Part 7 (1/2)

As in all Shakespeare's greater plays, a justice brings evil upon the vow breaker. Curses called down in the solemn moment come home to roost when the solemnity is forgotten or thrust aside. Clarence, who broke his oath to the House of Lancaster, is done to death by his brother. Anne, cursing the killer of her husband, curses the woman who shall marry him, is, herself, that woman, and dies wretchedly. Grey, Rivers, Dorset, Buckingham and Hastings make oaths of amity, call down curses on him that breaks them, themselves break them, and die wretchedly. Richard, too wise to make oaths, too strong to curse, dies, as his mother foretells, ”by G.o.d's just ordinance,” when the measure of the blood of his victims becomes too great, and when his victims' curses, after wandering from heart to heart, get them into human bodies and walk the world, executing justice.

All through the play there are warnings against human certainty. Of all the dangerous p.r.o.nouncements of man that to the fountain, ”Fountain, of thy water I will never drink,” is one of the most dangerous. There are terrible examples of certainty betrayed. Richard is certain as only fine intellect can be that he will triumph. It is a part of his tragedy that it is not intellect that triumphs in this world, but a stupid, though a righteous something, incapable of understanding intellect. Rivers and Grey are certain that Richard is friendly to them. They are hurried to Pomfret and put to death. Hastings ”Knows his state secure,” and ”goes triumphant.” He is rushed out of life at a moment's notice, one hour a lord, giving his opinion at a council, the next a corpse in its grave.

Buckingham thinks himself secure. A moment's nicety of conscience sends him flying to death. The little Princes lay down to sleep--

”girdling one another Within their innocent alabaster arms.

Their lips were four red roses on a stalk Which in their summer beauty kissed each other”--

when their waking time came they were stamped down under the stones at the stair foot.

The poetry of this play is that of great and high spiritual invention.

There is much that stays in the mind as exquisitely said and beautifully felt. But the wonder of the work is in the greatness of the conception.

That is truly great, both as poetry and as drama. The big and burning imaginings do not please, they haunt.

The dream of Clarence, the wooing of the Lady Anne, the scene in Baynard's Castle, and the ghost scene in the tents at Bosworth, have been praised and re-praised. They are in Shakespeare's normal mood, neither greater nor less than twenty other scenes in the mature plays.

The really grand scene of the calling down of the curses (Act I, sc.

iii), when the man's mind, after brooding on this event for months, sees it all, for a glowing hour, as the just G.o.d sees it, is the wonderful achievement. Think of this scene, and think of the scenes played nightly now in the English theatres, and ask whether all is well with the nation's soul.

There are many superb Shakespearean openings. No poet in history opens a play with a more magnificent certainty. The opening of this play--

”Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York,”

is one of the most splendid of all. There is no need to pick out fragments from the rest of the play, but the march of the line--

”Your fire-new stamp of honour is scarce current”--

the lines--

”then came wandering by A shadow like an angel, with bright hair Dabbled in blood; and he squeaked out aloud, 'Clarence is come; false, fleeting, perjured Clarence, That stabbed me in the field by Tewkesbury'”--

the exquisitely tender lines--

”And there the little souls of Edward's children Whisper the spirits”--

and the orders of Richard in the last act, for white Surrey to be saddled, ink and paper to be brought, and a bowl of wine to be filled, show that the poet's great confident manner was formed, on all the four sides of its perfection. The years only brought it to a deeper glow.

_The Merchant of Venice._

_Written._ (?)

_Published._ 1600.

_Source of the Plot._ The ancient story of the merciless Jew is told in the _Gesta Romanorum_, and re-told, with delicate grace, by Giovanni Fiorentino, a fourteenth-century Italian writer, in his _Il Pecorone_ (the simpleton), a collection of novels, or, as we should call them, short stories. The story of the three caskets is also told in the _Gesta Romanorum_. Other incidents in the play are taken from other sources, possibly from other plays. It is thought by some that the character of Shylock was suggested by the case of the Spanish Jew, Lopez, who was hanged, perhaps unjustly, for plotting to poison Queen Elizabeth, in 1594. The main source of the dramatic fable is Fiorentino's story.

_The Fable._ Portia, the lady of Belmont, has three caskets, one of gold, one of silver, one of lead. She is vowed to marry the man who, on viewing the caskets, guesses which of them contains her portrait. Various attempting suitors fail to guess rightly.

Ba.s.sanio, eager to try the hazard, obtains money from his friend Antonio, to equip him. Antonio borrows the money from the Jew, Shylock, on condition that, should he fail to repay the debt by a fixed day, a pound of his flesh shall be forfeit to the Jew.

Ba.s.sanio guesses rightly and weds Portia.