Shakespeare and the Modern Stage Part 13

Glory is like a circle in the water, Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself, Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought.

(I. _Henry VI._, I., ii., 133-5.)

No wise man vaunts in the name of patriotism his own nation's superiority over another. The typical patriot, Henry V., once makes the common boast that one Englishman is equal to three Frenchmen, but he apologises for the brag as soon as it is out of his mouth. (He fears the air of France has demoralised him.)

Elsewhere Shakespeare utters a vivacious warning against the patriot's exclusive claim for his country of natural advantages, which all the world shares substantially alike.

Hath Britain all the sun that s.h.i.+nes? Day, night, Are they not but in Britain? I' the world's volume Our Britain seems as of it, but not in 't; In a great pool, a swan's nest: prithee, think There's livers out of Britain.[36]

[Footnote 36: _Cymbeline_, III., iv., 139-43.]

It is not the wild hunger for war, but the stable interests of peace that are finally subserved in the Shakespearean world by true and well-regulated patriotism. _Henry V._, the play of Shakespeare which shows the genuine patriotic instinct in its most energetic guise, ends with a powerful appeal to France and England, traditional foes, to cherish "neighbourhood and Christianlike accord," so that never again should "war advance his bleeding sword 'twixt England and fair France."

However whole-heartedly Shakespeare rebukes the excesses and illogical pretensions to which the lack of moral or intellectual discipline exposes patriotism, he reserves his austerest censure for the disavowal of the patriotic instinct altogether. One of the greatest of his plays is practically a diagnosis of the perils which follow in the train of a wilful abnegation of the normal instinct. In _Coriola.n.u.s_ Shakespeare depicts the career of a man who thinks that he can, by virtue of inordinate self-confidence and belief in his personal superiority over the rest of his countrymen, safely abjure and defy the common patriotic instinct, which, after all, keeps the State in being. "I'll never," says Coriola.n.u.s,

"Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand As if a man were author of himself, And knew no other kin."[37]

[Footnote 37: _Coriola.n.u.s_, V., iii., 34-7.]

Coriola.n.u.s deliberately suppresses the patriotic instinct, and, with greater consistency than others who have at times followed his example, joins the fighting ranks of his country's enemies by way of ill.u.s.trating his sincerity. His action proves to be in conflict with the elementary condition of social equilibrium. The subversion of the natural instinct is brought to the logical issues of sin and death.

Domestic ties are rudely severed. The crime of treason is risked with an insolence that is fatal to the transgressor. With relentless logic does the Shakespearean drama condemn defiance of the natural instinct of patriotism.

III

It does not, however, follow that the patriotic instinct of the Shakespearean gospel encourages blind adoration of state or country.

Intelligent citizens of the Shakespearean world are never prohibited from honestly criticising the acts or aspirations of their fellows, and from seeking to change them when they honestly think they can be changed for the better. It is not the business of a discerning patriot to sing paeans in his nation's honour. His final aim is to help his country to realise the highest ideals of social and political conduct which are known to him, and to ensure for her the best possible "reputation through the world." Criticism conceived in a patriotic spirit should be constant and unflagging. The true patriot speaks out as boldly when he thinks the nation errs as when, in his opinion, she adds new laurels to her crown. The Shakespearean patriot applies a rigorous judgment to all conditions of his environment--both social and political.

Throughout the English history plays Shakespeare bears convincing testimony to the right, and even to the duty, of the patriot to exercise in all seriousness his best powers of criticism on the political conduct of his fellow-citizens and of those who rule over him.

Shakespeare's studies of English history are animated by a patriotism which boldly seeks and faces the truth. His dramatic presentations of English history have been often described as fragments of a national epic, as detached books of an English _Iliad_. But they embody no epic or heroic glorification of the nation. Taking the great series which begins chronologically with _King John_ and ends with _Richard III._ (_Henry VIII._ stands apart), we find that Shakespeare makes the central features of the national history the persons of the kings.

Only in the case of _Henry V._ does he clothe an English king with any genuine heroism. Shakespeare's kings are as a rule but men as we are.

The violet smells to them as it does to us; all their senses have but human conditions; and though their affections be higher mounted than ours, yet when they stoop they stoop with like wing. Excepting _Henry V._, the history plays are tragedies. They "tell sad stories of the death of kings." But they do not merely ill.u.s.trate the crus.h.i.+ng burdens of kings.h.i.+p or point the moral of the hollowness of kingly pageantry; they explain why kingly glory is in its essence brittle rather than brilliant. And since Shakespeare's rulers reflect rather than inspire the character of the nation, we are brought to a study of the causes of the brittleness of national glory.

The glory of a nation, as of a king, is only stable, we learn, when the nation, as the king, lives soberly, virtuously, and wisely, and is courageous, magnanimous, and zealous after knowledge. Cowardice, meanness, ignorance, and cruelty ruin nations as surely as they ruin kings. This is the lesson specifically taught in the most eloquent of all the direct avowals of patriotism which are to be found in Shakespeare's plays--in the dying speech of John of Gaunt.

That speech is no ebullition of the undisciplined patriotic instinct.

It is a solemn announcement of the truth that the greatness and glory, with which nature and history have endowed a nation, may be dissipated when, on the one hand, the rulers prove selfish, frivolous, and unequal to the responsibilities which a great past places on their shoulders, and when, on the other hand, the nation acquiesces in the depravity of its governors. In his opening lines the speaker lays emphasis on the possibilities of greatness with which the natural physical conditions of the country and its political and military traditions have invested his countrymen. Thereby he brings into lurid relief the sin and the shame of paltering with, of putting to ign.o.ble uses, the national character and influence. The dying patriot apostrophises England in the familiar phrases, as:--

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle....

This fortress, built by nature for herself, Against infection and the hand of war; This happy breed of men, this little world; This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands: This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land, Dear for her reputation through the world.

(_Richard II._, II., i., 40-58.)

The last line identifies with the patriotic instinct the aspiration of a people to deserve well of foreign opinion. Subsequently the speaker turns from his survey of the ideal which he would have his country seek. He exposes with ruthless frankness the ugly realities of her present degradation.

England, bound in with the triumphant sea, Whose rocky sh.o.r.e beats back the envious siege Of wat'ry Neptune, is now bound in with shame, With inky blots, and rotten parchment bonds,-- That England, that was wont to conquer others, Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.

(_Richard II._, II., i., 61-6.)

At the moment the speaker's warning is scorned, but ultimately it takes effect. At the end of the play of _Richard II._, England casts off the ruler and his allies, who by their self-indulgence and moral weakness play false with the traditions of the country.

In _Henry V._, the only one of Shakespeare's historical plays in which an English king quits the stage in the full enjoyment of prosperity, his good fortune is more than once explained as the reward of his endeavour to abide by the highest ideals of his race, and of his resolve to exhibit in his own conduct its n.o.blest mettle. His strongest appeals to his fellow-countrymen are:--

Dishonour not your mothers; now attest That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you;

Let us swear That you are worth your breeding.

The kernel of sound patriotism is respect for a nation's traditional repute, for the attested worth of the race. That is the large lesson which Shakespeare taught continuously throughout his career as a dramatist. The teaching is not solely enshrined in the poetic eloquence either of plays of his early years like _Richard II._ or of plays of his middle life like _Henry V._ It is the last as well as the first word in Shakespeare's collective declaration on the true character of patriotism. _Cymbeline_ belongs to the close of his working life, and there we meet once more the a.s.surance that a due regard to the past and an active resolve to keep alive ancestral virtue are the surest signs of health in the patriotic instinct.

The accents of John of Gaunt were repeated by Shakespeare with little modulation at that time of his life when his reflective power was at its ripest. The Queen of Britain, Cymbeline's wife, is the personage in whose mouth Shakespeare sets, not perhaps quite appropriately, the latest message in regard to patriotism that he is known to have delivered. Emissaries from the Emperor Augustus have come from Rome to demand from the King of Britain payment of the tribute that Julius Caesar had long since imposed on the island, by virtue of a _force majeure_, which is temporarily extinguished. The pusillanimous King Cymbeline is indisposed to put himself to the pains of contesting the claim, but the resolute queen awakens in him a sense of patriotism and of patriotic obligation by recalling the more n.o.bly inspired att.i.tude of his ancestors, and by convincing him of the baseness of ignoring the physical features which had been bestowed by nature on his domains as a guarantee of their independence.

Remember, sir my liege, The kings your ancestors, together with The natural bravery of your isle, which stands As Neptune's park, ribbed and paled in With rocks unscaleable and roaring waters, With sands, that will not bear your enemies' boats, But suck them up to the topmast.

(_Cymbeline_, III., i., 16-22.)

The appeal prevails, and the tribute is refused. Although the evolution of the plot which is based on an historical chronicle compels the renewed acquiescence of the British king in the Roman tax at the close of the play, the Queen of Britain's spirited insistence on the maritime strength of her country loses little of its significance.

IV

Frank criticism of the social life of the nation is as characteristic of Shakespearean drama as outspoken exposition of its political failings. There is hardly any of Shakespeare's plays which does not offer shrewd comment on the foibles and errors of contemporary English society.

To society, Shakespeare's att.i.tude is that of a humorist who invites to reformation half-jestingly. His bantering tone, when he turns to social censure, strikingly contrasts with the tragic earnestness that colours his criticism of political vice or weakness. Some of the national failings on the social side which Shakespeare rebukes may seem trivial at a first glance. But it is the voice of prudent patriotism which prompts each count in the indictment. The keenness of Shakespeare's insight is attested by the circ.u.mstance that every charge has a modern application. None is yet quite out of date.

Shakespeare rarely missed an opportunity of betraying contempt for the extravagances of his countrymen and countrywomen in regard to dress.

Portia says of her English suitor Faulconbridge, the young baron of England: "How oddly he is suited! I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behaviour everywhere." Another failing in Englishmen, which Portia detects in her English suitor, is a total ignorance of any language but his own. She, an Italian lady, remarks: "You know I say nothing to him, for he understands not me nor I him. He hath neither Latin, French, nor Italian. He is a proper man's picture, but, alas! who can converse with a dumb show." This moving plaint draws attention to a defect which is not yet supplied. There are few Englishmen nowadays who, on being challenged to court Portia in Italian, would not cut a sorry figure in dumb show--sorrier figures than Frenchmen or Germans.

No true patriot ought to ignore the fact or to direct attention to it with complacency.

Again, Shakespeare was never unmindful of the drunken habits of his compatriots. When Iago sings a verse of the song beginning, "And let me the cannikin clink," and ending, "Why then let a soldier drink," Ca.s.sio commends the excellence of the ditty.

Thereupon Iago explains: "I learned it in England, where indeed they are most potent in potting; Your Dane, your German, and your swag-bellied Hollander--drink, ho!--are nothing to your English." Ca.s.sio asks: "Is your Englishman so expert in his drinking?"

Iago retorts: "Why, he drinks you, with facility, your Dane dead drunk," and gains, the speaker explains, easy mastery over the German and the Hollander.

A further stroke of Shakespeare's social criticism hits the thoughtless pursuit of novelty, which infected the nation and found vent in Shakespeare's day in the patronage of undignified shows and sports. When Trinculo, perplexed by the outward aspect of the hideous Caliban, mistakes him for a fish, he remarks: "Were I in England now, as once I was, and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver: there would this monster make a man; any strange beast there makes a man: when they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian."

Shakespeare seems slyly to confess a personal conviction of defective balance in the popular judgment when he makes the first grave-digger remark that Hamlet was sent into England because he was mad.

"He shall recover his wits there," the old clown suggests, "or if he do not, 'tis no great matter there."

"Why?" asks Hamlet.

"'Twill not be seen in him there; there the men are as mad as he."

So, too, in the emphatically patriotic play of _Henry V._, Shakespeare implies that he sees some purpose in the Frenchman's jibes at the foggy, raw, and dull climate of England, which engenders in its inhabitants, the Frenchman argues, a frosty temperament, an ungenial coldness of blood. Nor does the dramatist imply dissent from the French marshal's suggestion that Englishmen's great meals of beef impair the efficiency of their intellectual armour. The point of the reproof is not blunted by the subsequent admission of a French critic in the same scene to the effect that, however robustious and rough in manner Englishmen may be, they have the unmatchable courage of the English breed of mastiffs. To credit men with the highest virtues of which dogs are capable is a grudging compliment.

V