Characteristics of Women Part 32

Just as our sense of human misery and wickedness being carried to its extreme height, becomes nearly intolerable, "like an engine wrenching our frame of nature from its fixed place," then, like a redeeming angel, she descends to mingle in the scene, "loosening the springs of pity in our eyes," and relieving the impressions of pain and terror by those of admiration and a tender pleasure. For the catastrophe, it is indeed terrible! wondrous terrible! When Lear enters with Cordelia dead in his arms, compa.s.sion and awe so seize on all our faculties, that we are left only to silence and to tears. But if I might judge from my own sensations, the catastrophe of Lear is not so overwhelming as the catastrophe of Oth.e.l.lo. We do not turn away with the same feeling of absolute unmitigated despair. Cordelia is a saint ready prepared for heaven--our earth is not good enough for her: and Lear!--O who, after sufferings and tortures such as his, would wish to see his life prolonged? What replace a sceptre in that shaking hand?--a crown upon that old gray head, on which the tempest had poured in its wrath?--on which the deep dread bolted thunders and the winged lightnings had spent their fury? O never, never!

Let him pa.s.s! he hates him That would upon the rack of this rough world Stretch him out longer.

In the story of King Lear and his three daughters, as it is related in the "delectable and mellifluous" romance of Perceforest, and in the Chronicle of Geoffrey of Monmouth, the conclusion is fortunate. Cordelia defeats her sisters, and replaces her father on his throne. Spenser, in his version of the story, has followed these authorities. Shakspeare has preferred the catastrophe of the old ballad, founded apparently on some lost tradition. I suppose it is by way of amending his errors, and bringing back this daring innovator to sober history, that it has been thought fit to alter the play of Lear for the stage, as they have altered Romeo and Juliet: they have converted the seraph-like Cordelia into a puling love heroine, and sent her off victorious at the end of the play--exit with drums and colors flying--to be married to Edgar. Now any thing more absurd, more discordant with all our previous impressions, and with the characters as unfolded to us, can hardly be imagined. "I cannot conceive," says Schlegel, "what ideas of art and dramatic connection those persons have, who suppose we can at pleasure tack a double conclusion to a tragedy--a melancholy one for hard-hearted spectators, and a merry one for those of softer mould." The fierce manners depicted in this play, the extremes of virtue and vice in the persons, belong to the remote period of the story.[64] There is no attempt at character in the old narratives; Regan and Goneril are monsters of ingrat.i.tude, and Cordelia merely distinguished by her filial piety; whereas, in Shakspeare, this filial piety is an affection quite distinct from the qualities which serve to individualize the human being; we have a perception of innate character apart from all accidental circ.u.mstance: we see that if Cordelia had never known her father, had never been rejected from his love, had never been a born princess or a crowned queen, she would not have been less Cordelia; less distinctly _herself_; that is, a woman of a steady mind, of calm but deep affections, of inflexible truth, of few words, and of reserved deportment.

As to Regan and Goneril--"tigers, not daughters"--we might wish to regard them as mere hateful chimeras, impossible as they are detestable; but fortunately there was once a Tullia. I know not where to look for the prototype of Cordelia: there was a Julia Alpinula, the young priestess of Aventic.u.m,[65] who, unable to save her father's life by the sacrifice of her own, died with him--"_infelix patris, infelix proles_"--but this is all we know of her. There was the Roman daughter, too. I remember seeing at Genoa, Guido's "Pieta Romana," in which the expression of the female bending over the aged parent, who feeds from her bosom, is perfect,--but it is not a Cordelia: only Raffaelle could have painted Cordelia.

But the character which at once suggests itself in comparison with Cordelia, as the heroine of filial tenderness and piety, is certainly the Antigone of Sophocles. As poetical conceptions, they rest on the same basis: they are both pure abstractions of truth, piety, and natural affection; and in both, love, as a pa.s.sion, is kept entirely out of sight: for though the womanly character is sustained, by making them the objects of devoted attachment, yet to have portrayed them as influenced by pa.s.sion, would have destroyed that unity of purpose and feeling which is one source of power; and, besides, have disturbed that serene purity and grandeur of soul, which equally distinguishes both heroines. The spirit, however, in which the two characters are conceived, is as different as possible; and we must not fail to remark, that Antigone, who plays a princ.i.p.al part in two fine tragedies, and is distinctly and completely made out, is considered as a masterpiece, the very triumph of the ancient cla.s.sical drama; whereas, there are many among Shakspeare's characters which are equal to Cordelia as dramatic conceptions, and superior to her in finis.h.i.+ng of outline, as well as in the richness of the poetical coloring.

When Oedipus, pursued by the vengeance of the G.o.ds, deprived of sight by his own mad act, and driven from Thebes by his subjects and his sons, wanders forth, abject and forlorn, he is supported by his daughter Antigone; who leads him from city to city, begs for him, and pleads for him against the harsh, rude men, who, struck more by his guilt than his misery, would drive him from his last asylum. In the opening of the "Oedipus Coloneus," where the wretched old man appears leaning on his child, and seats himself in the consecrated Grove of the Furies, the picture presented to us is wonderfully solemn and beautiful. The patient, duteous tenderness of Antigone; the scene in which she pleads for her brother Polynices, and supplicates her father to receive his offending son; her remonstrance to Polynices, when she entreats him not to carry the threatened war into his native country, are finely and powerfully delineated; and in her lamentation over Oedipus, when he perishes in the mysterious grove, there is a pathetic beauty, apparent even through the stiffness of the translation.

Alas! I only wished I might have died With my poor father; wherefore should I ask For longer life?

O I was fond of misery with him; E'en what was most unlovely grew beloved When he was with me. O my dearest father, Beneath the earth now in deep darkness hid, Worn as thou wert with age, to me thou still Wert dear, and shalt be ever.

--Even as he wished he died, In a strange land--for such was his desire-- A shady turf covered his lifeless limbs, Nor unlamented fell! for O these eyes, My father, still shall weep for thee, nor time E'er blot thee from my memory.

The filial piety of Antigone is the most affecting part of the tragedy of "Oedipus Coloneus:" her sisterly affection, and her heroic self-devotion to a religious duty, form the plot of the tragedy called by her name. When her two brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, had slain each other before the walls of Thebes, Creon issued an edict forbidding the rites of sepulture to Polynices, (as the invader of his country,) and awarding instant death to those who should dare to bury him. We know the importance which the ancients attached to the funeral obsequies, as alone securing their admission into the Elysian fields. Antigone, upon hearing the law of Creon, which thus carried vengeance beyond the grave, enters in the first scene, announcing her fixed resolution to brave the threatened punishment: her sister Ismene shrinks from sharing the peril of such an undertaking, and endeavors to dissuade her from it, on which Antigone replies:--

Wert thou to proffer what I do not ask-- Thy poor a.s.sistance--I would scorn it now; Act as thou wilt, I'll bury him myself: Let me perform but that, and death is welcome.

I'll do the pious deed, and lay me down By my dear brother; loving and beloved, We'll rest together.

She proceeds to execute her generous purpose; she covers with earth the mangled corse of Polynices, pours over it the accustomed libations, is detected in her pious office, and after n.o.bly defending her conduct, is led to death by command of the tyrant: her sister Ismene, struck with shame and remorse, now comes forward to accuse herself as a partaker in the offence, and share her sister's punishment; but Antigone sternly and scornfully rejects her; and after pouring forth a beautiful lamentation on the misery of peris.h.i.+ng "without the nuptial song--a virgin and a slave," she dies _a l'antique_--she strangles herself to avoid a lingering death.

Hemon, the son of Creon, unable to save her life, kills himself upon her grave: but throughout the whole tragedy we are left in doubt whether Antigone does or does not return the affection of this devoted lover.

Thus it will be seen that in the Antigone there is a great deal of what may be called the effect of situation, as well as a great deal of poetry and character: she says the most beautiful things in the world, performs the most heroic actions, and all her words and actions are so placed before us as to _command_ our admiration. According to the cla.s.sical ideas of virtue and heroism, the character is sublime, and in the delineation there is a severe simplicity mingled with its Grecian grace, a unity, a grandeur, an elegance, which appeal to our taste and our understanding, while they fill and exalt the imagination: but in Cordelia it is not the external coloring or form, it is not what she says or does, but what she is in herself, what she feels, thinks, and suffers, which continually awaken our sympathy and interest. The heroism of Cordelia is more pa.s.sive and tender--it melts into our heart; and in the veiled loveliness and unostentatious delicacy of her character, there is an effect more profound and artless, if it be less striking and less elaborate than in the Grecian heroine. To Antigone we give our admiration, to Cordelia our tears. Antigone stands before us in her austere and statue-like beauty, like one of the marbles of the Parthenon. If Cordelia reminds us of any thing on earth, it is of one of the Madonnas in the old Italian pictures, "with downcast eyes beneath th' almighty dove?" and as that heavenly form is connected with our human sympathies only by the expression of maternal tenderness or maternal sorrow, even so Cordelia would be almost too angelic, were she not linked to our earthly feelings, bound to our very hearts, by her filial love, her wrongs, her sufferings, and her tears.

FOOTNOTES:

[48]

----The G.o.ds approve The depth, and not the tumult of the soul.

WORDSWORTH.

"Il pouvait y avoir des vagues majestueuses et non de l'orage sans son coeur," was finely observed of Madame de Stael in her maturer years; it would have been true of Hermione at any period of her life.

[49] Winter's Tale, act v scene 11

[50] Only in the last scene, when, with solemnity befitting the occasion, Paulina invokes the majestic figure to "descend, and be stone no more," and where she presents her daughter to her. "Turn, good lady!

our Perdita is found."

[51] Act iii, scene 3.

[52] Which being interpreted into modern English, means, I believe, nothing more than that the pattern was what we now call _arabesque_.

[53] There is an incident in the original tale, "Il Moro di Venezia,"

which could not well be transferred to the drama, but which is very effective, and adds, I think, to the circ.u.mstantial horrors of the story. Desdemona does not accidentally drop the handkerchief; it is stolen from her by Iago's little child, an infant of three years old, whom he trains and bribes to the theft. The love of Desdemona for this child, her little playfellow--the pretty description of her taking it in her arms and caressing it, while it profits by its situation to steal the handkerchief from her bosom, are well imagined, and beautifully told; and the circ.u.mstance of Iago employing his own innocent child as the instrument of his infernal villany, adds a deeper, and, in truth an unnecessary touch of the fiend, to his fiendish character.

[54] Consequences are so linked together, that the exclamation of Emilia,

O thou dull Moor!--That handkerchief thou speakest of I found by fortune, and did give my husband!--

is sufficient to reveal to Oth.e.l.lo the whole history of his ruin.

[55] Decamerone. Novella, 9mo. Giornata, 2do.

[56] _Vide_ Dr. Johnson, and Dunlop's History of Fiction.

[57] See Hazlitt and Schlegel on the catastrophe of Cymbeline.

[58] More rare--_i. e._ more exquisitely poignant.

[59] Characters of Shakspeare's Plays.

[60] _Vide_ act 1. scene 7.

[61] The character of Cloten has been p.r.o.nounced by some unnatural, by others inconsistent, and by others obsolete. The following pa.s.sage occurs in one of Miss Seward's letters, vol. iii p. 246: "It is curious that Shakspeare should, in so singular a character as Cloten, have given the exact prototype of a being whom I once knew. The unmeaning frown of countenance, the shuffling gait, the burst of voice, the bustling insignificance, the fever and ague fits of valor, the froward tetchiness, the unprincipled malice, and, what is more curious, those occasional gleams of good sense amidst the floating clouds of folly which generally darkened and confused the man's brain, and which, in the character of Cloten, we are apt to impute to a violation of unity in character; but in the some-time Captain C----, I saw that the portrait of Cloten was not out of nature."

[62] i. e. _full of words_.

[63] Dryden.

[64] King Lear may be supposed to have lived about one thousand years before the Christian era, being the forth or fifth in descent from King Brut, the great-grandson of aeneas, and the fabulous founder of the kingdom of Britain.

[65] She is commemorated by Lord Byron. _Vide_ Childe Harold Canto iii.

HISTORICAL CHARACTERS.

CLEOPATRA.

I cannot agree with one of the most philosophical of Shakspeare's critics, who has a.s.serted "that the actual truth of particular events, in proportion as we are conscious of it, is a drawback on the pleasure as well as the dignity of tragedy." If this observation applies at all, it is equally just with regard to characters: and in either case can we admit it? The reverence and the simpleness of heart with which Shakspeare has treated the received and admitted truths of history--I mean according to the imperfect knowledge of his time--is admirable; his inaccuracies are few: his general accuracy, allowing for the distinction between the narrative and the dramatic form, is acknowledged to be wonderful. He did not steal the precious material from the treasury of history, to debase its purity,--new-stamp it arbitrarily with effigies and legends of his own devising and then attempt to pa.s.s it current, like Dryden, Racine, and the rest of those poetical coiners: he only rubbed off the rust, purified and brightened it, so that history herself has been known to receive it back as sterling.

Truth, wherever manifested, should be sacred: so Shakspeare deemed, and laid no profane hand upon her altars. But tragedy--majestic tragedy, is worthy to stand before the sanctuary of Truth, and to be the priestess of her oracles. "Whatever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable or grave, whatsoever hath pa.s.sion or admiration in all the changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and refluxes of man's thought from within;"[66]--whatever is pitiful in the weakness, sublime in the strength, or terrible in the perversion of human intellect, these are the domain of Tragedy. Sibyl and Muse at once, she holds aloft the book of human fate, and is the interpreter of its mysteries. It is not, then, making a mock of the serious sorrows of real life, nor of those human beings who lived, suffered and acted upon this earth, to array them in her rich and stately robes, and present them before us as powers evoked from dust and darkness, to awaken the generous sympathies, the terror or the pity of mankind. It does not add to the pain, as far as tragedy is a source of emotion, that the wrongs and sufferings represented, the guilt of Lady Macbeth, the despair of Constance, the arts of Cleopatra, and the distresses of Katherine, had a real existence; but it adds infinitely to the moral effect, as a subject of contemplation and a lesson of conduct.[67]

I shall be able to ill.u.s.trate these observations more fully in the course of this section, in which we will consider those characters which are drawn from history; and first, Cleopatra.

Of all Shakspeare's female characters, Miranda and Cleopatra appear to me the most wonderful. The first, unequalled as a poetic conception; the latter, miraculous as a work of art. If we could make a regular cla.s.sification of his characters, these would form the two extremes of simplicity and complexity; and all his other characters would be found to fill up some shade or gradation between these two.

Great crimes, springing from high pa.s.sions, grafted on high qualities, are the legitimate source of tragic poetry. But to make the extreme of littleness produce an effect like grandeur--to make the excess of frailty produce an effect like power--to heap up together all that is most unsubstantial, frivolous, vain, contemptible, and variable, till the worthlessness be lost in the magnitude, and a sense of the sublime spring from the very elements of littleness,--to do this, belonged only to Shakspeare that worker of miracles. Cleopatra is a brilliant ant.i.thesis, a compound of contradictions, of all that we most hate, with what we most admire. The whole character is the triumph of the external over the innate; and yet like one of her country's hieroglyphics, though she present at first view a splendid and perplexing anomaly, there is deep meaning and wondrous skill in the apparent enigma, when we come to a.n.a.lyze and decipher it. But how are we to arrive at the solution of this glorious riddle, whose dazzling complexity continually mocks and eludes us? What is most astonis.h.i.+ng in the character of Cleopatra is its ant.i.thetical construction--its _consistent inconsistency_, if I may use such an expression--which renders it quite impossible to reduce it to any elementary principles.

It will, perhaps, be found on the whole, that vanity and the love of power predominate; but I dare not say it _is_ so, for these qualities and a hundred others mingle into each other, and s.h.i.+ft and change, and glance away, like the colors in a peac.o.c.k's train.

In some others of Shakspeare's female characters, also remarkable for their complexity, (Portia and Juliet, for instance,) we are struck with the delightful sense of harmony in the midst of contrast, so that the idea of unity and simplicity of effect is produced in the midst of variety; but in Cleopatra it is the absence of unity and simplicity which strikes us; the impression is that of perpetual and irreconcilable contrast. The continual approximation of whatever is most opposite in character, in situation, in sentiment, would be fatiguing, were it not so perfectly natural: the woman herself would be distracting, if she were not so enchanting.

I have not the slightest doubt that Shakspeare's Cleopatra is the real historical Cleopatra--the "Rare Egyptian"--individualized and placed before us. Her mental accomplishments, her unequalled grace, her woman's wit and woman's wiles, her irresistible allurements, her starts of irregular grandeur, her bursts of ungovernable temper, her vivacity of imagination, her petulant caprice, her fickleness and her falsehood, her tenderness and her truth, her childish susceptibility to flattery, her magnificent spirit, her royal pride, the gorgeous eastern coloring of the character; all these contradictory elements has Shakspeare seized, mingled them in their extremes, and fused them into one brilliant impersonation of cla.s.sical elegance, Oriental voluptuousness, and gipsy sorcery.