Part 9 (1/2)
It is incomprehensible to me why our stage Juliets, in the ”Balcony Scene,” go through their billing-and-cooing as deliberately as they do their toilets, never for a moment thinking that the ”place is death” to Romeo, and that ”loves sweet bait must be stolen from fearful hookes.” In Shakespeare's time this scene was acted in broad daylight, and the dramatist is careful to stimulate the imagination of his audience with appropriate imagery. The word ”night” occurs ten times, and I suppose the actor would be instructed to give a special emphasis to it. There are, besides, several allusions to the moon and the stars, including that descriptive couplet:
”Lady, by yonder blessed Moone I vow, That tips with siluer all these frute tree tops.”
When Shakespeare could give us in words so vivid a picture of moonlight, Ben Jonson could well afford to have a fling at Inigo Jones's mechanical scenery, and say:
”What poesy e'er was painted on a wall?”
Romeo goes direct from Capulet's orchard to Friar Lawrence's cell to make confession of his ”deare hap.” He loves now in earnest, and love teaches him to brave all dangers, and even to face matrimony; and his virtuous mood wins for him the good-will of the Friar, who sees in the alliance of the two houses their reconciliation. In the poem and novel both the lovers avow a similar disinterested motive to justify their union, but the mind of reason never enters the heart of love, and Shakespeare, in their case, wisely omits this bit of sophistry. The advance of the love episode must move side by side with the quarrel episode, so in the next scene we hear of Romeo receiving a challenge from Tybalt. The Irving-version omits most of the good-natured banter between Romeo and Mercutio, which is all telling comedy if spoken lightly and quickly. The Nurse enters, and Mercutio and Benvolio set off for Montague's house, where they propose dining. The incident that follows must have been very irritating to the Elizabethan Puritans, who complained of the corruption of morals begot in ”the chapel of Satan” by witnessing the carrying and recarrying of letters by laundresses ”to beguile fathers of their children.” Here more excellent comedy is omitted in the Irving-version, including the Nurse's allusion to Paris as being ”the properer man” of the two, and her nave question, ”Doth not Rosemarie and Romeo begin both with a letter?” The Nurse had overheard Juliet talk about ”Rosemarie and Romeo.” Later on we see rosemary strewed over the body of the apparently dead Juliet.
The scene in which Romeo and Juliet meet to be married at the Friar's Cell ends on the stage the second act. But to drop the curtain here interrupts the dramatic movement just as it is about to reach a climax in the death of Tybalt, followed by the banishment of Romeo. These incidents require action that is all hurry and excitement, and are therefore out of place at the beginning of an act, unless it be the opening act of a play. Besides, they are immediately connected with the scene in which allusion is made to Tybalt having challenged Romeo. We are shown Mercutio and Benvolio returning from Montague's house, where they proposed dining. And Mercutio has, apparently, indulged too freely in his host's wine, for the prudent Benvolio is anxious to get his friend out of the public streets as quickly as possible. Benvolio's worst fears are realized by the entrance of the quarrelsome Tybalt, whom Mercutio, as is the way with fuddled people, at once offers to fight. But Tybalt hesitates to cross swords with a relative of the Prince, and is glad of the excuse of Romeo's appearance to transfer the quarrel to him. Romeo will not draw sword upon his wife's cousin, and Mercutio, exasperated, takes up the challenge, is stabbed by Tybalt under Romeo's arm, and dies cursing the two houses. This tragedy rouses Romeo to action; he will now defend his own honour since he was Mercutio's dear friend. Tybalt is challenged and killed. The citizens ”are up,” and for the second time we hear their ominous shout:
”Downe with the Capulets, downe with the Montagues!”
They enter, followed by the Prince, with the heads of the two houses and their wives. The Capulets call for Romeo's death. The Montagues protest that Romeo in killing a man whose life was already forfeited has but taken the law into his own hands. For that offence he is exiled by the Prince.
”I haue an interest in your hates proceeding: My bloud for your rude brawles doth lie a bleeding.
But ile amerce you with so strong a fine, That you shall all repent the losse of mine.
I will be deafe to pleading and excuses, Nor teares, nor prayers, shall purchase out abuses.
Therefore use none, let Romeo hence in hast, Else when he is found, that houre is his last.”
The whole of the latter part of this scene is brilliant in the variety and rapidity of its action, and should not, I consider, be omitted in representation as is directed to be done in the Irving-version. To take out the second renewal of hostilities between the two houses; not to show, in action on the stage, the rage of the Capulets at the death of Tybalt, and the grief of the Montagues at the banishment of Romeo, is to weaken the tragic significance of the scenes that follow. Without it the audience cannot vividly realize that the hatred of the two houses has reached its acutest stage, and that all hope of reconciliation is at an end.
Mercutio at the commencement of this scene says to Benvolio: ”Thou wilt quarell with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes.” Did Shakespeare, who, according to tradition had hazel eyes, act the part of Benvolio? I think he did. It is the only part in the play I can fancy him able to act. A study of both the bust and the Droeshout portrait of the poet-dramatist leads me to believe that he would not have been able to disguise easily his ident.i.ty on the stage. His flexibility was essentially of a mental and not of a physical nature. The face is entirely wanting in mobility, and the head is so large that no wig could hide its unusual size. Shakespeare, moreover, became bald probably early in life. The Droeshout portrait shows undoubtedly the likeness of a youngish man, about thirty-five years old, while his baldness would still justify the epithet of ”grandsire” with which Mercutio dubs Benvolio; and ”grandsire” may have been a nickname of Shakespeare's suggested by his baldness. ”Come hither, goodman bald-pate”--words spoken by Lucio in ”Measure for Measure”--have been quoted as a reason for presuming that Shakespeare played the Duke in that comedy. Sir William Davenant, who liked to be thought a natural son of the poet, in an adaption of this play altered the words to, ”She has been advised by a bald dramatic poet of the next cloister.” If the audience recognized their ”gentle Will” in the part of the peace-loving Benvolio, we may imagine the laughter that would arise at Mercutio's words: ”Thy head is as full of quarelles, as an egg is full of meate”--Shakespeare's head being egg-shaped. If my supposition be correct, we may honour the self-abnegation, the entire absence of personal vanity that enabled Shakespeare, like Moliere, to direct laughter against himself. The scattered references to him which we find in the writings of his contemporaries show us, says Professor Dowden, ”the poet concealed and sometimes forgotten in the man, and make it clear that he moved among his fellows with no a.s.suming of the bard or prophet, no air of authority as of one divinely commissioned; that, on the contrary, he appeared as a pleasant comrade, genial, gentle, full of civility in the large meaning of the word, upright in dealing, ready and bright in wit, quick and sportive in conversation.” How aptly does this description fit the character of Benvolio! One quality was especially common to the two men--tact. It was the possession of tact that made Shakespeare so invaluable to his fellow-actors as a manager. Benvolio's tact is shown in his conversation with Romeo's parents, with Romeo himself, with Mercutio when hot-headed, and with the Prince, Mercutio's relative. It is true that Benvolio attributes Mercutio's death to Tybalt's interference, while in reality it was due to Mercutio's indiscretion; but we have no pity for Tybalt, who, as Brooke says, thirsting after the death of others, lost his life.
Romeo's banishment brings us to the middle and ”busy” part of the play, where the Elizabethan actors were expected to thunder their loudest to split the ears of the groundlings; and Shakespeare, not yet sufficiently independent as a dramatist to dispense with the conventions of his stage, follows suit on the same fiddle to the same tune; and after all the ranting eloquence on the part of Romeo and Juliet, we are just where we were before with regard to any advance made with the story. Act III., Scene 2, is often entirely omitted in representation, but the Irving-version retains most of it. It is not till the middle of Act III., Scene 3, that the action advances again. But this, and the previous scenes, if acted with animation and rapidly spoken by all the characters concerned, would not take up much time, and could be declaimed with effect. The stage fas.h.i.+on of making the Friar stolidly indifferent to the unexpected complication that has arisen through Tybalt's death is not only undramatic, but inconsistent with the text. A heavy responsibility lies on him, and his position is full of difficulty and danger. The scene that follows shows us Capulet fixing a day for the marriage of Juliet with Paris, and the father's words--
”I thinke she will be rulde In all respects by _me_: nay, more, I doubt it not,”
have a significance, and render the parting of the lovers in the next scene highly dramatic. In the poem and novel, Juliet, before parting with Romeo, proposes to accompany him disguised as his servant; about the best thing she could do. After a good deal of arguing on both sides the idea is abandoned as impracticable. Shakespeare prefers his lovers to discourse about the nightingale. Romeo being gone, the mother enters to announce to the wife her betrothal to Paris, and the early day of marriage. The news is sprung upon her with terrible abruptness, though the audience have been in the secret from the first, and Juliet has hardly time to protest against ”this sudden day of joy” before the father enters to complete her discomfiture by his torrents of abuse. Capulet's varnish of good manners entirely disappears in this scene, and his coa.r.s.e nature is exposed in all its ugliness. But in the emergency of this tragic moment, as Professor Dowden points out, does Juliet leap into womanhood, and realize her position and responsibilities as a wife, and in the following lines Shakespeare touches the first note of highest tragedy in the play: that of the mind's suffering as opposed to the mere tragedy of incident--
”O G.o.d, o Nurse, how shall this be preuented?
My husband is on earth, my faith in heauen; How shall that faith returne againe to earth, Unlesse that husband send it me from heauen By leauing earth? comfort me, counsaile me.”
I am curious to learn on what grounds these thrilling words are omitted in the Irving-version. To me they are the climax of the scene and of the play so far as it has progressed. They mark the turning-point in Juliet's moral nature. They enable us to forgive her any indiscretions of which she may previously have been guilty. From this point onwards all is calm in Juliet's breast, because there is no infirmity of purpose,
”If all else faile, my self have power to die.”
As the shadows fall across the path of the lovers, so do they over that of the Friar.
”O _Iuliet_, I already know thy greefe, It straines me past the compa.s.se of my wits,”
is his greeting in the next scene. A ”desperate preventive” to shame or death is decided upon, and then follows what is perhaps the most dramatic episode in the whole play. We are shown Capulet's household busy with the preparations for the marriage-feast, and the father, now bent on having a ”great ado,” hastily summoning ”twenty cunning Cookes”--the consequence possibly of Juliet's threatened opposition to his wishes. Juliet enters to feign submission and beg forgiveness, which enables the father to indulge in another despotic freak by hastening the day of marriage, heedless of all the inconvenience it may cause. Juliet retires to her chamber, and Capulet goes to prepare Paris against to-morrow. Then comes Juliet's terrible ordeal, the undertaking ”of a thing like death,” which is all the more terrible because it must be done alone. This scene is often overacted on the stage. Our Juliets do far too much ”stumping and frumping” about. I once saw the ”potion-scene” acted with dramatic intelligence by an actress quite unknown to fame. When Juliet lays her dagger on the table, the actress took up the vial, and, standing motionless in the centre of the stage, spoke the lines in a hurried, low whisper, conveying the impression of reflection as well as the need for discretion. At the words,
”O looke, me thinks I see my Cozins Ghost,”
she sank on one knee, and, raising the right arm with a quick movement, pointed into s.p.a.ce, the eye following the hand, a very simple but telling gesture. The words, ”Stay, _Tybalt_, stay!” were not given with a scream, but in a tone of alarm and entreaty, followed immediately by the drinking of the potion, as if to suggest Juliet's desire to come to Romeo's rescue.
The whole scene was acted in less than two minutes. The vision of Tybalt's ghost pursuing Romeo for vengeance, an incident not to be found in the originals, shows the touch of the master dramatist. We feel the need of some immediate incentive to nerve Juliet to raise the vial to her lips; and what more effectual than that of her overwrought imagination picturing to herself the husband in danger.
While the poor child lies prostrate upon her bed in the likeness of death, we are shown the dawn of the morning, the rousing and bustle of the household; we hear the bridal march in the distance, the sound coming nearer every moment; the Nurse knocking at Juliet's chamber-door; her awful discovery; the entrance of the parents; the filling of the stage by the bridal party, led by the Friar; the wailing, and wringing of the hands as the first quarto directs; the changing of the sound of instruments to that of melancholy bells, of solemn hymns to sullen dirges, of bridal flowers to funeral wreaths. All this is thrilling in conception, and yet the episode as conceived by Shakespeare is never represented on the stage.
Why are the Capulet scenes omitted, those which are dovetailed to the ”potion scene,” and make it by contrast so terribly tragic? The accentuation here of Capulet's tyranny, of his sensuality, his brutal frankness, his indifference to every one's convenience but his own, his delight in exacting a cringing obedience from all about him, are designed by the dramatist to move us with deep pity for Juliet's sufferings, and by emphasizing its necessity to save the ”potion scene” from the danger of appearing grotesque. But Shakespeare's method of dramatic composition, that of uniting a series of short scenes with each other in one dramatic movement, will not bear the elaboration of heavy stage sets, and with the demand for carpentry comes the inducement for mutilation. At the Shakespeare Reading Society's recital of this play, given recently under my direction at the London Inst.i.tution, these scenes were spoken without delay or interruption, and with but one scene announced, and the interest and breathless attention they aroused among the audience convinced me that my conception as to the dramatic treatment of them was the right one.