SHAKESPEARE'S MINOR POEMS. BY JOHN S. HART. rites by the daughters of Israel during the degenerate days of the later prophets. Numberless are the incidents framed by the poets out of this general idea. The most common is that celebrated by Shakespeare in the present poem. It is briefly this. Venus, the Goddess of female beauty, becomes enamoured of the beautiful boy, but her admiration is not returned; he forsakes her for the more congenial sports of the chase, where he is killed by a wild boar, leaving her to lament in bitter wailings his untimely fate. Such is an outline of the story. In the main incidents and in the leading idea, there is nothing original. All the creative power is in the filling up. Here the poet distances all competitors ancient or modern. The various scenes are painted with a distinctness-a sort of visibility -not surpassed even by Spenser, while there is throughout a compactness and force of expression of which Spenser was entirely incapable. The actors stand out to the mind's eye with all the distinctness of a group of statuary. SHAKESPEARE calls his Venus and Adonis | Thammuz, worshipped with foul and disgusting "the first heir of his invention." I have seen no sufficient reason why we should not take this expression in its obvious import. If so, the poem is to be regarded as the author's first and earliest literary performance. There seems indeed but little doubt that it was composed on the sweet banks of the Avon, and before the author had left Stratford for the great metropolis. The poem has about it all the freshness of country air, all the warmth of youthful passion. It is founded upon a well-known Grecian legend. That imaginative people invented for almost every abstract mental idea some material and concrete symbol, for every emotion and passion of the soul some graceful tale of life and action. Grecian fable is only Grecian logic, Grecian science, Grecian opinion personified. Among the ideas thus embodied in action are two that seem to be in some respects the counterparts of each other, although this correlation, so far as I am aware, has not been heretofore observed. As was Diana among women, so was Adonis among men-each having every perfection except that which is most characteristic. The same inventive fancy, which formed the idea of a woman possessed of every gracious and womanly quality except the desire to be acceptable to the other sex, conceived also the idea of a man, in all respects manly and noble, beautiful and brave, but utterly and absolutely indifferent to what is after all man's ruling passion. The Adonis of early Græcia was simply a passionless boy. He was one who could love a woman only as he loved his sister, his mother, or his brother. It was not guile, used to decoy more victims. It was not affectation, to hide the real state of his heart. It was not vanity, to show his own importance by apparently contemning that which others prized so highly. It was simply sheer, absolute indifference. Love, in the special application of that term, was to him a thing unintelligible. He could form no more idea of it, than can a blind man of colours, or a deaf man of sounds, or a cherub of the feelings of humanity. Yet was never cherub more beautiful or more enchanting. The flush of health was on his cheek, the pride of intellect was on his brow, the strength of manhood was in his Such was the Adonis of the graceful and imaginative Greek;-such, with disagreeable abatements and additions, was the Syrian 10 arm. VOL. VI. One peculiarity, first observed I believe by Coleridge, is worthy of note. The poem is not marked by stirring action, but by a series of minutely finished pictures. In other words, it is descriptive, not dramatic. Yet the character of these descriptions is precisely that which would indicate the possession of the dramatic power. Drama is action. That the action may be consistent and suitable, the dramatist while composing must have the actors and the scene of action most vividly and palpably before his own mind. He must be present to every scene and every soul, as really as though he were at the moment actually on the stage, surrounded by the characters whom he has summoned into existence. He must therefore have the power of conception in the highest degree. The fact to be noted is, that this power is equally shown in the Venus and Adonis. In other words, a poem essentially and characteristically undramatic evinces at the same time the possession of high dramatic power. The pictures given to the reader in the poem are such as must be ever present to the mind's eye of the poet while writing a drama. Shakespeare's descriptions in his Venus and Adonis raise in our minds just such scenes as I suppose always existed in his own mind while putting language into the mouth of his dramatic characters. The scene in which the horse of Adonis breaks loose from him may be cited in illustration of this peculiarity: "Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds, "His ears up-pricked; his braided hanging mane His eye, which glisters scornfully like fire, "Sometimes he trots, as if he told the steps, "What recketh he his rider's angry stir, He sees his love, and nothing else he sees, "Look, when a painter would surpass the life, So did this horse excel a common one, Look, what a horse should have, he did not lack, "Sometimes he scuds far off, and there he stares; "She (the hare) generally returns to the seat from which she was put up, running, as all the world knows, in a circle, or something sometimes like it... At starting, she tears away at her utmost speed for a mile or more, and distances the dogs halfway: she then returns, diverging a little to the right or left, that she may not run into the mouths of her enemies-a necessity which accounts for what is called the circularity of her course. Her flight from home is direct and precipitate; but on her way back, when she has gained a little time for consideration and stratagem, she describes a curious labyrinth of short turnings and windings, as if to perplex the dogs by the intricacy of her track." Shakespeare says:— "And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare, Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles, How he outruns the wind, and with what care He cranks and crosses, with a thousand doubles: The many musits through the which he goes Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes." Mr. Ayton: "The hounds, whom we left in full cry, continue their music without remission as long as they are faithful to the scent; as a summons, it should seem, like the seaman's cry, to pull together, or keep together, and it is a certain proof to themselves and their followers that they are in the right way: on the instant that they are 'at fault,' or lose the scent, they are silent... The weather, in its impression on the scent, is the great father of faults;' but they may arise from other accidents, even when the day is in every respect favourable. The intervention of ploughed land, on which the scent soon cools or evaporates, is at least perilous; but sheep-stains, recently left by a flock, are fatal: they cut off the scent irrecoverably -making a gap, as it were, in the clue, in which the dogs have not even a hint for their guidance." Shakespeare: "Sometime he runs among a flock of sheep, To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell, And sometime where earth-delving conies keep, To stop the loud pursuers in their yell; And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer; Then do they spend their mouths: Echo replies, Mr. Ayton: "Suppose then, after the usual rounds, that you see the hare at last (a sorry mark for so many foes) sorely beleaguered-looking dark and draggled, and limping heavily along; then stopping to listen, again tottering on a little, and again stopping: and at every step, and every pause, hearing the death-cry grow nearer and louder." Shakespeare: "By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill, And now his grief may be compared well fell from his horse and was overrun by the ferocious beast. The protruding tusk of the "grim, urchin-snouted boar," penetrated the groin of the beauteous boy, and killed him outright, goring him horribly. The anguish and distraction of Venus on seeing his mangled body, is another of those striking pictures with which the poem abounds. "She looks upon his lips, and they are pale; She takes him by the hand, and that is cold; She whispers in his ears a heavy tale, As if they heard the woful words she told: She lifts the coffer-lids that close his eyes, Passion always exaggerates. The spectator of a tragedy may be accurate and precise; the actor never. In wo, or rage, no man stops to measure his words, or correct his images. The boldest metaphors in his mouth seem tame, forced and even artificial comparisons become natural. They indicate an excited, an unnatural, an "artificial" state of mind. They are the efforts of a drowning man grasping at No one ever understood this principle better than Shakespeare. When Venus sees the flowers and grass drenched in the blood of Adonis, they seem to her to be bleeding in "sympathy," or to have "stolen" the precious drops. Indeed, the whole scene describing the lament of Venus over the dead body of Adonis is exquisitely beautiful. Every line shows the hand of a master. straws. "No flower was nigh, no grass, herb, leaf, or weed, "This solemn sympathy poor Venus noteth; Her voice is stopped, her joints forget to bow; "Upon his hurt she looks so steadfastly, That her sight dazzling makes the wound seem three; His face seems twain, each several limb is doubled, "My tongue cannot express my grief for one, And yet,' quoth she, behold two Adons dead! "Alas, poor world, what treasure hast thou lost! The flowers are sweet, their colours fresh and trim; "Bonnet nor veil henceforth no creature wear! "And therefore would he put his bonnet on, Under whose brim the gaudy sun would peep; The wind would blow it off, and, being gone, Play with his locks; then would Adonis weep: And straight, in pity of his tender years, 131 ~ They both would strive who first should dry his tears. "When he beheld his shadow in the brook, If he did see his face, why then I know, The mind, highly excited on any subject, is easily and rapidly carried from one passion to another. The disappointment and grief of Venus prepare the mind of the reader for the intense bitterness and spite that follow. "Since thou art dead, lo! here 1 prophesy, That all love's pleasures shall not match his wo. "It shall be fickle, false, and full of fraud; "It shall be sparing, and too full of riot, "It shall suspect, where is no cause of fear; Perverse it shall be, when it seems most toward, Sith, in his prime death doth my love destroy, The Venus and Adonis is by all the critics regarded as betraying marks of youth, and it is expressly called by the author "the first heir of his invention." Yet no one, I think, can read Fear him, frighten him. |