Part 13 (1/2)
The finished scenes are full of wisdom--
”Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, A great-sized monster of ingrat.i.tude: Those sc.r.a.ps are good deeds past, which are devour'd As fast as they are made, forgot as soon As done: perseverance, dear my lord, Keeps honour bright: to have done, is to hang Quite out of fas.h.i.+on.”
”O, let not virtue seek Remuneration for the thing it was.”
”Those wounds heal ill that men do give themselves.”
”And sometimes we are devils to ourselves.”
Some have thought that this play was written by Shakespeare to ridicule the two poets, Ben Jonson (in the person of Ajax) and John Marston (in the person of Thersites). Those two poets were engaged, with others, in the years 1601-2, in what is called the War of the Theatres, that is, they wrote plays to criticise and mock each other. These plays are often scurrilous and seldom amusing. During the course of the war the two chief combatants came to blows.
It is sad that Shakespeare should be credited with the paltriness of lesser men. His view of his task is expressed in _Timon of Athens_ with the perfect golden clearness of supreme power--
”my free drift Halts not particularly, but moves itself In a wide sea of wax: no levell'd malice Infects one comma in the course I hold; But flies an eagle flight, bold, and forth on, Leaving no tract behind.”
He held that view throughout his creative life, as a great poet must. At the time during which this play was written his thought was more rigidly kept to the just survey of life than at any other period. Creative art has been so long inglorious that the practice and ideas of supreme poets have become incomprehensible to the many. This play is a great hint of something never, now, to be made clear. Those who count it a mark of Shakespeare's littleness expose their own.
_Measure for Measure._
_Written._ 1603-4 (?)
_Produced._ (?)
_Published._ 1623.
_Source of the Plot._ The story is founded on an event that is said to have taken place in Ferrara, during the Middle Ages. Shakespeare took it from a collection of novels, the _Hecatomithi_, by Giraldi Cinthio; from the play, _The rare Historie of Promos and Ca.s.sandra_, founded on Cinthio's novel, by one George Whetstone, and from Whetstone's prose rendering of the story in his book _The Heptameron of Civil Discourses_.
_The Fable._ The Duke of Vienna, going on a secret mission, leaves his power in the hands of Angelo, a man of strict life.
Angelo enforces old laws against incontinence. He arrests Claudio and sentences him to be beheaded. Claudio's sister, Isabella, pleads with Angelo for her brother's life. Being moved to l.u.s.t, Angelo tempts Isabella. He offers to spare Claudio if she will submit to him. Claudio begs her to save him thus. She refuses.
The Duke returns to Vienna disguised, hears Isabella's story, and resolves to entrap Angelo. He causes her to make an appointment to that end. He causes Mariana, a maid who has been jilted by Angelo, to personate Isabella, and keep the appointment. Mariana does so.
He contrives to check Angelo's treachery, that would have caused Claudio's death in spite of the submission.
Lastly he reveals himself, exposes Angelo's sin, compels him to marry Mariana, pardons Claudio, and makes Isabella his d.u.c.h.ess.
This play is now seldom performed. It is one of the greatest works of the greatest English mind. It deals justly with the case of the man who sets up a lifeless sentimentality as a defence against a living natural impulse. The spirit of Angelo has avenged itself on Shakespeare by becoming the guardian spirit of the British theatre.
In this play Shakespeare seems to have brooded on the fact that the common prudential virtues are sometimes due, not to virtue, but to some starvation of the nature. Chast.i.ty may proceed from a meanness in the mind, from coldness of the emotions, or from cowardice, at least as often as from manly and cleanly thinking. Two kinds of chast.i.ty are set at clash here. The one springs from a fire in the personality that causes Isabella to think death better than contamination, and gives her that whiteness of generosity which fills nunneries with living sacrifice; the other comes from the n.i.g.g.ardliness that makes Angelo jilt Mariana rather than take her without a dower. Both are obsessions; both exalt a part of life above life itself. Like other obsessions, they come to grief in the presence of something real.
These two characters make the action. The play is concerned with the difficulty of doing justice in a world of animals swayed by rumour. The subject is one that occupied Shakespeare's mind throughout his creative life. Wisdom begins in justice. But how can man be just, without the understanding of G.o.d? Who is so faultless that he can sit in judgment on another? Who so wise that he can see into the heart, weigh the act with the temptation and strike the balance?
s.e.xual sin is the least of the sins in Dante. It is allied to love. It is an image of regeneration. No sin is so common, none is more glibly blamed. It is so easy to cry ”treacherous,” ”base,” and ”immoral.” But who, while the heart beats, can call himself safe from the temptation to this sin? It is mixed up with every generosity. It is a flood in the heart and a blinding wave over the eyes. It is the thorn in the side under the cloak of the beauty of youth. In Shakespeare's vision it is a natural force, incident to youth, as April is incident to the year. The young men live as though life were oil, and youth a bonfire to be burnt.
Life is always wasteful. Youth is life's test for manhood. The clown finds in the prison a great company of the tested and rejected, calling through the bars for alms. In spite of all this choice, another victim is picked by tragical chance. Lucio, a b.u.t.terfly of the brothel, a dirtier soul than Claudio, is spared. Claudio is taken and condemned.
The beautiful, vain, high-blooded youth, so quick with life and glad of the sun, is to lie in earth, at the bidding of one less full of April.
Angelo, the man whose want of sympathy condemns Claudio, is in the state of security that precedes so much Shakespearean tragedy. He has received the name of being more than human because (unlike his admirers) he has not shown himself to be considerably less. He has come through youth unsinged. He has not been betrayed by his ”gross body's treason.” Both he and those about him think that he is proof against temptation to s.e.xual sin. Suddenly his security is swept away. He is betrayed by the subtler temptation that would mean nothing to a grosser man. He is moved by the sight of the beauty of a distressed woman's mind. The sight means nothing to Claudio, and less than nothing to Lucio. The happy animal nature of youthful man has a way of avoiding distressed women. The cleverer man, who has shut himself up in the half life of sentiment, cannot so escape. He is attacked suddenly by the unknown imprisoned side of him as well as by temptation. He falls, and, like all who fall, he falls not to one sin, but to a degradation of the entire man. The sins come linked. ”Treason and murder ever kept together.” When he is once involved with l.u.s.t, treachery and murder follow. He is swiftly so stained that when the wise Duke shows him as he is, he shrinks from the picture, with a cry that he may be put out of the way by some swift merciful death so that the horror of the knowledge of himself may end, too.
The play is a marvellous piece of unflinching thought. Like all the greatest of the plays, it is so full of ill.u.s.tration of the main idea that it gives an illusion of an infinity like that of life. It is constructed closely and subtly for the stage. It is more full of the ingenuities of play-writing than any of the plays. The verse and the prose have that smoothness of happy ease which makes one think of Shakespeare not as a poet writing, but as a sun s.h.i.+ning.