صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

fluctuating. The memory of the poet was richly stored with words-good, domestic, household words-in his mother tongue, and he had enough of the grammar of it, for all his purposes. Ilis thoughts were all new creations, however much he might be indebted to old ones for begetting them; and he clothed them as the fallen ones did themselves in paradise-with a fig-leaf, a lion's skin, or any thing they chose, or considered best for the purpose; and his taste has stood the test of every age since his own. He understood human nature, and he wisely wrote for two purposes, in some sort to please those of his own times, and to secure all those who should come after him. With Shakspeare, posthumous fame never seemed to be a passion. He rather felt sure of it, than panted after it; he that could so well judge of the present and the past, could easily see what was to come. He took no pains for monument, or epitaph, but simply said to those he left behind him, spare my bones. His mental strength seemed to be used as playfully as the physical strength of the Nazarite, who chose to slay the Philistines with a jaw bone of an ass, rather than draw his sword-and Shakspeare preferred to kill his enemies with a gibe, rather than with an argument. Samson's power only crushed his enemies-Shakspeare's gave distinct, and certain immortality to his friends, and all those he chose to consider worth preserving.

Other men share the throes of composition; and even those which are dedicated to Momus, and all the laughter-loving train, have some lines of mental melancholy about them. Not so with Shakspeare. Yet to suppose that those productions were not of profound thought, would, indeed, be idle. He meditated, not only

[graphic]

at noon, in the field, but in the dark watches of the night. He read nature, from season to season, and man in every hour of his existence; but there was about his doing this, the mild complacency of a superior being, not the swollen muscle, and bursting veins of the gladiator; nor was it ever known that he rolled his eye in frenzy, although he glanced from heaven to earth, and answered his own description of a poet, as to the mental part of it.

[graphic]

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothingS
A local habitation, and a name."

This was all done by Shakspeare, without effort; or at least without the appearance of it. The ancients made Apollo calm and composed in all his deeds; no agitation ever was seen in the actions of the far-darting Apollo. So of Shakspeare; he never foamed, or was cast to the earth; or wildly gazed on the heavens, or threw up ejaculations to superior powers; but he went on in his own pathway, as though he was only the humble, but true minister of Deity, proclaiming just thoughts, and wholesome precepts to man. He was fed by no ravens, nor asked, or expected à car of fire. A well regulated stage may be likened to a CAMERA LUCIDA, in which one desirous of taking minute resemblances of man, in every form of his character, may be indulged. Shakspeare saw that the stage, which should "hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature," did not, in ignorant hands, give precise images of things, and he set about reforming this altogether;

and no man was better formed for the task. A thousand might have been found to have ravaged nations, and swept over empires, in all the greatness of the conqueror, to one who could have reformed the stage; or rather human nature exhibited by the stage.

Shakspeare, in the thirty-five plays proved to have been from his pen, has exhibited the mind of man in all its phases. His propensities, his habits, his practices, his reasoning, false and philosophical, were all exhibited by him, in truth and power. His virtues, his weaknesses, his eccentricities, even his idiosyncrasies, were all known to this great anatomist of the human mind; his hopes, his passions, his frivolities, were all laid bare to him. Tthese plays, which seemed, perhaps, in the age in which he lived, only written to amuse the populace of a city, contained the analysis of the human mind, and the history of the passions. For instance, if he would give ambition, look at his Richard III, when the passion is up, the means pa- . tiently pursued, and every principle sacrificed to the end. Hypocrisy, cunning, flattery, and diabolical energy, all are used for his purposes. In all this, all is natural in its way-the monarch croaks morality, and utters "wise saws," while he plots destruction, and strikes the dagger; but he does not hide his deformity, even from the mother who bare him. She sees all his moral baseness; and speaks it in words wrung from her breaking heart.

"Techy and wayward was thy infancy;

Thy schooldays frightful, desperate, wild, and furious; Thy prime of manhood, daring, bold, and venturous; Thy age confirm'd, proud, subtle, sly, and bloody."

His lady Macbeth is even a finer delineation of character, as it regards reckless ambition. She was bold in her means, as well as anxious for results. She had firmness of purpose, as well as insatiable passion for power. She put heaven and hell at defiance, and drove onward to expected enjoyment and distinction. She spoke in all the boldness of her nature:

"The raven himself is hoarse,

That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan

Under my battlements. Come, come you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here;
And fill me from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood,
Stop the access and passage to remorse!
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep pace between
The effect and it."

Notwithstanding she braced herself with all this fiend-like energy, yet, he made her true to nature; for though she had plucked from her soul all remorse, while she could concentrate her powers, no sooner than she slept, her dreams and somnambulism spoke all the horrors of her soul. Shakspeare developed this truth in Richard and Clarence-neither of whom shrunk from perjury or murder while awake and masters of themselves, but when the soul was naked and in the lonely watches of the night, were very babies in fortitude. A quiet conscience rarely sees a frightful object in the repose of nature; it has none of the night-mare agonies of villany. Angels smooth the pillows of the virtuous, and bring visions of delight to the benevolent and the good. If we sleep each passing

night so much better for doing well, who would not wish to lie down in the long sleep of the grave, with all quiet about his heart?

Macbeth was of a more delicate fibre; he felt and shrunk from his deeds of blood; he had some touches of nature in him; he saw daggers, and heard warning voices, and said aloud,

"I'll go no more;

I am afraid to think what I have done;

Look on't again I dare not."

She, braced by ambition to the use of reckless means to bring about ends, tauntingly replies,

"Infirm of purpose!

Give me the daggers; the sleeping, and the dead, Are but as pictures; 'tis the eye of childhood That fears a painted devil."

Shakspeare never suffers the shades of character to run unnaturally into each other; for the usurper of the crown of Denmark did as foul a deed for power as Lady Macbeth and her husband; but though as treacherous and more vile, for it was a brother's blood he shed, yet he had no energy of character. He exhibited remorse of conscience, and yet could not refrain from adding to his crime in seeking safety in the death of others.

Shakspeare has been as successful in describing love, as ambition. He has shown it in all its varieties, from the sickly flame that glimmers in the breasts of those whom interests unite, to the simplicity, warmth, and

« السابقةمتابعة »