網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版
[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed]

breadth, and clarity of vision. This tragedy of disillusion has at least the saving quality of a rich and many-sided knowledge of life.

M.DC. XVI.

Queen Elizabeth died in March, 1603, while Shakespeare was absorbed in the problems presented in the Tragedies. His silence when the chorus of elegies filled the air has already been noted; his friendship for Southampton and Essex had probably estranged him from the Queen. Shortly after his accession to the throne, James I. showed his favor to a group of nine actors, among whom were Shakespeare and Burbage, by granting them a special license of a very liberal character, and giving them the right to call themselves the King's Servants. The plays of Shakespeare were repeatedly presented before the King at various places; among

GEORGIVS

[graphic]
[ocr errors]

GEORGE CHAPMAN

From a very old print.

peared before the King at Whitehall on at least eleven occasions. Much as the King loved the society of prelates and the amenities of theological discussion, it is clear that he was not indifferent to the charms of the stage.

them, Wilton House, the residence of show that Shakespeare's company apthe Earl of Pembroke, which stands in a charming country about three miles from Salisbury, and in which Sidney wrote the "Arcadia." The whole region is touched with literary associations of the most diverse kinds. The course of travel taken by Shakespeare's company makes it probable that he saw the noble Cathedral in its beautiful close, as Dickens saw it when he laid the scene of " Martin Chuzzlewit" in that neighborhood, and that he passed the little church where holy George Herbert lived five years of his beautiful life a quarter of a century later. In the following year, wearing the scarlet robe presented for the occasion, Shakespeare, in company with other actors, walked in the procession which formally welcomed the King to London. Mr. Lee agrees with Mr. HalliwellPhillipps in the belief that Shakespeare and his fellow-actors of the King's Company were present at Somerset House by royal order, and took part in the magnificent ceremonies with which the Spanish ambassador, who came to England to ratify the treaty of peace between the two countries, was entertained at midsummer in the same year. And during the succeeding autumn and winter the records

One of the plays which the King saw was "Othello." In "Hamlet" Shakespeare spoke for and to the Germanic consciousness; in "Romeo and Juliet," and still more directly in "Othello," he spoke for and to the Latin consciousness. "Othello" is one of the simplest, most direct, conventional, and objective of the plays. In its main lines it is an oldfashioned drama of blood-shedding, saved by the penetrating insight with which the motives of the chief characters are revealed, and by the vitalizing skill with which the situations are related to the plot and the plot rooted in the moral necessities of the human nature within the circle of movement. The thread of the story was clearly traced by Cinthio in the series of novels from which "Measure for Measure" was also derived. The Italian romancer furnished nearly all the incidents, but Shakespeare breathed the breath of dramatic life into them, made Othello and Desdemona the central fig

[blocks in formation]

striking blow after blow, is one of the most significant and original of Shakespeare's creations-a malicious servant of a fate compounded of his devilish keenness of insight into the weaknesses of noble natures and of their unsuspicious trustfulness. The

basis of tragedy in Othello was his ready belief

in Iago and his quickly awakened distrust of Desdemona. In the end, Iago, like most of those who invoke tragic forces for evil ends, is destroyed by the tempest of passion he has let loose in the world.

By reason of its simplicity, its rapid of movement, and its dramatic intere "Othello" has long been one of the po ular Shakespearean plays on the stag Its chief characteristic is perhaps pathos; the deep and penetrating appe which the spectacle of the defeat of t noble natures by pure villainy makes the imagination. Wordsworth declar that "the tragedy of Othello, Plato's re

[graphic]

FRANCIS BACON

ords of the last scenes in the career of Socrates, and Izaak Walton's 'Life of George Herbert,' are the most pathetic of human compositions."

Shakespeare was now swiftly mounting

[graphic][ocr errors][merged small]

to the sublimest heights of dramatic creation, penetrating further and further into the depths of the human spirit, and steadily bringing the tragic movement home to the soul of the tragic hero. In "Romeo and Juliet" the family and social forces are more powerful than the passion and devotion of the ill-fated lovers; in "Julius Cæsar" the interest fastens upon Brutus, while the dead Imperator remains in the background as the personification of a new order in society; in "Hamlet" the time, which was out of joint, must be taken into account if the chief actor is to be made comprehensible. In "Othello" the essential movement is wholly within the circle of the character of the protagonist; the tragic action springs out of Othello's nature; the drama issues out of the heart of the hero and is centered in him. This marks the culmination of Shakespeare's art as a dramatist; every element in the play-character, action, incident, background-is strictly subordinated to the

unity and totality of the movement, and the concentrated energy and vitality of the dramatist's genius bear the drama swiftly forward to the dramatic crisis.

In " Macbeth," which takes rank with "Hamlet," "Lear," and "Othello" as the dramatic masterpieces of Shakespeare, the same breadth and unity of interest are notable. It is one of the shortest of the plays; there is almost no relief from humor or a subsidiary plot; the style is broad and firm, almost sketchy in the largeness of outline and the indifference to detail. The brevity and condensation of the play have raised the question whether it is not an abridgment. There is no question, however, regarding the definiteness and completeness of impression which it conveys an impression of massive and inevitable tragedy. The sources of "Macbeth" are to be found in Holinshed's "Chronicle of England and Ireland;" suggestions for the witch scenes may have been found in the "Discoverie

of Witchcraft" which appeared not long before the poet left Stratford. The play was completed about 1606, and the Scottish background suggests that the interest of the King in the scenic and historic associations of the drama may have directed Shakespeare's attention to the subject. "Macbeth" presented the poet with a new motive or theme of dramatic interest. Up to this point the tragic heroes had committed deeds of violence, but Lear spoke for them all when he said:

I am a man more sinn'd against than sinning. Macbeth does not belong in this company of the children of fate; he deliberately sets in motion the tragic forces which sweep the stage; he becomes a criminal on a colossal scale; he kills his King under his own roof, uses murder as if it were a legitimate political method, and converts all the opportunities of usurpation into a consistent practice of tyranny. He fills the stage; the whole drama is rooted in his nature; and, criminal as he is, he commands unwilling admiration and breathless interest by the massive simplicity of his character, the concentration of his purpose, and the directness of his action. The play moves with unusual rapidity, and presents no elements which withdraw the attention for a moment from the central figures or the swift and definite

movement.

The weird sisters on the blasted heath had long been part of the Macbeth legend. In Shakespeare's version of the story these supernatural beings were neither the creations of Macbeth's brain nor the masters of his destiny; they had objective reality, but they were not the ministers of fate. Macbeth's fate was in his own hands. The sisters spoke to Banquo as directly as to Macbeth, but Banquo's clear vision and deep integrity gave their word no lodgment. Whether they speak truth or falsehood, they leave his fate untouched; in Macbeth's mind, on the other hand, they find a quick soil for evil suggestion.

It has been urged by several critics that some parts of "Macbeth" were interpolated at a later day by Thomas Middleton, chiefly on the ground that these passages are un-Shakespearean in character, that there are obvious resemblances between the witch scenes in the play and Middleton's play, "The Witch," which appeared in 1610, and that two songs to

which allusion is made in the stage-dire tions of "Macbeth" appear in "Th Witch." Charles Lamb long ago pointe out the marked differences between th witches of Shakespeare and those of Mic dleton; the resemblances between th plays are most readily explained by th assumption that Middleton had Shake speare too much in his mind. The tw songs beginning "Come away, com away," and "Black spirits and white, may have been written by Middleto and interpolated in the acting version o "Macbeth" at a later date, or they ma have been written by Shakespeare an revised or modified by Middleton. Th scene in which the porter speaks after th murder was long regarded as question able. Coleridge found the introductio of the comic element too abrupt, an failed to perceive the deepening of th tragic impression which the scene pro duces by its startling contrast with th awful atmosphere of crime which pervade the castle. This point was finally settle by the keen instinct of De Quincey in on of the most famous passages in Shake spearean criticism:

are

Another world has stept in; and the mu derers are taken out of the region of huma things, human purposes, human desires. The transfigured: Lady Macbeth is "un sexed;" Macbeth has forgot that he was bor of a woman; both are conformed to the imag of devils; and the world of devils is suddenl revealed. But how shall this be conveyed and made palpable? In order that a new world may step in, this world must for a tim disappear. The murderers and the murde must be insulated-cut off by an immeas urable gulf from the ordinary tide and suc cession of human affairs-locked up and se questered in some deep recess; we must be made sensible that the world of ordinary life is suddenly arrested, laid asleep, tranced racked into a dread armistice; time must be annihilated, relation to things abolished; and all must pass self-withdrawn into a deep syncope and suspension of earthly passion Hence it is that, when the deed is done, when the work of darkness is perfect, then the world of darkness passes away like a pageantry in the clouds; the knocking at the gate is heard: and it makes known audibly that the reaction has commenced; the human has made its reflux upon the fiendish; the pulses of life are beginning to beat again; and the re-establishment of the goings-on of the world in which we live first makes us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that had suspended them.

Dr. Simon Forman has left an account of a performance of "Macbeth" which he

« 上一頁繼續 »