ROMEO AND JULIET 27 agencies for good, but within their proper sphere, and under the control of reason. Without such control, when the senses or feelings master reason, misery and disorder follow; and this is exactly what we find in "Romeo and Juliet." The whole play portrays the consequences of ill-regulated passion. The scene is laid in an Italian summer, and the emotions of Romeo and Juliet are at fever heat. Impetuosity, vehemence, agitation, disturbance, mark their conduct throughout. The whole action consumes but five days from the Sunday to the following Friday morning. Within this space of time are the first meeting of the lovers, the stolen interview, the secret marriage, the duel, Tybalt's death, Romeo's banishment, and the double suicide of Romeo and Juliet. The whole lesson of the play is taught by Friar Lawrence in explicit terms: "These violent delights have violent ends, And in their triumph die; like fire and powder, And in the taste confounds the appetite : -Romeo and Juliet, ii. 6. Just as the "Midsummer-Night's Dream" shows the folly of love based merely on the imagination, so "Romeo and Juliet" manifests the ruin which follows in love, which, though not coarse or sensual, is still determined mainly by passion. Thus Hamlet repeats Friar Lawrence's teaching: "What to ourselves in passion we propose, Their own enactions with themselves destroy." And the reason is that the object of passion is something here and now, and therefore temporal and passing, and when it passes leaves a blank, for "this world is not for aye." The object of true love must be, like Silvia, "holy, fair, and wise"; the love it inspires knows neither doubt nor fear nor change, and the bond it forms is eternal. "Love is not love Which alters when it alterations finds Or bends with the remover to remove : Oh no! it is an ever-fixèd mark That looks on tempests, and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken ; Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, -Sonnet cxvi. We have now said enough to determine a further characteristic in Shakespeare's love philosophy, since the object of true love with him is the eternal truth, goodness, and beauty, and is only to be won by the renouncement of all else for its sake, love and religion with Shakespeare become identified, and religion like love bears an essentially sacrificial character, as we shall see in detail in our consideration of the love plays. In what religions, then, is the idea of sacrifice found? We find it in the old-world religions, and obscured indeed, but still expressed in the Greek tragedies in their doctrine of the nemesis consequent on sin, and the possibility and hope of a Divine atonement. It is seen again, but in its fulness and completeness, in the Catholic Church, and in the miracle and mystery plays of the Middle Ages, which were based in one way or other on the central mystery of the atoning sacrifice of the Redemption. But we may look for it in vain in the teaching of the Reformers. Their theory of salvation by election alone, already noticed, and its correlative doctrine of the worthlessness of works, excluded all idea of any sacrificial action being needed on the part of the believer. Nor does it find a place in the form of Protestantism dictated and enforced by the Crown in England. The surest way to wealth and preferment was the first purpose in the new Erastianism; and creed and discipline were accommodated to keep the royal favour. Men like Cranmer could boast with the poet in Timon of Athens: "My free drift Halts not particularly, but moves itself In a wide sea of wax."-Timon of Athens, i. 1. "The Church of England," says Dr. Dollinger, "is content with taking up just so much share in 1 life as commerce, the enjoyment of riches, and the habitudes of a class desirous before all things of comfort, may have left to it." Hence it abolished celibacy, the religious state, with its three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and the ascetic exercises of the ancient faith, and made the celebration of mass, on which they were all based, a capital offence. Such a system, whatever temporal advantages it might offer, was essentially of the earth, earthy, and could never have evoked the veneration of Shakespeare, or kindled, as did the proscribed creed, the fire of his muse. The Reformed creed was then, we think, from its negative and materialistic tendency, unfitted to give birth to a poet. "Catholicism," says Mr. Matthew Arnold," from its antiquity, its pretensions to universality, from its really widespread prevalence, from its sensuousness, has something European, august, and imaginative; Protestantism presents, from its inferiority in all these respects, something provincial, mean, and prosaic." Nor are Milton and Keble, the poets respectively, according to Professor 1 "The Church and Churches," 119, 146 (1862). He quotes Hallam to the effect that the supremacy "is the dog's collar which the State puts on the Church in return for food and shelter."Hallam, "Constitutional History," iii. 44. 2 The late Archbishop Trench, in his comparison of Calderon and Shakespeare, takes a precisely opposite view, and speaks of the advantages enjoyed by the latter, because "as the child of the Reformation," "he moved in a sphere of the highest truth.”—Life and Genius of Calderon, 78 (1880). What that truth was or where it is found in Shakespeare we are not told. 3 "Essays on Criticism," 133, ed. 1869. MILTON AND PURITANISM 31 Dowden, of Puritanism and Anglicanism, proofs to the contrary. Milton is great in his theme. He sings "in glorious hymns the equipage of God's almightiness, the victorious agonies of saints and martyrs, the deeds and triumphs of just nations, doing valiantly in faith against the enemies of Christ." As an epic poet he has been ranked above Homer and Dante, yet his vision of the other world is materialistic, prosaic, and dull, and he fails just where the voice of the seer should speak. This is so because his Calvinistic creed forbade mystery. He was deaf to Dante's constant warning, "State, umana gente alla quia." Everything must be explained the secrets of the divine counsel; the strife between good and evil; the precise cause of each individual fall-all must be laid bare. Hence God justifies himself, Adam excuses himself, and Satan is defiant. Adam and Eve, at dinner with the angel in Paradise, talk and act, says M. Taine, like Colonel Hutchinson and his wife; and their want of clothing is felt to be wholly incongruous. What dialogues!" that somewhat caustic critic goes on to say. Dissertations capped by politeness, mutual sermons concluded by bows. What bows! Philosophical compliments and moral smiles. . . . This Adam entered Paradise vid England." The "Para 1 1 "English Literature," i. 443. Col. Hutchinson sat in the Long Parliament for Nottingham, and in the High Court of Justice, which sentenced Charles I. to death. His memoirs were written by his wife, Lucy Hutchinson, and were printed in 1806. |