Part 5 (1/2)
When I stood amid the great trees of California that lift their spreading capitals against the clouds, looking like Nature's columns to support the sky, I thought of the poetry of Shakespeare.
XI.
WHAT a procession of men and women--statesmen and warriors--kings and clowns--issued from Shakespeare's brain. What women!
Isabella--in whose spotless life love and reason blended into perfect truth.
Juliet--within whose heart pa.s.sion and purity met like white and red within the bosom of a rose.
Cordelia--who chose to suffer loss, rather than show her wealth of love with those who gilded lies in hope of gain.
Hermione--”tender as infancy and grace”--who bore with perfect hope and faith the cross of shame, and who at last forgave with all her heart.
Desdemona--so innocent, so perfect, her love so pure, that she was incapable of suspecting that another could suspect, and who with dying words sought to hide her lover's crime--and with her last faint breath uttered a loving lie that burst into a perfumed lily between her pallid lips.
Perdita--A violet dim, and sweeter than the lids of Junos eyes--”The sweetest low-born la.s.s that ever ran on the green sward.” And Helena--who said:
”I know I love in vain, strive against hope-- Yet in this captious and intenable sieve I still pour in the waters of my love, And lack not to lose still, Thus, Indian-like, Religious in mine error, I adore The sun that looks upon his wors.h.i.+pper, But knows of him no more.”
Miranda--who told her love as gladly as a flower gives its bosom to the kisses of the sun.
And Cordelia, whose kisses cured and whose tears restored. And stainless Imogen, who cried:
”What is it to be false?”
And here is the description of the perfect woman:
”To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love; To keep her constancy in plight and youth-- Outliving beauty's outward with a mind That doth renew swifter than blood decays.”
Shakespeare done more for woman than all the other dramatists of the world.
For my part. I love the Clowns. I love _Launce_ and his dog Crabb, and _Gobbo_, whose conscience threw its arms around the neck of his heart, and _Touchstone_, with his lie seven times removed; and dear old _Dogberry_--a pretty piece of flesh, tedious as a king. And _Bottom_, the very paramour for a sweet voice, longing to take the part to tear a cat in; and _Autolycus_, the snapper-up of unconsidered trifles, sleeping out the thought for the life to come. And great _Sir John_, without conscience, and for that reason unblamed and enjoyed--and who at the end babbles of green fields, and is almost loved. And ancient _Pistol_, the world his oyster. And _Bardolph_, with the flea on his blazing nose, putting beholders in mind of a d.a.m.ned soul in h.e.l.l. And the poor _Fool_, who followed the mad king, and went ”to bed at noon.” And the clown who carried the worm of Nilus, whose ”biting was immortal.” And _Corin_, the shepherd--who described the perfect man: ”I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat--get that I wear--owe no man aught--envy no man's happiness--glad of other men's good--content.”
And mingling in this motley throng, _Lear_, within whose brain a tempest raged until the depths were stirred, and the intellectual wealth of a life was given back to memory--and then by madness thrown to storm and night--and when I read the living lines I feel as though I looked upon the sea and saw it wrought by frenzied whirlwinds, until the buried treasures and the sunken wrecks of all the years were cast upon the sh.o.r.es.
And _Oth.e.l.lo_--who like the base Indian threw a pearl away richer than all his tribe.
And _Hamlet_--thought-entangted--hesitating between two worlds.
And _Macbeth_--strange mingling of cruelty and conscience, reaping the sure harvest of successful crime--”Curses not loud but deep--mouth-honor,--breath.”
And _Brutus_, falling on his sword that Caesar might be still.
And _Romeo_, dreaming of the white wonder of Juliet's hand. And _Ferdinand_, the patient log-man for Miranda's sake. And _Florizel_, who, ”for all the sun sees, or the close earth wombs, or the profound seas hide,” would not be faithless to the low-born la.s.s. And _Constance_, weeping for her son, while grief ”stuffs out his vacant garments with his form.”
And in the midst of tragedies and tears, of love and laughter and crime, we hear the voice of the good friar, who declares that in every human heart, as in the smallest flower, there are encamped the opposed hosts of good and evil--and our philosophy is interrupted by the garrulous old nurse, whose talk is as busily useless as the babble of a stream that hurries by a ruined mill.