Characteristics of Women Part 48

Hearts of most hard temper Melt and lament for her.

ANNE.

O, G.o.d's will! much better She ne'er had known pomp: though it be temporal, Yet if that quarrel, fortune, do divorce It from the bearer, 'tis a sufferance, panging As soul and body's severing.

OLD LADY.

Alas, poor lady!

She's a stranger now again.

ANNE.

So much the more Must pity drop upon her. Verily, I swear 'tis better to be lowly born, And range with humble livers in content, Than to be perk'd up in a glistering grief, And wear a golden sorrow.

How completely, in the few pa.s.sages appropriated to Anna Bullen, is her character portrayed! with what a delicate and yet luxuriant grace is she sketched off, with her gayety and her beauty, her levity, her extreme mobility, her sweetness of disposition, her tenderness of heart, and, in short, all her _femalities_! How n.o.bly has Shakspeare done justice to the two women, and heightened our interest in both, by placing the praises of Katherine in the mouth of Anna Bullen! and how characteristic of the latter, that she should first express unbounded pity for her mistress, insisting chiefly on her fall from her regal state and worldly pomp, thus betraying her own disposition:--

For she that had all the fair parts of woman, Had, too, a woman's heart, which ever yet Affected eminence, wealth, and sovereignty.

That she should call the loss of temporal pomp, once enjoyed, "a sufferance equal to soul and body's severing;" that she should immediately protest that she would not herself be a queen--"No, good troth! not for all the riches under heaven!"--and not long afterwards ascend without reluctance that throne and bed from which her royal mistress had been so cruelly divorced!--how natural! The portrait is not less true and masterly than that of Katherine; but the character is overborne by the superior moral firmness and intrinsic excellence of the latter. That we may be more fully sensible of this contrast, the beautiful scene just alluded to immediately precedes Katherine's trial at Blackfriars, and the description of Anna Bullen's triumphant beauty at her coronation, is placed immediately before the dying scene of Katherine; yet with equal good taste and good feeling Shakspeare has constantly avoided all personal collision between the two characters; nor does Anna Bullen ever appear as queen except in the pageant of the procession, which in reading the play is scarcely noticed.

To return to Katherine. The whole of the trial scene is given nearly verbatim from the old chronicles and records; but the dryness and harshness of the law proceedings is tempered at once and elevated by the genius and the wisdom of the poet. It appears, on referring to the historical authorities, that when the affair was first agitated in council, Katherine replied to the long expositions and theological sophistries of her opponents with resolute simplicity and composure: "I am a woman, and lack wit and learning to answer these opinions; but I am sure that neither the king's father nor my father would have condescended to our marriage, if it had been judged unlawful. As to your saying that I should put the cause to eight persons of this realm, for quietness of the king's conscience, I pray Heaven to send his Grace a quiet conscience and this shall be your answer, that I say I am his lawful wife, and to him lawfully married, though not worthy of it; and in this point I will abide, till the court of Rome, which was privy to the beginning, have made a final ending of it."[101]

Katherine's appearance in the court at Blackfriars, attended by a n.o.ble troop of ladies and prelates of her counsel, and her refusal to answer the citation, are historical.[102] Her speech to the king--

Sir, I beseech you do me right and justice, And to bestow your pity on me, &c. &c.

is taken word for word (as nearly as the change from prose to blank verse would allow) from the old record in Hall. It would have been easy for Shakspeare to have exalted his own skill, by throwing a coloring of poetry and eloquence into this speech, without altering the sense or sentiment; but by adhering to the calm argumentative simplicity of manner and diction natural to the woman, he has preserved the truth of character without lessening the pathos of the situation. Her challenging Wolsey as a "foe to truth," and her very expressions, "I utterly refuse,--yea, from my soul _abhor_ you for my judge," are taken from fact. The sudden burst of indignant pa.s.sion towards the close of this scene,

In one who ever yet Had stood to charity, and displayed the effects Of disposition gentle, and of wisdom O'ertopping woman's power;

is taken from nature, though it occurred on a different occasion.[103]

Lastly, the circ.u.mstance of her being called back after she had appealed from the court, and angrily refusing to return, is from the life. Master Griffith, on whose arm she leaned, observed that she was called: "On, on," quoth she; "it maketh no matter, for it is no indifferent court for me, therefore I will not tarry. Go on your ways."[104]

King Henry's own a.s.sertion, "I dare to say, my lords, that for her womanhood, wisdom, n.o.bility, and gentleness, never prince had such another wife, and therefore if I would willingly change her I were not wise," is thus beautifully paraphrased by Shakspeare:--

That man i' the world, who shall report he has A better wife, let him in nought be trusted, For speaking false in that! Thou art, alone, If thy rare qualities, sweet gentleness, (Thy meekness saint-like, wife-like government, Obeying in commanding; and thy parts, Sovereign and pious else, could speak thee out,) The queen of earthly queens. She is n.o.ble born, And, like her true n.o.bility, she has Carried herself towards me.

The annotators on Shakspeare have all observed the close resemblance between this fine pa.s.sage--

Sir, I am about to weep; but, thinking that We are a queen, or long have dreamed so, certain The daughter of a king--my drops of tears I'll turn to sparks of fire.

and the speech of Hermione--

I am not p.r.o.ne to weeping as our s.e.x Commonly are, the want of which vain dew Perchance shall dry your pities: but I have That honorable grief lodged here, which burns Worse than tears drown.

But these verbal gentlemen do not seem to have felt that the resemblance is merely on the surface, and that the two pa.s.sages could not possibly change places, without a manifest violation of the truth of character.

In Hermione it is pride of s.e.x merely: in Katherine it is pride of place and pride of birth. Hermione, though so superbly majestic, is perfectly independent of her regal state: Katherine, though so meekly pious, will neither forget hers, nor allow it to be forgotten by others for a moment. Hermione, when deprived of that "crown and comfort of her life," her husband's love, regards all things else with despair and indifference except her feminine honor: Katherine, divorced and abandoned, still with true Spanish pride stands upon respect, and will not bate one atom of her accustomed state

Though unqueened, yet like a queen And daughter to a king, inter me!

The pa.s.sage--

A fellow of the royal bed, that owns A moiety of the throne--a great king's daughter, ... here standing To prate and talk for life and honor 'fore Who please to come to hear,[105]

would apply nearly to both queens, yet a single sentiment--nay, a single sentence--could not possibly be transferred from one character to the other. The magnanimity, the n.o.ble simplicity, the purity of heart, the resignation in each--how perfectly equal in degree! how diametrically opposite in kind![106]

Once more to return to Katherine.

We are told by Cavendish, that when Wolsey and Campeggio visited the queen by the king's order she was found at work among her women, and came forth to meet the cardinals with a skein of white thread hanging about her neck; that when Wolsey addressed her in Latin, she interrupted him, saying, "Nay, good my lord, speak to me in English, I beseech you; although I understand Latin." "Forsooth then," quoth my lord, "madam, if it please your grace, we come both to know your mind, how ye be disposed to do in this matter between the king and you, and also to declare secretly our opinions and our counsel unto you, which we have intended of very zeal and obedience that we bear to your grace." "My lords, I thank you then," quoth she, "of your good wills; but to make answer to your request I cannot so suddenly, for I was set among my maidens at work, thinking full little of any such matter; wherein there needeth a longer deliberation, and a better head than mine to make answer to so n.o.ble wise men as ye be. I had need of good counsel in this case, which toucheth me so near; and for any counsel or friends.h.i.+p that I can find in England, they are nothing to my purpose or profit. Think you, I pray you, my lords, will any Englishmen counsel, or be friendly unto me, against the king's pleasure, they being his subjects? Nay, forsooth, my lords! and for my counsel, in whom I do intend to put my trust, they be not here; they be in Spain, in my native country.[107] Alas! my lords, I am a poor woman lacking both wit and understanding sufficiently to answer such approved wise men as ye be both, in so weighty a matter. I pray you to extend your good and indifferent minds in your authority unto me, for I am a simple woman, dest.i.tute and barren of friends.h.i.+p and counsel, here in a foreign region; and as for your counsel, I will not refuse, but be glad to hear."

It appears, also, that when the Archbishop of York and Bishop Tunstall waited on her at her house near Huntingdon, with the sentence of the divorce, signed by Henry, and confirmed by act of parliament, she refused to admit its validity, she being Henry's wife, and not his subject. The bishop describes her conduct in his letter: "She being therewith in great choler and agony, and always interrupting our words, declared that she would never leave the name of queen, but would persist in accounting herself the king's wife till death." When the official letter containing minutes of their conference was shown to her, she seized a pen, and dashed it angrily across every sentence in which she was styled _Princess-dowager_.

If now we turn to that inimitable scene between Katherine and the two cardinals, (act iii. scene 1,) we shall observe how finely Shakspeare has condensed these incidents, and unfolded to us all the workings of Katherine's proud yet feminine nature. She is discovered at work with some of her women--she calls for music "to soothe her soul grown sad with troubles"--then follows the little song, of which the sentiment is so well adapted to the occasion, while its quaint yet cla.s.sic elegance breathes the very spirit of those times, when Surrey loved and sung.

SONG.

Orpheus with his lute-made trees, And the mountain-tops that freeze, Bow themselves when he did sing To his music, plants and flowers Ever sprung, as sun and showers There had made a lasting spring.

Every thing that heard him play, Even the billows of the sea, Hung their heads and then lay by In sweet music is such art, Killing care, and grief of heart, Fall asleep, on hearing, die.

They are interrupted by the arrival of the two cardinals. Katherine's perception of their subtlety--her suspicion of their purpose--her sense of her own weakness and inability to contend with them, and her mild subdued dignity, are beautifully represented; as also the guarded self-command with which she eludes giving a definitive answer; but when they counsel her to that which she, who knows Henry, feels must end in her ruin, then the native temper is roused at once, or, to use Tunstall's expression, "the choler and the agony," burst forth in words.

Is this your christian counsel? Out upon ye!

Heaven is above all yet; there sits a Judge That no king can corrupt.

WOLSEY.

Your rage mistakes us.

QUEEN KATHERINE.

The more shame for ye! Holy men I thought ye, Upon my soul, two reverend cardinal virtues; But cardinal sins, and hollow hearts, I fear ye: Mend them, for shame, my lords: is this your comfort The cordial that ye bring a wretched lady?

With the same force of language, and impetuous yet dignified feeling, she a.s.serts her own conjugal truth and merit, and insists upon her rights.

Have I liv'd thus long, (let me speak myself, Since virtue finds no friends,) a wife, a true one A woman, (I dare say, without vain-glory,) Never yet branded with suspicion?

Have I, with all my full affections, Still met the king--lov'd him next heaven, obey'd him Been out of fondness superst.i.tious to him-- Almost forgot my prayers to content him, And am I thus rewarded? 'tis not well, lords, &c.

My lord, I dare not make myself so guilty, To give up willingly that n.o.ble t.i.tle Your master wed me to: nothing but death Shall e'er divorce my dignities.

And this burst of unwonted pa.s.sion is immediately followed by the natural reaction; it subsides into tears, dejection, and a mournful self-compa.s.sion.

Would I had never trod this English ground, Or felt the flatteries that grow upon it.

What will become of me now, wretched lady?

I am the most unhappy woman living.

Alas! poor wenches! where are now your fortunes?

[_To her women_ s.h.i.+pwrecked upon a kingdom, where no pity, No friends, no hope, no kindred weep for me!

Almost no grave allowed me! Like the lily that once Was mistress of the field, and flourish'd, I'll hang my head and perish.