The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume III Part 6

NOTHING is more difficult than a definition--a crystallization of thought so perfect that it emits light. Shakespeare says of suicide:

"It is great to do that thing That ends all other deeds, Which shackles accident, and bolts up change."

He defines drama to be:

"Turning the accomplishments of many years Into an hour gla.s.s."

Of death:

"This sensible warm motion to become a kneaded clod, To lie in cold obstruction and to rot."

Of memory:

"The warder of the brain."

Of the body:

"This muddy vesture of decay."

And he declares that

"Our little life is rounded with a sleep."

He speaks of Echo as:

"The babbling gossip of the air"--

Romeo, addressing the poison that he is about to take, says:

"Come, bitter conduct, come unsavory guide, Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on The das.h.i.+ng rocks thy sea-sick, weary bark."

He describes the world as

"This bank and shoal of time."

He says of rumor--

"That it doubles, like the voice and echo."

It would take days to call attention to the perfect definitions, comparisons and generalizations of Shakespeare. He gave us the deeper meanings of our words--taught us the art of speech. He was the lord of language--master of expression and compression.

He put the greatest thoughts into the shortest words--made the poor rich and the common royal.

Production enriched his brain. Nothing exhausted him. The moment his attention was called to any subject--comparisons, definitions, metaphors and generalizations filled his mind and begged for utterance. His thoughts like bees robbed every blossom in the world, and then with "merry march" brought the rich booty home "to the tent royal of their emperor."

Shakespeare was the confidant of Nature. To him she opened her "infinite book of secrecy," and in his brain were "the hatch and brood of time."

XV.

THERE is in Shakespeare the mingling of laughter and tears, humor and pathos. Humor is the rose, wit the thorn. Wit is a crystallization, humor an efflorescence. Wit comes from the brain, humor from the heart.

Wit is the lightning of the soul.

In Shakespeare's nature was the climate of humor. He saw and felt the sunny side even of the saddest things. You have seen suns.h.i.+ne and rain at once. So Shakespeare's tears fell oft upon his smiles. In moments of peril--on the very darkness of death--there comes a touch of humor that falls like a fleck of suns.h.i.+ne.

Gonzalo, when the s.h.i.+p is about to sink, having seen the boatswain, exclaims:

"I have great comfort from this fellow; Methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him; His complexion is perfect gallows."

Shakespeare is filled with the strange contrasts of grief and laughter.

While poor Hero is supposed to be dead--wrapped in the shroud of dishonor--Dogberry and Verges unconsciously put again the wedding wreath upon her pure brow.

The soliloquy of Launcelot--great as Hamlet's--offsets the bitter and burning words of Shylock.

There is only time to speak of Maria in "Twelfth Night," of Autolycus in the "Winter's Tale," of the parallel drawn by Fluellen between Alexander of Macedon and Harry of Monmouth, or of the marvelous humor of Falstaff, who never had the faintest thought of right or wrong--or of Mercutio, that embodiment of wit and humor--or of the gravediggers who lamented that "great folk should have countenance in this world to drown and hang themselves, more than their even Christian," and who reached the generalization that "the gallows does well because it does well to those who do ill."

There is also an example of grim humor--an example without a parallel in literature, so far as I know. Hamlet having killed Polonius is asked:

"Where's Polonius?"

"At supper."

"At supper! where?"

"Not where he eats, but where he is eaten."

Above all others, Shakespeare appreciated the pathos of situation.

Nothing is more pathetic than the last scene in "Lear." No one has ever bent above his dead who did not feel the words uttered by the mad king,--words born of a despair deeper than tears:

"Oh, that a horse, a dog, a rat hath life And thou no breath!"

So Iago, after he has been wounded, says:

"I bleed, sir; but not killed."

And Oth.e.l.lo answers from the wreck and shattered remnant of his life:

"I would have thee live; For in my sense it is happiness to die."

When Troilus finds Cressida has been false, he cries:

"Let it not be believed for womanhood; Think! we had mothers."

Ophelia, in her madness, "_the sweet bells jangled out o' tune,_" says softly:

"I would give you some violets; But they withered all when my father died."

When Macbeth has reaped the harvest, the seeds of which were sown by his murderous hand, he exclaims,--and what could be more pitiful?