 CHAPTER IV. OF CHARACTERS OF SHAKESPERE'S PLAYS by William Haslett Julius Caesar Julius Caesar was one of three principal plays by different authors, pitched upon by the celebrated Earl Halifax, to be brought out in a splendid manner by subscription in the year 1707. The other two were the king and no king of Fletcher and Dryden's maiden queen. There perhaps might be political reasons for this selection, as far as regards our author. Otherwise, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar is not equal as a whole to either of his other plays taken from the Roman history. It is inferior in interest to Corgillanus and both in interest and power to Antony and Cleopatra. It, however, abounds in admirable and affecting passages, as remarkable for the profound knowledge of character in which Shakespeare could scarcely fail. If there is any exception to this remark, it is in the hero of the piece himself. We do not much admire the representation here given of Julius Caesar, nor do we think it answers to the portrait given of him in his commentaries. He makes several vaporing and rather pedantic speeches and does nothing. Indeed, he has nothing to do. So far, the fault of the character might be the fault of the plot. The spirit with which the poet has entered it once into the manners of the common people and the jealousies and heart-burnings of the different factions is shown in the first scene when Flavius and Marullus' tribunes of the people and some citizens of Rome appear upon the stage. Flavius. Thou art a cobbler, art thou? Cobbler. Truly, sir, all that I live by is the all. I meddle with no tradesmen's matters, nor woman's matters, but with all. I am indeed, sir, a surgeon to old shoes. When they are in great danger, I recover them. Flavius. But wherefore art not in thy shop today? Why dost thou lead these men about the streets? Cobbler. Truly, sir, to wear out their shoes, to get myself into more work. But indeed, sir, we make holiday to see Caesar and rejoice in his triumph. To this specimen of quaint low humor immediately follows that unexpected and animated burst of indignant eloquence put into the mouth of one of the angry tribunes. Marullus. Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home? What tributaries follow him to Rome? To grace in captive bonds his chariot-wheels? O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome! Do you not, Pompey? Many a time and off have you climbed up to walls and battlements, to towers and windows, yea, to chimney tops, your infants in your arms, and there have sat the lived long day with patient expectation, to see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome. And when you saw his chariot but appear, have you not made a universal shout that Tiber trembled underneath his banks to hear the replication of your sounds made in his concave shores? And do you now put on your best attire? And do you now cull out and holiday? And do you not strew flowers in his way that comes in triumph over Pompey's blood? Be gone! Run to your houses, fall upon your knees, pray to the gods to intermit the plague that needs must light on this ingratitude. The well-known dialogue between Brutus and Cassius, in which the latter breaks the design of the conspiracy to the former, and partly gains him over to it, is a noble piece of high-minded declamation. Cassius is insisting on the pretended ephemisy of Caesar's character and his description of their swimming across the Tiber together, once upon a raw and gusty day, among the finest strokes in it. Perhaps the whole is not equal to the short scene which follows when Caesar enters with his train. Brutus. The games are done and Caesar is returning. Cassius. As they pass by, pluck Casca by the sleeve, and he will, after his sour fashion, tell you what has proceeded worthy note to-day. Brutus. I will do so, but look, you Cassius, to angry spot doth glow on Caesar's brow, and all the rest look like a chidden train. Califarina's cheek is pale and Cicero looks with such ferret and such fiery eyes as we have seen him in the capital, being crossed in conference by some senators. Cassius. Casca will tell us what the matter is. Caesar. Antonius. Anthony. Caesar. Caesar. Let me have men about me that are fat, sleek-headed men, and such as sleepin' knights. Yon, Cassius, has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous. Anthony. Fear him not, Caesar. He's not dangerous. He is a noble Roman, and well-given. Caesar. Would he were fatter, but I fear him not. Yet if my name were liable to fear, I do not know the man I should avoid. So soon as that spare Cassius, he reads much, he's a great observer, and he looks quite through the deeds of men. He loves no plays as thou dost, Anthony. He hears no music, seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort as if he mocked himself and scorned his spirit, that could be moved to smile at anything. Such men as he be never at heart's ease, whilst they behold a greater than themselves. And therefore are they very dangerous. I rather tell thee what is to be feared than what I fear, for always I am Caesar. Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf, and tell me truly what you think of him. We know hardly any passage more expressive of the genius of Shakespeare than this. It is as if he had been actually present, had known the different characters in what they thought of one another, and had taken down what he heard and saw, their looks, words and gestures, just as they happened. The character of Mark Anthony is further speculated upon where the conspirators deliberate whether he shall fall with Caesar. Brutus is against it. And for Mark Anthony, think not of him, for he can do no more than Caesar's arm when Caesar's head is off. But do I fear him, for the ingrafted love he bears to Caesar? Brutus, alas, good Cassius, do not think of him. If he loves Caesar, all that he can do is to himself take thought and die for Caesar. And that where much he should, for he is given to sports, to wildness, and much company. Trebonius. There is no fear in him, let him not die, for he will live, and laugh at this hereafter. They were on the wrong, and Cassius was right. The honest manliness of Brutus is, however, sufficient to find out the unfitness of Cicero to be included in their enterprise, from his affected egotism and literary vanity. O, name him not, let us not break with him, for he will never follow anything that other men begin. His skepticism as to prodigies and his moralizing on the weather. This disturbed sky is not to walk in, or in the same spirit of refined imbecility. Shakespeare has in this plane elsewhere shown the same penetration into political character and the springs of public events as into those of everyday life. For instance, the whole design to liberate their country fails from the generous temper and overweening confidence of Brutus in the goodness of their cause and the assistance of others. Thus it has always been. Those who meanwhile themselves think well of others and fall prey to their security, that humanity and sincerity which dispose men to resist injustice and tyranny render them unfit to cope with the cunning and power of those who are opposed to them. The friends of liberty trust to the professions of others because they are themselves sincere and endeavour to secure the public good with the least possible hurt to its enemies, who have no regard to anything but their own unprincipled ends and stick it nothing to accomplish them. Cassius was better cut out for a conspirator. His heart prompted his head. His habitual jealousy made him fear the worst that might happen, and his irritability of temper added to his inveteracy of purpose and sharpened his patriotism. The mixed nature of his motives made him fitter to contend with bad men. The vices are never so well employed as in combating one another. Tyranny and servility are to be dealt with after their own fashion. Otherwise they will triumph over those who spare them and finally pronounce their funeral panagiaric, as Antony did that of Brutus. All the conspirators save only he. To that they did an envy of great Caesar. He only in a general honest thought and common good to all made one of them. The quarrel between Brutus and Cassius is managed in a masterly way, the dramatic fluctuation of passion. The calmness of Brutus, the heat of Cassius, are admirably described in the exclamation of Cassius on hearing of the death of Portia, which he does not learn till after the reconciliation. How escaped I killing when I crossed you so gives double force to all that has gone before. The scene between Brutus and Portia, where she endeavors to extort the secret to the conspiracy from him, is conceived in the most heroic spirit and the burst of tenderness in Brutus. You are my true and honorable wife. Is it dear to me as are the ruddy drops that visit my sad heart? Is justified by her whole behavior? Portia's breathless impatience to learn the event of the conspiracy in the dialogue with Lucius is full of passion. The interest which Portia takes in Brutus and that which Calphernia takes in the fate of Caesar are discriminated with the nicest precision. Mark Antony's speech over the dead body of Caesar has been justly admired for the mixture of pathos and artifice in it. That of Brutus certainly is not so good. The entrance of the conspirators to the house of Brutus at midnight is rendered very impressive. In the midst of this scene we meet with one of those careless and natural digressions which occur so frequently and beautifully in Shakespeare. After Cassius has introduced his friends one by one Brutus says, they are all welcome. What watchful cares do interpose of themselves betwixt your eyes and night? Cassius, shall I entreat a word? They whisper. Decius, here lies the east. Doth not the day break here? Casca. No. Sina. Oh, pardon, sir, doth, and yon grey lines that fret the clouds are messengers of day. Casca. You shall confess that you are both deceived. Here, as I point my sword, this sun arises, which is a great way growing on the south, weighing the youthful season of the year. Some two months hence, up higher toward the north, he first presents his fire and the high east stands as the capital, directly here. We cannot help thinking this graceful familiarity better than all the formality in the world. The truth of history in Julius Caesar is very ably worked up with dramatic effect. The councils of generals, the doubtful turns of battles are represented to the life. The death of Brutus is worthy of him and has the dignity of the Roman senator with the firmness of the stoic philosopher. But what is perhaps better than either is the little incident of his boy Lucius falling asleep over his instrument as he is playing to his master in his tent the night before the battle. Nature had played him the same forgetful trick once before on the night of the conspiracy. The humanity of Brutus is the same on both occasions. It is no matter. Enjoy the honey heavy dew of slumber. Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies which busy care draws in the brains of men. Therefore, thou sleepest so sound. End of Julius Caesar. Chapter 5 of Characters of Shakespeare's Plays by William Haslett. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Nemo and Eva Davis. Othello. It has been said that tragedy purifies the affections by terror and pity. That is, it substitutes imaginary sympathy for mere selfishness. It gives us a high and permanent interest beyond ourselves in humanity as such. It raises the great, the remote, and the possible to an equality with the real, the little and the near. It makes man a partaker with his kind. It subdues and softens the stubbornness of his will. It teaches him that there are and have been others like himself by showing him, as in a glass, what they have felt, thought and done. It opens the chambers of the human heart. It leaves nothing indifferent to us that can affect our common nature. It excites our sensibility by exhibiting the passions wound up to the utmost pitch by the power of imagination or the temptation of circumstances, and corrects their fatal excesses in ourselves by pointing to the greater extent of sufferings and of crimes to which they have led others. Tragedy creates a balance of the affections. It makes us thoughtful spectators in the list of life. It is the refiner of this species, a discipline of humanity. The habitual study of poetry and works of imagination is one chief part of a well-grounded education. A taste for liberal art is necessary to complete the character of a gentleman. Science alone is hard and mechanical. It exercises the understanding upon things out of ourselves while it leaves the affections unemployed or engrossed with our own immediate narrow interests. A fellow furnishes an illustration of these remarks. It excites our sympathy in an extraordinary degree. The moral it conveys has a closer application to the concerns of human life than any other of Shakespeare's plays. It comes directly home to the bosoms and business of men. The pathos in Lear is indeed more dreadful and overpowering, but it is less natural and less of everyday's occurrence. We have not the same degree of sympathy with the passions described in Macbeth. The interest in Hamlet is more remote and reflex. That of a fellow is at once equally profound and affecting. The picturesque contrast of character in this play are almost as remarkable as the depth of the passion. The poor Othello, the gentle Desdemona, the villain Iago, the good-natured Casio, the fool Rodrigo, present a range of variety of character as striking and palpable as that produced by the opposition of costume in a picture. Their distinguishing qualities stand out to the mind's eye, so that even when we are not thinking of their actions or sentiments, the idea of their persons is still as present to us as ever. These characters and the images they stamp upon the mind are the farthest asunder possible. The distance between them is immense, yet the compass of knowledge and invention, which the poet has shown in embodying these extreme creations of his genius, is only greater than the truth and felicity, with which he has identified each character with itself, or blended their different qualities together in the same story. What a contrast the character of Othello forms to that of Iago. At the same time, the force of conception, with which these two figures are opposed to each other, is rendered still more intense by the complete consistency with which the traits of each character are brought out in a state of the highest finishing. The making one black and the other white, the one unprincipled, the other unfortunate in the extreme, would have answered the common purpose of effect and satisfied the ambition of an ordinary painter of character. Shakespeare has labored the finer shades of difference in both with as much care and skill as if he had had to depend upon the execution alone for the success of his design. On the other hand, Desdemona and Emilia are not meant to be opposed with anything like strong contrast to each other. Both are, to outward appearance, characters of common life, not more distinguished than women usually are by difference of rank and situation. The difference of their thoughts and sentiments is, however, laid as open, their minds are separated from each other by signs as plain and as little to be mistaken as the complexions of their husbands. The movement of the passion in Othello is exceedingly different from that of Macbeth. In Macbeth there is a violent struggle between opposite feelings, between ambition and the stings of conscious, almost from first to last. In Othello the doubtful conflict between contrary passions, though dreadful, continues only for a short time, and the chief interest is excited by the alternate ascendancy of different passions, the entire and unforeseen change from the fondest love and the most unbounded confidence to the tortures of jealousy and the madness of hatred. The revenge of Othello after it has once taken thorough possession of his mind never quits it, but grows stronger and stronger at every moment of its delay. The nature of the more is noble, confiding, tender and generous, but his blood is of the most inflammable kind, and being once drowsed by a sense of his wrongs he is stopped by no considerations of remorse or pity till he is given a loose to all the dictates of his rage and his despair. It is in working his noble nature up to its extremity through rapid but gradual transitions and raising passion to its height from the smallest beginnings and in spite of all obstacles, and painting the expiring conflict between love and hatred, tenderness and resentment, jealousy and remorse, and unfolding the strength and the weaknesses of our nature, and uniting sublimity of thought with the anguish of the keenest woe, and putting in motion the various impulses that agitate this, our mortal being, and at last blending them in that noble tide of deep and sustained passion, impetuous but majestic, that flows on to the propontic and knows no ebb. The Shakespeare has shown the mastery of his genius and of his power over the human heart. The third act of Othello is his masterpiece, not of knowledge or passion separately, but of the two combined, of the knowledge of character with the expression of passion, of consummate art in the keeping up of appearances with the profound workings of nature, and the convulsive movements of uncontrollable agony of the power of inflicting torture and of suffering it. Not only is the tumult of passion heaved up from the very bottom of the soul, but every the slightest undulation of feeling is seen on the surface as it arises from the impulses of imagination or the different probabilities maliciously suggested by Iago. The progressive preparation for the catastrophe is wonderfully managed from the Moore's first gallant recital of the story of his love, of the spells and witchcraft he had used, from his unlooked-for and romantic success, the fond satisfaction with which he dotes on his own happiness, the unreserved tenderness of Desdemona, and her innocent importunities in favor of Casio, irritating the suspicions instilled into her husband's mind by the perfidity of Iago, and rankling there to poison till he loses all command of himself and his rage can only be appeased by blood. She is introduced just before Iago begins to put his scheme in practice, pleading for Casio with all the thoughtless gait of friendship and winning confidence in the love of Othello. What? Michael Casio? There came a wooing with you and so many a time, when I have spoke of you dispraisingly, hath tain your part, to have so much to do to bring him in. Why, this is not a boom. Tis as I should entreat you wear your gloves or feed on nourishing meats or keep you warm or sue to you to do a peculiar profit to your person. Nay, when I have a suit, when I mean to touch your love indeed, it shall be full of poise and fearful to be granted. Othello's confidence, at first only staggered by broken hints and insinuations, recovers itself at sight of Desdemona, and he exclaims, If she be false, oh, then heaven mocks itself. I'll not believe it. But presently after, I'm brooding over his suspicions by himself and yielding to his apprehensions of the worst, his smothered jealousy breaks out into open fury and he returns to demand satisfaction of Iago, like a wild bee stung with the envemmoned shaft of the hunters. Look where he comes, etc. In this state of exasperation and violence, after the first paroxysms of his grief and tenderness have had their vent in that passionate apostrophe, I felt not Cassio's kisses on her lips. Iago, by false aspersions and by presenting the most revolting images to his mind, easily turns the storm of passion from himself against Desdemona and works him up into a trembling agony of doubt and fear in which he abandons all his love and hopes and a breath. Now do I see to this true. Look here, Iago, all my fond love thus do I blow to heaven, Tis gone. Arise, black vengeance from the hollow hell. Yield up, O love, thy crown in hearted throne to tearness hate. Swell bosom with thy fraught for tis of aspic's tongues. From this time his raging thoughts never look back, near ebbed to humble love till's revenge is sure of its object. The painful regrets and involuntary recollections of past circumstances which cross his mind amidst the dim trances of passion, aggravating the sense of his wrongs, but not shaking his purpose. Once indeed, where Iago shows him Cassio with a handkerchief in his hand and making sport as he thinks of his misfortunes, the intolerable bitterness of his feelings, the extreme sense of shame, makes him fall to praising her accomplishments and relapse into a momentary fit of weakness. Yet, O, the pity of it, Iago, the pity of it. This returning fondness, however, only serves as it is managed by Iago to wet his revenge and set his heart more against her. In his conversations with Desdemona, the persuasion of her guilt and the immediate proofs of her duplicity seem to irritate his resentment and aversion to her. But, in the scene immediately preceding her death, the recollection of his love returns upon him in all its tenderness and force, and after her death he all at once forgets his wrongs in the sudden, in irreparable sense of his loss. My wife! My wife! What wife? I have no wife! O, insupportable! O, heavy hour! This happens before he is assured of her innocence, but afterwards his remorse is as dreadful as his revenge has been, and yields only to fixed and death-like despair. His farewell speech before he kills himself, in which he conveys his reason to the Senate for the murder of his wife, is equal to the first speech in which he gave them an account of his courtship of her, and his whole course of love. Such an ending was alone worthy of such a commencement. If anything could add to the force of our sympathy with Othello, or compassion for his fate, it would be the frankness and generosity of his nature, which so little deserved it. When Iago first begins to practice upon his unsuspecting friendship, he answers, Tis not to make me jealous, to say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company, is free of speech, sings, plays, and dances well, we're virtuous, these are most virtuous. Nor from my own weak merits will I draw the smallest fear or doubt of her revolt, for she had eyes and chose me. This character is beautifully, and with affecting simplicity, confirmed by what Desdemona herself says of him to Amelia, after she has lost the handkerchief, the first pledge of his love to her. Believe me, I had rather lost my purse full of crusados, and but my noble more is true of mind and made of no such baseness as jealous creatures are. It were enough to put him to ill-thinking. Amelia, is he not jealous? Desdemona. Who he? I think the son where he was born drew all such humours from him. In a short speech of Amelia's, there occurs one of those side intimations of the fluctuations of passion which we seldom meet with but in Shakespeare. After Othello has resolved upon the death of his wife and bids her dismiss her attendant for the night, she answers, I will, my lord. Amelia, how goes it now? He looks gently than he did. Shakespeare has here put into half a line what some authors would have spun out into ten set speeches. The character of Desdemona herself is inimitable both in itself and as a contrast with Othello's grandless jealousy and with a foul conspiracy of which she is the innocent victim. Her beauty and external graces are only indirectly glanced at. We see her visage in her mind. Her character everywhere predominates over her person, a maiden never bold of spirits so still and quiet that her motion blushed at itself. There is one fine compliment paid to her by Cassio who exclaims triumphantly when she comes a short cypress after the storm. Tempest themselves, high seas and howling winds as having sense of beauty do omit their mortal natures letting safe go by the divine Desdemona. In general, as is the case with most of Shakespeare's females, we lose sight of her personal charms in her attachment and devotedness to her husband. She is subdued even to the very quality of her lord and, to Othello's, honors and his valiant parts her soul and fortunes consecrates. The lady protests so much herself and she is as good as her word. The truth of conception with which timidity and boldness are united in the same character is marvelous. The extravagance of her resolutions, the pertinacity of her affections, may be said to arise out of the gentleness of her own nature. They imply an unreserved reliance on the purity of her own intentions, an entire surrender of her fears to her love, a knitting of herself, heart and soul, to the fate of another, baiting the commencement of her passion, which is a little fantastical and headstrong, though even that may perhaps be consistently accounted for from her inability to resist a rising inclination, her whole character consistent having no will of her own, no prompter but her obedience. Her romantic turn is only a consequence of the domestic and practical part of her disposition and, instead, of following Othello to the wars, she would gladly have remained at home a moth of peace if her husband could have stayed with her. Her resignation and angelic sweetness of temper do not desert her at the last. The scenes in which she laments and tries to account for Othello's estrangement from her are exquisitely beautiful. After he has struck her and called her names, she says, Alas, Iago, what shall I do to win my lord again? Good friend, go to him, for by this light of heaven I know not how I lost him. Here I kneel. If ere my will to trespass against his love, either in discourse or thought or actual deed, or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense delighted them on any other form, or that I do not, and ever did and ever will, though he do shake me off to beggarly divorcement, love him dearly, comfort forswear me. Unkindness may do much, and his unkindness may defeat my life, but never taint my love. Iago, I pray you be content, tis but his humour. The business of the state does him offence, does Demona. If to her no other. The scene which follows with Amelia in the Song of the Willow are equally beautiful, and show the author's extreme power of varying the expression of passion in all its moods and in all its circumstances. Amelia. Would you had never seen him? Does Demona? So would not I. My love does so approve him that even his stubbornness, his checks, his frowns have grace and favour in them. Not the unjust suspicions of Othello, not Iago's treachery, place does Demona in a more amiable or interesting light than the casual conversation half earnest, half jest between her and Amelia on the common behaviour of women to their husbands. This dialogue takes place just before the last fatal scene. If Othello had overheard it, it would have prevented the whole catastrophe, but then it would have spoiled the play. The character of Iago is one of the super-erogations of Shakespeare's genius. Some persons, more nice than wise, have thought this whole character unnatural because his villainy is, without a sufficient motive. Shakespeare, who was as good a philosopher as he was a poet, thought otherwise. He knew that the love of power, which is another name for the love of mischief is natural to man. He would know this as well or better than if it had been demonstrated to him by a logical diagram merely from seeing children paddle in the dirt or kill flies for a sport. Iago, in fact, belongs to a class of characters common to Shakespeare and at the same time peculiar to him, whose heads are as acute and active as their hearts are hard and callous. Iago is, to be sure, an extreme instance of the kind, that is to say, of diseased intellectual activity with an almost perfect indifference to moral good or evil, or rather, with a decided preference of the latter, because it falls more readily in with his favorite propensity, gives greater zest to his thoughts and scope to his actions. He is quite or nearly as indifferent to his own fate as to that of others. He runs all risk for trifling and doubtful advantage and is himself the dupe and victim of his ruling passion, an insatiable craving after action of the most difficult and dangerous kind. Our ancient is a philosopher who fancies that a lie the kills has more point in it than an alliteration or an antithesis, who thinks a fatal experiment on the peace of a family than watching the palpitations in the heart of a flea in a microscope who plots the ruin of his friends as an exercise for his ingenuity and stabs men in the dark to prevent ennui. His gaity, such as it is, arises from the success of his treachery, his ease from the torture he has inflicted on others. He is an amateur of tragedy in real life, and instead of employing his invention on imaginary characters or long forgotten incidents he takes the bolder and more desperate course of getting up his plot at home, casts the principal parts among his nearest friends and connections and rehearses it in downright earnest with steady nerves and unabated resolution. We will just give an illustration or two. One of his most characteristic speeches is that immediately after the marriage of Othello. Rodrigo, what a full fortune does the thick lips owe if he can carry her thus. Iago, call up her father, rouse him, make after him poison his delight, proclaim him in the streets and sense her kinsmen, though he in a fertile climate dwell plague him with flies, though that his joy be joy, yet throw such changes of vexation on it as it may lose some color. In the next passage his imagination runs riot in the mischief he is plotting and breaks out into the wildness and impetuosity of real enthusiasm. Rodrigo, here is her father's house, I'll call aloud. Iago, like Timur's accent and dire yell, as when by night to negligence the fires spied in populous cities. One of his most favorite topics on which he is rich indeed and in descanting on which his spleen serves him firm use is a disproportionate match between Desdemona and the Moor. This is a clue to the character of the Lady which he is by no means ready to part with. It is brought forward in the first scene and he recurs to it when in answer to his insinuations against Desdemona Rodrigo says, I cannot believe that in her she is full of most blessed conditions. Iago Blessed fig zen the wine she drinks is made of grapes if she had been blessed she would never have married the Moor. And again with still more spirit effect afterwards when he turns this very suggestion arising in Othello's own breast to her prejudice. Othello and yet how nature airing from itself. Iago, there is the point as to be bold with you not to effect many proposed matches of her own climb, complexion, and degree, etc. This is probing to the quick. Iago here turns the character of poor Desdemona as it were inside out. It is certain that nothing but the genius of Shakespeare could have preserved the entire interest and delicacy of the part and have even drawn an additional elegance and dignity from the peculiar circumstances in which she is placed. The habitual assentuousness of Iago's conversation to be traced to the pleasure he takes in gross or lascivious images but to his desire of finding out the worst side of everything and approving himself in over match for appearances. He has none of the milk of human kindness in his composition. His imagination rejects everything that is not a strong infusion of the most unpalatable ingredients. His mind just only poisons. Virtue or goodness or whatever has the least relish of salvation in it is, to his depraved apatite, sickly and insipid. And he even resents the good opinion entertained of his own integrity, as if it were in a front cast on the masculine sense and spirit of his character. Thus at the meeting between Othello and Desdemona he exclaims Oh, you are well-tuned now but I'll set down the pegs that make this music as honest as I am. His character, Bonomi not sitting at all easily upon him. In the scenes where he tries to work Othello to his purpose he is proportionately guarded insidious, dark and deliberate. We believe nothing ever came up to the profound dissimulation and dexterous artifice of the well-known dialogue in the Third Act where he first enters upon the execution of his design. Iago My noble lord Othello What dost thou say, Iago? Iago Did Michael Cascio when you wooed my lady know of your love? Othello He did from first to last. Why dost thou ask? Iago But for a satisfaction of my thought no further harm. Othello Why have thou thought, Iago? Iago I did not think he had been acquainted with it. Othello Oh, yes, it went between us very off. Iago Indeed Othello I indeed. Do cernus thou ought of that? Is he not honest? Iago Honest, my lord? Othello Honest, I honest? Iago My lord, for ought I know. Othello What dost thou think? Iago Think, my lord? Othello Think, my lord? Alas, thou echoest me as if there was some monster in thy thought, too hideous to be shown. The stops and breaks, the deep workings of treachery under the mask of love and honesty, the anxious watchfulness, the cool earnestness, and, if we may so say, the passion of hypocrisy marked in every line received their last finishing conceivable burst of pretended indignation at Othello's doubts of his sincerity. O grace, O heaven, forgive me. Are you a man? Have you a soul or sense? God be with you. Take mine office, O wretched fool that love us to make thine honesty of vice. O monstrous world, take note, take note, O world, to be direct and honest is not safe. I thank you for this profit, and from hence I'll love no friend since love breeds such offense. If Iago is detestable enough when he has business on his hands and all his engines at work, he is still worse when he has nothing to do, and we only see into the hollowness of his heart. His indifference when Othello falls into his swoon is perfectly diabolical. Iago How is it, General? Have you not hurt your head? Othello Does thou mock me? Iago I mock you not, by heaven, etc. The part, indeed, would hardly be tolerated, even as a foil to the virtue and generosity of the other actors in the play, but for its indefatigable industry and inexhaustible resources which divert the attention of the spectator as well as his own from the end he has in view to the means by which it must be accomplished. Edmund the Bastard and Leer is something of the same character placed in less prominent circumstances. Zanga is a vulgar character, sure of it. End of Othello Timon of Athens Timon of Athens always appeared to us to be written with as intense a feeling of his subject as any one play of Shakespeare. It is one of the few in which he seems to be an earnest throughout, never to trifle nor go out of his way. He does not relax in his efforts, nor lose sight of the unity of his design. It is the only play of our author in which spleen is the predominant feeling of the mind. It is as much a satire as a play and contains some of the finest pieces of invective possible to be conceived, both in the snarling, captious answers of the cynic Epimentus and in the impassioned and more terrible implications of Timon. The latter remind the classical reader of the force and swelling and petuosity of the moral declamations in juvenile while the former have all the keenness and caustic severity of the old stoic philosophers. The soul of Diogenes appears to have been seated on the lips of Epimentus. The churlish profession of misanthropy and the cynic is contrasted with the profound feeling of it in Timon and also with soldier-like and determined resentment of Alcibiades against his countrymen who have banished him though this forms only an incidental episode in the tragedy. The fable consists of a single event of the transition from the highest pomp and profusion of artificial refinement to the most abject state of savage life and the privation of all social intercourse. The change is as rapid as it is complete nor is the description of the rich and generous Timon, banqueting and gilded palaces, pampered by every luxury, prodigal of his hospitality, courted by crowds of flatterers, poets, painters, lords, ladies who follow his strides, his lobbies filled with tendons, reigns sacrificial whisperings in his ear and threw him during the free air more striking than that of the sudden falling off of his friends and fortune and his naked exposure in a wild forest, digging roots from the earth for his sustenance with a lofty spirit of self-denial and bitter scorn of the world which raised him higher in our esteem than the dazzling gloss of prosperity could do. He grudges himself the means of life and is only busy in preparing his grave. How forcibly is the difference between what he was and what he is described in Appomatus' taunting questions when he comes to reproach him with the change in his way of life. What, thinkest thou that the bleak air, my boisterous chamberlain, will put thy shul on warm? Will these moist trees that have outlived the eagle page thy heels and skip when thou pointest out, with a cold brook candied with ice, coddled thy mourning taste to cure thy overnight surfeit? Call the creatures naked natures live in all the spite of reekful heaven whose barren housing trunks to the conflicting elements exposed answer mere nature. Bid them flatter thee. The manners are everywhere preserved with distinct truth. The poet and painter are very skillfully played off against one another, both effecting great attention to the other and each taken up with his own vanity and the superiority of his own art. Shakespeare has put into the mouth of the former a very lively description of the genius of poetry and of his own in particular. A thing slipped idly from me. Our posee is as a gum which issues from whence it is nourished. The fire in the flint shows a knot till it be struck. Our gentle flame provokes itself and like the current flies each bound it chafes. The hollow friendship and shuffling evasions of the Athenian lords, their smooth professions and pitiful ingratitude are very satisfactorily exposed as well as the different disguises to which the meanness of self-love resorts in such cases to hide a want of generosity and good faith. The lurking selfishness of Appomatus does not pass undetected amidst the grossness of his sarcasms and his contempt for the pretensions of others. The citizens who accompany Alcibiades to the cave of Taimen are very characteristically sketched and the thieves who come to visit him are also true men in their way. An exception to this general picture of selfish depravity is found in the old and honest steward Flavius to whom Taimen pays a full tribute of tenderness. Shakespeare was unwilling to draw a picture all over ugly with hypocrisy. He owed this character to captured solicitations of his muse. His mind was well said by Ben Johnson to be the sphere of humanity. The moral sententiousness of this play equals that of Lord Bacon's treatise on the wisdom of the ancients and is indeed seasoned with greater variety. Every topic of contempt or indignation is here exhausted. But while the sordid licentiousness of Appomatus which turns everything to gall and bitterness shows only the natural virulence of his temper and antipathy to good or evil alike, Taimen does not utter an implication without betraying the extravagant workings of disappointed passion, of love altered to hate. Appomatus sees nothing good in any object and exaggerates whatever is disgusting. Taimen is tormented with a perpetual contrast between things and appearances, between the fresh tempting outside and the rottenness within and invokes mischiefs on the heads of mankind proportioned to the sense of his wrongs and of their treacheries. He impatiently cries out when he finds the gold. This yellow slave will knit and break religions, bless the accursed, make the whole leprosy adored, place thieves and give them title knee and approvation with senators on the bench. This is it that makes the warped widow wed again. She whom the hospital house would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices to the April day again. One of his most dreadful implications is that which occurs immediately on his leaving Athens. Let me look back upon thee, O thou wall, that girdlest in those wolves, dive in the earth and fence not Athens, matrons turn incontinent, obedience fail in children, slaves and fools pluck the grave wrinkled senate from the bench and minister in their steds. Degeneral filth's convert are the instant green virginity, do it in your parent's eyes, bankwraps hold fast rather than render back out with your knives and cut your trustor's throats, found servants steal, large-handed robbers your grave masters are and pill by law, paid to thy masters' bed thy mistresses are the brothel son of sixteen pluck the lion and crutch from thy old limping sire and with it beat his brains out fear and piety, religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth, domestic awe, nightrest and neighborhood instructions, manners, mysteries and trades, degrees observances, customs and laws decline to your confounding tonteries and let confusion live. Plagues incident to men, your potents and infectious fevers heap on Athens, ripe for stroke. The cold sciatica cripple our senators that their limbs may halt as lamely as their manners, lust and liberty creep in the minds and manners of our youth that gains the stream of virtue they may strive and drown themselves in riot itches, blanes, so all the Athenian bosoms and their croppy general leprosy breath infect breath that their society as their friendship may be merely poison. Timon is here just as ideal in his passion for ill as he had before been in his belief of good. Appomatus was satisfied with the mischief existing in the world and with his own ill nature one of the most decisive intimations of Timon's more bit jealousy of appearances is in his answer to Appomatus who asks him what things in the world can sound nearest compare with eye flatterers. Timon, women nearest, but men, men of the things themselves. Appomatus, that is said, loved few things better than to abhor himself. This is not the case with Timon who neither loves to abhor himself nor others. All his vehement misanthropy is forced uphill work. From the slippery turns of fortune, from the turmoil of passion and adversity he wishes to sink into the quiet of the grave. On that subject his thoughts are intent. On that he finds time and place to grow romantic. He digs his own grave by the seashore, contrives his funeral ceremonies amidst the pomp of desolation and builds his mausoleum of the elements. Come not to me again, but say to Athens, Timon hath made his everlasting mansion upon the beached verge of the salt flood, which once a day with his embossed froth the turbulent surge shall cover. Thither come and let my gravestone be your oracle. And again, Alcibiades, after reading his epitaph, says of him, these well expressed in thee thy latter spirits, though thou abhorst in us our human griefs, scorned our brain's flow, and those our droplets, which from niggered nature fall, yet rich conceit taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for eye on thy low grave. Thus making the winds his funeral dirge, his mourner the murmuring ocean and seeking in the everlasting solemnities of nature, oblivion of the transitory splendor of his lifetime. End of Timon of Athens. Chapter 7 Of Characters of Shakespeare's plays by William Haslick This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Nemo and Eva Davis. Coriolanus Shakespeare has in this play shown himself well versed in state affairs. Coriolanus is a store-house of political common places. Anyone who studies it may save himself the trouble of reading Burke's Reflections or Payne's Rights of Man or the debates in both houses of Parliament since the French Revolution or our own. The arguments for and against aristocracy or democracy on the privileges of the few and the claims of the many on liberty and slavery, power in the abuse of it, peace and war are here very ably handled with the spirit of a poet in the acuteness of a philosopher. Shakespeare himself seems to have had a leaning to the arbitrary side of the question perhaps from some feeling of contempt for his own origin and to have spared no occasion of reading the rabble. What he says of them is very true. What he says of their betters is also very true, though he dwells less upon it. The cause of the people is indeed but little calculated as a subject for poetry. It admits of rhetoric which goes into argument and explanation, but it presents no immediate or distinct images to the mind. No jutting frieze, no coin of vantage for poetry to make its pendant bed and procreate cradle in. The language of poetry naturally falls in with the language of power. The imagination is an exaggerating and exclusive faculty. It takes from one thing to add to another. It accumulates circumstances together to give the greatest possible effect to a favorite object. The understanding is a dividing and measuring faculty at judges of things not according to their immediate impression on the mind, but according to their relations to one another. The one is a monopolizing faculty which seeks the greatest quantity of present excitement by inequality and disproportion. The other is a distributive faculty which seeks the greatest quantity of ultimate good and proportion. The one is an aristocratical. The other a republican faculty. The principle of poetry is a very anti-leveling principle. It aims at effect. It exists by contrast. It admits of no medium. It is everything by excess. It rises above the ordinary standard of suffering and crimes. It presents a dazzling appearance. It shows its head turreted, crowned and crested. Its front is guilt and bloodstained. Before it, it carries noise and behind it tears. It has its alters and its victims, sacrifices, human sacrifices, kings, priest, nobles, arts, train bearers, tyrants and slaves, its executioners. Carnage is its daughter. Poetry is right royal. It puts the individual for the species, the one above the infinite, many might before right. A lion hunting a flock of sheep or a herd of wild asses is a more poetical object than they. And we even take part with the luredly beast, because our vanity of some other feeling makes us disposed to place ourselves in the situation of the strongest party. So we feel some concern when they meet together to compare their wants and grievances till Coriolanus comes in and with blows and big words drives this set of poor rats, this rascal scum to their homes and beggary before them. There is nothing heroic on a multitude of miserable rogues not wishing to be starved or complaining that they are like to be so. When a single man comes forward to take their cries and to make them submit to the last indignities from mere pride and self-will our admiration of his prowess is immediately converted into contempt for their pulsal anonymity. The insolence of power is stronger than the plea of necessity. The tame submission to exerpt authority or even the natural resistance to it has nothing to excite the assumption of a right to insult or oppress others that carries an opposing air of superiority with it. We would rather be the oppressor than the oppressed. The love of power in ourselves and the admiration of it in others are both natural to man. The one makes them a tyrant the other a slave. Wrong dressed out in pride, pomp and circumstance has more attraction than laziness complaints of the fickleness of the people yet the instant he cannot gratify his pride and obstinacy at their expense he turns his arms against his country. If his country was not worth defending why did he build his pride on its defense? He is a conqueror and a hero. He conquers other countries and he makes this plea for enslaving his own and when he is prevented from doing so he leagues with its enemies to destroy his country. He rates the people as if he were a god to punish and not a man of their infirmity. He scoffs at one of their tribunes for maintaining their rights and franchises. Mark you his absolute shall not marking his own absolute will to take everything from them, his impatience of the slightest opposition to his own pretensions being in proportion to their arrogance and absurdity. If the great and powerful had the beneficence and wisdom of gods then all this would have been well. If with a greater knowledge of what is good for the people they had as great a care for their interest as they have for themselves. If they were seated above the world sympathizing with the welfare but not feeling the passions of men receiving neither good nor hurt from them but bestowing their benefits as free gifts on them they might then rule over them like in other Providence. But this is not the case. Coriolanus is unwilling that the senate should show their cares for the people lest their cares should be construed into fears to the subversion of all due authority and he is no sooner disappointed in his schemes to deprive the people not only of the cares of the state but of all power to address themselves. Then Volumnia is made madly to exclaim Now the red pestilence strike all trades in Rome and occupations perish. This is but natural. It is but natural for a mother to have more regard for her son than for a whole city. But then the city should be left to take itself. The care of the state cannot we here see be safely entrusted to maternal affection or to the domestic charities of high life. The great have private feelings of their own to which the interest of humanity and justice must curtsy. Their interests are so far from being the same as those of the community that they aren't direct and necessary opposition to them. Their power is at the expense of our weakness. Their riches of our poverty. Their pride of our degradation. Their splendor of our wretchedness. Their tyranny of our servitude. If they had the superior knowledge subscribed to them which they have not it would only render them so much more formidable and from gods would convert them The whole dramatic moral of Coriolanus is that those who have little shall have less and those who have much shall take all that others have left. The people are poor therefore they ought to be starved. They are slaves therefore they ought to be beaten. They work hard therefore they ought to be treated like beasts of burden. They are ignorant therefore they ought not to be allowed to feel that they want or clothing or rest that they are enslaved, oppressed and miserable. This is the logic of the imagination and the passions which seek to aggrandize what excites admiration and to heap contempt on misery to raise power into tyranny and to make tyranny absolute to thrust down that which is low still lower and to make wretches desperate to exalt strates into kings kings into gods to degrade subjects to the rank of slaves and slaves to the condition of brutes. The history of mankind is a romance a mask a tragedy constructed upon the principles of poetical justice it is a noble or royal hunt in which what is sport to the few is death to the many and in which the spectators hallow and encourage the strong to set upon the weak and cry havoc in the chase though they do not share in the spoil we may depend upon it that what men delight to read in books they will put in practice in reality. One of the most natural traits in this play is the difference of the interest taken in the success of Coriolanus by his wife and mother the one is only anxious for his honor the other is fearful for his life Volumnia He thinks I hear their hair your husband's drum I see him pluck a fidious down by the hair he thinks I see him stamp thus and call thus come on you cowards you got him fear though you were born in Rome his bloody brow with his mailed hand then wiping forth he goes like to a harvest man that's tasked to mow or all fire Virgilla his bloody brow oh Jupiter no blood Volumnia Away you fool it more becomes a man than guilt his trophy the breast of Hecuba when she did suckle Hector looked not lovelier than Hector's forehead when it spit forth blood at Grecian's swords contending When she hears the trumpets that proclaim her son's return she says in the true spirit of a Roman matron these are the ushers of Marcius before him he carries noise and behind him he leaves tears death that dark spirit in this nervy arm doth lie which being advanced declines and then men die Coriolanus himself is a complete character his love of reputation his contempt of popular opinion his pride and modesty are consequences of each other his pride consists in the inflexible sternus of his will his love of glory is a determined desire to bear down all opposition and to extort the admiration both of friends and foes his contempt for popular favor his unwillingness to hear his own praises spring from the same source he cannot contradict the praises that are bestowed upon him therefore he is impatient in hearing them he would enforce the good opinion of others by his actions but does not want their acknowledgments and words pray now no more my mother who has a charter to extol her blood when she does praise me grieves me his magnanimity is of the same kind he admires an enemy of himself he places himself on the hearth of Aphidius with the same confidence that he would have met him in the field and feels that by putting himself in his power he takes from him all temptation for using it against him in the title page of Coriolanus it is said at the bottom of the Dermatis personae the whole history exactly followed in many of the principal speeches copied from the life of Coriolanus and Plutarch it will be interesting to our readers to see how far this is the case two of the principal scenes those between Coriolanus and Aphidius and between Coriolanus and his mother are thus given in Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch dedicated to Queen Elizabeth 1579 the first is as follows it was even twilight when he entered the city of Antium and many people met him in the streets but no man knew him so he went directly to Toulouse of Aphidius's house and when he came thither he got him up straight to the chimney hearth and sat him down and spake not a word to any man his face all muffled over they of the house spying him wondered what he should be yet they durst not bit him rise still favorily muffled and disguised as he was yet there appeared a certain majesty in his countenance and in his silence whereupon they went to Toulouse who is at supper to tell him of the strange disguising of this man Toulouse rose presently from the board and coming towards him asked him what he was and wherefore he came then Marshus unmuffled himself and paused a while making no answer he said unto himself if thou knowest me not yet Toulouse and sing me dost not perhaps believe me to be the man I am indeed I must of necessity discover myself to be that I am I am Caius Marshus who hath done to thyself particularly and to all the Volsicis generally great hurt to mischief for my surname of Coriolanus that I bear for I never had other benefits nor recompense of the true and painful service I have done and the extreme dangers I have been in but this only surname a good memory and witness of the malice and displeasure thou shouldest bear me indeed the name only remaineth with me for the rest the envy and cruelty of the people of Rome have taken from me the sufferance of the dastardly nobility and magistrates who have forsaken me and let me banished by the people this extremity hath now driven me to come as a poor suitor to take thy chimney hearth not of any hope I have to save my life thereby for if I had feared death I would not have come hither to put myself in hazard but pricked forward with desire to be revenge of them that thus have banished me which now I do begin in putting my person into the hands of their enemies wherefore, if thou hast any heart to be wrecked of the injuries thy enemies have done thee speed thee now and let my misery serve thy turn and so use it as my services may be a benefit to the Vulsis promising thee that I will fight with better good will for all you than I did when I was against you knowing that they fight more valiantly who know the force of the enemy than such as have never proved it and if it be so that thou dare not and have thou art weary to prove fortune any more then am I also weary to live any longer and it were no wisdom in thee to save the life of him who hath been here to for thy mortal enemy and whose service now can nothing help nor pleasure thee Tulus, hearing what he said was a marvelous glad man and taking him by the hand he said unto him stand up, O Marshus and be of good cheer for in proffering thyself unto us thou dost us great honor and by this means thou mayest hope also of greater things at all the Vulsis hands so he feasted him for that time and entertained him in the honorableest manner he could talking with him of no other matter at that present but within a few days after they fell to consultation together in what sort they should begin their wars the meeting between Coriolanus and his mother is also nearly the same as in the play now was Marshus set then in the chair of state with all the honors of a general and when he had spied the women coming a far off he marveled what the matter meant but afterwards knowing his wife which came foremost he determined at the first to persist in his obstinate and inflexible ranker but overcome in the end with natural affection and being all together altered to see them his heart would not serve him to tarry their coming to his chair but coming down in haste he went to meet them and first he kissed his mother now and his wife and little children and nature so wrought with him that the tears fell from his eyes and he could not keep himself from making much of them but yielded to the affection of his blood as if he had been violently carried with a fury of a most swift running stream after he had thus lovingly received them and perceiving that his mother would begin to speak to him he called the chiefness of the council of the Vulsis to hear what she would say then she spake in this sort if we held our peace my son and determined not to speak the state of our poor bodies and present sight of our raiment would easily betray to thee what life we have led in home since thy exile and abode abroad but think now with thyself how much more unfortunate than all the women living they are come hither considering that the sight which should be most pleasant to all others to behold spiteful fortune had made most fearful to us making myself to see my son and my daughter hear her husband besieging the walls of his native country so is that which is the only comfort to all others in their adversity and misery to pray unto the gods and to call them for aid is the only thing to bless us into the most deep perplexity for we cannot have to last together pray both for victory to our country and for the safety of thy life also but a world of grievous curses yea more than any mortal enemy can heap upon us are forcibly wrapped up in our prayers for the bitter sop of most hard choice is offered thy wife and children to forego one of the two to choose the person of thy self or the nurse of their native country for myself my son I am determined not to tarry till fortune in my lifetime do make an end to this war for if I cannot persuade the rather to do good unto both parties then to overthrow and destroy the one preferring love and nature before the malice and calamity of wars thou shalt see my son and trust unto it no sooner march forward to assault thy country but thy foot shall tread upon thy mother's womb that brought thee first into this world and I may not defer to see the day either that my son be led prisoner in triumph by his natural countrymen or that he himself do triumph of them and of his natural country for if it were so that my request tended to save thy country in destroying the vulties I must confess thou wits hardly and doubtfully resolve on that for as to destroy thy natural country it is altogether unmeet and unlawful so were not just and less honorable to betray those that put their trust in thee but my only demand consisteth to make a jail delivery of all evils which delivereth equal benefit and safety both to the one and the other but most honorable for the vulties for it shall appear that having victor in their hands they have a special favor granted of singular graces peace and amity albeit themselves have no less part of both than we of which good if so it came to pass thyself is the only author and so hast thou the only honor but if it fail and fall out contrary thyself alone deservedly shall to carry the shameful approach and burden of either party so though the end of war be uncertain yet this notwithstanding is most certain that if it be thy chance to conquer this benefit shall thou reap of thy goodly conquest to be chronicled the plague and destroyer of thy country and if fortune overthrow thee then the world will say that through desire to revenge thy private injuries thou hast for ever undone thy good friends who did most lovingly and courteously receive thee marshes gave good ear unto his mother's words without interrupting her speech at all and after she had said what she would he held his piece a pretty while and answered not a word hereupon she began again to speak unto him and said my son why dost thou not answer me dost thou think it good altogether to give place to thy collar and desire of revenge and thinkest thou if not honestly for thee to grant thy mother's request and so weighty a cause dost thou take it honourable for a nobleman to remember the wrongs and injuries done him and dost not in like case think at an honest nobleman's part to be thankful for the goodness the parents do show to their children acknowledging the duty and reverence they ought to bear unto them no man living is more bound to show himself thankful in all parts and respects than thyself who so universally showest all in gratitude moreover my son thou hast sorely taken of thy country exacting grievous payments upon them in revenge of the injuries offered thee besides thou hast not hitherto showed thy poor mother any courtesy and therefore it is not only honest but due unto me that without compulsion I should obtain my so just and reasonable request of thee but since by reason I cannot persuade thee to it to what purpose do I defer my last hope and with these words herself his wife and children fell down upon their knees before him marshes seeing that could refrain no longer who went straight and lifted her up saying out oh mother what have you done to me and holding her hard by the right hand oh mother said he you have won a happy victory for your country but mortal and unhappy for your son for I see myself vanquished by you alone these words being spoken openly he spake a little apart with his mother and wife and then let them return again to request him and so remaining in the camp that night the next morning he dislodged and marched homeward onto the Volce's country again Shakespeare has in giving a dramatic form to this passage adhered very closely and properly to the text he did not think it necessary to improve upon the truth of nature several of the scenes in Julius Caesar particularly Portia's appeal to the confidence of her husband by showing him the wound she had given herself and the appearance of the ghost of Caesar to Brutus are in like manner taken from the history end of Coriolanus Chapter 8 of Characters of Shakespeare's Plays by William Haslett this LibriVox recording is in the public domain Troilus and Cressida this is one of the most loose and desultory of our author's plays it rambles on just as it happens but it overtakes, together with some in different manner a prodigious number of fine things in its way Troilus himself is no character, he is merely a common lover but Cressida and her uncle Pandarus are hit off with proverbial truth by the speeches given to the leaders of the Grecian host Nestor Eulissis Agamemnon Achilles Shakespeare seems to have known them as well as a spy sent by the Trojans into the enemy's camp to say nothing of there being very lofty examples of didactic eloquence the following is a very stately and spirited declamation Eulissis Troy yet upon her basis had been down and the great Hector's sword had lacked a master but for these instances the specialty of rule had been neglected the heavens themselves the planets and this center of degree, priority, and place and sister, course proportion, season form, office and custom in all line of order and therefore is the glorious planet's soul in noble eminence enthroned and spared amidst the other whose mentionable eye corrects the ill aspects of planets evil and posts like the commandment of a king sans check to good and bad but when the planets are fixture to disorder wonder what plagues and what portents what mutinies what raging of the sea, shaking of earth commotion in the winds frights, changes, horrors divert and crack, rend and erasinate the unity and married calm of states quite from their fixture oh when degree is shaken, which is the ladder to all high designs the enterprise is sick how could communities, degrees schools and brotherhoods and cities peaceful commerce from dividable shores the primogenitive and due of birth prerogative of age crowned sceptres, lores but by degree stand inauthentic place take but degree away, untune that string and hark what discord follows each thing meets in mere a pugnancy the bounded waters would lift their bosoms higher than the shores and make a sop of all this solid globe strength would be lord of imbecility and the rude son would strike as father dead force would be right or rather right and wrong between whose endless jar justice resides would lose their names and so would justice too then everything includes itself in power power into will will into appetite an appetite, an universal wolf so doubly seconded with will and power must make perforce an universal pray and last eat up himself great Agamemnon this chaos when degree is suffocate follows the choking and this neglection of degree it is that by a pace goes backward in a purpose it hath to climb the generals disdained by him one step below he by the next that next by him beneath so every step example by the first pace that is sick of his superior grows into an envious fever of pale and bloodless emulation and his this fever that keeps Troy on foot not her own sinews to end a tale of length Troy in our weakness lives not in her strength it cannot be said of Shakespeare as was said of someone that he was quote without aura flowing full he was full even to aura flowing he gave heap to measure running over this was his greatest fault he was only in danger of quote losing distinction in his thoughts to borrow his own expression astuth a battle when they charge on heaps the enemy flying there is another passage the speech of Ulysses to Achilles showing him the thankless nature of popularity which has a still greater depth of moral observation and richness of illustration than the former it is long but worth the quoting the sometimes giving an entire extract from the unacted plays of our author may with one class of readers have almost the use of restoring a lost passage and may serve to convince another class of critics that the post genius was not confined to the production of stage effect by preternatural means Ulysses a time half my lord a wallet at his back wherein he puts alms for oblivion a great size monster of ingratitudes these scraps are good deeds past which are devoured as fast as they are made forgot as soon as done perseverance dear my lord keeps honor bright to have done is to hang quite out of fashion like a rusty mail in monumental mockery take the instant way for honor travels in a straight so narrow where one but goes oppressed keep then the path for emulation have a thousand sons one by one pursue if you give way or head aside from the direct forthright like to an entered tide they all rush by and leave you most or like a gallant horse fallen in first rank or run and trampled on then what they do in present though less than yours and past must over top yours for time has like a fashionable host that slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand and with his arm outstretched as he fly grasps in the the welcome ever smiles and farewell goes our sign though let not virtue seek remuneration for the thing it was for beauty wit, high birth, vigor bone, dessert and service love, friendship, charity or subjects all to envious and culminating time one touch of nature makes the whole world kin that all with one consent is new born gods though they are made emolded of things past the present eye praises the present object then marvel not, thou great and complete man that all the Greeks began to worship Ajax since things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs the cry went out on thee and still it might and yet it may again if thou wits not entomb thyself alive encase thy reputation ent the throng of images in the above lines is prodigious and though they sometimes jostle against one another they everywhere raise and carry on the feeling which is metaphysically true and profound the debates between the Trojan chiefs on the restoring of Helen are full of knowledge of human motives and character Troilus enters well into the philosophy of war when he says an answer to something that falls from Hector why there you touch the life and design were not glory that we more affected than the performance of our heaving spleens I would not wish a drop of Trojan blood spent more in her defense but were the Hector she is a theme of honour and renown a spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds the character of Hector in the few slight indications which appear of it is made very amiable his death is sublime it shows in a striking light the mixture of barbarity and heroism of the age the threats of Achilles are fatal they carry their own means of execution with them come here about me you my mermidans mark what I say attend me where I will strike not a stroke but keep yourselves in breath and when I have the bloody Hector found impale him with your weapons round about follow me sirs and my proceeding I he then finds Hector and slays him as if he had been hunting down a wild beast there is something revolting as well as terrific in the ferocious coolness with which he singles out his prey nor does the splendour of the achievement reconcile us to the cruelty of the means the characters of Cressida and Pandaris are very amusing and instructive the disinterested willingness of Pandaris to serve his friend in an affair which lies next to his heart is immediately brought forward go thy way Troilus go thy way had I a sister were a grace or a daughter were a goddess he should take his choice admirable man Paris is dirt to him and I warned Helen to change would give money to boot this is the language he addresses to his niece nor is she much behind hand the plot her head is as light and fluttering as her heart it is the prettiest villain she fetches her breath so short as a new Tayan sparrow both characters are originals and quite different from what they are in Chaucer in Chaucer Cressida is represented as a grave sober considerate personage a widow he cannot tell her age nor whether she has children or no who has an alternate eye to her character her interest and her pleasure Shakespeare's Cressida is a giddy girl an unpracticed jilt who falls in love with Troilus as she afterwards deserts him from mere levity and thoughtlessness of temper she may be wooed and won to anything and from anything at a moment's warning the other knows very well what she would be at and sticks to it and is more governed by substantial reasons than by caprice or vanity panderous again in Chaucer's story is a friendly sort of go between tolerably busy a vicious and forward in bringing matters to bear but in Shakespeare he has quote a stamp exclusive and professional he wears the badge of his trade he is a regular knight of the game the difference of the manner in which the subject is treated arises perhaps less from intention than from the different genius of the two poets there is no double entendre in the characters of Chaucer they are either quite serious or quite comic in Shakespeare the ludicrous and the ironical are constantly blended with the stately and the impassioned we see Chaucer's characters as they saw themselves not as they appeared to others or might have appeared to the poet he is as deeply implicated in the affairs of his personages as they could be themselves he had to go a long journey with each of them and became a kind of necessary confidant there is little relief or light and shade in his pictures the conscious smile is not seen lurking under the brow of grief or impatience everything with him is intense and continuous a working out of what went before Shakespeare never committed himself to his characters he trifled, laughed or wept with them as he chose he has no prejudices for or against them and it seems a matter of perfect indifference whether he shall be honest or earnest according to him quote the web of our lives is of a mingled yarn good and ill together his genius was dramatic as Chaucer's was historical he saw both sides of a question the different views taken of it according to the different interests of the parties concerned and he was at once an actor and spectator in the scene if anything he is too various and flexible too full of transitions of dancing lights of salient points if Chaucer followed up his subject too doggedly perhaps Shakespeare was too volatile and heedless the muses wing too often lifted him off his feet he made infinite excursions to the right and the left he hath done mad and fantastic execution engaging and redeeming of himself with such careless force and forceless care as if that luck and very spite of cunning bade him win all Chaucer attended chiefly to the real and natural that is to the involuntary and inevitable impressions on the mind in given circumstances Shakespeare exhibited also the possible and the fantastical not only what things are in themselves but whatever they might seem to be their different reflections their endless combinations he lent his fancy wit invention to others and borrowed their feelings in return Chaucer excelled in the force of habitual sentiment Shakespeare added to it every variety of passion every suggestion of thought or accident Chaucer described external objects with the eye of a painter or he might be said to have embodied them with the hand of a sculptor every part is so thoroughly made out and tangible Shakespeare's imagination threw over them a luster prouder than when blue iris bends everything in Chaucer has a downright reality a simile or a sentiment is as if it were given in upon evidence in Shakespeare the common matter of fact has a romantic grace about it or seems to float with the breath of imagination in a freer element no one could have more depth of feeling or observation than Chaucer but he wanted resources of invention to lay open the stores of nature or the human heart with the same radiant light that Shakespeare has done however fine or profound the thought we know what was coming whereas the effect of reading Shakespeare is quote like the eye of Vassalage encountering Majesty Chaucer's mind was consecutive rather than discursive he arrived at truth through a certain process Shakespeare saw everything by intuition Chaucer had great variety of power but he could only do one thing at once to work on a particular subject his ideas were kept separate labeled, ticketed and parceled out in a set form in pews and compartments by themselves they did not play into one another's hands they did not react upon one another as the blowers breath molds the yielding glass there is something hard and dry in them what is the most wonderful thing in Shakespeare's faculties is their excessive sociability to accept and compare notes together we must conclude this criticism and we will do it with a quotation or two one of the most beautiful passages in Chaucer's tale is the description of Cressidae's first avowal of her love and as the new Abashid Nightingale that stinteth first when she began to sing when that she heareth any herd his tale or in the hedges any white stirring and after, sicker, did her voice out ring write so, Cressidae when that her dread stent opened her heart and told him her intent see also the next two stanzas and particularly that divine one beginning her arm miss small her back both straight and soft and so on compare this with the following speech of Cressidae in the play that I thought it could be in a woman and if it can I will presume in you to feed for I her lamp and flame of love to keep her constancy in plight and youth out living beauties outward with a mind that doth renews swifter than blood decays or that persuasion could but thus convince me that my integrity and truth to you might be affronted with the match and weight of such a winnowed purity in love how where I then uplifted but alas, I am as true as truth simplicity and simpler than the infancy of truth these passages may not seem very characteristic at first sight though we think they are so we will give two that cannot be mistaken Patroclus says to Achilles rouse yourself and the weak wanton cupid shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold and like a dewdrop from the lion's mane be shook to air Troilus addressing the god of day on the approach of the mourning that parts him from chrysidae says with much scorn what proffers thou thy light herefor to sell go sell it them that smaller sellers grave if nobody but Shakespeare could have written the former nobody but Chaucer would have thought of the latter Chaucer was the most literal of poets as Richardson was of prose writers end of Troilus and Chrysidae chapter 9 of characters of Shakespeare's plays by William Haslett this Libravox recording is in the public domain Antony and Cleopatra this is a very noble play though not in the first class of Shakespeare's productions it stands next to them and is we think the finest of his historical plays of those in which he made poetry the organ of history and assumed a certain tone of character and sentiment and conformity to known facts instead of trusting to his observations of general nature or to the unlimited indulgence of his own fancy what he has added to the history is upon a par with it his genius was, as it were a match for history as well as nature this play is full of that pervading comprehensive power by which the poet could always make himself the master of time and circumstances it presents a fine picture of Roman pride and eastern magnificence and in the struggle between the two the empire of the world seems suspended quote like the swan's down feather that stands upon the swell at full of tide and neither way inclines the characters breathe move and live Shakespeare does not stand reasoning on what his characters would do or say but at once becomes them and speaks and acts for them he does not present us with groups of stage puppets or poetical machines making set speeches on human life and acting from a calculation of ostensible motives but he brings living men and women on the scene who speak and act from real feelings according to the ebbs and flows of passion without the least tincture of the pedantry of logic or rhetoric nothing is made out by inference and analogy by climax and antithesis but everything takes place just as it would have done in reality according to the occasion the character of Cleopatra is a masterpiece what an extreme contrast it affords to Imogen one would think it almost impossible for the same person to have drawn both she is voluptuous ostentatious, conscious boastful of her charms hotty, tyrannical, fickle the luxurious pomp and gorgeous extravagance of the Egyptian queen are displayed in all their force and luster as well as the irregular grandeur of the soul of Marc Antony take only the first four lines that they speak as an example of the regal style of love making Cleopatra, if it be love indeed tell me how much Antony there's beggary in the love that can be reckoned I'll set a bone how far to be beloved then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth the rich and poetical description of her person beginning the barge she sat in like a burnished throne burnt on the water the poop was beaten cold purple the sails and so perfumed that the winds were lovesick seems to prepare the way for and almost to justify the subsequent infatuation of Antony when in the sea fight at Actium he leaves the battle and quote like a doting mallard follows her flying sails few things in Shakespeare and we know of nothing in any other author like them have more of that local truth of imagination and character than the passage in which Cleopatra is represented conjecturing what were the employments of Antony in his absence quote he's speaking now or murmuring where's my serpent of old Nile or again when she says to Antony after the defeat at Actium and his summoning up resolution to risk another fight it is my birthday I had thought to have held it poor but since my lord is Antony again I will be Cleopatra perhaps the finest burst of all is Antony's rage after his final defeat when he comes in and surprises the messenger of Caesar kissing her hand to let a fellow that will take rewards and say God quit you be familiar with my play fellow your hand this kingly seal and plighter of high hearts it is no wonder that he orders him to be whipped but his low condition is not the true reason there is another feeling which lies deeper though Antony's pride would not let him show it except by his rage he suspects the fellow to be Caesar's proxy Cleopatra's whole characters the triumph of the voluptuous of the love of pleasure and the power of giving it over every other consideration Octavia is a dull foil to her and Fulvia a shrew and shrill-tongued what a picture do these lines give of her age cannot wither her nor custom stale her infinite variety other women cloy the appetites they feed but she makes hungry where most she satisfies what a spirit and fire in her conversation with Antony's messenger who brings her the unwelcome news of his marriage with Octavia how all the pride of beauty and of high rank breaks out in her promised reward to him there's gold and here my bluest veins to kiss she had great and unpardonable faults but the beauty of her death almost redeems them she learns from the depth of despair the strength of her affections she keeps her queen like state in the last disgrace the pleasurable in the last moments of her life she tastes a luxury in death after applying the asp she says with fondness does that not see my baby at my breast that sucks the nurse asleep as sweet as balm as soft as air as gentle oh Antony it is worthwhile to observe that Shakespeare has contrasted the extreme magnificence of the descriptions in this play with pictures of extreme suffering and physical horror not less striking partly perhaps to excuse the effeminacy of Mark Antony to whom they are related is having happened but more to preserve a certain balance of feeling in the mind Caesar says hearing of his conduct at the court of Cleopatra Antony leave thy lascivious fossils when now once were it beaten from mutina where thou slewest hurchess thy consuls that thy healed and famine follow who now fought against though daintily brought up with patience more than savages could suffer thou didst drink the stale of horses and the gilded puddle which beast would cough at thy pellet then did dain the roughest berry on the rudest hedge yea like the stag when snow the pasture sheets the parks of trees thou browsed as reported thou didst eat strange flesh some did die to look on and all this it wounds thine honour that I speak it now was born so like a soldier that thy cheeks so much as languid not the passage after Antony's defeat by Augustus where he is made to say yes yes he at Philippi kept his sword even like a dancer while I struck the lean and wrinkled caches and twas I that the mad brutist ended is one of those fine retrospections which show us the winding and eventful march of human life the jealous attention which has been paid to the unities both of time and place has taken away the principle of perspective in the drama and all the interest which objects derive from distance from contrast from privation from change of fortune long cherished passion and contracts our view of life from a strange and romantic dream long obscure and infinite into a smartly contested three hours inaugural disputation on its merits by the different candidates for theatrical applause the latter scenes of Antony and Cleopatra are full of the changes of accident and passion success and defeat follow one another with startling rapidity upon her wheel more blind and giddy than usual this precarious state and the approaching dissolution of his greatness are strikingly displayed in the dialogue between Antony and Eros Antony Eros thou yet beholts me Eros I know bellowed sometime we see a cloud that's dragnish a vapor sometime like a bear or lion a towered citadel a pendant rock a forked mountain a blue promontory with trees upon it a nod unto the world and mock our eyes with air thou hast seen these signs they are black vesperous pageants I am my lord that which is now a horse even with a thought the rack dislimbs and makes it indistinct as water is in water it does my lord my good-nave Eros now thy captain is even such a body this is without doubt one of the finest pieces of poetry in Shakespeare the splendor of the imagery the semblance of reality the lofty range of picturesque objects hanging over the world their evanescent nature the total uncertainty of what is left behind are just like the mouldering schemes of human greatness and Cleopatra's passionate lamentation over his fallen grandeur because it is more dim, unstable, unsubstantial Antony's headstrong presumption and infatuated determination to yield to Cleopatra's wishes to fight by sea instead of land meet a merited punishment and the extravagance of his resolutions increasing with the desperateness of his circumstances is well commented upon by Ina Barbis I see men's judgments are a parcel of their fortunes and things outward to draw their inward quality after them to suffer all alike the repentance of Ina Barbis after his treachery to his master is the most affecting part of the play he cannot recover from the blow which Antony's generosity gives him and he dies brokenhearted quote a master lever and a fugitive Shakespeare's genius has spread over the whole play a richness like the overflowing of the Nile End of Antony and Cleopatra