Part 9 (2/2)
Until these scenes are restored to the acting version, Shakespeare's tragedy will not be seen on the stage as he conceived it; and when they are restored, their dramatic power will electrify the house, and twentieth-century dilettantism will lose its influence among playgoers.
The comic scene between Peter and the Musicians should also be restored.
It comes in as a welcome relief after the intensity of the previous scenes, and is, besides, a connecting link with the comedy in the earlier part of the play.
The last act can be briefly dealt with. We antic.i.p.ate the final catastrophe, though we do not know by what means it will be brought about.
It is carried out, as it should be, effectively but simply. The children have loved and suffered, let them die easily and quickly. Romeo's costume in exile is described in the poem as that of a merchant venturer, which is certainly a more appropriate dress than the conventional black velvet of the stage. After hearing the fatal news, which provokes the boy to mutter, ”Is it even so?” in the Lyceum version is inserted the stage-direction, ”_He pauses, overcome with grief_.” But as there is no similar stage-direction in the originals, the actor may, without violation to the author's intentions, pause _before_ the words are spoken. The blow is too sudden, too cruel, too overwhelming to allow of any immediate response in words. The colour would fly from Romeo's face, his teeth grip his under lip, his eyes gleam with a look of frenzy, _looks_ that ”import some misadventure,” but there is no action and no sound for a while, and afterwards only a muttering. The stillness of Romeo's desperation is very dramatic. There is nothing, in my opinion, unnatural in Romeo's description of the Apothecary's shop. All sorts of petty details float before our mental vision when the nerves are over-wrought, but the actor should be careful not to accentuate the description in any way; it is but introductory to the dominant words of the speech,
”And if a man did need a poyson now.”
As Juliet's openly acknowledged lover, Paris occupies too prominent a place in the play to be lightly dismissed, and so he is involved in the final catastrophe. In Brooke's poem, Romeo, before dying, prays to Heaven for mercy and forgiveness, and the picture of the boy kneeling by his wife's side, with her hand clasped in his, pleading to his Redeemer to--
”Take pity on my sinnefull and my poore afflicted mynde!”
would, on the stage, have been a supremely pathetic situation. But Shakespeare's stern love of dramatic truth rejects it. In Romeo's character he strikes but one note, love--and love as a pa.s.sion. Love is Romeo's divinity, physical beauty his deity. The a.s.sertion that--
”In nature there's no blemish but the mind, None can be call'd deform'd but the unkind,”
would have sounded in Romeo's ears profanation. When he first sees Juliet he will by touching hers make _blessed_ his rude hand, and when he dies he will seal the doors of breath ”with a _righteous_ kiss.” To the Friar he cries:
”Do thou but close our hands with holy words, Then loue-deuouring death do what he dare.
It is inough I may but call her _mine_.”
And ”love-devouring death” accepts the challenge, but the agony of death does not ”countervail the exchange of joy” that one short minute gives him in her presence. Here Shakespeare's treatment of the love-episode differs from that of Brooke's in his tolerance for the children's love, though it be carried out in defiance of the parents' wishes, and in his recognition that love, so long as it be strong as death, has an enn.o.bling and not a debasing influence on character: we are made to feel that it is better for Romeo to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. For the hatred of the two houses Shakespeare shows no tolerance. Juliet's death is carried out with the greatest simplicity, and within a few moments of her awakening. There is neither time for reflection nor lamentation; the watch has been roused, and is heard approaching. She has hardly kissed the poison from her dead husband's lips before they enter the churchyard, and nothing but the darkness of the night screens from them the sight of the steel that Juliet plunges into her breast. It is the presence of the watch, almost within touch of her, that goads her to lift the knife, just as it is the vision of Tybalt's ghost pursuing Romeo that nerves her to drink the potion. The dramatist's intention is clearly indicated in the stage-directions of the two quartos and the folio, but the Irving-version retains in this last scene the modern stage-directions.
Professor Dowden is of opinion ”that it were presumptuous to say that had Shakespeare been acquainted with the earlier form of the story (in which Juliet wakes before Romeo dies), he would not have altered his ending.”
But an ending of this kind is inartistic. It is bringing the axe down twice instead of once. It is introducing a new complication and a new movement at a moment when none is wanted. The catastrophe should be and always is, by Shakespeare, carried out with simplicity and directness.
After Juliet's death other watchmen enter with the Friar in custody, while from afar we hear for the third and last time the cries of the citizens:
”Downe with the Capulets, downe with the Mountagues!”
the only child of each of the two rival houses lying dead before the spectators. Nature had done her best to effect a reconciliation, but man thwarted her in her purpose. Then the Prince and the heads of the two houses enter and learn for the first time that
”_Romeo_ there dead, was husband to that _Iuliet_, And she there dead, that's _Romeo's_ faithfull wife.”
Well may the Prince say--
”_Capulet, Montague_, See what a scourge is laide upon your hate That heauen finds means to kill your joyes with loue.”
All this last scene is full of animation, and presents a fine opportunity for the _regisseur_. I am obliged to use the French word, for we have no similar functionary in this country. Our public is sufficiently indifferent to the welfare of dramatic art to allow its leading actors to be their own stage-managers and often their own authors. As a consequence the public gets no English plays worthy of being called plays, and no guarantee that a dead author's intentions shall be respected. Human nature has its prejudices, and the actor is seldom to be found who can look at a play from any other point of view than in relation to the prominence of his own part in it. It is owing to the despotism of the actor on the English stage, and consequently to the star system, that I attribute the mutilation of Shakespeare's plays in their representation. The closing scene of this play might be made very effective in action. The crowd hurrying with ”bated breath” to the spot; its horror at the sight of the dead children, who for all it knows are murdered; its amazement at finding they are man and wife; the Prince's stern rebuke; the bowed grief and shame of Montague and Capulet; the reconciliation of the bereaved parents, and joining of hands across the dead bodies. The Irving-version omits all but the entrance of the citizens with Montague, Capulet, and the Prince, who at once ends the play with the couplet--
”For neuer was a Storie of more wo Than this of _Iuliet_ and her _Romeo_.”
But if the Prince hears no story, he and those who enter with him cannot be aware that Romeo and Juliet are man and wife, or that they died by their own hands, and are not victims to an act of treachery. Then why open your play with the quarrel of the two houses if you do not intend to show them reconciled? Why not follow the c.u.mberland acting-version, and take out the crowd scenes altogether? It is a more intelligible proceeding than this compromise of the Irving-version.
Criticized as cla.s.sical tragedy, the play of ”Romeo and Juliet” is a veritable hotch-potch. It seems to defy the laws of criticism. The characters at one moment talk in the highest poetical language, and at another in the most commonplace colloquy. Nothing can well seem more inconsistent than to put into the mouth of Capulet these words--
”Death lies on her like an untimely frost, Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.”
<script>