Characteristics of Women Part 52

[73] _i. e._ silver coins, from the Spanish _plata_.

[74] Cleopatra replies to the first word she hears on recovering her sense, "No more _an empress_, but a mere woman!"

[75] _i. e._ sedate determination.--JOHNSON

[76] The Cleopatra of Jodelle was the first regular French tragedy: the last French tragedy on the same subject was the Cleopatre of Marmontel.

For the representation of this tragedy Vaucanson, the celebrated French mechanist, invented an automaton asp, which crawled and hissed to the life,--to the great delight of the Parisians. But it appears that neither Vaucanson's asp, nor Clairon, could save Cleopatre from a deserved fate. Of the English tragedies, one was written by the Countess of Pembroke, the sister of Sir Philip Sydney; and is, I believe, the first instance in our language, of original dramatic writing, by female.

[77] "The sober eye of dull Octavia."--Act v. scene 2.

[78] Octavia was never in Egypt.

[79] "The Octavia of Dryden is a much more important personage than in the Antony and Cleopatra of Shakspeare. She is, however, more cold and unamiable, for in the very short scenes in which the Octavia of Shakspeare is introduced, she is placed in rather an interesting point of view. But Dryden has himself informed us that he was apprehensive that the justice of a wife's claim would draw the audience to her side, and lessen their interest in the lover and the mistress. He seems accordingly to have studiously lowered the character of the injured Octavia who, in her conduct to her husband, shows much duty and little love." Sir W. Scott (in the same fine piece of criticism prefixed to Dryden's All for Love) gives the preference to Shakspeare's Cleopatra.

[80] In all, about two thousand pounds.

[81] The corresponding pa.s.sage in the old English Plutarch runs thus: "My son, why dost thou not answer me? Dost thou think it good altogether to give place unto thy choler and revenge, and thinkest thou it not honesty for thee to grant thy mother's request in so weighty a cause?

Dost thou take it honorable for a n.o.bleman to remember the wrongs and injuries done him, and dost not in like case think it an honest n.o.bleman's part to be thankful for the goodness that parents do show to their children, acknowledging the duty and reverence they ought to bear unto them? No man living is more bound to show himself thankful in all parts and respects than thyself, who so universally showest all ingrat.i.tude. Moreover, my son, thou hast sorely taken of thy country, exacting grievous payments upon them in revenge of the injuries offered thee; besides, thou hast not hitherto showed thy poor mother any courtesy. And, therefore, it is not only honest, but due unto me, that without compulsion I should obtain my so just and reasonable request of thee. But since by reason I cannot persuade ye to it, to what purpose do I defer my last hope?" And with these words, herself, his wife, and children, fell down upon their knees before him.

[82] _Vide_ Daru, Histoire de Bretagne.

[83] _Vide_ Sir Peter Leycester's Antiquities of Chester.

[84] By the treaty of Messina, 1190

[85] Malone says, that "In expanding the character of the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Shakspeare seems to have proceeded on the following slight hint in an old play on the story of King John:--

Next them a b.a.s.t.a.r.d of the king's deceased-- A hardy wild-head, rough and venturous."

It is easy to _say_ this; yet who but Shakspeare could have expanded the last line into a Falconbridge?

[86] The Greek Merope, which was esteemed one of the finest of the tragedies of Euripides, is unhappily lost; those of Maffei, Alfieri, and Voltaire, are well known. There is another Merope in Italian, which I have not seen: the English Merope is merely a bad translation from Voltaire.

[87] "Queen Elinor saw that if he were king, how his mother Constance would look to bear the most rule in the realm of England, till her son should come of a lawful age to govern of himself."--HOLINSHED.

[88] King John, Act iii, Scene 1.

[89] Louis VII. of France, whom she was accustomed to call, in contempt, _the monk_. Elinor's adventures in Syria, whither she accompanied Louis on the second Crusade, would form a romance.

[90] Henry II. of England. It is scarcely necessary to observe that the story of Fair Rosamond, as far as Elinor is concerned, is a mere invention of some ballad-maker of later times.

[91] _Vide_ Mezerai.

[92] When at Naples, I have often stood upon the rock at the extreme point of Posilippo, and looked down upon the little Island of Nisida, and thought of this scene till I forgot the Lazaretta which now deforms it: deforms it, however, to the fancy only, for the building itself, as it rises from amid the vines, the cypresses and fig-trees which embosom it, looks beautiful at a distance.

[93] "The contention of the two Houses of York and Lancaster," in two parts, supposed by Malone to have been written about 1590.

[94] I abstain from making any remarks on the character of Joan of Arc, as delineated in the First part of Henry VI.; first, because I do not in my conscience attribute it to Shakspeare, and secondly, because in representing her according to the vulgar English traditions, as half sorceress, half enthusiast, and in the end, corrupted by pleasure and ambition, the truth of history, and the truth of nature, justice, and common sense, are equally violated. Schiller has treated the character n.o.bly: but in making Joan the slave of pa.s.sion, and the victim of love, instead of the victim of patriotism, has committed, I think, a serious error in judgment and feeling; and I cannot sympathize with Madame de Stael's defence of him on this particular point. There was no occasion for this deviation from the truth of things, and from the dignity and spotless purity of the character. This young enthusiast, with her religious reveries, her simplicity, her heroism, her melancholy, her sensibility, her fort.i.tude, her perfectly feminine bearing in all her exploits, (for though she so often led the van of battle unshrinking, while death was all around her, she never struck a blow, nor stained her consecrated sword with blood,--another point in which Schiller has wronged her,) this heroine and martyr, over whose last moments we shed burning tears of pity and indignation, remains yet to be treated as a Dramatic character, and I know but one person capable of doing this.

[95] See Henry VI. Part III. Act. iii. sc. 3--

QUEEN MARGARET.

Warwick, these words have turned my hate to love,-- And I forgive and quite forget old faults, And joy that thou becom'st King Henry's friend.

[96] Horace Walpole observes, that "it is evident from the conduct of Shakspeare, that the house of Tudor retained all their Lancasterian prejudices even in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In his play of Richard the Third, he seems to deduce the woes of the house of York from the curses which Queen Margaret had vented against them; and he could not give that weight to her curses, without supposing a right in her to utter them."

[97] See her letters in Ellis's Collection.

[98] Under similar circ.u.mstances, one of Katherine's predecessors, Philippe of Hainault, had gained in her husband's absence the battle of Neville Cross, in which David Bruce was taken prisoner.

[99] Ellis's Collection. We must keep in mind that Katherine was a foreigner, and till after she was seventeen, never spoke or wrote a word of English.

[100] Hall's Chronicle

[101] Hall's Chronicle, p. 781.

[102] The court at Blackfriars sat on the 28th of May, 1529. "The queen being called, accompanied by the four bishops and others of her counsel, and a great company of ladies and gentlewomen following her; and after her obeisance, sadly and with great gravity, she appealed from them to the court of Rome."--_See Hall and Cavendish's Life of Wolsey._

The account which Hume gives of this scene is very elegant; but after the affecting _navete_ of the old chroniclers, it is very cold and unsatisfactory.

[103] "The queen answered the Duke of Suffolk very highly and obstinately, with many high words: and suddenly, in a fury she departed from him into her privy chamber."--_Vide Hall's Chronicle_.

[104] _Vide_ Cavendish's Life of Wolsey.

[105] Winter's Tale, act iii. scene 2.

[106] I have constantly abstained from considering any of these characters with a reference to the theatre; yet I cannot help remarking, that if Mrs. Siddons, who excelled equally in Hermione and Katherine, and threw such majesty of demeanor, such power, such picturesque effect, into both, could likewise feel and convey the infinite contrast between the ideal grace, the cla.s.sical repose and imaginative charm thrown round Hermione, and the matter-of-fact, artless, prosaic nature of Katherine; between the poetical grandeur of the former, and the moral dignity of the latter,--then she certainly exceeded all that I could have imagined possible, even to _her_ wonderful powers.

[107] This affecting pa.s.sage is thus rendered by Shakspeare:--

Nay, forsooth, my friends, They that must weigh out my afflictions-- They that my trust must grow to, live not here-- They are, as all my other comforts, far hence, In mine own country, lords.

_Henry VIII._ _act_ iii. _sc._ 1

[108] Dr. Johnson is of opinion, that this scene "is above any other part of Shakspeare's tragedies, and perhaps above any scene of any other poet, tender and pathetic; without G.o.ds, or furies, or poisons, or precipices; without the help of romantic circ.u.mstances; without improbable sallies of poetical lamentation, and without any throes of tumultuous misery."

I have already observed, that in judging of Shakspeare's characters as of persons we meet in real life, we are swayed unconsciously by our own habits and feelings, and our preference governed, more or less, by our individual prejudices or sympathies. Thus, Dr. Johnson, who has not a word to bestow on Imogen, and who has treated poor Juliet as if she had been in truth "the very beadle to an amorous sigh," does full justice to the character of Katherine, because the logical turn of his mind, his vigorous intellect, and his austere integrity, enabled him to appreciate its peculiar beauties: and, accordingly, we find that he gives it, not only unqualified, but almost exclusive admiration: he goes so far as to a.s.sert, that in this play the genius of Shakspeare comes in and goes out with Katherine.

[109] It will be remembered, that in early youth Anna Bullen was betrothed to Lord Henry Percy, who was pa.s.sionately in love with her.

Wolsey, to serve the king's purposes, broke off this match, and forced Percy into an unwilling marriage with Lady Mary Talbot. "The stout Earl of Northumberland," who arrested Wolsey at York, was this very Percy; he was chosen for his mission by the interference of Anna Bullen--a piece of vengeance truly feminine in its mixture of sentiment and spitefulness; and every way characteristic of the individual woman.

[110] The king is said to have wept on reading this letter, and her body being interred at Peterbro', in the monastery, for honor of her memory it was preserved at the dissolution, and erected into a bishop's see.--_Herbert's Life of Henry VIII._

[111] Written, (as the commentators suppose,) not by Shakspeare, but by Ben Jonson.