At this word the letter becomes menacing. Those next Sejanus forsake him. "Sit farther.... Let's remove!" The heavy Sanquinius leaps panting over the benches. The soldiers come in; then Macro. And now, at last, the letter orders the arrest of Sejanus.
"Regulus. Take him hence;
And all the gods guard Cæsar!
Trio. Take him hence.
Haterius. Hence.
Cotta. To the dungeon with him.
Sanquinius. He deserves it.
Senator. Crown all our doors with bays.
San. And let an ox,
With gilded horns and garlands, straight be led
Unto the Capitol.
Hat. And sacrific'd
To Jove, for Cæsar's safety.
Tri. All our gods
Be present still to Cæsar!...
Cot. Let all the traitor's titles be defac'd.
Tri. His images and statues be pull'd down....
Sen. Liberty, liberty, liberty! Lead on,
And praise to Macro that hath saved Rome!"[538]
It is the baying of a furious pack of hounds, let loose at last on him, under whose hand they had crouched, and who had for a long time beaten and bruised them. Jonson discovered in his own energetic soul the energy of these Roman passions; and the clearness of his mind, added to his profound knowledge, powerless to construct characters, furnished him with general ideas and striking incidents, which suffice to depict manners.
Moreover, it was to this that he turned his talent. Nearly all his work consists of comedies, not sentimental and fanciful as Shakespeare's, but imitative and satirical, written to represent and correct follies and vices. He introduced a new model; he had a doctrine; his masters were Terence and Plautus. He observes the unity of time and place, almost exactly. He ridicules the authors who, in the same play,
"Make a child now swaddled, to proceed
Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed,
Past threescore years; or, with three rusty swords,
And help of some few foot and half-foot words,
Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars....
He rather prays you will be pleas'd to see."[539]
He wishes to represent on the stage
"One such to-day, as other plays shou'd be;
Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas,
Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please:
Nor nimble squib is seen to' make afeard
The gentlewomen....
But deeds, and language, such as men do use....
You, that have so grac'd monsters, may like men."[540]
Men, as we see them in the streets, with their whims and humors—
"When some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his affects, his spirits, and his powers
In their conductions, all to run one way,
This may be truly said to be a humor."[541]
It is these humors which he exposes to the light, not with the artist's curiosity, but with the moralist's hate:
"I will scourge those apes,
And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror,
As large as is the stage whereon we act;
Where they shall see the time's deformity
Anatomized in every nerve, and sinew,
With constant courage, and contempt of fear....
My strict hand
Was made to seize on vice, and with a gripe
Squeeze out the humour of such spongy souls,
As lick up every idle vanity."[542]
Doubtless a determination so strong and decided does violence to the dramatic spirit. Jonson's comedies are not rarely harsh; his characters are too grotesque, laboriously constructed, mere automatons; the poet thought less of producing living beings than of scotching a vice; the scenes get arranged, or are confused together in a mechanical manner; we see the process, we feel the satirical intention throughout; delicate and easy-flowing imitation is absent, as well as the graceful fancy which abounds in Shakespeare. But if Jonson comes across harsh passions, visibly evil and vile, he will derive from his energy and wrath the talent to render them odious and visible, and will produce a "Volpone," a sublime work, the sharpest picture of the manners of the age, in which is displayed the full brightness of evil lusts, in which lewdness, cruelty, love of gold, shamelessness of vice, display a sinister yet splendid poetry, worthy of one of Titian's bacchanals.[543] All this makes itself apparent in the first scene, when Volpone says:
"Good morning to the day; and next, my gold!——
Open the shrine, that I may see my saint."
This saint is his piles of gold, jewels, precious plate:
"Hail the world's soul, and mine!... O thou son of Sol,
But brighter than thy father, let me kiss,
With adoration, thee, and every relick
Of sacred treasure in this blessed room."[544]
Presently after, the dwarf, the eunuch, and the hermaphrodite of the house sing a sort of pagan and fantastic interlude; they chant in strange verses the metamorphoses of the hermaphrodite, who was first the soul of Pythagoras. We are at Venice, in the palace of the magnifico Volpone. These deformed creatures, the splendor of gold, this strange and poetical buffoonery, carry the thought immediately to the sensual city, queen of vices and of arts.
The rich Volpone lives like an ancient Greek or Roman. Childless and without relatives, playing the invalid, he makes all his flatterers hope to be his heir, receives their gifts,
"Letting the cherry knock against their lips,
And draw it by their mouths, and back again."[545]
Glad to have their gold, but still more glad to deceive them, artistic in wickedness as in avarice, and just as pleased to look at a contortion of suffering as at the sparkle of a ruby.
The advocate Voltore arrives, bearing a "huge piece of plate." Volpone throws himself on his bed, wraps himself in furs, heaps up his pillows, and coughs as if at the point of death:
"Volpone. I thank you, signior Voltore,
Where is the plate? mine eyes are bad.... Your love
Hath taste in this, and shall not be unanswer'd....
I cannot now last long.... I fell me going—
Uh, uh, uh, uh!"[546]
He closes his eyes, as though exhausted:
"Voltore. Am I inscrib'd his heir for certain?
Mosca (Volpone's Parasite). Are you!
I do beseech you, sir, you will vouchsafe
To write me in your family. All my hopes
Depend upon your worship: I am lost,
Except the rising sun do shine on me.
Volt. It shall both shine and warm thee, Mosca.
M. Sir,
I am man, that hath not done your love
All the worst offices: here I wear your keys,
See all your coffers and your caskets lock'd,
Keep the poor inventory of your jewels,
Your plate and monies; am your steward, sir,
Husband your goods here.
Volt. But am I sole heir?
M. Without a partner, sir; confirm'd this morning
The wax is warm yet, and the ink scarce dry
Upon the parchment.
Volt. Happy, happy me!
By what good chance, sweet Mosca?
M. Your desert, sir;
I know no second cause."[547]
And he details the abundance of the wealth in which Voltore is about to revel, the gold which is to pour upon him, the opulence which is to flow in his house as a river:
"When will you have your inventory brought, sir?
Or see a copy of the will?"
The imagination is fed with precise words, precise details. Thus, one after another, the would-be heirs come like beasts of prey. The second who arrives is an old miser, Corbaccio, deaf, "impotent," almost dying, who, nevertheless, hopes to survive Volpone. To make more sure of it, he would fain have Mosca give his master a narcotic. He has it about him, this excellent opiate: he has had it prepared under his own eyes, he suggests it. His joy on finding Volpone more ill than himself is bitterly humorous:
"Corbaccio. How does your patron?...
Mosca. His mouth
Is ever gaping, and his eyelids hang.
C. Good.
M. A freezing numbness stiffens all his joints,
And makes the color of his flesh like lead.
C. 'Tis good.
M. His pulse beats slow, and dull.
C. Good symptoms still.
M. And from his brain—
C. I conceive you; good.
M. Flows a cold sweat, with a continual rheum,
Forth the resolved corners of his eyes.
C. Is't possible? Yet I am better, ha!
How does he, with the swimming of his head?
M. O, sir, 'tis past the scotomy; he now
Hath lost his feeling, and hath left to snort:
You hardly can perceive him, that he breathes.
C. Excellent, excellent! sure I shall outlast him:
This makes me young again, a score of years."[548]
If you would be his heir, says Mosca, the moment is favorable, but you must not let yourself be forestalled. Voltore has been here, and presented him with this piece of plate:
"C. See, Mosca, look,
Here, I have brought a bag of bright chequines.
Will quite weigh down his plate....
M. Now, would I counsel you, make home with speed;
There, frame a will; whereto you shall inscribe
My master your sole heir....
C. This plot
Did I think on before....
M. And you so certain to survive him—
C. Ay.
M. Being so lusty a man—
C. 'Tis true."[549]
And the old man hobbles away, not hearing the insults and ridicule thrown at him, he is so deaf.
When he is gone the merchant Corvino arrives, bringing an orient pearl and a splendid diamond:
"Corvino. Am I his heir?
Mosca. Sir, I am sworn, I may not show the will
Till he be dead; but here has been Corbaccio,
Here has been Voltore, here were others too,
I cannot number 'em, they were so many;
All gaping here for legacies: but I,
Taking the vantage of his naming you,
Signior Corvino, Signior Corvino, took
Paper, and pen, and ink, and there I asked him,
Whom he would have his heir? Corvino. Who
Should be executor? Corvino. And,
To any question he was silent to,
I still interpreted the nods he made,
Through weakness, for consent: and sent home th' others,
Nothing bequeath'd them, but to cry and curse.
Cor. O my dear Mosca!... Has he children?
M. Bastards,
Some dozen, or more, that he begot on beggars,
Gypsies, and Jews, and black-moors, when he was drunk....
Speak out:
You may be louder yet....
Faith, I could stifle him rarely with a pillow,
As well as any woman that should keep him.
C. Do as you will; but I'll begone."[550]
Corvino presently departs; for the passions of the time have all the beauty of frankness. And Volpone, casting aside his sick man's garb, cries:
"My divine Mosca!
Thou hast to-day out gone thyself.... Prepare
Me music, dances, banquets, all delights;
The Turk is not more sensual in his pleasures,
Than will Volpone."[551]
On this invitation, Mosca draws a most voluptuous portrait of Corvino's wife, Celia. Smitten with a sudden desire, Volpone dresses himself as a mountebank, and goes singing under her windows with all the sprightliness of a quack; for he is naturally a comedian, like a true Italian, of the same family as Scaramouch, as good an actor in the public square as in his house. Having once seen Celia, he resolves to obtain her at any price:
"Mosca, take my keys,
Gold, plate, and jewels, all's at thy devotion;
Employ them how thou wilt; nay, coin me too:
So thou, in this, but crown my longings, Mosca."[552]
Mosca then tells Corvino that some quack's oil has cured his master, and that they are looking for a "young woman, lusty and full of juice," to complete the cure:
"Have you no kinswoman?
Odso—Think, think, think, think, think, think, think, sir.
One o' the doctors offer'd there his daughter.
Corvino. How!
Mosca. Yes, signior Lupo, the physician.
C. His daughter!
M. And a virgin, sir....
C. Wretch!
Covetous wretch."[553]
Though unreasonably jealous, Corvino is gradually induced to offer his wife. He has given too much already, and would not lose his advantage. He is like a half-ruined gamester, who with a shaking hand throws on the green cloth the remainder of his fortune. He brings the poor sweet woman, weeping and resisting. Excited by his own hidden pangs, he becomes furious:
"Be damn'd!
Heart, I will drag thee hence, home, by the hair;
Cry thee a strumpet through the streets; rip up
Thy mouth unto thine ears; and slit thy nose;
Like a raw rochet!—Do not tempt me; come,
Yield, I am loth—Death! I will buy some slave
Whom I will kill, and bind thee to him, alive;
And at my window hang you forth, devising
Some monstrous crime, which I, in capital letters,
Will eat into thy flesh with aquafortis,
And burning corsives, on this stubborn breast.
Now, by the blood thou hast incensed, I'll do it!
Celia. Sir, what you please, you may, I am your martyr.
Corvino. Be not thus obstinate, I have not deserv'd it:
Think who it is intreats you. Prithee, sweet;—
Good faith thou shalt have jewels, gowns, attires,
What thou wilt think, and ask. Do but go kiss him,
Or touch him, but. For my sake.—At my suit.—
This once.—No! not! I shall remember this.
Will you disgrace me thus? Do you thirst my undoing?"[554]
Mosca turned a moment before, to Volpone:
"Sir,
Signior Corvino... hearing of the consultation had
So lately, for your health, is come to offer,
Or rather, sir, to prostitute.—
Corvino. Thanks, sweet Mosca.
Mosca. Freely, unask'd, or unintreated.
C. Well.
Mosca. As the true fervent instance of his love,
His own most fair and proper wife; the beauty
Only of price in Venice.—
C. 'Tis well urg'd."[555]
Where can we see such blows launched and driven hard, full in the face, by the violent hand of satire? Celia is alone with Volpone, who, throwing off his feigned sickness, comes upon her "as fresh, as hot, as high, and in as jovial plight," as on the gala days of the Republic, when he acted the part of the lovely Antinous. In his transport he sings a love-song; his voluptuousness culminates in poetry; for poetry was then in Italy the blossom of vice. He spreads before her pearls, diamonds, carbuncles. He is in raptures at the sight of the treasures, which he displays and sparkles before her eyes:
"Take these,
And wear, and lose them: yet remains an ear-ring
To purchase them again, and this whole state.
A gem but worth a private patrimony,
Is nothing: we will eat such at a meal,
The heads of parrots, tongues of nightingales,
The brains of peacocks, and of estriches,
Shall be our food....
Conscience? 'Tis the beggar's virtue....
Thy baths shall be of the juice of July flowers,
Spirit of roses, and of violets,
The milk of unicorns, and panthers' breath
Gather'd in bags, and mixt with Cretan wines.
Our drink shall be prepared gold and amber;
Which we will take, until my roof whirl round
With the vertigo: and my dwarf shall dance,
My eunuch sing, my fool make up the antic,
Whilst we, in changed shapes, act Ovid's tales,
Thou, like Europa now, and I like Jove,
Then I like Mars, and thou like Erycine;
So, of the rest, till we have quite run through,
And wearied all the fables of the gods."[556]
We recognize Venice in this splendor of debauchery—Venice, the throne of Aretinus, the country of Tintoretto and Giorgione. Volpone seizes Celia: "Yield, or I'll force thee!" But suddenly Bonario, disinherited son of Corbaccio, whom Mosca had concealed there with another design, enters violently, delivers her, wounds Mosca, and accuses Volpone before the tribunal, of imposture and rape.
The three rascals who aim at being his heirs, work together to save Volpone. Corbaccio disavows his son, and accuses him of parricide. Corvino declares his wife an adulteress, the shameless mistress of Bonario. Never on the stage was seen such energy of lying, such open villany. The husband, who knows his wife to be innocent, is the most eager:
"This woman (please your fatherhoods) is a whore,
Of most hot exercise, more than a partrich,
Upon record.
1st Advocate. No more.
Corvino. Neighs like a jennet.
Notary. Preserve the honor of the court.
C. I shall,
And modesty of your most reverend ears.
And yet I hope that I may say, these eyes
Have seen her glued unto that piece of cedar,
That fine well-timber'd gallant; and that here
The letters may be read, thorough the horn,
That make the story perfect....
3d Adv. His grief hath made him frantic. (Celia swoons.)
C. Rare! Prettily feign'd! again!"[557]
They have Volpone brought in, like a dying man; manufacture false "testimony," to which Voltore gives weight with his advocate's tongue, with words worth a sequin apiece. They throw Celia and Bonario into prison, and Volpone is saved. This public imposture is for him only another comedy, a pleasant pastime, and a masterpiece.
"Mosca. To gull the court.
Volpone. And quite divert the torrent
Upon the innocent....
M. You are not taken with it enough, methinks.
V. O, more than if I had enjoy'd the wench?"[558]
To conclude, he writes a will in Mosca's favor, has his death reported, hides behind a curtain, and enjoys the looks of the would-be heirs. They had just saved him from being thrown into prison, which makes the fun all the better; the wickedness will be all the greater and more exquisite. "Torture 'em rarely," Volpone says to Mosca. The latter spreads the will on the table, and reads the inventory aloud. "Turkey carpets nine. Two cabinets, one of ebony, the other mother-of-pearl. A perfum'd box, made of an onyx." The heirs are stupefied with disappointment, and Mosca drives them off with insults. He says to Corvino:
"Why should you stay here? with what thought, what promise?
Hear you; do you not know, I know you an ass,
And that you would most fain have been a wittol,
If fortune would have let you? That you are
A declar'd cuckold, on good terms? This pearl,
You'll say, was yours? Right: this diamond?
I'll not deny't, but thank you. Much here else?
It may be so. Why, think that these good works
May help to hide your bad. [Exit Corvino.]...
Corbaccio. I am cozen'd, cheated, by a parasite slave;
Harlot, thou hast gull'd me.
Mosca. Yes, sir. Stop your mouth,
Or I shall draw the only tooth is left.
Are not you he, that filthy covetous wretch,
With the three legs, that here, in hope of prey,
Have, any time this three years, snufft about,
With your most grov'ling nose, and would have hir'd
Me to the pois'ning of my patron, sir?
Are not you he that have to-day in court
Profess'd the disinheriting of your son?
Perjur'd yourself? Go home, and die, and stink."[559]
Volpone goes out disguised, comes to each of them in turn, and succeeds in wringing their hearts. But Mosca, who has the will, acts with a high hand, and demands of Volpone half his fortune. The dispute between the two rascals discovers their impostures, and the master, the servant, with the three would-be heirs, are sent to the galleys, to prison, to the pillory—as Corvino says, to
"Have mine eyes beat out with stinking fish,
Bruis'd fruit, and rotten eggs.—'Tis well. I'm glad,
I shall not see my shame yet."[560]
No more vengeful comedy has been written, none more persistently athirst to make vice suffer, to unmask, triumph over, and to punish it.
Where can be the gayety of such a theatre? In caricature and farce. There is a rough gayety, a sort of physical, external laughter which suits this combative, drinking, blustering mood. It is thus that this mood relaxes from war-waging and murderous satire; the pastime is appropriate to the manners of the time, excellent to attract men who look upon hanging as a good joke, and laugh to see the Puritan's ears cut. Put yourself for an instant in their place, and you will think like them, that "The Silent Woman" is a masterpiece. Morose is an old monomaniac, who has a horror of noise, but loves to speak. He inhabits a street so narrow that a carriage cannot enter it. He drives off with his stick the bear-leaders and sword-players, who venture to pass under his windows. He has sent away his servant whose shoes creaked; and Mute, the new one, wears slippers "soled with wool," and only speaks in a whisper through a tube. Morose ends by forbidding the whisper, and makes him reply by signs. He is also rich, an uncle, and he ill-treats his nephew Sir Dauphine Eugenie, a man of wit, but who lacks money. We anticipate all the tortures which poor Morose is to suffer. Sir Dauphine finds him a supposed silent woman, the beautiful Epicœne. Morose, enchanted by her brief replies and her voice, which he can hardly hear, marries her, to play his nephew a trick. It is his nephew who has played him a trick. As soon as she is married, Epicœne speaks, scolds, argues as loud and as long as a dozen women: "Why, did you think you had married a statue? or a motion only? one of the French puppets, with the eyes turned with a wire? or some innocent out of the hospital, that would stand with her hands thus, and a plaise mouth, and look upon you?"[561]
She orders the servants to speak louder; she opens the doors wide to her friends. They arrive in shoals, offering their noisy congratulations to Morose. Five or six women's tongues overwhelm him all at once with compliments, questions, advice, remonstrances. A friend of Sir Dauphine comes with a band of music, who play all together, suddenly, with their whole force. Morose says, "O, a plot, a plot, a plot, a plot, upon me! This day I shall be their anvil to work on; they will grate me asunder. 'Tis worse than the noise of a saw."[562] A procession of servants is seen coming, with dishes in their hands; it is the racket of a tavern which Sir Dauphine is bringing to his uncle. The guests clash the glasses, shout, drink healths; they have with them a drum and trumpets which make great noise. Morose flees to the top of the house, puts "a whole nest of night-caps" on his head and stuffs up his ears. Captain Otter cries, "Sound, Tritons o' the Thames! Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero. Villains, murderers, sons of the earth and traitors," cries Morose from above, "what do you there?" The racket increases. Then the captain, somewhat "jovial," maligns his wife, who falls upon him and gives him a good beating. Blows, cries, music, laughter, resound like thunder. It is the poetry of uproar. Here is a subject to shake coarse nerves, and to make the mighty chests of the companions of Drake and Essex shake with uncontrollable laughter. "Rogues, hell-hounds, Stentors! ... They have rent my roof, walls, and all my windows asunder, with their brazen throats!" Morose casts himself on his tormentors with his long sword, breaks the instruments, drives away the musicians, disperses the guests amidst an inexpressible uproar, gnashing his teeth, looking haggard. Afterwards they pronounce him mad and discuss his madness before him.[563] The disease in Greek is called μανία, in Latin insania, furor, vel ecstasis melancholica; that is, egressio, when a man ex melancholico evadit fanaticus.... But he may be but phreneticus yet, mistress; and phrenetis is only delirium, or so. They talk of the books which he must read aloud to cure him. They add, by way of consolation, that his wife talks in her sleep, "and snores like a porpoise. O redeem me, fate; redeem me, fate!" cries the poor man.[564] "For how many causes may a man be divorced, nephew?" Sir Dauphine chooses two knaves, and disguises them, one as a priest, the other as a lawyer, who launch at his head Latin terms of civil and canon law, explain to Morose the twelve cases of nullity, jingle in his ears one after another the most barbarous words in their obscure vocabulary, wrangle, and make between them as much noise as a couple of bells in a belfry. Following their advice, he declares himself impotent. The wedding-guests propose to toss him in a blanket; others demand an immediate inspection. Fall after fall, shame after shame; nothing serves him: his wife declares that she consents to "take him with all his faults." The lawyer proposes another legal method; Morose shall obtain a divorce by proving that his wife is faithless. Two boasting knights, who are present, declare that they have been her lovers. Morose, in raptures, throws himself at their knees, and embraces them. Epicœne weeps, and Morose seems to be delivered. Suddenly the lawyer decides that the plan is of no avail, the infidelity having been committed before the marriage. "O, this is worst of all worst worsts that hell could have devis'd! marry a whore, and so much noise!" There is Morose then, declared impotent and a deceived husband, at his own request, in the eyes of the whole world, and moreover married forever. Sir Dauphine comes in like a clever rascal, and as a succoring deity. "Allow me but five hundred during life, uncle, and I free you." Morose signs the deed of gift with alacrity; and his nephew shows him that Epicœne is a boy in disguise.[565] Add to this enchanting farce the funny parts of the two accomplished and gallant knights, who, after having boasted of their bravery, receive gratefully, and before the ladies, flips and kicks.[566] Never was coarse physical laughter more adroitly produced. In this broad coarse gayety, this excess of noisy transport, you recognize the stout roisterer, the stalwart drinker who swallowed hogsheads of Canary, and made the windows of the Mermaid shake with his bursts of humor.
Jonson did not go beyond this; he was not a philosopher like Molière, able to grasp and dramatize the crisis of human life, education, marriage, sickness, the chief characters of his country and century, the courtier, the tradesman, the hypocrite, the man of the world.[567] He remained on a lower level, in the comedy of plot,[568] the painting of the grotesque,[569] the representation of too transient subjects of ridicule,[570] too general vices.[571] If at times, as in the "Alchemist," he has succeeded by the perfection of plot and the vigor of satire, he has miscarried more frequently by the ponderousness of his work and the lack of comic lightness. The critic in him mars the artist; his literary calculations strip him of spontaneous invention; he is too much of a writer and moralist, not enough of a mimic and an actor. But he is loftier from another side, for he is a poet; almost all writers, prose-authors, preachers even, were so at the time we speak of. Fancy abounded, as well as the perception of colors and forms, the need and wont of enjoying through the imagination and the eyes. Many of Jonson's pieces, the "Staple of News, Cynthia's Revels," are fanciful and allegorical comedies like those of Aristophanes. He there dallies with the real, and beyond the real, with characters who are but theatrical masks, abstractions personified, buffooneries, decorations, dances, music, pretty laughing whims of a picturesque and sentimental imagination. Thus, in "Cynthia's Revels," three children come on "pleading possession of the cloke" of black velvet, which an actor usually wore when he spoke the prologue. They draw lots for it; one of the losers, in revenge, tells the audience beforehand the incidents of the piece. The others interrupt him at every sentence, put their hands on his mouth, and taking the cloak one after the other, begin to criticise the spectators and authors. This child's play, these gestures and loud voices, this little amusing dispute, divert the public from their serious thoughts, and prepare them for the oddities which they are to look upon.
We are in Greece, in the valley of Gargaphie, where Diana[572] has proclaimed "a solemn revels." Mercury and Cupid have come down, and begin by quarrelling; the latter says: "My light feather-heel'd coz, what are you any more than my uncle Jove's pander? a lacquey that runs on errands for him, and can whisper a light message to a loose wench with some round volubility?... One that sweeps the gods' drinking-room every morning, and sets the cushions in order again, which they threw one at another's head over night?"[573]
They are good-tempered gods. Echo, awoke by Mercury, weeps for the "too beauteous boy Narcissus":
"That trophy of self-love, and spoil of nature,
Who, now transformed into this drooping flower,
Hangs the repentant head, back from the stream....
Witness thy youth's dear sweets, here spent untasted,
Like a fair taper, with his own flame wasted!...
And with thy water let this curse remain,
As an inseparate plague, that who but taste
A drop thereof, may, with the instant touch,
Grow doatingly enamour'd on themselves."[574]
The courtiers and ladies drink thereof, and behold, a sort of a review of the follies of the time, arranged, as in Aristophanes, in an improbable farce, a brilliant show. A silly spendthrift, Asotus, wishes to become a man of the court and of fashionable manners; he takes for his master Amorphus, a learned traveller, expert in gallantry, who, to believe himself, is
"An essence so sublimated and refined by travel... able... to speak the mere extraction of language; one that... was your first that ever enrich'd his country with the true laws of the duello; whose optics have drunk the spirit of beauty in some eight-score and eighteen princes' courts, where I have resided, and been there fortunate in the amours of three hundred forty and five ladies, all nobly if not princely descended,... in all so happy, as even admiration herself doth seem to fasten her kisses upon me."[575]
Asotus learns at this good school the language of the court, fortifies himself like other people with quibbles, learned oaths, and metaphors; he fires off in succession supersubtle tirades, and duly imitates the grimaces and tortuous style of his masters. Then, when he has drunk the water of the fountain, becoming suddenly pert and rash, he proposes to all comers a tournament of "court compliment." This odd tournament is held before the ladies; it comprises four jousts, and at each the trumpets sound. The combatants perform in succession "the bare accost; the better regard; the solemn address;" and "the perfect close."[576] In this grave buffoonery the courtiers are beaten. The severe Crites, the moralist of the play, copies their language, and pierces them with their own weapons. Already, with grand declamation, he had rebuked them thus:
"O vanity,
How are thy painted beauties doated on,
By light, and empty idiots! how pursu'd
With open and extended appetite!
How they do sweat, and run themselves from breath,
Rais'd on their toes, to catch thy airy forms,
Still turning giddy, till they reel like drunkards,
That buy the merry madness of one hour,
With the long irksomeness of following time!"[577]
To complete the overthrow of the vices, appear two symbolical masques, representing the contrary virtues. They pass gravely before the spectators, in splendid array, and the noble verses exchanged by the goddess and her companions raise the mind to the lofty regions of serene morality, whither the poet desires to carry us:
"Queen, and huntress, chaste and fair,
Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair,
State in wonted manner keep....
Lay thy bow of pearl apart,
And thy crystal shining quiver;
Give unto the flying hart
Space to breathe, how short soever."[578]
In the end, bidding the dancers to unmask, Cynthia shows that the vices have disguised themselves as virtues. She condemns them to make fit reparation, and to bathe themselves in Helicon. Two by two they go off singing a palinode, whilst the chorus sings the supplication "Good Mercury defend us."[579] Is it an opera or a comedy? It is a lyrical comedy; and if we do not discover in it the airy lightness of Aristophanes, at least we encounter, as in the "Birds" and the "Frogs," the contrasts and medleys of poetic invention, which, through caricature and ode, the real and the impossible, the present and the past, sent forth to the four quarters of the globe, simultaneously unites all kinds of incompatibilities, and culls all flowers.
Jonson went further than this, and entered the domain of pure poetry. He wrote delicate, voluptuous, charming love poems, worthy of the ancient idyllic muse.[580] Above all, he was the great, the inexhaustible inventor of Masques, a kind of masquerades, ballets, poetic choruses, in which all the magnificence and the imagination of the English Renaissance is displayed. The Greek gods, and all the ancient Olympus, the allegorical personages whom the artists of the time delineate in their pictures; the antique heroes of popular legends; all worlds, the actual, the abstract, the divine, the human, the ancient, the modern, are searched by his hands, brought on the stage to furnish costumes, harmonious groups, emblems, songs, whatever can excite, intoxicate the artistic sense. The élite, moreover, of the kingdom is there on the stage. They are not mountebanks moving about in borrowed clothes, clumsily worn, for which they are still in debt to the tailor; they are ladies of the court, great lords, the queen, in all the splendor of their rank and pride, with real diamonds, bent on displaying their riches, so that the whole splendor of the national life is concentrated in the opera which they enact, like jewels in a casket. What dresses! what profusion of splendors! what medley of strange characters, gipsies, witches, gods, heroes, pontiffs, gnomes, fantastic beings! How many metamorphoses, jousts, dances, marriage songs! What variety of scenery, architecture, floating isles, triumphal arches, symbolic spheres! Gold glitters; jewels flash; purple absorbs the lustre-lights in its costly folds; streams of light shine upon the crumpled silks; diamond necklaces, darting flame, clasp the bare bosoms of the ladies; strings of pearls are displayed, loop after loop, upon the silver-sown brocaded dresses; gold embroidery, weaving whimsical arabesques, depicts upon their dresses flowers, fruits, and figures, setting picture within picture. The steps of the throne bear groups of Cupids, each with a torch in his hand.[581] On either side the fountains cast up plumes of pearls; musicians, in purple and scarlet, laurel-crowned, make harmony in the bowers. The trains of masques cross, commingling their groups; "the one half in orange-tawny and silver, the other in sea-green and silver. The bodies and short skirts (were of) white and gold to both."
Such pageants Jonson wrote year after year, almost to the end of his life, true feasts for the eyes, like the processions of Titian. Even when he grew to be old, his imagination, like that of Titian, remained abundant and fresh. Though forsaken, lying gasping on his bed, feeling the approach of death, in his supreme bitterness he did not lose his faculties, but wrote "The Sad Shepherd," the most graceful and pastoral of his pieces. Consider that this beautiful dream arose in a sick-chamber, amidst medicine bottles, physic, doctors, with a nurse at his side, amidst the anxieties of poverty and the choking-fits of a dropsy! He is transported to a green forest, in the days of Robin Hood, amidst the gay chase and the great barking greyhounds. There are the malicious fairies, who, like Oberon and Titania, lead men to flounder in mishaps. There are open-souled lovers, who, like Daphne and Chloe, taste with awe the painful sweetness of the first kiss. There lived Earine, whom the stream has "suck'd in," whom her lover, in his madness, will not cease to lament:
"Earine,
Who had her very being, and her name
With the first knots or buddings of the spring,
Born with the primrose or the violet,
Or earliest roses blown: when Cupid smil'd,
And Venus led the graces out to dance,
And all the flowers and sweets in nature's lap
Leap'd out, and made their solemn conjuration
To last but while she liv'd!"...[582]
"But she, as chaste as was her name, Earine,
Died undeflower'd: and now her sweet soul hovers
Here in the air above us."[583]
Above the poor old paralytic artist, poetry still hovers like a haze of light. Yes, he had cumbered himself with science, clogged himself with theories, constituted himself theatrical critic and social censor, filled his soul with unrelenting indignation, fostered a combative and morose disposition; but divine dreams never left him. He is the brother of Shakespeare.
So now at last we are in the presence of one, whom we perceived before us through all the vistas of the Renaissance, like some vast oak to which all the forest ways converge. I will treat of Shapespeare by himself. In order to take him in completely, we must have a wide and open space. And yet how shall we comprehend him? how lay bare his inner constitution? Lofty words, eulogies, are all used in vain; he needs no praise, but comprehension merely; and he can only be comprehended by the aid of science. As the complicated revolutions of the heavenly bodies become intelligible only by use of a superior calculus, as the delicate transformations of vegetation and life need for their explanation the intervention of the most difficult chemical formulas, so the great works of art can be interpreted only by the most advanced psychological systems; and we need the loftiest of all these to attain to Shakespeare's level—to the level of his age and his work, of his genius and of his art.
After all practical experience and accumulated observations of the soul, we find as the result that wisdom and knowledge are in man only effects and fortuities. Man has no permanent and distinct force to secure truth to his intelligence, and common-sense to his conduct. On the contrary, he is naturally unreasonable and deceived. The parts of his inner mechanism are like the wheels of clock-work, which go of themselves, blindly, carried away by impulse and weight, and which yet sometimes, by virtue of a certain unison, end by indicating the hour. This final intelligent motion is not natural, but fortuitous; not spontaneous, but forced; not innate, but acquired. The clock did not always go regularly; on the contrary, it had to be regulated little by little, with much difficulty. Its regularity is not insured; it may go wrong at any time. Its regularity is not complete; it only approximately marks the time. The mechanical force of each piece is always ready to drag all the rest from their proper action, and to disarrange the whole agreement. So ideas, once in the mind, pull each their own way blindly and separately, and their imperfect agreement threatens confusion every moment. Strictly speaking, man is mad, as the body is ill, by nature; reason and health come to us as a momentary success, a lucky accident.[584] If we forget this, it is because we are now regulated, dulled, deadened, and because our internal motion has become gradually, by friction and reparation, half harmonized with the motion of things. But this is only a semblance; and the dangerous primitive forces remain untamed and independent under the order which seems to restrain them. Let a great danger arise, a revolution take place, they will break out and explode, almost as terribly as in earlier times. For an idea is not a mere inner mark, employed to designate one aspect of things, inert, always ready to fall into order with other similar ones, so as to make an exact whole. However it may be reduced and disciplined, it still retains a sensible tinge which shows its likeness to an hallucination; a degree of individual persistence which shows its likeness to a monomania; a network of singular affinities which shows its likeness to the ravings of delirium. Being such, it is beyond question the rudiment of a nightmare, a habit, an absurdity. Let it become once developed in its entirety, as its tendency leads it,[585] and you will find that it is essentially an active and complete image, a vision drawing along with it a train of dreams and sensations, which increases of itself, suddenly, by a sort of rank and absorbing growth, and which ends by possessing, shaking, exhausting the whole man. After this, another, perhaps entirely opposite, and so on successively: there is nothing else in man, no free and distinct power: he is in himself but the process of these headlong impulses and swarming imaginations: civilization has mutilated, attenuated, but not destroyed them; shocks, collisions, transports, sometimes at long intervals a sort of transient partial equilibrium: this is his real life, the life of a lunatic, who now and then simulates reason, but who is in reality "such stuff as dreams are made on";[586] and this is man, as Shakespeare has conceived him. No writer, not even Molière, has penetrated so far beneath the semblance of common-sense and logic in which the human machine is enclosed, in order to disentangle the brute powers which constitute its substance and its mainspring.
How did Shakespeare succeed? and by what extraordinary instinct did he divine the remote conclusions, the deepest insights of physiology and psychology? He had a complete imagination; his whole genius lies in that complete imagination. These words seem commonplace and void of meaning. Let us examine them closer, to understand what they contain. When we think a thing, we, ordinary men, we only think a part of it; we see one side, some isolated mark, sometimes two or three marks together; for what is beyond, our sight fails us; the infinite network of its infinitely complicated and multiplied properties escapes us; we feel vaguely that there is something beyond our shallow ken, and this vague suspicion is the only part of our idea which at all reveals to us the great beyond. We are like tyro naturalists, quiet people of limited understanding, who, wishing to represent an animal, recall its name and ticket in the museum, with some indistinct image of its hide and figure; but their mind stops there. If it so happens that they wish to complete their knowledge, they lead their memory, by regular classifications, over the principal characters of the animal, and slowly, discursively, piecemeal, bring at last the bare anatomy before their eyes. To this their idea is reduced, even when perfected; to this also most frequently is our conception reduced, even when elaborated. What a distance there is between this conception and the object, how imperfectly and meanly the one represents the other, to what extent this mutilates that; how the consecutive idea, disjoined in little, regularly arranged and inert fragments, resembles but slightly the organized, living thing, created simultaneously, ever in action, and ever transformed, words cannot explain. Picture to yourself, instead of this poor dry idea, propped up by a miserable mechanical linkwork of thought, the complete idea, that is, an inner representation, so abundant and full that it exhausts all the properties and relations of the object, all its inward and outward aspects; that it exhausts them instantaneously; that it conceives of the entire animal, its color, the play of the light upon its skin, its form, the quivering of its outstretched limbs, the flash of its eyes, and at the same time its passion of the moment, its excitement, its dash; and beyond this its instincts, their composition, their causes, their history; so that the hundred thousand characteristics which make up its condition and its nature find their analogues in the imagination which concentrates and reflects them: there you have the artist's conception, the poet's—Shakespeare's; so superior to that of the logician, of the mere savant or man of the world, the only one capable of penetrating to the very essence of existences, of extricating the inner from beneath the outer man, of feeling through sympathy, and imitating without effort, the irregular oscillation of human imaginations and impressions, of reproducing life with its infinite fluctuations, its apparent contradictions, its concealed logic; in short, to create as nature creates. This is what is done by the other artists of this age; they have the same kind of mind, and the same idea of life: you will find in Shakespeare only the same faculties, with a still stronger impulse; the same idea, with a still more prominent relief.