H HALL CAINE (1853-) ALL CAINE, famous as the author of "The Deemster," "The land, May 14th, 1853. His great reputation as a novelist should not lead his admirers to forget that he is one of the most attractive of living English essayists. His studies of Shakespeare, which, with his other essays, are still uncollected, are made from the standpoint of the novelist, who, as a creator of imaginary characters, studies the great dramatist to gain assurance in creative work. THE ASPECTS OF SHAKESPEARE'S ART HERE can be little doubt that Shakespeare found the nucleus of fact on which he based his characters in real intercourse with men. But he did more than transfer the figures he saw in life to the canvas of his invention. If he had merely set down, however faithfully, the men and women he actually beheld in the flesh, he must soon have been forgotten. Some of his contemporaries did that, and with what results we know. He doubtless saw many a Sir John Falstaff strutting bodily before him at the Mermaid Tavern, but he did not depict under that name any individual charlatan he chanced to meet there. If he had done so, we who live in days when soldiers do not think it necessary for the better support of their valor to forswear thin potations, and addict themselves to sack, would probably care very little for the character, notwithstanding the attractions pertaining to it of that Rabelaisean humor which never disturbs us with any question as to the side of our face on which the laugh should be. But the whole family of swaggering topers from Sir John's day down to our own have had certain features of family resemblance, and these features Shakespeare waited for and portrayed. So Sir John Falstaff becomes a type, and hence is applicable to every age, because representative of his phase of humanity in every age. The same truth that explains to us the basis of the immortality of Falstaff applies to every notable character Shakespeare depicts. The poet never goes to work (as, according to an acute critic, the young pre-Raphaelites did in 1850) as a photographic camera, but always as a creative intelligence, and this is what Coleridge means in the argument in which he shows that Shakespeare passed every conception through the medium of his meditative genius. Nor is this true. merely of Shakespeare's method of projecting character in the realm of what the actors call eccentric comedy, for in dealing with heroic character his art is the same. Glance at Romeo. It is hardly to be supposed that an individual answering to the young Montague engaged in that shadowy historical occurrence which is referred to the first years of the fourteenth century; but none the less on that account is he typical of certain romantic young lovers in all ages. He begins by sighing over some fugitive passion for a mythical Rosaline, and presently forgets the paragon in his new-found passion for the more responsive Juliet. There may not exist either historical or traditional ground for believing that the original of the Romeo of Luigi da Porto and Bandello had in fact any such preliminary passion; but Shakespeare knew from observation, and perhaps from personal experience, that a vague, indeterminate condition of mind and heart usually precedes the ordeal known as falling in love, and therefore (following Arthur Brooke in part) he gave Romeo an unrequited attachment, or shadow of attachment, in which he is much more in love with his own thoughts than with anything more substantial. So Romeo, without ceasing to be a son of the house of Montague, becomes a type of all the sons of the house of Love. It was the typical feature of Romeo's character that Mr. Irving brought most into prominence in his recent impersonation of the part, and in giving relief to so salient a characteristic Mr. Irving did well; but perhaps the chief imperfection of his performance was a too prolonged dwelling upon this subjective side of Romeo's passion, apparently to the total disregard of the clear fact that Shakespeare meant no more by it than to generalize on the beginnings of all human passion, and then pass on to the story of an individual and very concrete affection. Look now at Hamlet. When Shakespeare took up that character it was a bald, traditional conception, simply of a commonplace young prince, having coarse appetites and gross passions, who had been supplanted in the royal succession by an uncle who had murdered his father and married his mother; but Shakespeare shed a flood of light upon the character, and the traditional prince became the representative man. When Shakespeare took in hand the character of Macbeth, it was (in the Holinshed Chronicle) a tradition of individual ambition and cruelty; but from him it was to get a world of purpose that should make it typical of a vast section of humanity. In order to realize how exactly Hamlet and Macbeth are of opposite types, let us glance at one scene from each of the plays in question. Immediately after the play in "Hamlet," the guilty king, whose conscience has been caught by the trap laid for it, retires to a chamber to pray. Hamlet is now convinced of his uncle's guilt; he will take the word of the ghost for a thousand pounds; in the heat of his resolve he believes he could drink hot blood, his purpose is so firm that he prays that the soul of Nero may not enter into his bosom, and that to his mother, at least, he may speak daggers, but use none. In this crowning witness of the justice of the act he contemplates, he shrieks frantic and bitter doggerel. He is summoned to his mother's chamber, and on the way thither he passes through the room where the stubborn knees of the king are bent in the prayer that is meant to purge the black bosom of its rank offense. Now might Hamlet do the deed his soul is bent on; but no, the king prays, and Hamlet dares not to raise the sword against him. Would not the murderer go to heaven if taken in this purging of his soul? Here creeps in Hamlet's apology to himself for doing nothing, and he goes out again, his purpose shaken and undone. Contrast this conduct of Hamlet with that of Macbeth at a juncture no less terrible. After he has murdered Duncan, and possessed himself of the sovereignty, he is more than ever tossed about with fears. He cannot sleep; he has murdered the innocent asleep; he thinks it were better to be with the dead, whom he has sent to rest, than to lie upon the rack of a tortured mind. Duncan is in his grave. After life's fitful fever he sleeps well. Banquo is dead, but Fleance has escaped, and Macbeth's fears stick deep in Banquo's issue. He will seek afresh the Weird Sisters, and so goes to the pit of Acheron. Small comfort he gets there, the secret, black, and midnight hags show him apparitions that foretell his speedy overthrow; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight kings pass before his eyes, and the last bears a glass in hand that shows him many more. He curses the witches; infected be the air whereon they ride, and damned all those that trust them! But what is the result? Does Macbeth arrest himself in his deeds of blood? A hundreth part of such an evidence against him would have seemed to Hamlet excuse enough for ignoring the "canon 'gainst self-slaughter. Macbeth is of another mettle; he is so far steeped in blood that to go backward were as hard as to go on. This is what he says as he comes out of the cave: «Time, thou anticipat'st my dread exploits; The flighty purpose never is o'ertook Unless the deed go with it; from this moment The very firstlings of my heart shall be The firstlings of my hand. And even now To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done. Seize upon Fife; give to the edge o' the sword His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls "But no more sights!" This man can do any deed of horrible cruelty, but he cannot now, he will not, think; he will not count the cost. By thinking too precisely on the event, Hamlet's purposes lost the name of action. Hamlet's flighty purpose never was overtaken (it may be said to have overtaken him), because the deed never did go with it. Hamlet could look on thoughts, but not on blood; Macbeth could look on blood, but not on thoughts. Macduff's wife and little ones Macbeth could cruelly butcher in "one fell swoop," but he could not, would not, look on the future. "This deed I'll do," he says, "but no more sights!" Here, then, we have two types of character: the man that can think and will not act, and the man that can act and will not think; and these together represent, perhaps, a full half of the entire human family. In the one we have the dread of action which never fails to present itself in the meditative genius; in the other we have the impatience of brooding reflection which as constantly exhibits itself in the active intelligence. Hamlet envies Laertes, fresh from France, the good opinion he has won for skill with rapier and dagger, but despises Rosencrantz, who, straight, probably from Wittenberg, talks metaphysics to him; he is never so satisfied with himself as when he recalls his speedy dispatch of his base companions to sudden and unshriven death in England, and never so strong in his own strength of arm as when he reflects that the news must shortly reach the king of the issue of the business in his tributary state "It will be short: the interim is mine." Macbeth reserves no pity in his heart for the partner of his great crime, when, tortured by the memory of it, she dies of remorse, and it adds one more anticipatory pang to the humiliation of possible overthrow, that he may have to kiss the dust before the feet of young Malcolm (who has never given proof of active power), while before the resolute Macduff the relentless monarch quails Let us look at Othello. The Moor of Venice was a figure in Cinthio's "Hecatomithi" before Shakespeare began to deal with him; but he was, as the facetious Rymer so playfully puts it, a mere jealous blackamoor. The black generals having beautiful wives liable to be courted by their husbands' officers are necessarily few. One in a century would be a liberal estimate, probably, and perhaps one in a cycle would be enough. Therefore the interest attaching to such unions must be slight. A passion must touch a large part of humanity before it can be universally appreciated. Now see what marvelous re-creation the story undergoes in Shakespeare, and what a magnificent type the poet makes of Othello. Lifting him entirely out of the originally vulgar character of the black man with a fair wife, he makes him a perfect gentleman. It has been well said that Othello is, perhaps, the most faultless gentleman in Shakespeare, for not Hamlet himself is so peerless a gentleman. What is Shakespeare's He is going to do far greater business than to show us the power of jealousy. Cinthio's original blackamoor would have done for that. He intends to show us what it is to have our ideals shattered, our gods overthrown, our hopes withered, our aims blasted. Othello shall have no touch of jealousy; he shall have a greatness of soul with which jealousy cannot live. Othello at first adores his wife, worships her beyond all limit or control of reason. Then comes up the spirit of envy. Iago whispers that his fair idol is not so flawless as he thinks. He laughs at the imputation. Presently, that old relentless enemy, Circumstance (the vis matrix of Shakespearean tragedy, as a critic most aptly terms her) steps in and mars everything, as she so often does. When Circumstance frowns on Desdemona, Othello is trapped. Can it be that she whom he thought so pure is yet aim in this? |