Hubert, Come forth; do as I bid you. [Stamps and the men enter. Arthur. O save me, Hubert, save me! my eyes are out Ev'n with the fierce looks of these bloody men. Hubert. Give me the iron, I say, and bind him here. I will not struggle, I will stand stone-still. For heav'n's sake, Hubert, let me not be bound! I will not stir, nor wince, nor speak a word, Thrust but these men away, and I'll forgive you, Hubert. Go, stand within; let me alone with him. Arthur. Alas, I then have chid away my friend. He hath a stern look, but a gentle heart; Let him come back, that his compassion may Give life to yours. Hubert. Come, boy, prepare yourself. Arthur. Is there no remedy? Hubert. None, but to lose your eyes. Arthur. O heav'n! that there were but a mote in yours, A grain, a dust, a gnat, a wand'ring hair, Any annoyance in that precious sense! Then, feeling what small things are boist'rous there, Your vile intent must needs seem horrible. Hubert. Is this your promise? go to, hold your tongue. Arthur. Let me not hold my tongue; let me not, Hubert; Or, Hubert, if you will, cut out my tongue, So I may keep mine eyes. O spare mine eyes! Lo, by my troth, the instrument is cold, Hubert. I can heat it, boy. Arthur. No, in good sooth, the fire is dead with grief, Being create for comfort, to be us'd In undeserv'd extremes; see else yourself, There is no malice in this burning coal; The breath of heav'n hath blown its spirit out, And strew'd repentant ashes on its head. Hubert. But with my breath I can revive it, boy. Arthur. All things that you shall use to do me wrong, Deny their office; only you do lack That mercy which fierce fire and iron extend, Creatures of note for mercy-lacking uses. [Exit. Hubert. Well, see to live; I will not touch thine eyes Yet I am sworn, and I did purpose, boy, With this same very iron to burn them out. Arthur. O, now you look like Hubert. All this while Hubert. Peace; no more. Adieu, Your uncle must not know but you are dead. Arthur. O heav'n! I thank you, Hubert. Hubert. Silence, no more; go closely in with me; [Exeunt." His death afterwards, when he throws himself from his prison walls, excites the utmost pity for his innocence and friendless situation, and well justifies the exaggerated denunciations of Falconbridge to Hubert whom he suspects wrongfully of the deed. "There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell As thou shalt be, if thou did'st kill this child. To this most cruel act, do but despair : And if thou want'st a cord, the smallest thread Will strangle thee; a rush will be a beam To hang thee on or would'st thou drown thyself, And it shall be as all the ocean, Enough to stifle such a villain up." The excess of maternal tenderness, rendered desperate by the fickleness of friends and the injustice of fortune, and made stronger in will, in proportion to the want of all other power, was never more finely expressed than in Constance. The dignity of her answer to King Philip, when she refuses to accompany his messenger, "To me and to the state of my great grief, let kings assemble," her indignant reproach to Austria for deserting her cause, her invocation to death, "that love of misery," however fine and spirited, all yield to the beauty of the passage, where, her passion subsiding into tenderness, she addresses the Cardinal in these words : "Oh father Cardinal, I have heard you say For since the birth of Cain, the first male child, There was not such a gracious creature born. As dim and meagre as an ague's fit, And so he'll die; and rising so again, When I shall meet him in the court of heav'n, Must I behold my pretty Arthur more. K. Philip. You are as fond of grief as of your child. Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me; Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form. The contrast between the mild resignation of Queen Katherine to her own wrongs, and the wild, uncontroulable affliction of Constance for the wrongs which she sustains as a mother, is no less naturally conceived than it is ably sustained throughout these two wonderful characters. The accompaniment of the comic character of the Bastard was well chosen to relieve the poignant agony of suffering, and the cold cowardly policy of behaviour in the principal characters of this play. Its spirit, invention, volubility of tongue and forwardness in action, are unbounded. Aliquando sufflaminandus erat, says Ben Jonson of Shakespear. But we should be sorry if Ben Jonson had been his licenser. We prefer the heedless magnanimity of his wit infinitely to all Jonson's laborious caution. The character of the Bastard's comic humour is the same in essence as that of other comic characters in Shakespear; they always run on with good things and are never exhausted; they are always daring and successful. They have words at will, and a flow of wit like a flow of animal spirits. The difference between Falconbridge and the others is that he is a soldier, and brings his wit to bear upon action, is courageous with his sword as well as tongue, and stimulates his gallantry by his jokes, his enemies feeling the sharpness of his blows and the sting of his sarcasms at the same time. Among his happiest sallies are his descanting on the composition of his own person, his invective against "commodity, tickling commodity," and his expression of contempt for the Archduke of Austria, who had killed his father, which begins in jest but ends in serious earnest. His conduct at the siege of Angiers shews that his resources were not confined to verbal retorts. The same exposure of the policy of courts and camps, of kings, nobles, priests, and cardinals, takes place here as in the other plays we have gone through, and we shall not go into a disgusting repetition. This, like the other plays taken from English history, is written in a remarkably smooth and flowing style, very different from some of the tragedies, Macbeth, for instance. The passages consist of a series of single lines, not running into one another. This peculiarity in the versification, which is most common in the three parts of Henry VI. has been assigned as a reason why those plays were not written by Shakespear. But the same structure of verse occurs in his other undoubted plays, as in Richard II. and in King John. The following are instances : "That daughter there of Spain, the lady Blanch, Is the young dauphin every way complete : And she again wants nothing, to name want, And she a fair divided excellence, O, two such silver currents, when they join, And two such shores to two such streams made one, Another instance, which is certainly very happy as an example of the simple enumeration of a number of particulars, is Salisbury's remonstrance against the second crowning of the king. "Therefore to be possessed with double pomp, To guard a title that was rich before; To seek the beauteous eye of heav'n to garnish; TWELFTH NIGHT; OR, WHAT THIS is justly considered as one of the most delightful of Shakespear's comedies. It is full of sweetness and pleasantry. It is perhaps too good-natured for comedy. It has little satire, and no spleen. It aims at the ludicrous rather than the ridiculous. It makes us laugh at the follies of mankind, not despise them, and still less bear any ill-will towards them. Shakespear's comic genius resembles the bee rather in its power of extracting sweets from weeds or poisons, than in leaving a sting behind it. He gives the most amusing exaggeration of the prevailing foibles of his characters, but in a way that they themselves, instead of being offended at, would almost join in to humour; he rather contrives opportunities for them to shew themselves off in the happiest lights, than renders them contemptible in the perverse construction of the wit |