of Ophelia, he that was mad and sent to England, the slow avenger of his father's death, who lived at the court of Horwendilus five hundred years before we were born, but all whose thoughts we seem to know as well as we do our own, because we have read them in Shakespeare. Hamlet is a name, his speeches and sayings but the idle coinage of the poet's brain. What then? Are they not real? They are as real as our own thoughts, their reality is in the reader's mind, it is we who are Hamlet. This play has a prophetic truth, which is above that of history. Whoever has become thoughtful and melancholy through his own mishaps are those of others. Whoever has borne about with him the clouded brow of reflection and thought himself too much in the sun. Whoever has seen the golden lamp of day dimmed by envious mist rising in his own breast and could find in the world before him only a dull blank with nothing left remarkable in it. Whoever is known the pangs of despised love, the insolence of office, or the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes. He who has felt his mind sink within him and sadness cling to his heart like a malady, who has had his last hopes blighted and his youth staggered by the apparitions of strange things. Who cannot be well at ease while he sees evil hovering near him like a specter, whose powers of action have been eaten up by thought, he to whom the universe seems infinite and himself nothing, whose bitterness of soul makes him careless of consequences, and who goes to a play as his best resource to shove off to a second remove the evils of life by a mock presentation of them. This is the true Hamlet. We have been so used to this tragedy that we hardly know how to criticize it anymore than we should know how to describe our own faces, but we must make such observations as we can. It is the one of Shakespeare's plays that we think of oftenest because it abounds most in striking reflections on human life, and because the distresses of Hamlet are transferred by the turn of his mind to the general account of humanity. Whatever happens to him we apply to ourselves, because he applies it so himself as a means of general reasoning. He is a great moralizer, and what makes him worth attending to is that he moralizes on his own feelings and experience. He is not a commonplace pedant. If Lear shows the greatest depth of passion, Hamlet is the most remarkable for the ingenuity, originality, and unstudied development of character. Shakespeare had more magnanimity than any other poet, and he has shown more of it in this play than in any other. There is no attempt to force an interest. Everything is left for time and circumstances to unfold. The attention is excited without effort. The incidences succeed each other as matters of course. The characters think and speak and act just as they might do if left entirely to themselves. There is no set purpose, no straining at a point. The observations are suggested by the passing scene. The gust of passion come and go like sounds of music born on the wind. The whole play is an exact transcript of what might be supposed to have taken place at the court of Denmark, at the remote period of time fixed upon, before the modern refinements and morals and manners were heard of. It would have been interesting enough to have been admitted as a bystander in such a scene at such a time, to have heard and seen something of what was going on. But here we are more than spectators. We have not only the outward pageants and the signs of grief, but we have that within which passes show. We read the thoughts of the heart. We catch the passions living as they rise. Other dramatic writers give us very fine versions and paraphrases of nature, but Shakespeare, together with his own comments, gives us the original text that we may judge for ourselves. This is a very great advantage. The character of Hamlet is itself a pure effusion of genius. It is not a character marked by strength of will or even of passion, but by refinement of thought and sentiment. Hamlet is as little of the hero as a man can well be, but he is a young and princely novice, full of high enthusiasm and quick sensibility, the sport of circumstances questioning with fortune and refining on his own feelings, and forced from the natural bias of his disposition by the strangeness of his situation. He seems incapable of deliberate action, and is only hurried into extremities on the spur of the occasion when he has no time to reflect, as in the scene where he kills Polonius, and again where he alters the letters which Rosenkraus and Guildenstern are taking with them to England, purporting his death. At other times, when he is most bound to act, he remains puzzled, undecided, and skeptical. Dali's with his purposes, till the occasion is lost, and always finds some pretense to relapse into indolence and thoughtfulness again. For this reason he refuses to kill the king when he is at his prayers, and by a refinement in malice, which is in truth only an excuse for his own want of resolution, defers his revenge to some more fatal opportunity, when he shall be engaged in some act that has no relish of salvation in it. He kneels and prays, and now I'll do it, and so he goes to heaven, and so am I revenged. That would be scanned. He killed my father, and for that I, his sole son, send him to heaven. Why, this is reward, not revenge. Absurd, and know thou a more horrid time when he is drunk, asleep, or in a rage. He is the prince of philosophical speculators, and because he cannot have his revenge perfect, according to the most refined idea his wish can form, he misses it altogether. So he scruples to trust the suggestion of the ghost, contrives the scene of the play to have sure proof of his uncle's guilt, and then rests satisfied with his confirmation of his suspicions and the success of his experiment, instead of acting upon it. But he is sensible of his own weakness, taxes himself with it, and tries to reason himself out of it. How all occasions do inform against me and spur my dull revenge! What is a man, if his chief good in market of his time be but to sleep and feed a beast no more? Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after gave us not that capability in godlike reason to rust in us unused. Now, whether it be bestial oblivion or some craven scruple of thinking too precisely on the event, a thought which quartered hath put one part wisdom, and over three parts coward, I do not know why yet I live to say this things to do, since I have cause and will and strength and means to do it. Examples gross as earth excite me, witness this army of such mass in charge, led by a delicate and tender prince, whose spirit with divine ambition puffed, makes malice at the invisible event, exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death, and danger dare, even for an exchel. It is not to be great never to stir without great argument, but greatly to find quarrel in a straw when honors at the stake. How stand I, then, that have a father killed, a mother stained with excitement of my reason and my blood, and let all sleep, while to my shame I see the imminent death of twenty thousand men, that for a fantasy and trick of fame go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot, whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, which is not tomb enough in consonants to hide the slain? From this time forth my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth. Still he does nothing, and this very speculation on his own infirmity only affords him another occasion for indulging it. It is not for any want of attachment to his father, or abhorrence of his murder, that Hamlet is thus dilatory. But it is more to his taste to indulge his imagination in reflecting upon the enormity of the crime, and refining on his schemes of vengeance, than to put them into immediate practice. His ruling passion is to think, not to act, and any vague pretence that flatters this propensity instantly diverts him from his previous purposes. The moral perfection of this character has been called in question, we think, by those who did not understand it. It is more interesting than according to rules, amiable, though not faultless. The ethical delineation of that noble and liberal casualist, as Shakespeare has been well called, do not exhibit the drab-colored Quakerism of morality. His plays are not copied either from the whole duty of man, or from the Academy of Compliments. We confess we are a little shocked at the want of refinement and those who are shocked at the want of refinement in Hamlet. The want of punctilious exactness in his behavior either partakes of the license of the time, or else belongs to the very excess of intellectual refinement in the character, which makes the common rules of life, as well as his own purposes, sit loose upon him. He may be said to be amenable only to the tribunal of his own thoughts, and is too much taken up with the arry world of contemplation to lay as much stress as he ought on the practical consequences of things. His habitual principles of action are unhinged and out of joint with the time. His conduct to Ophelia is quite natural in his circumstances. It is that of assumed severity only. It is the effect of disappointed hope of bitter regrets, of affection suspended not obliterated by the distractions of the scene around him. Amidst the natural and preternatural horrors of his situation, he might be excused in delicacy from carrying out a regular courtship. When his father's spirit was in arms, it was not to time for the son to make love in him. He could neither marry Ophelia nor wound her mind by explaining the cause of his alienation, which he durst hardly trust himself to think of. It would have taken him years to have come to a direct explanation on the point. In the harassed state of his mind he could not have done otherwise than he did. His conduct does not contradict what he says when he sees her funeral. I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not with all their quantity of love make up my sum. Nothing can be more affecting or beautiful than the Queen's apostrophe to Ophelia. I'm throwing flowers into the grave. Sweets to the sweet farewell. I hoped thou should have been my Hamlet's wife. I thought thy bride bed to have decked, sweet maid, and not of strud thy grave. Shakespeare was thoroughly a master of the mixed motives of human character, and he here shows us the Queen, who is so criminal in some respects, not without sensibility and affection in other relations of life. Ophelia is a character almost too exquisitely touching to be dolt upon. O Rose of May, O Flower too soon faded. Her love, her madness, her death, are described with the truest touches of tenderness and pathos. It is a character which nobody but Shakespeare could have drawn in the way that he has done, and to the conception of which there is not even the smallest approach, except in some of the old romantic ballads. Her brother, Larities, is a character we do not like so well. He is too hot and choleric, and somewhat rudimentate. Polonius is a perfect character in its kind, nor is there any foundation for the objections which have been made to the consistency of this part. It is said that he acts very foolishly and talks very sensibly. There is no inconsistency in that. Again that he talks wisely at one time and foolishly at another. That his advice to Larities is very sensible, and his advice to the king and queen on the subject of Hamlet's madness very ridiculous. But he gives the one as a father, and is sincere in it. He gives the other as a mere courtierre, a busy body, and is accordingly officious, guirless, and impertinent. In short, Shakespeare has been accused of inconsistency in this and other characters, only because he has kept up the distinction which there is in nature between the understandings and the moral habits of men, between the absurdity of their ideas and the absurdity of their motives. Polonius is not a fool, but he makes himself so. His folly, whether in his actions or speeches, comes under the head of impropriety of intention. We do not like to see our author's plays acted, in least of all, Hamlet. There is no play that suffers so much in being transferred to the stage. Hamlet himself seems hardly capable of being acted. Mr. Kemble unavoidably fails in this character from a want of ease and variety. The character of Hamlet is made up of undulating lines. It has the yielding flexibility of a wave over the sea. Mr. Kemble plays it like a man in armor, with a determined inverteracy of purpose, in one undeviating straight line, which is as remote from the natural grace and refined susceptibility of the character, as the sharp angles and abrupt starts, which Mr. Keane introduces into the part. Mr. Keane's Hamlet is as much too splenetic and rash as Mr. Kemble's is too deliberate and formal. His manner is too strong and pointed. He throws a severity approaching the virulence into the common observations and answers. There is nothing of this in Hamlet. He is, as it were, wrapped up in his reflections, and only thinks aloud. There should, therefore, be no attempt to impress what he says upon others by a studied exaggeration of emphasis and manner. No talking at his hearers. There should be as much of the gentleman and scholar as possible infused into the part and as little of the actor. A pensive air of sadness should sit reluctantly upon his brow, but no appearance of fixed and sullen gloom. He is full of weakness and melancholy, but there is no harshness in his nature. He is the most amiable of misanthropes. CHAPTER XI of characters of Shakespeare's plays by William Haslett. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Tempest. There can be little doubt that Shakespeare was the most universal genius that ever lived. Quote, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral comical, historical pastoral, seen in dividable or poem unlimited. He is the only man. Seneca cannot be too heavy nor plautice, too light for him. He has not only the same absolute command over our laughter and our tears, all the resources of passion, of wit, of thought, of observation, but he has the most unbounded range of fanciful invention, whether terrible or playful, the same insight into the world of imagination that he has into the world of reality. And overall, there presides the same truth of character and nature, and the same spirit of humanity. His ideal beings are as true and natural as his real characters, that is, as consistent with themselves, or if we suppose such beings to exist at all, they could not act, speak, or feel otherwise than as he makes them. He has invented for them a language, manners, and sentiments of their own, from the tremendous implications of the witches in Macpeth, when they do a quote deed without a name, to the self-like expressions of Ariel, who does his pirating gently, the mischievous tricks and gossiping of Robin Goodfellow, or the uncouth, gabbling and emphatic gesticulations of Caliban in this play. The Tempest is one of the most original and perfect of Shakespeare's productions, and he has shown in it all the variety of his powers. It is full of grace and grandeur, the human and imaginary characters, the dramatic and the grotesque, are blended together with the greatest art, and without any appearance of it. Though he has here given to, quote, airy nothing a local habitation and a name, yet that part, which is only the fantastic creation of his mind, has the same palpable texture and coheres semblably with the rest. As the preternatural part has the air of reality, and almost haunts the imagination with a sense of truth, the real characters and events partake of the wildness of a dream. The stately magician, Prospero, driven from his dukedom, but around whom, so potent is his art, airy spirits throng numberless to do his bidding. His daughter Miranda, quote, worthy of that name, to whom all the power of his art points, and who seems the goddess of the aisle, the princely Ferdinand, cast by fate upon the haven of his happiness in this idol of his love, the delicate aerial, the savage Caliban, half brute, half demon, the drunken ship's crew, all are connected parts of the story and can hardly be spared from the place they fill. Even the local scenery is of a piece and character with the subject. Prospero's enchanted island seems to have risen up out of the sea, the airy music, the tempest-tossed vessel, the turbulent waves, all have the effect of the landscape background of some fine picture. Shakespeare's pencil is, to use an illusion of his own, quote, like the dire's hand, subdued to what it works in. Everything in him, though it partakes of the liberty of wit, is also subjected to the law of the understanding. For instance, even the drunken sailors, who are made reeling ripe, share in the disorder of their minds and bodies, in the tumult of the elements, and seem unsure to be as much at the mercy of chance as they were before at the mercy of the winds and waves. These fellows with their sea-wit are the least who are taste of any part of the play, but they are as like drunken sailors as they can be and are in indirect foil to Caliban, whose figure acquires a classical dignity in the comparison. The character of Caliban is generally thought, and justly so, to be one of the author's masterpieces. It is not indeed pleasant to see this character on the stage, any more than it is to see the God Pan personated there. But in itself, it is one of the wildest and most abstracted of all Shakespeare's characters, whose deformity, whether of body or mind, is redeemed by the power and truth of the imagination displayed in it. It is the essence of grossness, but there is not a particle of vulgarity in it. Shakespeare has described the brutal mind of Caliban in contact with the pure and original forms of nature. The character grows out of the soil, where it is rooted, uncontrolled, uncouth and wild, uncrammed by any of the meannesses of custom. It is, quote, of the earth, earthy. It seems almost to have been dug out of the ground, with the soul instinctively super-added to it, answering to its wants and origin. Vulgarity is not natural coarseness, but conventional coarseness, learned from others, contrary to, or without, an entire conformity of natural power and disposition. As fashion is the commonplace affectation of what is elegant and refined without any feeling of the essence of it. Schlegel, the admirable German critic on Shakespeare, observes that Caliban is a poetical character, and, quote, always speaks in blank verse. He first comes in thus. As wicked do is ere my mother, brushed with raven's feather, from unwholesome fend, drop on you both, south-west, blow on ye, and blister you all o'er. Prospero, for this be sure, tonight thou shall have cramps, side-stitches, that shall pen thy breath up, urchins, shall for that vast of night that they may work, all exercise on thee, that shall be pinched as thick as honeycombs, each pinch more stinging than the bees that made them. I must eat my dinner, this island's mine, by sycorax my mother, which thou takes from me. When thou came as first, thou stroked me, and made much of me, which give me water with berries in it, and teach me how to name the bigger light, and how, the less, they burn by day and night, and then I love thee, and showed thee all the qualities of the arel, the fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile. Cursed be that I did so, all the charms of sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you, for I am all the subjects that you have, who first was mine own king, in here you stry me in this hard rock, whilst you do keep from me the west of the island. And again he promises Trinkulow his services thus, if you will free him from his drudgery. I'll show thee the best springs, I'll pluck thee berries, I'll fish for thee, and get thee wood enough, I pray thee let me bring thee where crabs grow, and I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts, show thee a jay's nest, and instruct thee how to snare the nimble marmotset, I'll bring thee to clustering fill-birds, and sometimes I'll get the young scammers from the rock. In conducting Stefano and Trinkulow to Prospero's cell, Caliban chose the superiority of natural capacity over greater knowledge in greater folly, and in a former scene, when Ariel frightens them with his music, Caliban, to encourage them, and counts for it in the eloquent poetry of the senses. Be not afraid, the isle is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs, the gift to light and hurt not, sometimes a thousand twanging instruments will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices, that if I then had waked after long sleep would make me sleep again, and then in dreaming the clouds me thought would open and show riches ready to drop upon me, when I waked I cried to dream again. This is not more beautiful than it is true. The poet here shows us the savage with the simplicity of a child, a mix the strange monster amiable. Shakespeare had to paint the human animal rude and without choice in its pleasures, but not without the sense of pleasure or some germ of the affections. Master Barnadine in measure for measure, the savage of civilized life, is an admirable philosophical counterpart to Caliban. Shakespeare has, as it were by design, drawn off from Caliban the elements of whatever is ethereal and refined, to compound them in the unearthly mold of Ariel. Nothing was ever more finely conceived than this contrast between the material and the spiritual, the gross and delicate. Ariel is imaginary power, the swiftness of thought personified. When told to make good speed by Prospero, he says, I drink the air before me. This is something like Puck's boast on a similar occasion. I'll put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes, but Ariel differs from Puck in having a fellow feeling in the interests of those he is employed about. How exquisite is the following dialogue between him and Prospero. Ariel, your charm so strongly works them that if you now beheld them, your affections would become tender. Prospero, dost thou think so, spirit? Ariel, mine would, sir, were a human. Prospero, and mine shall, hast thou, which are but air, a touch, a feeling of their afflictions, and shall not myself, one of their kind, that relish all as sharply, passioned as they, be kindly or moving than thou art. It has been observed that there is a peculiar charm in the songs introduced in Shakespeare, which, without conveying any distinct images, seem to recall all the feelings connected with them, like snatches of half-forgotten music heard indistinctly and in intervals. There is this effect produced by Ariel's songs, which, as we are told, seem to sound in the air, and as if the person playing them were invisible, we shall give one instance out of many of this general power. Enter Ferdinand, an Ariel invisible, playing and singing, Ariel's song. Where should this music be, an air or earth? It sounds no more, and sure it waits upon some god of the island, sitting on a bank weeping against the king, my father's wreck. This music crept by me upon the waters, allaying both their fury and my passion, with its sweet air. Thence I have followed it, or it hath drawn me, rather, but is gone. No, it begins again. The diddy does remember my drowned father. This is no mortal business, nor no sound that the earth owns. I hear it now above me. The courtship between Ferdinand and Miranda is one of the chief beauties of this play. It is the very purity of love. The pretended interference of Prospero with it heightens its interest, and is in character with the magician, whose sense of preternatural power makes him arbitrary, touchy and impatient of opposition. The Tempest is a finer play than the Midsummer Night's Dream, which has sometimes been compared with it, but it is not so fine a poem. There are a greater number of beautiful passages in the latter. Two of the most striking in the Tempest are spoken by Prospero. The one is that admirable one, when the vision which he has conjured up disappears, beginning, the cloud-cap towers, the gorgeous palaces, and etc., which is so often been quoted that every schoolboy knows it by heart. The other is that which Prospero makes in abjuring his art. The elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves, and ye that on the sands with printless foot do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him when he comes back, you demi-puppets that by moonshine do the green sour ringlets make were of the Unabites, and you whose pastime is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice to hear the solemn curfew by whose aid weak masters though ye be. I have bedimmed the noontide's son, called forth the mutinous winds, and twix the green sea, and the azured vault set roaring war, to the dread-rattling thunder have I given fire, and rifted jove stout oak with his own bolt, the strong-based promontory have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up the pine and cedar, graves at my command have waked their sleepers, oped and led them forth by my so potent art. But this rough magic I hear abjure, and when I have required some heavenly music, which even now I do, to work mine end upon their senses that this airy charm is for, I'll break my staff, bury it certain fathoms in the earth, and deeper than did ever plummet sound, I'll drown my book. We must not forget to mention, among other things in this play, that Shakespeare has anticipated nearly all the arguments on the utopian schemes of modern philosophy. Gonzalo. Had I the plantation of this isle, my lord? Antonio. He'd sow it with nettle seed. Sebastian, or docks, or mallows. Gonzalo. And ere the king haunt, what would I do? Sebastian, escape being drunk, or want of wine. Gonzalo. In the commonwealth I would, by contraries, execute all things. For no kind of traffic would I admit. No name of magistrate. Letters should not be known. Wealth, poverty, and use of service, none. Contracts, succession, born, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none. No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil. No occupation. All man idle, all, and women too. But innocent and pure. No sovereignty. Sebastian. And yet he would be king on it. Antonio. The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning. Gonzalo. All things in common nature should produce without sweat or endeavor. Treason, felony, sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine would I not have. But nature should bring forth of its own kind, all foison, all abundance, to feed my innocent people. Sebastian. No marrying among his subjects. Antonio. None, man. All idle. Horses and knaves. Gonzalo. I would with such perfection govern, sir, to excel the golden age. Sebastian. Save his majesty. End of Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Of Characters of Shakespeare's Plays by William Haslett This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Nemo and Eva Davis The Midsummer Night's Dream Bottom the Weaver is a character that has not had justice on him. He is the most romantic of mechanics, and what a list of companions he has quints the carpenter, snug the joiner, flute the bellows mender, snout the tinker, starvelling the tailor, and then again, what a group of fairy attendants. Puck, peace blossom, cobweb, moth, and mustard seed. It has been observed that Shakespeare's characters are constructed upon deep, physiological principles, and there is something in this play which looks very like it. Bottom the Weaver, who takes the lead of This crew of patches, rude mechanicals, that work for bread upon Athenian stalls, follows a sedentary trade, and he is, accordingly, represented as conceited, serious, and fantastical. He is ready to undertake anything and everything, as if it was, as much a matter of course as the motion of his loom and shuttle. He is for playing the tyrant, the lover, the lady, the lion. He will roar that it shall do any man's heart good to hear him. And this being objected to as improper, he still has a resource in his good opinion of himself, and will roar you and twirt any night and gale. Snug the joiner as the moral man of the peace, who proceeds by measurement and discretion in all things. You see him with his rule compass in his hand. Have you the lion's part written? Pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study. You may do it extemporary, says Quince, for it is nothing but roaring. Starvelling the tailor keeps the peace, and objects the lion and the drawn sword. I believe we must leave the killing out when all is done. Starvelling, however, does not start the objections himself, but seconds them when made by others, as if he had not spirit to express his fears without encouragement, is too much to suppose all this intentional. But it very luckily falls out so. Nature includes all that is implied in the most subtle analytical distinctions, and the same distinctions we found in Shakespeare. Bottom, who is not only chief actor but stage manager for the occasion, has a device to obviate the danger of frightening the ladies. Write to me a prologue, and let the prologue seem to say, we will do no harm with our swords, and that Pyramus is not killed indeed, and for better assurance tell them that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but bottom the weaver. This will put them out of fear. Bottom seems to have understood the subject of dramatic illusion, at least as well as any modern essayist. If our holiday mechanic rules the roast among his fellows, he is no less at home in his new character of an ass, with amiable cheeks and fair large ears. He instinctively acquires a most learned taste, and grows facetious in the choice of dried peas and bottled hay. He is quite familiar with his new attendance, and assigns them their parts with all due gravity. Mashaur Khabweb, good Mashaur, get your weapon in your hand, and kill me a red-hipped humblebee on the top of a thistle. And good Mashaur, bring me the honey-bag. What an exact knowledge is here, shown of natural history. Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, is the leader of the fairy band. He is the aerial of the mid-summer's night dream, and yet, as unlike as can be, to the aerial and the tempest, no other poet could have made two such different characters out of the same fanciful materials and situations. Aerial is a minister of retribution, who is touched with a sense of pity at the woes he inflicts. Puck is a mad cap-sprite, full of wantonness and mischief, who laughs at those whom he misleads. Lord, what fools these mortals be? Aerial cleaves the air, and executes his mission with a zeal of a winged messenger. Puck is born along on his fairy, errant, like the light-glittering gossamer before the breeze. He is indeed a most epicurian, little gentleman, dealing in quaint devices and faring in dainty delights. Prospero and his world of spirits are a set of moralists, but with Oberon and his fairies, we are launched at once into the empire of the butterflies. How beautifully is this race of beings contrasted with the men and women actors in the scene? By a single epithet, which Titania gives to the latter, the human mortals. It is astonishing that Shakespeare should be considered not only by foreigners, but by many of our own critics, as a gloomy and heavy writer who painted nothing but gorgons and hydras and chimeras dire. His subtlety exceeds that of all other dramatic writers, and so much that a celebrated person of the present day said that he regarded him rather as a metaphysician than a poet. His delicacy and sporting gaiety are infinite. In the Midsummer's Night Dream alone, we should imagine there is more sweetness and beauty of description than in the whole range of French poetry put together. What we mean is this, that we will produce out of that single-play ten passages, to which we do not think any ten passages in the works of the French poets can be opposed, displaying equal fancy and imagery. Shall we mention the remonstrance of Helena to Hermia, or Titania's description of her fairy train, or her disputes of Oberon about the Indian boy, or Pucks account of himself and his employments, or the fairy queen's exhortation to the elves to pay due attendance upon her favorite bottom, or Hippolyta's description of a chase, or Theseus's answer? The two last are as heroic and spirited as the others are full of luscious tenderness. The reading of this play is like wandering in a grove by moonlight. The descriptions breathe a sweetness like odors thrown from beds of flowers. Titania's exhortation to the fairies to wait upon bottom, which is remarkable for a certain ploying sweetness, and the repetition of the rhymes is as follows. Be kind and courteous to this gentleman. Hop in his walks and gamble in his eyes, feed him with apricots and dewberries, with purple grapes, green figs, and whole berries. The honey-bags steal from the humble bees, and for night tapers crop their wax and thighs and light them at the fiery glowworm's eyes, to have my love to bed and to arise, and pluck the wings from painted butterflies to fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes, nod to him elves, and do him courtesies. The sounds of the lute and of the trumpet are not more distinct than the poetry of the foregoing passage and of the conversation between Theseus and Hippolyta. Theseus. Go, one of you, find out the forester, for now our observation is performed. And since we have the vow word of the day, my love shall hear the music of my hounds. Uncouple in the western valley go, dispatch, I say, and find the forester. We will, fair queen, up to the mountain's top, and mark the musical confusion of hounds in echo in conjunction. Hippolyta. I was with Hercules and Cadmus months, when in a wood of Crete they bade the bear with hounds of Sparta. Never did I hear such gallant chiding, for beside the groves, the skies, the fountains, every region near seemed all one mutual cry. I never heard so musical a discord, such sweet thunder. Theseus. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, so fluid, so sanded, and their heads are hung, with ears that sweep away the morning dew. Crooked kneed and dew lapped like Thessalian bulls, slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth-like bells, each under each a cry more tunable was never hallowed to, nor cheered with horn, in Crete and Sparta, nor in Thessaly. Judge when you hear. Even Titian never made a hunting-piece of Augusto so fresh and lusty, and so near the first ages of the world is this. It has been suggested to us that the mid-summer's night dream would do admirably to get up as a Christmas after-piece, and our prompter proposed that Mr. Keane should play the part of bottom, as worthy of his great talents. He might, in the discharge of his duty, offer to play the lady like any of our actresses that he pleased, the lover of the tyrant like any of our actors that he pleased, and the lion like the most fearful wildfowl living. The carpenter, the tailor and joiner, it was thought, would hit the galleries. The young ladies in love would interest the side-boxes, and Robin Goodfellow and his companions excite a lively fellow feeling in the children from school. There would be two courts, an empire within an empire, the Athenian and the Fairy King and Queen, with their attendants, and with all their finery. What an opportunity for processions, for the sound of trumpets, and glittering of spears. What a fluttering of urchins, painted wings, what a delightful profusion of gauze, clouds, and airy spirits floating on them. Alas, the experiment has been tried and has failed, not through the fault of Mr. Keane, who did not play the part of Bottom, nor of Mr. Liston, who did, and who played it well, but from the nature of things. The Midsummer Night's Dream, when acted, is converted from a delightful fiction into a dull pantomime. All that is finest in the play is lost in the representation. The spectacle was grand, but the spirit was evaporated, the genius was fled. Poetry and the stage do not agree well together. The attempt to reconcile them in this instance fails not only of effect, but of decorum. The ideal can have no place upon the stage, which is a picture without perspective. Everything there is in the foreground. That, which was merely an airy shape, a dream, a passing thought, immediately becomes an unmanageable reality. Where all is left to the imagination, as is the case in reading, every circumstance, near or remote, has an equal chance of being kept in mind, and tells according to the mixed impression of all that has been suggested. But the imagination cannot sufficiently qualify the actual impressions of the senses. Any offense given to the eye is not to be got rid of by explanation. Thus Bottom's head in the play is a fantastic illusion produced by magic spells. On the stage it is an ass's head, and nothing more. Certainly a very strange costume for a gentleman to appear in. Fancy cannot be embodied any more than a simile can be painted, and it is as idle to attempt it as to personate wall or moonshine. Fairies are not incredible, but fairies six feet high are so. Monsters are not shocking, if they are seen at a proper distance. When ghosts appear at midday, when apparitions stalk along cheapside, then may the Midsummer's Night Dream be represented without injury at Covent Garden or at Drury Lane. The boards of a theater and the regions of fancy are not the same thing. End of The Midsummer Night Dream Chapter 13 Of Characters of Shakespeare's Plays by William Haslett. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Nemo and Eva Davis. Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet is the only tragedy which Shakespeare's written entirely on a love story. It is supposed to have been his first play, and it deserves to stand in that proud rank. There is the buoyant spirit of youth in every line, and the rapturous intoxication of hope, and in the bitterness of despair. It has been said of Romeo and Juliet by a great critic that whatever is most intoxicating in the odour of a southern spring, languishing in the song of The Nightingale, or voluptuous, in the first opening of the rose, is to be found in this poem. The description is true, and yet it does not answer to our idea of the play. For if it has the sweetness of the rose, it has its freshness too. If it has the langer of The Nightingale's song, it also has its giddy transport. If it has the softness of a southern spring, it is as glowing and as bright. There is nothing of a sickly and sentimental cast. Romeo and Juliet are in love, but they are not love sick. Everything speaks the very soul of pleasure, the high and healthy pulse of the passions, the heartbeats, the blood circulates, and mantles throughout. Their courtship is not an insipid interchange of sentiments, lip-deep, learnt at second hand from poems and plays, made up of beauties of the most shadowy kind, of fancies-wan that hang the pensive head, of evanescent smiles, and sighs that breathe not, of delicacy that shirks from the touch and feebleness that scare supports itself, an elaborate peculiarity of thought, and an artificial dearth of sense, spirit, truth, and nature. It is the reverse of all this. It is Shakespeare all over, and Shakespeare when he was young. We have heard it objected to, Romeo and Juliet, that it is founded on an idle passion between a boy and a girl, who have scarcely seen and can have but little sympathy or rational esteem for one another, who have had no experience of the good or ills of life, in whose raptures or despair must be therefore equally groundless and fantastical. Whoever objects to the youth of the parties in this play as, too unripe and crude, to pluck the sweets of love, and wishes to see a first love carried on into good old age, and the passions taken at the rebound when their forces spent may find all this done in the stranger and in other German plays, where they do things by contraries and transpose nature to inspire sentiment and create philosophy. Shakespeare proceeded in a more straightforward and, we think, effectual way. He did not endeavor to extract beauty from wrinkles, or the wild throb of passion from the last expiring sigh of indifference. He did not gather grapes of thorns nor figs of thistles. It was not his way. But he has given a picture of human life, such as it is in the order of nature. He has founded the passion of the two lovers, not on the pleasures they had experienced, but on all the pleasures they had not experienced. All that was to come of life was theirs, at that untried source of promised happiness they slicked their thirst, and the first eager draft made them drunk with love and joy. They were in full possession of their senses and their affections, their hopes were of air, their desires of fire. Youth is the season of love, because the heart is then first melted in tenderness from the touch of novelty, and kindled to rapture, for it knows no end of its enjoyments or its wishes. Desire has no limit but itself. Passion, the love and expectation of pleasure, is infinite, extravagant, inexhaustible, till experience comes to check and kill it. Juliet exclaims on her first interview with Romeo. My bounty is boundless as the sea, my love is deep. And why should it not? What was to hinder the thrilling tide of pleasure, which had just gushed from her heart, from flowing on without stink or measure, but experience which she was yet without? What was to abate the transport of the first sweet sense of pleasure, which her heart and her senses had just tasted, but indifference which she was yet a stranger to? What was there to check the ardor of hope, a faith of constancy, just rising in her breast, but disappointment which she had not yet felt? As are the desires and the hopes of youthful passion, such is the keenness of its disappointments, and their baleful effect. Such is the transition in this play from the highest bliss to the lowest despair, from the nuptial couch to an untimely grave. The only evil that even an apprehension befalls the two lovers is the loss of the greatest possible felicity. Yet this loss is fatal to both, for they had rather part with life than bear the thought of surviving all that had made life dear to them. In all this Shakespeare has but followed nature which existed in his time as well as now. The modern philosophy which reduces the whole theory of the mind to habitual impressions and leaves the natural impulses of passion and imagination out of the account had not then been discovered, or if it had, would have been little calculated for the uses of poetry. It is the inadequacy of the same false system of philosophy to account for the strength of our earliest attachments, which has led Mr. Wordsworth to indulge in the mystical visions of Platonism and his ode on the progress of life. He has very admirably described the vividness of our impressions in youth and childhood, and how they fade by degrees into the light of common day, and he ascribes the change to the supposition of a pre-existent state, as if our early thoughts were near heaven, reflections of former trails of glory, shadows of our past being. This is idle. It is not from the knowledge of the past that the first impressions of things derive their gloss and splendor, but from our ignorance of the future, which fills the void to come with a warmth of our desires, with our gayest hopes and brightest fancies. It is the obscurity spread before it that colors the prospect of life with hope, as it is the cloud which reflects the rainbow. There is no occasion to resort to any mystical union and transmission of feeling through different states of being to account for the romantic enthusiasm of youth, nor to plant the root of hope in the grave, nor to derive it from the skies. Its root is in the heart of man. It lifts its head above the stars. Desire and imagination are inmates of the human breast. The heaven that lies about us in our infancy is only a new world of which we know nothing but what we wish it to be and believe all that we wish. In youth and boyhood the world we live in is the world of desire and of fancy. It is experience that brings us down to the world of reality. What is it that in youth sheds a dewy light around the evening star that makes the daisy look so bright, that perfumes the hyacinth, that embalms the first kiss of love? It is the delight of novelty, and the seeing no end to the pleasure that we finally believe is still in store for us. The heart revels in the luxury of its own thoughts, and is unable to sustain the weight of hope and love that presses upon it. The effects of the passion of love alone might have dissipated Mr. Wordsworth's theory, if he means anything more by it, than an ingenious and poetical allegory. That, at least, is not a link in the chain let down from other worlds. The purple light of love is not a dim reflection of the smiles of celestial bliss. It does not appear till the middle of life, and then seems like another mourn risen on midday. In this respect, the soul comes into the world in utter nakedness. Love waits for the ripening of the youthful blood. The sense of pleasure precedes the love of pleasure. But with a sense of pleasure, as soon as it is felt, come thronging infinite desires and hopes of pleasure. And love is mature as soon as born. It withers and it dies almost as soon. This play presents a beautiful coup d'etat of the progress of human life. In thought it occupies years and embraces the circle of the affections from childhood to old age. Juliet has become a great girl, a young woman, since we first remember her a little thing in the idle prattle of the nurse. Lady Capulet was about her age when she became a mother. An old Capulet, somewhat impatiently, tells his younger visitors. I have seen the day that I have worn a visor and could tell a whispering tale in a fair lady's ear, such as would please. Tis gone, tis gone, tis gone. Thus one period of life makes way for the following, and one generation pushes another off the stage. One of the most striking passages to show the intense feeling of youth in this play is Capulet's invitation to Paris to visit his entertainment. At my poor house look to behold this night earth treading stars that make dark heaven light, such comfort as do lusty young men feel when well appareled April on the heel of limping winter treads, even such delight among fresh female buds shall you this night inherit at my house. The feelings of youth and of the spring are here blended together like the breath of opening flowers. Images of vernal beauty appear to have floated before the author's mind, and writing this poem in profusion. Here is another of exquisite beauty brought in more by accident than by necessity. Montague declares of his son, smith with a hopeless passion, which he will not reveal. But he, his own affections counselor, is to himself so secret and so close, so far from sounding and discovery, as is the bud-bit with an envious worm, ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the ere, or dedicate his beauty to the sun. This casual description is as full of passionate beauty as when Romeo dwells in frantic fondness on the white wonder of his Juliet's hand. The reader may, if he pleases, contrast the exquisite pastoral simplicity of the above lines with a gorgeous description of Juliet when Romeo first sees her at her father's house, surrounded by company in artificial splendor. What, ladies, that which doth enrich the hand of yonder night? Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night, like a rich jewel in an ethiop's ear. It would be hard to say which of the two garden scenes the finest, that where he first converses with his love, or takes leave of her the morning after their marriage. Both are like a heaven upon earth. The blissful bowers of paradise let down upon this lower world. We will give only one passage of these well-known scenes to show the perfect refinement and delicacy of Shakespeare's conception of the female character. It is wonderful how Collins, who is a critic and a poet of great sensibility, should have encouraged the common error on the subject by saying, But stronger Shakespeare felt for man alone. The passage, we mean, is Juliet's apology for her maiden boldness. Though most the mask of night is on my face, else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek, for that which thou has turned me speak tonight. Fain would I dwell on form. Fain feigned and nigh would I have spoke, but farewell compliment. Just thou love me. I know thou wilt say I, and I will take the other word. Yet, if thou swarest, thou misproof false, that lover's perjuries, they say jove lapse. O gentle Romeo, if thou dislove, pronounce it faithfully, or if thou think I am too quickly one, I'll frown and be perverse and say thee nay, so thou wilt woo, but else not for the world. In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond, and therefore thou mayst think my havery light. But trust me, gentlemen, I'll prove more true than those that have more cunning to be strange. I should have been more strange, I must confess, but that thou overhurst, though I was where, my true love's passion, therefore pardon me, and not impute this yielding to light love, which the dark night has so discovered. In this and all the rest her heart, fluttering between pleasure, hope, and fear, seems to have dictated to her tongue, and calls true love spoken simple modesty. Of the same sort, what bolder and virgin innocence is her soliloquy after her marriage with Romeo. Gallop at pace, ye fiery-footed steeds, towards Phoebus' mansion. Such a wagoner as Phaeton would whip you to the west and bring in cloudy night immediately. Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night, that Runaway's eyes may wink, and Romeo leap to these arms untalked of and unseen. Lovers can see to do their amorous rites by their own beauties, or if love be blind, it best agrees with night. Come, civil night, thou sober, suited matron, all in black, and learn me how to lose a winning match, played for a pair of stainless maidenhoods. Hood my unmanned blood baiting in my cheeks, with thy black mantle, till strange love groan bold, thanks true love acted, simple modesty. Come, night, come, Romeo, come, thou day and night, for thou wilt lie upon the wings of night, wider than new snow on a raven's back. Come, gentle night, come, loving black-browed night, give me my Romeo. And when he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine, that all the world shall be in love with night, and pay no worship to the garish sun. Oh, I have bought the mansion of a love but not possessed it, and though I am soul not yet enjoyed, so tedious is this day, as is the night before some festival to an impatient child that hath new robes, and may not wear them. We there rather insert this passage here, in as much as we have no doubt it has been expunged from the family Shakespeare. Such critics do not perceive that the feelings of the heart sanctify without disguising the impulses of nature. Without refinement themselves, they confound modesty with hypocrisy, not so the German critic Schlegel. Speaking of Romeo and Juliet, he says, It was reserved for Shakespeare to unite purity of heart in the glow of imagination, sweetness and dignity of manners, and passionate violence in one ideal picture. The character is indeed one of perfect truth and sweetness. It is nothing forward, nothing coy, nothing affected, or coquettish about it. It is a pure effusion of nature. It is as frank as it is modest, for it has no thought that it wishes to conceal. It reposes unconscious innocence on the strength of its affections. Its delicacy does not consist in coldness and reserve, but in combining warmth of imagination and tenderness of heart with the most voluptuous sensibility. Love is a gentle flame that rarefies and expands her whole being. What an idea of trembling haste and arry grace, born upon the thoughts of love, does the friar's exclamation give of her, as she approaches his cell to be married. Here comes the lady, oh, so light a foot, while Nair wear out the everlasting flint. A lover may bestride the gossamer that idols in the wanton summer air, and yet not fall, so light is vanity. The tragic part of this character is of a peace with arrest. It is the heroic founded on tenderness and delicacy. Of this kind are her resolution to follow the friar's advice, and the conflict in her bosom between apprehension and love when she comes to take the sleeping poison. Shakespeare is blamed for the mixture of low characters. If this is a deformity, it is the source of a thousand beauties. One instance is the contrast between the guileless simplicity of Juliet's attachment to her first love, and the convenient policy of the nurse in advising her to marry Paris, which excites such indignation in her mistress. Ancient damnation, oh, most wicked fiend, etc. Romeo is hamlet in love. There is the same rich exuberance of passion and sentiment and the one that there is of thought and sentiment in the other. Both are absent and self-involved. Both live out of themselves in a world of imagination. Hamlet is abstracted from everything. Romeo is abstracted from everything but his love, and lost in it. His frail thoughts dally with faint surmise, and are fashioned out of the suggestion of hope, the flatteries of sleep. He is himself only in his Juliet. She is his only reality, his heart's true home, and idle. The rest of the world is to him a passing dream. How finely is this character portrayed where he recollects himself on seeing Paris slain at the tomb of Juliet? What said my man, when my batast soul did not attend him as we rode? I think he told me Paris should have married Juliet. And again, just before he hears the sudden tidings of her death. If I may trust the flattery of sleep, my dreams per sage some joyful news at hand. My bosom's lord sits lightly on his throne, and all this day an unaccustomed spirit lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts. I dreamt my lady Cayman found me dead, strange dream that gives a dead man leave to think, and breathed such life with kisses on my lips, that I revived, and was an emperor. Ah, me, how sweet is love itself possessed, when but love's shadows are so rich in joy! Romeo's passion for Juliet is not to first love. It succeeds and drives out his passion for another mistress, Rosalyn, as his son hides his stars. This is perhaps an artifice, not absolute necessary, to give us a higher opinion of the lady, while the first absolute surrender of her heart to him enhances the richness of the prize. The commencement, progress, and ending of his second passion, however complete in themselves, not injured, if they are not bettered by the first. The outline of the play is taken from an Italian novel, but the dramatic arrangement of the different scenes between the lovers, the more than dramatic interest and the progress of the story, the development of the characters with time and circumstances, just according to the degree and kind of interest excited, are not inferior to the expression of passion and nature. It has been ingenuously remarked among other proofs of skill in the contrivance of the fable that the improbability of the main incident in the piece, the administering of the sleeping potion, is softened and obviated from the beginning by the introduction of the friar on his first appearance calling symbols and discounting on their virtues. Of the passionate scenes in this tragedy, that between the friar and Romeo, when he is told of his sentence of banishment, that between Juliet and the nurse, when she hears of it, and of the death of her cousin Tybalt, which bear no proportion to her mind when passion, after the first shock of surprise, throws its weight into the scale of her affections, and the last scene at the tomb are among the most natural and overpowering. In all of these it is not merely the force of any one passion that is given, but the slightest and most unlooked for transitions from one to another, the mingling currents of every different feeling rising up and prevailing in turn swayed by the mastermind of the poet as the waves undulate beneath the gliding storm. Thus when Juliet has by her complaints encouraged the nurse to say, shame come to Romeo. She instantly repels the wish which she has herself occasioned by answer. Blistered be thy tongue for such a wish, he was not born to shame. Upon his brow shame is a shame to sit, for it is a throne whereon her may be crowned sole monarch of the universe What a beast was I to chide him so. Nurse Will you speak well of him that killed your cousin? Juliet Shall he speak ill of him that is my husband? My poor lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name when I thy three hours wife have mangled it? And then follows on the neck of her remorse and returning fondness, that wish treading almost on the brink of impiety, but still held back by the strength of her devotion to her lord, that father, mother, nay, or both were dead, rather than Romeo banished. If she requires any other excuse, it is in the manner in which Romeo echoes her frantic grief and disappointment in the next scene at being banished from her. Perhaps one of the finest pieces of acting that ever was witnessed on the stage is Mr. Keane's manner of doing the scene and his repetition of the word banished. He treads close indeed upon the genius of his author. A passage which the celebrated actor and able commentators on Shakespeare, actors are the best commentators on the poets, did not give with equal truth or force a feeling was the one which Romeo makes at the tomb of Juliet before he drinks the poison. Let me peruse this face. Mercutius Kinsman, noble Count Paris. What said my man when my batass soul did not attend him as we wrote? I think he told me Paris should have married Juliet. Said he not so? Or did I dream it so? Or am I mad hearing him talk of Juliet to think it was so? Oh, give me thy hand, one writ with me in sour misfortune's book. I'll bury thee in a triumphant grave, for here lies Juliet. Oh, my love, my wife, death that has sucked the honey of thy breath, hath had no power yet upon thy beauty. Thou art not conquered, beauty's ensign yet is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, and death's pale fling is not advanced there. Tippled, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet? Oh, what more favour can I do thee than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain to sunter his that was thine enemy? Forgive me, cousin. Ah, dear Juliet, why art thou so yet fair? I will believe that unsubstantial death is amorous, and that the lean, abhorred monster keeps the year in dark to be his paramour. For fear of that, I will stay still with thee, and never from this palace of dim night depart again. Here, here will I remain with worms that are thy chambermaids. Oh, here will I set up my everlasting rest, and shake the yoke of inauspicious stars from this world-waryed flesh. Eyes, look your last. Arms, take your last embrace and lips. Oh, youth adores of breath, seal with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain to engrossing death. Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavory guide, Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on the dashing rocks my sea-sick wary bark. Here's to my love, drinks. True apothecary, thy drugs are quick, thus with it kiss I die. The lions in this beach, describing the loveliness of Juliet, who is supposed to be dead, have been compared to those in which it is said of Cleopatra after her death, that she looked, as she would take another Antony and her strong toil of grace, and a question has been started, which is the finest, that we do not pretend to decide. We can more easily decide between Shakespeare and any other author than between him and himself. Shall we quote any more passages to show his genius or the beauty of Romeo and Juliet? At that rate we might quote the whole. The late Mr. Sheridan, on being shown a volume of the beauties of Shakespeare, very properly asked, but where are the other eleven? The character of Mercutio in this play is one of the most mercurial and spirited of the productions of Shakespeare's comic muse. End of Romeo and Juliet