Characteristics of Women Part 46

LUCIUS.

To know my errand, madam.

PORTIA.

I would have had thee there and here again, Ere I can tell thee what thou should'st do there.

O constancy! be strong upon my side: Set a huge mountain 'tween my heart and tongue!

I have a man's mind, but a woman's might.

... Ah me! how weak a thing The heart of woman is! O I grow faint, &c.

There is another beautiful incident related by Plutarch, which could not well be dramatized. When Brutus and Portia parted for the last time in the island of Nisida, she restrained all expression of grief that she might not shake _his_ fort.i.tude; but afterwards, in pa.s.sing through a chamber in which there hung a picture of Hector and Andromache, she stopped, gazed upon it for a time with a settled sorrow, and at length burst into a pa.s.sion of tears.[92]

If Portia had been a Christian, and lived in later times, she might have been another Lady Russel; but she made a poor stoic. No fact.i.tious or external control was sufficient to restrain such an exuberance of sensibility and fancy: and those who praise the _philosophy_ of Portia and the _heroism_ of her death, certainly mistook the character altogether. It is evident, from the manner of her death, that it was not deliberate self-destruction, "after the high Roman fas.h.i.+on," but took place in a paroxysm of madness, caused by overwrought and suppressed feeling, grief, terror, and suspense. Shakspeare has thus represented it:--

BRUTUS.

O Ca.s.sius! I am sick of many griefs!

Ca.s.sIUS.

Of your philosophy you make no use, If you give place to accidental evils.

BRUTUS.

No man bears sorrow better; Portia's dead.

Ca.s.sIUS.

Ha!--Portia?

BRUTUS.

She is dead.

Ca.s.sIUS.

How 'scap'd I killing when I cross'd you so?

O insupportable and touching loss-- Upon what sickness?

BRUTUS.

Impatient of my absence, And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antony Had made themselves so strong--(for with her death These tidings came)--_with this she fell distract_, And, her attendants absent, swallowed fire.

So much for woman's philosophy!

MARGARET OF ANJOU.

Malone has written an essay, to prove from external and internal evidence, that the three parts of King Henry VI. were not originally written by Shakspeare, but altered by him from two old plays,[93] with considerable improvements and additions of his own. Burke, Porson, Dr.

Warburton, and Dr. Farmer, p.r.o.nounced this piece of criticism convincing and unanswerable; but Dr. Johnson and Steevens would not be convinced, and, moreover, have contrived to answer the _unanswerable_.

"Who shall decide when doctors disagree?" The only arbiter in such a case is one's own individual taste and judgment. To me it appears that the three parts of Henry VI. have less of poetry and pa.s.sion, and more of unnecessary verbosity and inflated language, than the rest of Shakspeare's works; that the continual exhibition of treachery, bloodshed, and violence, is revolting, and the want of unity of action, and of a pervading interest, oppressive and fatiguing; but also that there are splendid pa.s.sages in the Second and Third Parts, such as Shakspeare alone could have written: and this is not denied by the most skeptical.[94]

Among the arguments against the authenticity of these plays, the character of Margaret of Anjou has not been adduced, and yet to those who have studied Shakspeare in his own spirit, it will appear the most conclusive of all. When we compare her with his other female characters, we are struck at once by the want of family likeness; Shakspeare was not always equal, but he had not two _manners_, as they say of painters. I discern his hand in particular parts, but I cannot recognize his spirit in the conception of the whole: he may have laid on some of the colors, but the original design has a certain hardness and heaviness, very unlike his usual style. Margaret of Anjou, as exhibited in these tragedies, is a dramatic portrait of considerable truth, and vigor, and consistency--but she is not one of Shakspeare's women. He who knew so well in what true greatness of spirit consisted--who could excite our respect and sympathy even for a Lady Macbeth, would never have given us a heroine without a touch of heroism; he would not have portrayed a high-hearted woman, struggling unsubdued against the strangest vicissitudes of fortune, meeting reverses and disasters, such as would have broken the most masculine spirit, with unshaken constancy, yet left her without a single personal quality which would excite our interest in her bravely-endured misfortunes; and this too in the very face of history. He would not have given us, in lieu of the magnanimous queen, the subtle and accomplished French woman, a mere "Amazonian trull," with every coa.r.s.er feature of depravity and ferocity; he would have redeemed her from unmingled detestation; he would have breathed into her some of his own sweet spirit--he would have given the woman a soul.

The old chronicler Hall informs us, that Queen Margaret "excelled all other as well in beauty and favor, as in wit and policy, and was in stomach and courage more like to a man than to a woman." He adds, that after the espousals of Henry and Margaret, "the king's friends fell from him; the lords of the realm fell in division among themselves; the Commons rebelled against their natural prince; fields were foughten; many thousands slain; and, finally, the king was deposed, and his son slain, and his queen sent home again with as much misery and sorrow as she was received with pomp and triumph."

This pa.s.sage seems to have furnished the groundwork of the character as it is developed in these plays with no great depth or skill. Margaret is portrayed with all the exterior graces of her s.e.x; as bold and artful, with spirit to dare, resolution to act, and fort.i.tude to endure; but treacherous, haughty, dissembling, vindictive, and fierce. The b.l.o.o.d.y struggle for power in which she was engaged, and the companions.h.i.+p of the ruthless iron men around her, seem to have left her nothing of womanhood but the heart of a mother--that last stronghold of our feminine nature! So far the character is consistently drawn: it has something of the power, but none of the flowing ease of Shakspeare's manner. There are fine materials not well applied; there is poetry in some of the scenes and speeches; the situations are often exceedingly poetical; but in the character of Margaret herself, there is not an atom of poetry. In her artificial dignity, her plausible wit, and her endless volubility, she would remind us of some of the most admired heroines of French tragedy, but for that unlucky box on the ear which she gives the d.u.c.h.ess of Gloster,--a violation of tragic decorum, which of course destroys all parallel.

Having said thus much, I shall point out some of the finest and most characteristic scenes in which Margaret appears. The speech in which she expresses her scorn of her meek husband, and her impatience of the power exercised by those fierce overbearing barons, York, Salisbury, Warwick, Buckingham, is very fine, and conveys as faithful an idea of those feudal times as of the woman who speaks. The burst of female spite with which she concludes, is admirable--

Not all these lords do vex me half so much As that proud dame, the Lord Protector's wife.

She sweeps it through the court with troops of ladies, More like an empress than Duke Humphrey's wife.

Strangers in court do take her for the queen: She bears a duke's revenues on her back, And in her heart she scorns our poverty.

Shall I not live to be avenged on her?

Contemptuous base-born callet as she is!

She vaunted 'mongst her minions t'other day, The very train of her worst wearing gown Was better worth than all my father's lands, Till Suffolk gave two dukedoms for his daughter.

Her intriguing spirit, the facility with which she enters into the murderous confederacy against the good Duke Humphrey, the artful plausibility with which she endeavours to turn suspicion from herself--confounding her gentle consort by mere dint of words--are exceedingly characteristic, but not the less revolting.

Her criminal love for Suffolk (which is a dramatic incident, not an historic fact) gives rise to the beautiful parting scene in the third act; a scene which it is impossible to read without a thrill of emotion, hurried away by that power and pathos which forces us to sympathize with the eloquence of grief, yet excites not a momentary interest either for Margaret or her lover. The ungoverned fury of Margaret in the first instance, the manner in which she calls on Suffolk to curse his enemies, and then shrinks back overcome by the violence of the spirit she had herself evoked, and terrified by the vehemence of his imprecations; the transition in her mind from the extremity of rage to tears and melting fondness, have been p.r.o.nounced, and justly, to be in Shakspeare's own manner.

Go, speak not to me--even now begone.

O go not yet! Even thus two friends condemn'd Embrace, and kiss, and take ten thousand leaves, Loather a hundred times to part than die: Yet now farewell; and farewell life with thee!

which is followed by that beautiful and intense burst of pa.s.sion from Suffolk--

'Tis not the hand I care for, wert thou hence; A wilderness is populous enough, So Suffolk had thy heavenly company: For where thou art, there is the world itself, With every several pleasure in the world; And where thou art not, desolation!

In the third part of Henry the Sixth, Margaret, engaged in the terrible struggle for her husband's throne, appears to rather more advantage. The indignation against Henry, who had pitifully yielded his son's birthright for the privilege of reigning unmolested during his own life, is worthy of her, and gives rise to a beautiful speech. We are here inclined to sympathize with her; but soon after follows the murder of the Duke of York; and the base revengeful spirit and atrocious cruelty with which she insults over him, unarmed and a prisoner,--the bitterness of her mockery, and the unwomanly malignity with which she presents him with the napkin stained with the blood of his youngest son, and "bids the father wipe his eyes withal," turn all our sympathy into aversion and horror. York replies in the celebrated speech, beginning--

She-wolf of France, and worse than wolves of France, Whose tongue more poisons than the adder's tooth--

and taunts her with the poverty of her father, the most irritating topic he could have chosen.

Hath that poor monarch taught thee to insult?

It needs not, nor it boots thee not, proud queen, Unless the adage must be verified, That beggars, mounted, ride their horse to death.

'Tis beauty, that doth oft make women proud; But, G.o.d he knows, thy share thereof is small.

'Tis virtue that doth make them most admired; The contrary doth make thee wondered at.

'Tis government that makes them seem divine, The want thereof makes thee abominable.

O tiger's heart, wrapped in a woman's hide!

How could'st thou drain the life-blood of the child To bid the father wipe his face withal, And yet be seen to bear a woman's face?

Women are soft, mild, pitiful and flexible, Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless!

By such a woman as Margaret is here depicted such a speech could be answered only in one way--with her dagger's point--and thus she answers it.