Part 4 (2/2)
It then occurred to me that I had discovered the secret of Shakespeare.
He did, when awake, what I did when asleep--that is, he threw off a character so perfect that it acted independently of him.
In the delineation of character Shakespeare has no rivals. He creates no monsters. His characters do not act without reason, without motive.
Iago had his reasons. In Caliban, nature was not destroyed--and Lady Macbeth certifies that the woman still was in her heart, by saying:
”Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it.”
Shakespeare's characters act from within. They are centres of energy.
They are not pushed by unseen hands, or pulled by unseen strings. They have objects, desires. They are persons--real, living beings.
Few dramatists succeed in getting their characters loose from the canvas--their backs stick to the wall--they do not have free and independent action--they have no background, no unexpressed motives--no untold desires. They lack the complexity of the real.
Shakespeare makes the character true to itself. Christopher Sly, surrounded by the luxuries of a lord, true to his station, calls for a pot of the smallest ale.
Take one expression by Lady Macbeth. You remember that after the murder is discovered--after the alarm bell is rung--she appears upon the scene wanting to know what has happened. Macduff refuses to tell her, saying that the slightest word would murder as it fell. At this moment Banquo comes upon the scene and Macduff cries out to him:
”Our royal master's murdered.”
What does Lady Macbeth then say? She in fact makes a confession of guilt. The weak point in the terrible tragedy is that Duncan was murdered in Macbeth's castle. So when Lady Macbeth hears what they suppose is news to her, she cries:
”What! In our house!”
Had she been innocent, her horror of the crime would have made her forget the place--the venue. Banquo sees through this, and sees through her.
Her expression was a light, by which he saw her guilt--and he answers:
”Too cruel anywhere.”
No matter whether Shakespeare delineated clown or king, warrior or maiden--no matter whether his characters are taken from the gutter or the throne--each is a work of consummate art, and when he is unnatural, he is so splendid that the defect is forgotten.
When Romeo is told of the death of Juliet, and thereupon makes up his mind to die upon her grave, he gives a description of the shop where poison could be purchased. He goes into particulars and tells of the alligators stuffed, of the skins of ill-shaped fishes, of the beggarly account of empty boxes, of the remnants of pack-thread, and old cakes of roses--and while it is hardly possible to believe that under such circ.u.mstances a man would take the trouble to make an inventory of a strange kind of drug-store, yet the inventory is so perfect--the picture is so marvellously drawn--that we forget to think whether it is natural or not.
In making the frame of a great picture--of a great scene--Shakespeare was often careless, but the picture is perfect. In making the sides of the arch he was negligent, but when he placed the keystone, it burst into blossom. Of course there are many lines in Shakepeare that never should have been written. In other words, there are imperfections in his plays. But we must remember that Shakespeare furnished the torch that enables us to see these imperfections.
Shakespeare speaks through his characters, and we must not mistake what the characters say, for the opinion of Shakespeare. No one can believe that Shakespeare regarded life as ”a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” That was the opinion of a murderer, surrounded by avengers, and whose wife--partner in his crimes--troubled with thick-coming fancies--had gone down to her death.
Most actors and writers seem to suppose that the lines called ”The Seven Ages” contain Shakespeare's view of human life. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The lines were uttered by a cynic, in contempt and scorn of the human race.
Shakespeare did not put his characters in the livery and uniform of some weakness, peculiarity or pa.s.sion. He did not use names as tags or brands. He did not write under the picture, ”This is a villain.” His characters need no suggestive names to tell us what they are--we see them and we know them for ourselves.
It may be that in the greatest utterances of the greatest characters in the supreme moments, we have the real thoughts, opinions and convictions of Shakespeare.
Of all writers Shakespeare is the most impersonal.. He speaks through others, and the others seem to speak for themselves. The didactic is lost in the dramatic. He does not use the stage as a pulpit to enforce some maxim. He is as reticent as Nature.
He idealizes the common and transfigures all he touches--but he does not preach. He was in-terested in men and things as they were. He did not seek: to change them--but to portray, he was _Nature's mirror_--and in that mirror Nature saw herself.
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