blinded Gloster is equally heart-rending; nothing can be more affecting than to see the ejected son become the father's guide, and the good angel, who under the disguise of insanity, saves him by an ingenious and pious fraud from the horror and despair of self-murder. But who can possibly enumerate all the different combinations and situations by which our minds are here as it were stormed by the poet? Respecting the structure of the whole I will only make one observation. The story of Lear and his daughters was left by Shakspeare exactly as he found it in a fabulous tradition, with all the features characteristical of the simplicity of old times. But in that tradition there is not the slightest trace of the story of Gloster and his sons, which was derived by Shakspeare from another source. The incorporation of the two stories has been censured as destructive of the unity of action. But whatever contributes to the intrigue or the dénouement must always possess unity. And with what ingenuity and skill are the two main parts of the composition dovetailed into one another! The pity felt by Gloster for the fate of Lear becomes the means which enables his son Edmund to effect his complete destruction, and affords the outcast Edgar an opportunity of being the saviour of his father. On the other hand, Edmund is active in the cause of Regan and Gonerill; and the criminal passion which they both entertain for him induces them to execute justice on each other and on themselves. The laws of the drama have therefore been sufficiently complied with; but that is the least: it is the very combination which constitutes the sublime beauty of the work. The two cases resembles each other in the main: an infatuated father is blind towards his well-disposed child, and the unnatural children, whom he prefers, requite him by the ruin of all his happiness. But all the circumstances are so different, that these stories, while they each make a correspondent impression on the heart, form a complete contrast for the imagination. Were Lear alone to suffer from his daughters, the impression would be limited to the powerful compassion felt by us for his private misfortune. But two such unheardof examples taking place at the same time have the appearance of a great commotion in the moral world: the picture becomes gigantic, and fills us with such alarm as we should entertain at the idea that the heavenly bodies might one day fall from their appointed orbits. To save in some degree the honour of human nature, Shakspeare never wishes his spec

tators to forget that the story takes place in a dreary ano
barbarous age: he lays particular stress on the circumstance
that the Britons of that day were still heathens, although he
has not made all the remaining circumstances to coincide
learnedly with the time which he has chosen. From this
point of view we must judge of many coarsenesses in expres-
sion and manners; for instance, the immodest manner in
which Gloster acknowledges his bastard, Kent's quarrel with
the Steward, and more especially the cruelty personally in-
flicted on Gloster by the Duke of Cornwall. Even the virtue
of the honest Kent bears the stamp of an iron age, in which
the good and the bad display the same uncontrollable energy.
Great qualities have not been superfluously assigned to the
King; the poet could command our sympathy for his situa-
tion, without concealing what he had done to bring himself
into it. Lear is choleric, overbearing, and almost childish
from age, when he drives out his youngest daughter because
she will not join in the hypocritical exaggerations of her
sisters. But he has a warm and affectionate heart, which is
susceptible of the most fervent gratitude; and even rays of a
high and kingly disposition burst forth from the eclipse of
his understanding. Of Cordelia's heavenly beauty of soul,
painted in so few words, I will not venture to speak; she can
only be named in the same breath with Antigone. Her death
has been thought too cruel; and in England the piece is in
acting so far altered that she remains victorious and happy
I must own, I cannot conceive what ideas of art and dramatic
connexion those persons have who suppose that we can at
pleasure tack a double conclusion to a tragedy; a melan-
choly one for hard-hearted spectators, and a happy one for
souls of a softer mould. After surviving so many sufferings,
Lear can only die; and what more truly tragic end for him
than to die from grief for the death of Cordelia? and if he
is also to be saved and to pass the remainder of his days in
happiness, the whole loses its signification. According to
Shakspeare's plan the guilty, it is true, are all punished, for
wickedness destroys itself; but the virtues that would bring
help and succour are everywhere too late, or overmatched by
the cunning activity of malice. The persons of this drama
have only such a faint belief in Providence as heathens may
be supposed to have; and the poet here wishes to show va
that this belief requires a wider range than the dark pilgrim-
age on earth to be established in full extent.

Here too.

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SHAKSPEARE: CORIOLANUS,

LECTURE XXVI.

Criticisms on Shakspeare's Historical Dramas.

THE five tragedies of which I have just spoken are deservedly the most celebrated of all the works of Shakspeare. In the three last, more especially, we have a display of a loftiness of genius which may almost be said to surpass the powers of human nature: the mind is as much lost in the contemplation of all the heights and depths of these works as our feelings are overpowered by the first impression which they produce. Of his historical plays, however, some possess a high degree of tragical perfection, and all are distinguished by peculiar excellencies.

In the three Roman pieces, Coriolanus, Julius Cæsar, and Antony and Cleopatra, the moderation with which Shakspeare excludes foreign appendages and arbitrary suppositions, and yet fully satisfies the wants of the stage, is particularly deserving of admiration. These plays are the very thing itself; and under the apparent artlessness of adhering closely to history as he found it, an uncommon degree of art is concealed. Of every historical transaction Shakspeare knows how to seize the true poetical point of view, and to give unity and rounding to a series of events detached from the immeasurable extent of history without in any degree _changing them. The public life of ancient Rome is called up from its grave, and exhibited before our eyes with the utmost grandeur and freedom of the dramatic form, and the heroes of Plutarch are ennobled by the most eloquent poetry.

In Coriolanus we have more comic intermixtures than in the others, as the many-headed multitude plays here a considerable part; and when Shakspeare portrays the blind movements of the people in a mass, he almost always gives himself up to his merry humour. To the plebeians, whose folly is certainly sufficiently conspicuous already, the original old satirist Menenius is added by way of abundance. Droll scenes arise of a description altogether peculiar, and which are compatible only with such a political drama; for instance, when Coriolanus, to obtain the consulate, must solicit the

SHAKSPEARE: JULIUS CÆSAR.

415

lower order of citizens whom he holds in contempt for their cowardice in war, but cannot so far master his haughty disposition as to assume the customary humility, and yet extorts from them their votes.

Yet

The

I have already shown* that the piece of Julius Cæsar, to complete the action, requires to be continued to the fall of Brutus and Cassius. Cæsar is not the hero of the piece, but Brutus. The amiable beauty of this character, his feeling and patriotic heroism, are portrayed with peculiar care. the poet has pointed out with great nicety the superiority of Cassius over Brutus in independent volition and discernment in judging of human affairs; that the latter from the purity of his mind and his conscientious love of justice, is unfit to be the head of a party in a state entirely corrupted; and that these very faults give an unfortunate turn to the cause of the conspirators. In the part of Cæsar several ostentatious speeches have been censured as unsuitable. But as he never appears in action, we have no other measure of his greatness than the impression which he makes upon the rest of the characters, and his peculiar confidence in himself. In this Cæsar was by no means deficient, as we learn from history and his own writings; but he displayed it more in the easy ridicule of bis enemies than in pompous discourses. theatrical effect of this play is injured by a partial falling off of the last two acts compared with the preceding in external splendour and rapidity. The first appearance of Caesar in festal robes, when the music stops, and all are silent whenever he opens his mouth, and when the few words which he utters are received as oracles, is truly magnificent; the conspiracy is a true conspiracy, which in stolen interviews and in the dead of night prepares the blow which is to be struck in open day, and which is to change the constitution of the world; the confused thronging before the murder of Cæsar, the general agitation even of the perpetrators after the deed, are all portrayed with most masterly skill; with the funeral procession and the speech of Antony the effect reaches its utmost height. Cæsar's shade is more powerful to avenge his fall than he himself was to guard against it. After the overthrow of the external splendour and greatness of the conqueror and ruler of the world, the intrinsic grandeur of character of Brutus and Cassius is all that remain to fill the * Page 240

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416

SHAKSPEARE: ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.

stage and occupy the minds of the spectators: suitably to their name, as the last of the Romans, they stand there, in some degree alone; and the forming a great and hazardous determination is more powerfully calculated to excite our expectation, than the supporting the consequences of the deed with heroic firmness.

Antony and Cleopatra may, in some measure, be considered as a continuation of Julius Cæsar: the two principal characters of Antony and Augustus are equally sustained in both pieces. Antony and Cleopatra is a play of great extent; the progress is less simple than in Julius Caesar. The fulness and variety of political and warlike events, to which the union of the three divisions of the Roman world under one master necessarily gave rise, were perhaps too great to admit of being clearly exhibited in one dramatic picture. In this consists the great difficulty of the historical drama:-it must be a 、 crowded extract, and a living development of history;-the difficulty, however, has generally been successfully overcome by Shakspeare. But now many things, which are transacted in the background, are here merely alluded to, in a manner which supposes an intimate acquaintance with the history; but a work of art should contain, within itself, every thing 、 necessary for its being fully understood. Many persons of historical importance are merely introduced in passing; the preparatory and concurring circumstances are not sufficiently collected into masses to avoid distracting our attention. The principal personages, however, are most emphatically distinguished by lineament and colouring, and powerfully arrest the imagination. In Antony we observe a mixture of great qualities, weaknesses, and vices; violent ambition and ebullitions of magnanimity; we see him now sinking into luxurious enjoyment and then nobly ashamed of his own aberrations, manning himself to resolutions not unworthy of himself, which are always shipwrecked against the seductions of an artful woman. It is Hercules in the chains of Omphale, drawn from the fabulous heroic ages into history, and invested with the Roman costume. The seductive arts of Cleopatra are in no respect veiled over; she is an ambiguous being made up of royal pride, female vanity, luxury, inconstancy, Land true attachment. Although the mutual passion of herself and Antony is without moral dignity, it still excites our sympathy as an insurmountable fascination :-they seem formed