ESSAY IX LOVE WITHOUT forming and fixing in our minds, at whatever expense of thought, a true conception of Shakespeare's theory of love, we shall fail to comprehend many parts of his writings. Yet he had himself, perhaps, no very definite idea of his own views, which sprang at first from his physical idiosyncrasies, and were afterwards corrected and modified by reflection. A man's ideas about love depend greatly on his estimate of women, which with Shakespeare in the early part of his life was a very low one. Nothing can be more derogatory to the sex than the sentiments which pervade Venus and Adonis,' the Sonnets, and most of his shorter pieces. The whole poem of 'Lucrece' is only an expansion of Ovid's idea that Lucretia consented to her own undoing and yet killed herself afterwards; though, whether this was his opinion or not, the poem is so frigid, so quibbling, so remote from nature, so tedious, that scarcely anything of value is to be extracted from it. Venus is a personification of female passion, who, having to deal with a statue rather than a man, exhausts all the arts of wantonness to animate this beautiful form of clay. The boy, indeed, as Shakespeare calls him, makes a good figure as a preacher, and lectures the goddess with an eloquence as little suited to his age as to the situation in which he finds himself. As time came to the aid of Shakespeare's genius, he retreated from some of the false positions he had taken up at the outset, his theory expanded, rose higher, invested itself with greater delicacy, became subtle, refined, purified, so that woman, instead of being a rampant wanton, came forth in Juliet as passion incarnate, full of all the turbulent elements of love, but co-ordinated into one beautiful whole, instinct with all the fire of its original elements, but elevated by rapturous preference into the highest form which love can assume. Some philosophers have argued that love is a passion not made up of several ingredients but simple and sui generis in its nature; but this hypothesis soon proves on examination to be untenable, since there is nothing so composite as love as it exists in intellects of a high order, though as we descend from that elevation to the lowest type of humanity we find it putting off some quality at every step in the descent, till we arrive at last at simple animal instinct. Poetical reasoners often aim at a refinement which nature repudiates. Say what we will, passion is love in the ore—that is, before it has been purified and stamped with the image and superscription of some individual; in fact, it is the mere sexual instinct which lies undeveloped in the mind, as gold in the earth, before it is dug forth and given a shape and destination. It may with truth be said that love is not exactly the same in any two minds, male or female, but differs quite as much as, perhaps more than, their features. It differs essentially, also, in men and women, since it bears as much the stamp of sex as they who feel it. Shakespeare has exhibited it co-existing in the mind with many other passions, and receiving certain modifications from each of them: in some it is delicate, innocent, and childlike, as in Julia, Mariana, and Ophelia; in some it is playful, sportive, and partaking of the warmer instincts, as in Viola and Rosalind; in some it is a compound of desire and vanity, as in Helena; in Beatrice it is mischievous, saucy, imperious, but withal noble and disinterested: in Desdemona it is ignorant of itself, evidently transitory because built on imaginary qualities, and allied too closely with the sway of temperament; in Imogen it is the idolatry of a wife, fond and affectionate, but silly; in Lady Macbeth it is the inborn preference of a fierce and tempestuous woman for one who could at the same time rule her and a kingdom. There are other characters, both male and female, in Shakespeare in which he has developed his idea of the principle of love. What a man is under the influence of this principle is so difficult to be understood, and still more to explain, that Shakespeare, with all his genius and insight into human nature, has scarcely succeeded, or succeeded at best but once, in presenting us with a vivid and true picture. In drawing a parallel between the sexes, love has been affirmed to take a deeper root in woman than in man. No idea can be more unfounded. Women, it is true, are more easily blighted where the passions are concerned by disappointment, because the structure of their minds, like that of their bodies, is more frail; but when man loves, his love is stronger, fiercer, and yet more enduring than that of woman. I say when man loves, for in general he only obeys his instincts, and devotes his energies to the ordinary and inferior concerns of life, business, public or private, or at the highest to mental culture and philosophical studies. Love, however, when it takes possession of a man's soul, when all the passions and faculties are in effervescence, transforms and impresses itself on his whole nature; and though, when the first fever is over, his pride restrains it from blazing forth externally it only burns the more fervently within, till death puts an end to his passion and his life together. This is the love that Shakespeare exhibits in Romeo, though in his character he has connected it with a certain effeminacy, in order perhaps to qualify him to figure with more effect upon the stage. Romantic youths and girls have in all ages been in the habit of declaiming about first love, seeking to persuade themselves and others that their deep natures could take but one impression. Shakespeare shows the groundlessness of this notion in the experience of Romeo. While he is an idle youth, who, having finished his studies and not engaged in politics, finds nothing else to think of but love, he chooses for himself a mistress that his fancy may have something to dwell on. Curiously enough, he lights upon a Capulet-for Rosaline belongs to the house of his enemy—and compels himself to dote on this unsusceptible beauty. To his youthful and ignorant mind, this dreamy preference appeared to be love. But no sooner has he seen Juliet than he feels the difference between an imaginary and a real passion: the scales drop at once from his eyes, the kernel of life has been discovered, the essence of another's being has penetrated his, and the world is henceforward to be dark or bright according to the chances of his love for her. Throughout his plays Shakespeare has no other lover of any mark or likelihood. Hamlet fancied he loved Ophelia, and may have felt for her that sort of preference to which the name of love is commonly applied; but it was a very subordinate feeling, a feeling that could be overridden by a weak thirst of revenge. Hamlet's nature is, in fact, too flaccid to grasp any feeling with firmness, or, if any, it is that of friendship for Horatio, and even with that he plays and toys with the indecision of a Sybarite. Hamlet } is incapable of any strong passion, and least of all of love. He mopes, he ruminates, he decides, he undecides, he will and he will not, and is ultimately drifted into action by mere chance. Where else in Shakespeare shall we look for a lover? Not in Othello, who only exhibits the jealousy of a middle-aged gentleman lest his female plaything should be taken from him; not in Claudio or Bassanio, who, though in the latter case with a tinge of romance, are both fortune-hunters; not in Ferdinand or Orlando; not, surely, in Posthumus, who deserves rather a halter than a mistress: but we are forgetting Troilus, who, though somewhat of the craziest, displays the excess of passionate love for a wanton. Through a great rent, however, in a tragic life we obtain one glimpse of a love as noble as what we may imagine to exist in heaven-the love of Brutus for his wife, expressed in language as tender as any that ever flowed from human lip or pen : Portia. Dwell I but in the suburbs Brutus. You are my true and honourable wife, |