NATURE'S MORAL TEACHING 15 To him nature is no accursed thing. It is a scene of wondrous beauty. But he valued nature chiefly as a storehouse whence he drew moral lessons. To Shakespeare nature was the mirror of the human soul with its joys and sorrows, and its virtues and vices. "Each drama," says Heine,1 "has its own special elements, its definite season, with all its characteristics. Heaven and earth bear as marked a physiognomy as the personages of the play." "Romeo and Juliet," with its theme of passionate love, speaks of summer heat and beauty and fragrance. Lear's wreck, political and physical, is attested by the thunder and drenching storm. Macbeth's crime is conceived on the blasted heath and in the witches' cave. Flowers and plants, again, each have their significance. The rose, above all, as with the classics and with Dante, is the chief symbol of innocence, purity, and love. Of the murdered princes Forrest says "Their lips were four red roses on a stalk, Which in their summer beauty kissed each other." -Richard III., iv. 3. Percy compares Richard II. as the sweet rose to the thorn Buckingham. Hamlet says his mother's second marriage was such an act "That blurs the grace and blush of modesty, 1 Works, iii. 312, ed. Rotterdam (1895). The whole story of Viola's secret attachment is thus related : "She never told her love, But let concealment, like a worm i̇' the bud, Lilies, again, are the emblems of chastity, but "Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.” -Sonnet xciv. Ophelia in "Hamlet" and Perdita in "Winter's Tale" teach many a lesson on the symbolism of flowers; and the gardener in "Richard II." finds in the neglected garden the image of the king's misrule: "The whole land Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up, The animal world supplies images mostly of the evil passions of man. Shylock has a "tiger's heart," Goneril, "boarish fangs." Edgar describes himself as a "hog in sloth, a fox in stealth, a wolf in greediness, a dog in madness, a lion in prey." Richard III. is a bloody and usurping boar, a foul swine. On the other hand, the lark in its rising typifies prayer; the swallow in its swiftness, hope piercing every obstacle; the eagle, strength, majesty, loyalty. Nature, then, with Shakespeare furnishes a theme, not for mere pastoral melodies or idyllic strains, though of these we have some exquisite examples, EMPLOYMENT OF MYTHS 17 but for deep moral lessons; and this parable teaching of the visible world is rendered more forcible and more graphic by being frequently presented through the medium of classic myths and deities. For with Shakespeare, as with Dante, the pagan fable is made the preacher of Christian truth. One of his most Christian and Catholic dramas in its moral teaching is perhaps "The Tempest"; and its lessons are inculcated by the aid of witches and fairies; of Isis, Ceres, and Juno; of nymphs and spirits, the demi-puppets evoked by Prospero's staff; nor without them would the tale or moral ever have had the same dramatic force.1 The same may be said of "Cymbeline," of "Midsummer-Night's Dream," and many others, where the Christian idea. is conveyed through a heathen rite or myth. To take what was true in Paganism, while rejecting what was false, had been the work of the Christian poets and philosophers from the first. But what we wish to draw special attention to is that such a philosophy of nature, which finds "Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, -As You Like It, ii. 1, is in its very essence opposed to the fundamental doctrine of the Reformation, as we have already shown. 1 Ariel imprisoned in the cloven pine and Caliban immersed in the foul lake are distinctly Dantesque images. Cf. Inferno, cantos vii. and viii. B But more. In the doctrine of the Catholic Church not only does Nature in its individual and several parts inculcate and illustrate moral lessons, but Nature in its entirety is like a magnificent symphony proclaiming the praises of God. Thus creation becomes a many-tongued choir, and the elements, plants, animals, man himself, intone together, in union with the angels, the praises of their Creator. In perhaps the oldest inspired poem we read of the music of the spheres, "The stars praising me together, the sons of God making glad melody" (Job xxviii. 7). The same theme repeats itself in the Psalms, and is the keynote of the Paradiso "When as the wheel which thou dost ever guide, Tempered of thee and measured, charmed mine ear, -Paradiso, i. 74-81. Here, then, it is light, as the instrument of God's power and the witness of His presence, which both produces the motion and evokes the harmony of the spheres, and this light and motion are loveLuce intellettual pien d'amore. And so in Shakespeare. In the sweetness of the moonlight and the effulgence of the stars the music of the heavens becomes audible, and the smallest orb joins in alter HARMONY OF CREATION 19 nate choirs with the angels, and each immortal soul gives forth its own harmony, inspired and moved by love. "How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven -Merchant of Venice, v. 1. Now it might have been thought that such a conception of creation and of men and their relation to God shows clearly the Catholic character of Shakespeare's cosmology. But no. But no. Though the poet's idea is found in the revealed Word, in the works of Dionysius the Areopagite, in St. Augustine, in St. Thomas, and Dante, it is derived from none of these sources, but, according to Professor Elze,1 from Montaigne. Now Montaigne nowhere teaches the existence of unity, order, or harmony in creation. On the contrary, he held that all knowledge, whether acquired by sense or reason, was necessarily uncertain; and of the music of the spheres he incidentally observes, that it is inaudible to us, because our hearing is so dulled by the ceaseless clamour of 1 I. 22; Hense, "Shakespeare," 361. |