Tolstoy On Shakespeare Part 8

"Ay, in the catalogue, ye go for men As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, Shoughs, water-sugs, and demi-wolves, are cleped All by the name of dogs."

(Act 3, Sc. 1.)

As Coriola.n.u.s is held up to our view as a pattern of n.o.ble bearing toward the people, so Richard II. condemns the courteous behavior of the future Henry IV. on his way into banishment. He says:

"Ourselves, and Bushy, Bagot here and Green Observed his courts.h.i.+p to the common people; How he did seem to dive into their hearts With humble and familiar courtesy; What reverence he did throw away on slaves; Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles And patient overbearing of his fortune, As 'twere to banish their effects with him.

Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench; A brace of draymen did G.o.d speed him well And had the tribute of his supple knee, With 'Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends.'"

(Richard II., Act 1, Sc. 4.)

The King of France, in "All's Well that Ends Well," commends to Bertram the example of his late father in his relations with his inferiors:

"Who were below him He used as creatures of another place, And bowed his eminent top to their low ranks, Making them proud of his humility In their poor praise he humbled. Such a man Might be a copy to these younger times."

(Act 1, Sc. 2.)

Shakespeare had no fondness for these "younger times," with their increasing suggestion of democracy. Despising the ma.s.ses, he had no sympathy with the idea of improving their condition or increasing their power. He saw the signs of the times with foreboding, as did his hero, Hamlet:

"By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken note of it; the age has grown so picked, that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe." There can easily be too much liberty, according to Shakespeare--"too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty" (Measure for Measure, Act 1, Sc. 3), but the idea of too much authority is foreign to him. Claudio, himself under arrest, sings its praises:

"Thus can the demi-G.o.d, Authority, Make us pay down for our offense by weight,-- The words of Heaven;--on whom it will, it will; On whom it will not, so; yet still 'tis just."

(Ib.)

Ulysses, in "Troilus and Cressida" (Act 1, Sc. 3), delivers a long panegyric upon authority, rank, and degree, which may be taken as Shakespeare's confession of faith:

"Degree being vizarded, Th' unworthiest shews as fairly in the mask.

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center, Observe degree, priority, and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office and custom, in all line of order; And therefore is the glorious planet, Sol, In n.o.ble eminence enthroned and sphered Amidst the other; whose med'cinable eye Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil, And posts, like the commandments of a king, Sans check, to good and bad. But when the planets, In evil mixture, to disorder wander, What plagues and what portents! what mutiny!

What raging of the sea, shaking of the earth, Commotion of the winds, frights, changes, horrors, Divert and crack, rend and deracinate The unity and married calm of states Quite from their fixture! Oh, when degree is shaked, Which is the ladder of all high designs, The enterprise is sick. How could communities, Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities, Peaceful commerce from dividable sh.o.r.es, The primogenity and due of birth, Prerogative of age, crowns, scepters, laurels, But by degree stand in authentic place?

Take but degree away, untune the string, And hark, what discord follows! each thing meets In mere oppugnancy; the bounded waters Should lift their bosoms higher than the sh.o.r.es, And make a sop of all this solid globe; Strength should be lord of imbecility, And the rude son should strike his father dead; Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong, (Between whose endless jar justice resides) Should lose their names, and so should justice too.

Then everything includes itself in power.

Power into will, will into appet.i.te; And appet.i.te, a universal wolf, So doubly seconded with will and power, Must make perforce an universal prey, And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon, This chaos, when degree is suffocate, Follows the choking; And this neglection of degree it is, That by a pace goes backward, in a purpose It hath to climb. The General's disdained By him one step below; he by the next; That next by him beneath; so every step, Exampled by the first pace that is sick Of his superiors, grows to an envious fever Of pale and bloodless emulation; And 'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot, Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length, Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength."

There is no hint in this eloquent apostrophe of the difficulty of determining among men who shall be the sun and who the satellite, nor of the fact that the actual arrangements, in Shakespeare's time, at any rate, depended altogether upon that very force which Ulysses deprecates. In another scene in the same play the wily Ithacan again gives way to his pa.s.sion for authority and eulogizes somewhat extravagantly the paternal, prying, omnipresent State:

"The providence that's in a watchful state Knows almost every grain of Plutus' gold, Finds bottom in th' incomprehensive deeps, Keeps place with thought, and almost, like the G.o.ds, Does thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles.

There is a mystery (with which relation Durst never meddle) in the soul of state, Which hath an operation more divine Than breath or pen can give expressure to."

(Act 3, Sc. 3.)

The State to which Ulysses refers is of course a monarchical State, and the idea of democracy is abhorrent to Shakespeare. Coriola.n.u.s expresses his opinion of it when he says to the people:

"What's the matter, That in these several places of the city You cry against the n.o.ble Senate, who, Under the G.o.ds, keep you in awe, which else Would feed on one another?"

(Act 2, Sc. 1.)

The people should have no voice in the government--

"This double wors.h.i.+p,-- Where one part does disdain with cause, the other Insult without all reason, where gentry, t.i.tle, wisdom, Can not conclude, but by the yea and no Of general ignorance,--it must omit Real necessities, and give away the while To unstable slightness. Purpose so barred, it follows, Nothing is done to purpose; therefore, beseech you, You that will be less fearful than discreet, That love the fundamental part of state More than you doubt the change on't, that prefer A n.o.ble life before a long, and wish To jump a body with a dangerous physic That's sure of death without it, at once pluck out The mult.i.tudinous tongue; let them not lick The sweet which is their poison."

(Ib. Act 3, Sc. 1.)

It is the n.o.bility who should rule--

"It is a purposed thing and grows by plot To curb the will of the n.o.bility; Suffer't and live with such as can not rule, Nor ever will be ruled."

(Ib.)

Junius Brutus tries in vain to argue with him, but Coriola.n.u.s has no patience with him, a "triton of the minnows"; and the very fact that there should be tribunes appointed for the people disgusts him--

"Five tribunes to defend their vulgar wisdoms, Of their own choice; one's Junius Brutus, Sicinus Velutus, and I know not--'Sdeath!

The rabble should have first unroofed the city, Ere so prevailed with me; it will in time Win upon power, and throw forth greater themes."

And again:

"The common file, a plague!--Tribunes for them!"

(Act 1, Sc. 6.)

Shakespeare took his material for the drama of "Coriola.n.u.s" from Plutarch's "Lives," and it is significant that he selected from that list of worthies the most conspicuous adversary of the commonalty that Rome produced. He presents him to us as a hero, and, so far as he can, enlists our sympathy for him from beginning to end. When Menenius says of him:

"His nature is too n.o.ble for the world,"

(Act 3, Sc. 1.)

he is evidently but registering the verdict of the author. Plutarch's treatment of Coriola.n.u.s is far different. He exhibits his fine qualities, but he does not hesitate to speak of his "imperious temper and that savage manner which was too haughty for a republic." "Indeed,"

he adds, "there is no other advantage to be had from a liberal education equal to that of polis.h.i.+ng and softening our nature by reason and discipline." He also tells us that Coriola.n.u.s indulged his "irascible pa.s.sions on a supposition that they have something great and exalted in them," and that he wanted "a due mixture of gravity and mildness, which are the chief political virtues and the fruits of reason and education."

"He never dreamed that such obstinacy is rather the effect of the weakness and effeminacy of a distempered mind, which breaks out in violent pa.s.sions like so many tumors." Nor apparently did Shakespeare ever dream of it either, altho he had Plutarch's sage observations before him. It is a pity that the great dramatist did not select from Plutarch's works some hero who took the side of the people, some Agis or Cleomenes, or, better yet, one of the Gracchi. What a tragedy he might have based on the life of Tiberius, the friend of the people and the martyr in their cause! But the spirit which guided Schiller in the choice of William Tell for a hero was a stranger to Shakespeare's heart, and its promptings would have met with no response there.

Even more striking is the treatment which the author of "Coriola.n.u.s"

metes out to English history. All but two of his English historical dramas are devoted to the War of the Roses and the incidental struggle over the French crown. The motive of this prolonged strife--so attractive to Shakespeare--had much the same dignity which distinguishes the family intrigues of the Sublime Porte, and Shakespeare presents the history of his country as a mere pageant of warring royalties and their trains. When the people are permitted to appear, as they do in Cade's rebellion, to which Shakespeare has a.s.signed the character of the rising under Wat Tyler, they are made the subject of burlesque. Two of the popular party speak as follows:

"John Holland. Well, I say, it was never merry world in England since gentlemen came up.

George Bevis. O miserable age! Virtue is not regarded in handicraftsmen.

John. The n.o.bility think scorn to go in leather ap.r.o.ns."

When Jack Cade, alias Wat Tyler, comes on the scene, he shows himself to be a braggart and a fool. He says:

"Be brave then, for your captain is brave and vows reformation. There shall be in England seven half-penny loaves sold for a penny; the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops, and I will make it a felony to drink small beer. All the realm shall be in common, and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to gra.s.s. And when I am king asking I will be--

All. G.o.d save your majesty!

Cade. I thank you, good people--there shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score, and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers and wors.h.i.+p me their lord."

(Henry VI., Part 2, Act 4, Sc. 2.)

The crowd wishes to kill the clerk of Chatham because he can read, write, and cast accounts. (Cade. "O monstrous!") Sir Humphrey Stafford calls them

"Rebellious hinds, the filth and sc.u.m of Kent, Marked for the gallows."

(Ib.)

Clifford succeeds without much difficulty in turning the enmity of the mob against France, and Cade e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.es disconsolately, "Was ever a feather so lightly blown to and fro as this mult.i.tude?" (Ib., Act 4, Sc.

8.) In the stage directions of this scene, Shakespeare shows his own opinion of the mob by writing, "Enter Cade and his rabblement." One looks in vain here as in the Roman plays for a suggestion that poor people sometimes suffer wrongfully from hunger and want, that they occasionally have just grievances, and that their efforts to present them, so far from being ludicrous, are the most serious parts of history, beside which the struttings of kings and courtiers sink into insignificance.

One of the popular songs in Tyler's rebellion was the familiar couplet:

"When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?"