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The Man Shakespeare

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I cannot copy this passage without drawing attention to the haunting
music of the third line.

The scene in which York betrays his son to Bolingbroke and prays the
king not to pardon but "cut off" the offending member, is merely a
proof, if proof were wanted, of Shakespeare's admiration of kingship and
loyalty, which in youth, at least, often led him to silliest
extravagance.

The dungeon scene and Richard's monologue in it are as characteristic of
Shakespeare as the similar scene in "Cymbeline" and the soliloquy of
Posthumus:

"K. Rich., I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world:
And for because the world is populous,
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it; yet I'll hammer it out,
My brain I'll prove the female to my soul
My soul the father; and these two beget
A generation of still breeding thoughts,
And these same thoughts people this little world,
In humours like the people of this world,
For no thought is contented...."

Here we have the philosopher playing with his own thoughts; but soon the
Hamlet-melancholy comes to tune the meditation to sadness, and
Shakespeare speaks to us directly:

"Thus play I in one person many people,
And none contented: sometimes am I king;
Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,
And so I am: then crushing penury
Persuades me I was better when a king;
Then am I king'd again; and by and by
Think, that I am unking'd by Bolingbroke,
And straight am nothing; but whate'er I be,
Nor I nor any man that but man is
With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased
With being nothing."

Later, one hears Kent's lament for Lear in Richard's words:

"How these vain weak nails
May tear a passage through the flinty ribs
Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls."

To Richard music is "sweet music," as it is to all the characters that
are merely Shakespeare's masks, and the scene in which Hamlet
asks Guildenstern to "play upon the pipe" is prefigured for us in
Richard's self-reproach:

"And here have I the daintiness of ear,
To check time broke in a disordered string;
But for the concord of my state and time,
Had not an ear to hear my true time broke."

In the last three lines of this monologue which I am now about to quote,
I can hear Shakespeare speaking as plainly as he spoke in Arthur's
appeals; the feminine longing for love is the unmistakable note:

"Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me!
For 'tis a sign of love; and love to Richard
Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world."

And at the last, by killing the servant who assaults him, this Richard
shows that he has the "something desperate" in him of which Hamlet
boasted.

The murderer's praise that this irresolute-weak and loving Richard is
"as full of valour as of royal blood" is nothing more than an excellent
instance of Shakespeare's self-illusion. He comes nearer the fact in
"Measure for Measure," where the Duke, his other self, is shown to be
"an unhurtful opposite" too gentle-kind to remember an injury or punish
the offender, and he rings the bell at truth's centre when, in "Julius
Caesar," his mask Brutus admits that he

"... carries anger as the flint bears fire
Who much enforcèd shows a hasty spark
And straight is cold again."

If a hasty blow were proof of valour then Walter Scott's Eachin in "The
Fair Maid of Perth" would be called brave. But courage to be worth the
name must be founded on stubborn resolution, and all Shakespeare's
incarnations, and in especial this Richard, are as unstable as water.

The whole play is summed up in York's pathetic description of Richard's
entrance into London:

"No man cried, God save him;
No joyful tongue gave him his welcome home:
But dust was thrown upon his sacred head;
Which with such gentle sorrow he shook off--
His face still combating with tears and smiles,
The badges of his grief and patience--
That had not God, for some strong purpose, steel'd
The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted,
And barbarism itself have pitied him."

This passage it seems to me both in manner and matter is as truly
characteristic of Shakespeare as any that can be found in all his works:
his loving pity for the fallen, his passionate sympathy with "gentle
sorrow" were never more perfectly expressed.

Pity, indeed, is the note of the tragedy, as it was in the Arthur-scenes
in "King John," but the knowledge of Shakespeare derived from "King
John" is greatly widened by the study of "King Richard II." In the
Arthur of "King John" we found Shakespeare's exquisite pity for
weakness, his sympathy with suffering, and, more than all, his
girlish-tender love and desire of love. In "Richard II.," the weakness
Shakespeare pities is not physical weakness, but mental irresolution and
incapacity for action, and these Hamlet-weaknesses are accompanied by a
habit of philosophic thought, and are enlivened by a nimble wit and
great lyrical power. In Arthur Shakespeare is bent on revealing his
qualities of heart, and in "Richard II." his qualities of mind, and that
these two are but parts of the same nature is proved by the fact that
Arthur shows great quickness of apprehension and felicity of speech,
while Richard once or twice at least displays a tenderness of heart and
longing for love worthy of Arthur.

It appears then that Shakespeare's nature even in hot, reckless youth
was most feminine and affectionate, and that even when dealing with
histories and men of action he preferred to picture irresolution and
weakness rather than strength, and felt more sympathy with failure
than with success.



CHAPTER V

SHAKESPEARE'S MEN OF ACTION (continued).
HOT-SPUR, HENRY V., RICHARD III.

The conclusions we have already reached, will be borne out and
strengthened in unexpected ways by the study of Hotspur--Shakespeare's
master picture of the man of action. The setting sun of chivalry falling
on certain figures threw gigantic shadows across Shakespeare's path, and
of these figures no one deserved immortality better than Harry Percy.
Though he is not introduced in "The Famous Victories of Henry V.," the
old play which gave Shakespeare his roistering Prince and the first
faint hint of Falstaff, Harry Percy lived in story and in oral
tradition. His nickname itself is sufficient evidence of the impression
he had made on the popular fancy. And both Prince Henry when mocking
him, and his wife when praising him, bear witness to what were, no
doubt, the accepted peculiarities of his character. Hotspur lived in the
memory of men, we may be sure, with thick, hasty speech, and hot,
impatient temper, and it is easy, I think, even at this late date, to
distinguish Shakespeare's touches on the traditional portrait. It is for
the reader to say whether Shakespeare blurred the picture, or bettered
it.

Hotspur's first words to the King in the first act are admirable; they
bring the brusque, passionate soldier vividly before us; but I am sure
Shakespeare had the fact from history or tradition.

"My liege, I did deny no prisoners.
But, I remember, when the fight was done,
When I was dry with rage and extreme toil,
Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,
Came there a certain lord, neat, trimly dressed,
Fresh as a bridegroom."

Hotspur's picture of this "popinjay" with pouncet-box in hand, and
"perfumed like a milliner," is splendid self-revelation:

"he made me mad,
To see him shine so brisk and smell so sweet,
And talk so like a waiting gentlewoman."

But immediately afterwards Hotspur's defence of Mortimer shows the poet
Shakespeare rather than the rude soldier who hates nothing more than
"mincing poetry." The beginning is fairly good:

"Hot. Revolted Mortimer!
He never did fall off, my sovereign liege,
But by the chance of war: to prove that true,
Needs no more but one tongue for all those wounds,
Those mouthed wounds which valiantly he took,
When on the gentle Severn's sedgy bank."

This "gentle Severn's sedgy bank" is too poetical for Hotspur; but what
shall be said of his description of the river?

"Who then, affrighted with their bloody looks,
Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds,
And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank
Blood-stained with these valiant combatants."

Shakespeare was still too young, too much in love with poetry to confine
himself within the nature of Hotspur. But the character of Hotspur was
so well known that Shakespeare could not long remain outside it. When
the King cuts short the audience with the command to send back the
prisoners, we find the passionate Hotspur again:

"And if the devil come and roar for them,
I will not send them.--I will after straight,
And tell him so: for I will ease my heart,
Although it be with hazard of my head."

The last line strikes a false note; such a reflection throws cold water
on the heat of passion, and that is not intended, for though reproved by
his father Hotspur storms on:

"Speak of Mortimer!
'Zounds! I will speak of him; and let my soul
Want mercy, if I do not join with him...."

The next long speech of Hotspur is mere poetic slush; he begins:

"Nay, then, I cannot blame his cousin king,
That wish'd him on the barren mountains starve...."

and goes on for thirty lines to reprove the conspirators for having put
down "Richard, that sweet lovely rose," and planted "this thorn,
Bolingbroke." This long speech retards the action, obscures the
character of Hotspur, and only shows Shakespeare poetising without a
flash of inspiration. Then comes Hotspur's famous speech about honour:

"By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap,
To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon;
Or dive into the bottom of the deep ..."

And immediately afterwards a speech in which his uncontrollable
impatience and the childishness which always lurks in anger, find
perfect expression. To soothe him, Worcester says he shall keep his
prisoners; Hotspur bursts out:

"Nay, I will: that's flat.
He said, he would not ransom Mortimer;
Forbad my tongue to speak of Mortimer;
But I will find him when he lies asleep,
And in his ear I'll holla--'Mortimer!' Nay,
I'll have a starling shall be taught to speak
Nothing but 'Mortimer,' and give it him,
To keep his anger still in motion."

No wonder Lord Worcester reproves him, and his father chides him as "a
wasp-stung and impatient fool," who will only talk and not listen. But
again Hotspur breaks forth, and again his anger paints him to the life:

"Why, look you, I am whipped and scourged with rods,
Nettled and stung with pismires, when I hear
Of this vile politician, Bolingbroke.
In Richard's time,--what do you call the place?--
A plague upon 't--it is in Glostershire;--
'Twas where the madcap duke his uncle kept,--..."

The very ecstasy of impatience and of puerile passionate temper has
never been better rendered.

His soliloquy, too, in the beginning of scene iii, when he reads the
letter which throws the cold light of reason on his enterprise, is
excellent, though it repeats qualities we already knew in Hotspur, and
does not reveal new ones:

'"The purpose you undertake is dangerous';--why,
that's certain: 'tis dangerous to take a cold, to sleep, to
drink; but I tell you, my lord fool, out of this nettle
danger, we pluck this flower safety.... What a frosty-spirited
rogue is this!... O, I could divide myself and
go to buffets, for moving such a dish of skimmed milk
with so honourable an action! Hang him! Let him tell
the King: we are prepared. I will set forward to-night."

But the topmost height of self-revealing is reached in the scene with
his wife which immediately follows this. Lady Percy enters, and Hotspur
greets her:

"How now, Kate? I must leave you within these two hours."

The lady's reply is too long and too poetical. Hotspur interrupts her by
calling the servant and giving him orders. Then Lady Percy questions,
and Hotspur avoids a direct answer, and little by little Shakespeare
works himself into the characters till even Lady Percy lives for us:

"Lady. Come, come, you paraquito, answer me
Directly unto this question that I ask.
In faith, I'll break thy little finger, Harry,
An if thou wilt not tell me true.
Hot. Away,
Away, you trifler!--Love?--I love thee not,
I care not for thee, Kate; this is no world
To play with mammets and to tilt with lips...."

It shows a certain immaturity of art that Hotspur should introduce the
theme of "love," and not Lady Percy; but, of course, Lady Percy seizes
on the word:

"Lady. Do you not love me? do you not, indeed,
Well, do not then; for since you love me not,
I will not love myself. Do you not love me?
Nay, tell me, if you speak in jest or no?
Hot. Come, wilt thou see me ride?
And when I am o' horseback, I will swear
I love thee infinitely...."

All this is superb; Hotspur's coarse contempt of love deepens our sense
of his soldier-like nature and eagerness for action; but though the
qualities are rendered magically the qualities themselves are few:
Shakespeare still harps upon Hotspur's impatience; but even a soldier is
something more than hasty temper, and disdain of love's dalliance. But
the portrait is not finished yet. The first scene in the third act
between Hotspur and Glendower is on this same highest level; Hotspur's
impatience of Glendower's bragging at length finds an unforgetable
phrase:

"Glend. I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hot. Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?"

Then Hotspur disputes over the division of England; he wants a larger
share than that allotted to him; the trait is typical, excellent; but
the next moment Shakespeare effaces it. As soon as Glendower yields,
Hotspur cries:

"I do not care; I'll give thrice so much land
Away to any well-deserving friend;
But in the way of bargain, mark ye me,
I'll cavil on the ninth part of a hair...."

This large generosity is a trait of Shakespeare and not of Hotspur; the
poet cannot bear to lend his hero a tinge of meanness, or of avarice,
and yet the character needs a heavy shadow or two, and no shadow could
be more appropriate than this, for greed of land has always been a
characteristic of the soldier-aristocrat.

Shakespeare is perfectly willing to depict Hotspur as scorning the arts.
When Glendower praises poetry, Hotspur vows he'd "rather be a kitten and
cry mew ... than a metre ballad-monger. ..." Nothing sets his teeth on
edge "so much as mincing poetry": and a little later he prefers the
howling of a dog to music. When he is reproved by Lord Worcester for
"defect of manners, want of government, ... pride, haughtiness,
disdain," his reply is most characteristic:

"Well, I am schooled: good manners be your speed,
Here come our wives, and let us take our leave."

He is too old to learn, and his self-assurance is not to be shaken; but
though he hates schooling he will school his wife:

"Swear me, Kate, like a lady as thou art,
A good mouth-filling oath; and leave, 'in sooth,'
And such protest of pepper-gingerbread
To velvet guards and Sunday citizens."

This is merely a repetition of the trait shown in his first speech when
he sneered at the popinjay-lord for talking in "holiday and lady terms."
But not only does Shakespeare repeat well-known traits in Hotspur, he
also uses him as a mere mouthpiece again and again, as he used him at
the beginning in the poetic description of the Severn. The fourth act
opens with a speech of Hotspur to Douglas, which is curiously
illustrative of this fault:

"Hot.. Well said, my noble Scot, if speaking truth
In this fine age were not thought flattery,
Such attribution should the Douglas have,
As not a soldier of this season's stamp
Should go so general current through the world.
By God, I cannot flatter; I defy
The tongues of soothers; but a braver place
In my heart's love hath no man than yourself.
Nay, task me to my word; approve me, lord."
In the first five lines of this skimble-skamble stuff I hear Shakespeare
speaking in his cheapest way; with the oath, however, he tries to get
into the character again, and succeeds indifferently.

Immediately afterwards Hotspur is shocked by the news that his father is
sick and has not even sent the promised assistance; struck to the heart
by the betrayal, the hot soldier should now reveal his true character;
one expects him to curse his father, and rising to the danger, to cry
that he is stronger without traitors and faint-heart friends. But
Shakespeare the philosopher is chiefly concerned with the effect of such
news upon a rebel camp, and again he speaks through Hotspur:
"Sick now! droop now! this sickness doth infect
The very life-blood of our enterprise;
'Tis catching hither, even to our camp."
Then Shakespeare pulls himself up and tries to get into Hotspur's
character again by representing to himself the circumstance:
"He writes me here, that inward sickness--
And that his friends by deputation could not
So soon be drawn; nor did he think it meet--"
and so forth to the question: "...What say you to it?"
"Wor. Your father's sickness is a maim to us.
Hot. A perilous gash, a very limb lopped off:--"

Shakespeare sees that he cannot go on exaggerating the injury--that is
not Hotspur's line, is indeed utterly false to Hotspur's nature; and so
he tries to stop himself and think of Hotspur:

"And yet, in faith, it's not; his present want
Seems more than we shall find it: were it good
To set the exact wealth of all our states
All at one cast? to set so rich a main
On the nice hazard of one doubtful hour?
It were not good; for therein should we read
The very bottom and the soul of hope,
The very list, the very utmost bound
Of all our fortunes."

After the first two lines, which Hotspur might have spoken, we have the
sophistry of the thinker poetically expressed, and not one word from the
hot, high-couraged soldier. Indeed, in the last four lines from the
bookish "we read" to the end, we have the gentle poet in love with
desperate extremities. The passage must be compared with Othello's--

"Here is my journey's end, here is my butt,
And very sea-mark of my utmost sail."

But at length when Worcester adds fear to danger Hotspur half finds
himself:

"Hot, You strain too far.
I rather of his absence make this use:--
It lends a lustre, and more great opinion,
A larger dare to our great enterprise,
Than if the earl were here; for men must think,
If we, without his help can make a head
To push against the kingdom; with his help
We shall o'erturn it topsy-turvy down.--
Yet all goes well, yet all our joints are whole."

And this is all. The scene is designed, the situation constructed to
show us Hotspur's courage: here, if anywhere, the hot blood should
surprise us and make of danger the springboard of leaping hardihood. But
this is the best Shakespeare can reach--this fainting, palefaced "Yet
all goes well, yet all our joints are whole." The inadequacy, the
feebleness of the whole thing is astounding. Milton had not the courage
of the soldier, but he had more than this: he found better words for his
Satan after defeat than Shakespeare found for Hotspur before the battle:

"What though the field be lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield,
And what is else not to be overcome;
That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me."

When Shakespeare has to render Hotspur's impatience he does it superbly,
when he has to render Hotspur's courage he fails lamentably.

In the third scene of this fourth act we have another striking instance
of Shakespeare's shortcoming. Sir Walter Blount meets the rebels "with
gracious offers from the King," whereupon Hotspur abuses the King
through forty lines; this is the kind of stuff:
"My father and my uncle and myself
Did give him that same royalty he wears;
And when he was not six and twenty strong,
Sick in the world's regard, wretched and low,
A poor unminded outlaw sneaking home,
My father gave him welcome to the shore; ..."
and so on and on, like Hamlet, he unpacks his heart with words, till
Blount cries:

"Tut, I came not to hear this."

Hotspur admits the reproof, but immediately starts off again:

"Hot. Then to the point.
In short time after he deposed the king;
Soon after that, deprived him of his life,"

and so forth for twenty lines more, till Blount pulls him up again with
the shrewd question:

"Shall I return this answer to the king?"

Hotspur replies:

"Not so, Sir Walter; we'll withdraw awhile.
Go to the king.....
And in the morning early shall mine uncle
Bring him our purposes; and so farewell."

And yet this Hotspur who talks interminably when he would do much better
to keep quiet, assures us a little later that he has not well "the gift
of tongue," and again declares he's glad a messenger has cut him short,
for "I profess not talking."

The truth is the real Hotspur did not talk much, but Shakespeare had the
gift of the gab, if ever a man had, and Hotspur was a mouthpiece. It is
worth noting that though the dramatist usually works himself into a
character gradually, Hotspur is best presented in the earlier scenes:
Shakespeare began the work with the Hotspur of history and tradition
clear in his mind; but as he wrote he grew interested in Hotspur and
identified himself too much with his hero, and so almost spoiled the
portrait. This is well seen in Hotspur's end; Prince Henry has said he'd
crop his budding honours and make a garland for himself out of them, and
this is how the dying Hotspur answers him:

"O Harry, thou hast robbed me of my youth!
I better brook the loss of brittle life
Than those proud titles thou hast won of me;
They wound my thoughts worse than thy sword my flesh:--
But thought's the slave of life, and life time's fool,
And time, that takes survey of all the world,
Must have a stop. O, I could prophesy,
But that the earthy and cold hand of death
Lies on my tongue:--no, Percy, thou art dust,
And food for ----"

Of course, Prince Henry concludes the phrase, and continues the
Hamlet-like philosophic soliloquy:

"P. Henry. For worms, brave Percy: fare thee well,
great heart!--
Ill-weaved ambition, how much art thou shrunk!
When that this body did contain a spirit,
A kingdom for it was too small a bound;
But now two paces of the vilest earth
Is room enough: ..."

I have tried to do justice to this portrait of Hotspur, for Shakespeare
never did a better picture of a man of action, indeed, as we shall soon
see, he never did as well again. But take away from Hotspur the
qualities given to him by history and tradition, the hasty temper, and
thick stuttering speech, and contempt of women, and it will be seen how
little Shakespeare added. He makes Hotspur hate "mincing poetry," and
then puts long poetic descriptions in his mouth; he paints the soldier
despising "the gift of tongue" and forces him to talk historic and
poetic slush in and out of season; he makes the aristocrat greedy and
sets him quarrelling with his associates for more land, and the next
moment, when the land is given him, Hotspur abandons it without further
thought; he frames an occasion calculated to show off Hotspur's courage,
and then allows him to talk faint-heartedly, and finally, when Hotspur
should die mutely, or with a bitter curse, biting to the last,
Shakespeare's Hotspur loses himself in mistimed philosophic reflection
and poetic prediction. Yet such is Shakespeare's magic of expression
that when he is revealing the qualities which Hotspur really did
possess, he makes him live for us with such intensity of life that no
number of false strokes can obliterate the impression. It is only the
critic working sine ira et studio who will find this portrait
blurred by the intrusion of the poet's personality.

It is the companion picture of Prince Henry that shows as in a glass
Shakespeare's poverty of conception when he is dealing with the
distinctively manly qualities. In order to judge the matter fairly we
must remember that Shakespeare did not create Prince Henry any more than
he created Hotspur. In the old play entitled "The Famous Victories of
Henry V.," and in the popular mouth, Shakespeare found roistering Prince
Hal. The madcap Prince, like Harry Percy, was a creature of popular
sympathy; his high spirits and extravagances, the vigorous way in which
he had sown his wild oats, had taken the English fancy, the historic
personage had been warmed to vivid life by the popular emotion.

Shakespeare was personally interested in this princely hero. As we have
seen, he dims Hotspur's portrait by intrusion of his own peculiarities;
and in the case of Harry Percy, this temptation will be stronger.

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