Puslapio vaizdai
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fortitude; but afterwards, in passing through a chamber in which there hung a picture of Hector and Andromache, she stopped, gazed upon it for a time with a settled sorrow, and at length burst into a passion of tears.*

If Portia had been a Christian, and lived in later times, she might have been another Lady Russel; but she made a poor stoic. No factitious or external controul was sufficient to restrain such an exuberance of sensibility and fancy: and those who praise the philosophy of Portia and the heroism of her death, certainly mistook the character altogether. It is evident, from the manner of her death, that it was not deliberate self-destruction," after the high Roman fashion," but took place in a paroxysm of madness, caused by over-wrought and suppressed feeling, grief,

* When at Naples, I have often stood upon the rock at the extreme point of Posilippo, and looked down upon the little Island of Nisida, and thought of this scene till I forgot the Lazaretto which now deforms it: deforms it, however, to the fancy only, for the building itself, as it rises from amid the vines, the cypresses, and fig-trees which embosom it, looks beautiful at a distance.

terror and suspense. Shakspeare has thus repre

sented it:

BRUTUS.

O Cassius! I am sick of many griefs!

CASSIUS.

Of your philosophy you make no use,

If you give place to accidental evils.

BRUTUS.

No man bears sorrow better: Portia's dead.

CASSIUS.

Ha!-Portia ?

BRUTUS.

She is dead.

CASSIUS.

How 'scap'd I killing when I cross'd you so?

O insupportable and touching loss

Upon what sickness?

BRUTUS.

Impatient of my absence,

And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antony
Had made themselves so strong-(for with her death

These tidings came)-with this she fell distract,

And, her attendants absent, swallowed fire.

So much for woman's philosophy!

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Malone has written an essay, to prove from external and internal evidence, that the three parts of King Henry VI. were not originally written by Shakspeare, but altered by him from two old plays,* with considerable improvements and additions of his own. and Dr. Farmer, pronounced this piece of criticism, convincing and unanswerable; but Dr. Johnson and Steevens would not be convinced, and

Burke, Porson, Dr. Warburton,

* "The Contention of the two Houses of York and Lancaster," in two parts, supposed by Malone to have been written about

1590.

VOL. II.

moreover, have contrived to answer the unanswerable. "Who shall decide when doctors disagree ?" The only arbiter in such a case is one's own individual taste and judgment. To me it appears that the three parts of Henry VI. have less of poetry and passion, and more of unnecessary verbosity and inflated language, than the rest of Shakspeare's works; that the continual exhibition of treachery, bloodshed, and violence, is revolting, and the want of unity of action, and of a pervading interest, oppressive and fatiguing; but also that there are splendid passages in the Second and Third Parts, such as Shakspeare alone could have written and this is not denied by the most sceptical.*

* I abstain from making any remarks on the character of Joan of Arc, as delineated in the First Part of Henry VI.; first, because I do not in my conscience attribute it to Shakspeare; and secondly, because in representing her according to the vulgar English traditions, as half sorceress, half enthusiast, and in the end, corrupted by pleasure and ambition, the truth of history, and the truth of nature, justice, and common sense, are equally violated. Schiller has treated the character nobly; but in making Joan the slave of passion, and the victim of love, instead of the victim of patriotism, has committed, I think, a serious error in

Among the arguments against the authenticity of these plays, the character of Margaret of Anjou has not been adduced, and yet to those who have studied Shakspeare in his own spirit, it will appear the most conclusive of all. When we compare her with his other female characters, we are struck at once by the want of family likeness; Shakspeare was not always equal, but he had not two manners, as they say of painters. I discern his hand in particular parts, but I cannot recognize his spirit in the conception of

judgment and feeling; and I cannot sympathise with Madame de Staël's defence of him on this particular point. There was no occasion for this deviation from the truth of things, and from the dignity and spotless purity of the character. This young enthusiast, with her religious reveries, her simplicity, her heroism, her melancholy, her sensibility, her fortitude, her perfectly feminine bearing in all her exploits, (for though she so often led the van of battle unshrinking, while death was all round her, she never struck a blow, nor stained her consecrated sword with blood,-another point in which Schiller has wronged her,) this heroine aud martyr, over whose last moments we shed burning tears of pity and indignation, remains yet to be treated as a dramatic character, and I know but one person capable of doing this.

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