In fact, what care we about the time which elapses between the actions with which Macbeth fills up his career of crime? When he commands the murder of Banquo the assassination of Duncan is still present to our eyes, and seems as though it had been committed only yesterday; and when Macbeth determines upon the massacre of Macduff's family, we fancy we see him still pale from the apparition of Banquo's ghost. None of his actions has terminated without necessitating the action which follows it; they announce and involve each other, thus forcing the imagination to go forward, full of trouble and sad expectation. Macbeth, who, after having killed Duncan, is urged, by the very terror which he feels at his crime, to kill the chamberlains, to whom he intends to attribute the murder, does not permit us to doubt the facility with which he will commit new crimes whenever occasion requires. The witches, who, at the opening of the play, have taken possession of his destiny, do not allow us to hope that they will grant any respite to the ambition and the necessities of his crimes. Thus all the threads are laid open to our eyes from the beginning; we follow, we anticipate the course of events; we stint no haste to arrive at that which our imagination devours beforehand; intervals vanish with the succession of the ideas which should occupy them; one succession alone is distinctly marked in our mind, and that is, the succession of the events which compose the absorbing spectacle which sweeps us onward in its rapidity. In our view, they are as closely connected in time as they are intimately linked together in thought; and any duration that may separate them is a duration as empty and unperceived as that of sleep—as all those epochs in which the soul is manifested by no sensible symptom of its existence. What, in our mind, is the connection of the hours in comparison with this train of ideas? and what poet, subjecting himself to unity of time, would deem it sufficient to establish, between the different parts of his work, that powerful bond of union which can result only from unity of impression? So true is it that this alone is the object, whereas the others are only the means.
These means may, undoubtedly, sometimes have their efficiency; the rapidity of a great action executed, or a great event accomplished, within the space of a few hours, fills the imagination, and animates the soul with a movement to which it yields with ardor. But few actions really permit so sudden an action; few events are composed of parts so exactly connected in time and space; and, without alluding to the improbabilities which are consequent upon their forced cohesion, the surprises which result from it very often disturb the unity of impression, which is the rigorous condition of dramatic illusion. Zaire, passing suddenly from her devoted love for Orosmane to entire submission to the faith and will of Lusignan, has some difficulty in restoring to us, in her new position, as much illusion as she has made us lose by so abrupt a change. Voltaire sought his effects in the contrast of perfectly happy love with love in despair; a powerful means, it is true, but less powerful, perhaps, than the preoccupation of a constant and unchanging position, which develops itself only to redouble the feeling which it has at first inspired. When we have thoroughly established ourselves in an affection, it is far from prudent to attempt to move us in favor of an opposite affection. Corneille has not shown us Rodrigue and Chimène together before the quarrel between their fathers; he felt so little desire to impress us with the idea of their happiness, that Chimène, when told of it, can not believe it, and disturbs by her presentiments the too delightful position of which the poet is exceedingly careful not to put us in possession, lest we should afterward find it too difficult to sacrifice it to that duty which will soon command us to leave it. In the same manner we have become associated with the feelings of Polyeucte, and have trembled for him before becoming aware of the love of Pauline for Sévère; if our first interest had been attached to this love, perhaps it would have been difficult for us afterward to feel much for Polyeucte, whose presence would be importunate. Thus, when Zaire has awakened our emotion as a lover, we are inclined to think that she abandons the position in which she has placed us rather too easily, in order to fulfill her duty as a daughter and a Christian. The philosophical indifference which Voltaire has imparted to her in the first scene, in order to facilitate her subsequent conversion, renders still more improbable the devotedness with which she so quickly enters upon a duty so recently discovered. If, on the other hand, at the outset, Voltaire had described her to us as troubled with scruples, and disquieted with regard to her happiness, fear would have prepared us beforehand to comprehend in all its extent, at its first appearance, the misfortune which threatens her, and to see her yield to it with that abandonment which is improbable because it is too sudden.
The employment of sudden changes of fortune, by which it is attempted to disguise, beneath a great alteration in circumstances, the too sudden transitions which the rule of unity in point of time may impose, frequently renders the inconveniences of this rule more striking, by depriving it of the means of making preparation for the different impressions which it accumulates within too limited a space. It is, on the contrary, by a single impression that Shakspeare, at least in his finest compositions, takes possession at the very outset, of our thought, and, by means of our thought, of space also. Beyond the magic circle which he has traced, he leaves nothing sufficiently powerful to interfere with the effect of the only unity of which he has need. Change of fortune may exist in reference to the persons of the drama, but never to the spectator. Before we are informed of Othello's happiness, we know that Iago is preparing to destroy it; the Ghost which is to devote the life of Hamlet to the punishment of a crime, appears on the stage before he does; and before we have seen Macbeth virtuous, the utterance of his name by the Witches tells us that he is destined to become guilty. In the same manner, in "Athalie," the whole idea of the drama is displayed, in the first scene, in the character and promises of the high-priest; the impression is begun, and it will continue and increase always in the same direction. Thus, who could say that an interval of eight days, interposed, if necessary, between the promises of Joad and their performance, would have broken the unity of impression which results from the invariable constancy of his plans?
To constancy of character, feelings, and resolutions exclusively belongs that moral unity which, braving time and distance, includes all the parts of an event in a compact action, in which the gaps of material unity are no longer perceptible. A violently excited passion could not aim at such an effect; it has its momentary storms, the course of which, being subject to external and variable causes, must in a short time reach its term. As soon as jealousy has seized upon the heart of Othello, if any interval separated that moment from the time which witnesses the death of Desdemona, the unity would be broken; nothing would attest to us the link which must unite the first transports of the Moor to his final resolution; the action must therefore hasten rapidly forward, and must hurry him onward to his destruction, which a day's reflection would perhaps prevent him from consummating. In the same manner, the simple description of events, unless the presence of a great individual character should, by dominating over them, impress upon them its own unity, will make us feel the want of the material unities; and the efforts which Shakspeare has made, in his historical dramas, to approximate to them, or to disguise their absence, are a new homage paid to that moral unity which is sufficient for every thing when the poet possesses it, and which nothing can replace when he has it not. In "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," Shakspeare, inattentive to the course of time, allows it to pass unnoticed. In his historical plays, on the other hand, he conceals and dissembles its lapse by all the artifices that can deceive us in reference to its duration; the scenes follow and announce each other in such a way, that an interval of several years seems to be included within a few weeks, or even a few days. All the probabilities are sacrificed to this theatrical unity, which time would break too easily between events which are not linked together by a uniform principle. The scene in which Richard II. learns from Aumerle the departure of Bolingbroke into exile, is that in which he announces that he is himself about to go to Ireland; and it is not yet thoroughly known at court whether he has actually embarked on this voyage, when the news is received of the disembarkation of Bolingbroke, returning with an army, under the pretext of asserting his rights to the succession of his father, who has died in the interval, but, in reality, to take possession of the crown; in which attempt he has almost succeeded before Richard, cast by a tempest upon the coasts of England, can have been informed of his arrival. And we are told at the end of the play, which, dating from the banishment of Bolingbroke, can not have lasted more than fifteen days, that Mowbray, who was exiled at the same time, has made several journeys to the Holy Land during the interval, and is at last dead in Italy.
These monstrous extravagances would assuredly not be numbered among the proofs of Shakspeare's genius, if they did not attest the empire assumed over him by the great dramatic thought to which he sacrificed all beside. Whether in his historical plays, he multiplies improbabilities and impossibilities in order to conceal the flight of time, or whether, in his finest tragedies, he allows it to pass without the slightest notice, he invariably pursues and attempts to maintain unity of impression, the great source of dramatic effect. We may see in "Macbeth," the true type of his system, with what art he overcomes the difficulties which arise from it, and links together in the soul of the spectator the chain of places and times which is constantly being broken in reality. Macbeth, when resolved on the destruction of Macduff, whom he fears, learns that he has taken flight into England; and he leaves the stage, announcing his intention to surprise his castle, and to put to death his wife, his children, and all who bear his name. The next scene opens in Macduff's castle, by a conversation between Lady Macduff and her relative, Rosse, who has come to inform her of her husband's departure, and to express his fears for her own safety. The two scenes, thus closely connected in thought, seem to be so in time also; distance has disappeared; and who would think of pointing out, as an interval of which some recount should be given, the leagues which separate Macduff's castle from Macbeth's palace, and the time that would be required to traverse them. We have entered without effort into this new part of the position; it follows its course; the assassins appear; the massacre commences. We pass into England; we behold the arrival of Macduff in that country; the terrible events of which he is ignorant fill up, for us, the interval which must separate his departure from his arrival. Rosse appears some time after him, and informs him of his misfortune. Both describe to Malcolm the desolation of Scotland, and the general hatred which Macbeth has incurred. The army which is destined to overthrow the tyrant is collected together, and the order for departure is given. But, while the army is on its road, the poet recalls our imagination toward Macbeth; with him we prepare for the approach of the troops, whose march is effected without any thing occurring to inform us of its duration, or to lead us to make inquiries about it. Scarcely ever, in Shakspeare, do the personages of the drama arrive immediately in the place for which they have set out; so abrupt a conjunction would be contrary to the natural order of the succession of ideas. We have seen Richard II. set out for the castle of John of Gaunt; it is therefore in John of Gaunt's castle that we await the arrival of Richard, whose journey has taken place without our mind being able to complain of not having been consulted with regard to the time which it occupied. In the same manner, between two events evidently separated by an interval long enough for us not to like to see it disappear without taking some part in it, Shakspeare interposes a scene which may belong with equal propriety to either the first or the second epoch, and he makes us pass from one to the other without shocking us by its intimate connection with the scene which immediately precedes or follows it. Thus, in "King Lear," between the time when Lear divides his kingdom among his daughters, and the moment when Goneril, already tired of her father's presence, determines to get rid of him, the scenes at Gloster's castle, and the commencement of Edmund's intrigue, are interposed. Guided by that instinct which is the science of genius, the poet knows that our imagination will traverse without effort both time and space with him, if he spares those moral improbabilities which could alone arrest its progress. With this view, he sometimes accumulates material unlikelihoods, and sometimes exhausts the ingenuity of his art; but, ever attentive to the object at which he aims, he can reduce to unity of action those artifices and preparatory means which he employs to remove every thing that could interfere with the dramatic illusion, and to dispose freely of our thought.
Unity of action, being indispensable to unity of impression, could not escape Shakspeare's notice. But how, it may be asked, could he maintain it in the midst of so many events of so changeful and complicated a nature—in that immense field which includes so many places, so many years, all conditions of society, and the development of so many positions? Shakspeare succeeded in maintaining it, nevertheless: in "Macbeth," "Hamlet," "Richard III.," and "Romeo and Juliet," the action, though vast, does not cease to be one, rapid and complete. This is because the poet has seized upon its fundamental condition, which consists in placing the centre of interest where he finds the centre of action. The character which gives movement to the drama is also the one upon which the moral agitation of the spectator is bestowed. Duplicity of action, or at least of interest, has been urged against Racine's tragedy of "Andromaque," and the charge is not without foundation; it is not that all the parts of the action do not work together toward the same end, but the interest is divided, and the centre of action is uncertain. If Shakspeare had had to treat of such a subject, which, it must be said, is not in great conformity to the nature of his genius, he would have made Andromache the centre of the action as well as of the interest. Maternal love would have pervaded the entire drama, displaying its courage as well as its fears, its strength as well as its sorrows. Shakspeare, indeed, would not have hesitated to introduce the child upon the stage, as Racine subsequently did in "Athalie," when he had grown more bold. All the emotions of the spectator would have been directed toward a single point: we should have beheld Andromache, with greater activity, trying other means to save Astyanax than "the tears of her mother," and constantly riveting upon her son and herself an attention which Racine has too often diverted to the means of action which he was constrained to derive from the vicissitudes of the destiny of Hermione. According to the system imposed upon our dramatic poets in the seventeenth century, Hermione should be the centre of the action; and so, in fact, she is. Upon a stage which daily became more subject to the authority of the ladies and of the court, love seemed destined to take the place of the fatality of the ancients: a blind power, as inflexible as fatality, and, like it, leading its victims toward an object defined from the very outset, love became the fixed point around which all things should revolve. In "Andromaque," love makes Hermione a simple personage, swayed by her passion, referring to it every thing that occurs beneath her view, and careful to bring events into subjection to herself, in order to make them serve and satisfy her affection. Hermione alone directs and gives movement to the drama; Andromaque only appears to suffer the agony of a position as powerless as it is painful. Such an idea may admit of admirable developments of the passive affections of the heart; but it does not constitute a tragic action; and in those developments which do not lead immediately to action, our interest runs the risk of wandering astray, and returns afterward with difficulty into the only direction in which it can be maintained.
When, on the contrary, the centre of action and the centre of interest are identical—when the attention of the spectator has been fixed upon the hero of the drama, at once active and unchanging, whose character, though it remains ever the same, will lead to incessant changes in his destiny—then the events in agitation around such a man strike us only by their relation to him, and the impression which we receive from them assumes the color which he has himself imparted to them. Richard III. proceeds from plot to plot; every new success redoubles the terror with which we are inspired at the outset by his infernal genius; the pity which each one of his victims successively awakes, becomes merged in the feelings of hate which accumulate upon their persecutor; none of these particular feelings diverts our impressions to its own advantage; they are directed incessantly, and always with increasing vigor, toward the author of so many crimes; and thus Richard, the centre of action, is at the same time the centre of interest also; for dramatic interest is not only the unquiet pity which we feel for misfortune, or the passionate affection with which we are inspired by virtue; it is also hatred, the thirst for vengeance, the invocation of Heaven's justice upon the malefactor, as well as the prayer for the salvation of the innocent. All strong feelings, capable of exciting the human soul, can draw us in their train, and inspire us with passionate interest, they have no need to promise us happiness, or to gain our attachment by tenderness: we can also raise ourselves to that sublime contempt for life which makes men heroes and martyrs, and to that noble indignation beneath which tyrants succumb.
Every element may enter into an action, thus reduced to one sole centre, from which emanate, and to which are related, all the events of the drama, and all the impressions of the spectator. Every thing that moves the heart of man, every thing that agitates his life, may combine to produce dramatic interest, provided that, being directed toward the same point, and marked with the same impress, the most various facts present themselves only as satellites of the principal fact, the brilliancy and power of which they serve to augment. Nothing will appear trivial, insignificant, or puerile, if it imparts greater vitality to the predominant position, or greater depth to the general feeling. Grief is sometimes redoubled by the aspect of gayety; in the midst of danger, a joke may increase our courage. Nothing is foreign to the impression but that which destroys it; it nourishes itself, and gains greater power from every thing that can mingle with it. The prattle of young Arthur with Hubert becomes heart-rending from the idea of the horrible barbarity which Hubert is about to practice upon him. We are filled with emotion by the sight of Lady Macduff lovingly amused by the witty sallies of her little son, while at her door are the assassins who have come to massacre that son, and her other children, and afterward herself. Who, but for these circumstances, would take a deep interest in this scene of maternal childishness? But, if this scene were omitted, should we hate Macbeth as much as we ought to do for this new crime? In "Hamlet," not only is the scene of the grave-diggers connected with the general idea of the piece by the kind of meditations which it inspires, but—and we know it—it is Ophelia's grave which they are digging in Hamlet's presence; and to Ophelia will relate, when he is informed of this circumstance, all the impressions which have been kindled in his soul by the sight of those hideous and despised bones, and the indifference which is felt for the mortal remains of those who were once beautiful and powerful, honored or beloved. No detail of these mournful preparations is lost to the feeling which they occasion; the coarse insensibility of the men devoted to the habits of such a trade, their songs and jokes, all have their effect; and the forms and means of comedy thus enter, without effort, into tragedy, the impressions of which are never more keen than when we see them about to fall upon a man who is already their unwitting subject, and who is amusing himself in presence of the misfortune of which he is unaware.
Without this use of the comic, and without this intervention of the inferior classes, how many dramatic effects, which contribute powerfully to the general effect, would become impossible! Accommodate to the taste of the pleasantry of our age the scene with Macbeth's porter, and there is no one who will not shudder at the thought of the discovery that will follow this exhibition of jovial buffoonery, and of the spectacle of carnage still concealed beneath these remnants of the intoxication of a festival. If Hamlet were the first brought into connection with his father's ghost, what preparation and explanations would be indispensable to place us in the state of mind in which a prince, a man belonging to the highest class of society, must be in order to believe in a ghost! But the phantom appears first to soldiers, men of simple a kind, who are more ready to be alarmed than astonished at it; and they relate the story to one another in the night-watch:
The effect of terror is produced, and we believe in the spectre before Hamlet has ever heard it mentioned.
Nor is this all; the intervention of the inferior classes furnishes Shakspeare with another means of effect, which would be impracticable in any other system. The poet who can take his actors from all ranks of society, and place them in all positions, may also bring every thing into action—that is to say, may remain constantly dramatic. In "Julius Caesar," the scene opens with a living picture of popular movements and feelings; what explanation or conversation could make us so well acquainted with the nature of the seductive influence exercised by the Dictator over the Romans, of the kind of danger to which liberty is exposed, and of the error, as well as the peril, of the republicans who hope to restore liberty by the death of Caesar? When Macbeth determines to get rid of Banquo, he has not to inform us of his project in the person of a confidant, or to receive an account of the execution of the deed in order to make us aware of it: he sends for the assassins and converses with them; we witness the artifices by which a tyrant renders the passions and misfortunes of man subservient to his designs; and we afterward see the murderers lie in wait for their victim, strike the fatal blow, and return, with blood-stained hands, to demand their reward. Banquo can then appear to us; the real presence of crime has produced all its effect, and we reject none of the terrors which accompany it.
When we desire to produce man upon the stage in all the energy of his nature, it is not too much to summon to our aid man as a whole, and to exhibit him under all the forms and in all the positions of which his existence admits. Such a representation is not merely more complete and striking, but it is also more truthful and accurate. We deceive the mind with regard to an event, if we present to it merely one salient part adorned with the colors of truth, while the other part is rejected and effaced in a conversation or a narrative. Thence results a false impression which, in more than one instance, has injured the effect of the finest works. "Athalie," that masterpiece of our drama, still finds us imbued with a certain prejudice against Joad and in favor of Athalie, whom we do not hate sufficiently to rejoice in her destruction, and whom we do not fear enough to approve the artifice which draws her into the snare. And yet Athalie has not only massacred her son's children, in order that she might reign in their stead; but she is a foreigner, maintained on the throne by foreign troops; the enemy of the God adored by her people, she insults and braves Him by the presence and pomp of a foreign worship, while the national religion, stripped of its power and honors, and clung to with fear and trembling by only "a small number of zealous worshipers," daily expects to fall a victim to the hatred of Mathan, the insolent despotism of the queen, and the avidity of her base courtiers. Here is, indeed, an exhibition of tyranny and misfortune; here is matter enough to drive the people to revolt, and to lead to conspiracies among the last defenders of their liberties. And all these facts are related in the speeches of Joad, of Abner, of Mathan, and even of Athalie herself. But they are displayed in speeches only; all that we behold in action is Joad conspiring with the means which his enemy still leaves at his disposal, and the imposing grandeur of the character of Athalie. The conspiracy is under our eyes; but we have only heard of tyranny. If the action had revealed to us the evils which oppression involves; if we had beheld Joad excited and stimulated to revolt by the cries of the unhappy victims of the vexations of the foreigner; if the patriotic and religious indignation of the people against a power "lavish of the blood of the defenseless," had given legitimacy to Joad's conduct in our eyes—the action, when thus completed, would leave no uncertainty in our minds; and "Athalie" would perhaps present to us the ideal of dramatic poetry, at least, according to our conception of it at the present time.
Though easily attained among the Greeks, whose life and feelings might be summed up in a few large and simple features, this ideal did not present itself to modern nations under forms sufficiently general and pure to receive the application of the rules laid down in accordance with the ancient models. France, in order to adopt them, was compelled to limit its field, in some sort, to one corner of human existence. Our poets have employed all the powers of genius to turn this narrow space to advantage; the abysses of the heart have been sounded to their utmost depth, but not in all their dimensions. Dramatic illusion has been sought at its true source, but it has not been required to furnish all the effects that might have been obtained from it. Shakspeare offers to us a more fruitful and a vaster system. It would be a strange mistake to suppose that he has discovered and brought to light all its wealth. When we embrace human destiny in all its aspects, and human nature in all the conditions of man upon earth, we enter into possession of an exhaustless treasure. It is the peculiar advantage of such a system, that it escapes, by its extent, from the dominion of any particular genius. We may discover its principles in Shakspeare's works; but he was not fully acquainted with them, nor did he always respect them. He should serve as an example, not as a model. Some men, even of superior talent, have attempted to write plays according to Shakspeare's taste, without perceiving that they were deficient in one important qualification for the task; and that was, to write as he did, to write them for our age, just as Shakspeare's plays were written for the age in which he lived. This is an enterprise, the difficulties of which have hitherto, perhaps, been maturely considered by no one. We have seen how much art and effort was employed by Shakspeare to surmount those which are inherent in his system. They are still greater in our times, and would unvail themselves much more completely to the spirit of criticism which now accompanies the boldest essays of genius. It is not only with spectators of more fastidious taste, and of more idle and inattentive imagination, that the poet would have to do, who should venture to follow in Shakspeare's footsteps. He would be called upon to give movement to personages embarrassed in much, more complicated interests, pre-occupied with much more various feelings, and subject to less simple habits of mind, and to less decided tendencies. Neither science, nor reflection, nor the scruples of conscience, nor the uncertainties of thought, frequently encumber Shakspeare's heroes; doubt is of little use among them, and the violence of their passions speedily transfers their belief to the side of their desires, or sets their actions above their belief. Hamlet alone presents the confused spectacle of a mind formed by the enlightenment of society, in conflict with a position contrary to its laws; and he needs a supernatural apparition to determine him to act, and a fortuitous event to accomplish his project. If incessantly placed in an analogous position, the personages of a tragedy conceived at the present day, according to the romantic system, would offer us the same picture of indecision. Ideas now crowd and intersect each other in the mind of man, duties multiply in his conscience, and obstacles and bonds around his life. Instead of those electric brains, prompt to communicate the spark which they have received—instead of those ardent and simple-minded men, whose projects, like Macbeth's, "will to hand"—the world now presents to the poet minds like Hamlet's, deep in the observation of those inward conflicts which our classical system has derived from a state of society more advanced than that of the time in which Shakspeare lived. So many feelings, interests, and ideas, the necessary consequences of modern civilization, might become, even in their simplest form of expression, a troublesome burden, which it would be difficult to carry through the rapid evolutions and bold advances of the romantic system.
We must, however, satisfy every demand; success itself requires it. The reason must be contented at the same time that the imagination is occupied. The progress of taste, of enlightenment, of society, and of mankind, must serve, not to diminish or disturb our enjoyment, but to render them worthy of ourselves, and capable of supplying the new wants which we have contracted. Advance without rule and art in the romantic system, and you will produce melodrames calculated to excite a passing emotion in the multitude, but in the multitude alone, and for a few days; just as, by dragging along without originality in the classical system, you will satisfy only that cold literary class who are acquainted with nothing in nature which is more important than the interests of versification, or more imposing than the three unities. This is not the work of the poet who is called to power and destined for glory; he acts upon a grander scale, and can address the superior intellects, as well as the general and simple faculties of all men. It is doubtless necessary that the crowd should throng to behold those dramatic works of which you desire to make a national spectacle; but do not hope to become national if you do not unite in your festivities all those classes of persons and minds whose well-arranged hierarchy raises a nation to its loftiest dignity. Genius is bound to follow human nature in all its developments; its strength consists in finding within itself the means for constantly satisfying the whole of the public. The same task is now imposed upon government and upon poetry; both should exist for all, and suffice at once for the wants of the masses and for the requirements of the most exalted minds. Doubtless stopped in its course by these conditions, the full severity of which will only be revealed to the talent that can comply with them, dramatic art, even in England, where, under the protection of Shakspeare, it would have liberty to attempt any thing, scarcely ventures at the present day to endeavor timidly to follow him. Meanwhile, England, France, and the whole of Europe demand of the drama pleasures and emotions that can no longer be supplied by the inanimate representation of a world that has ceased to exist. The classical system had its origin in the life of its time; that time has passed; its image subsists in brilliant colors in its works, but can no more be reproduced. Near the monuments of past ages, the monuments of another age are now beginning to arise. What will be their form? I can not tell; but the ground upon which their foundations may rest is already perceptible. This ground is not the ground of Corneille and Racine, nor is it that of Shakspeare; it is our own; but Shakspeare's system, as it appears to me, may furnish the plans according to which genius ought now to work. This system alone includes all those social conditions and all those general or diverse feelings, the simultaneous conjunction and activity of which constitute for us, at the present day, the spectacle of human things. Witnesses, during thirty years, of the greatest revolutions of society, we shall no longer willingly confine the movement of our mind within the narrow space of some family event, or the agitations of a purely individual passion. The nature and destiny of man have appeared to us under their most striking and their simplest aspect, in all their extent and in all their variableness. We require pictures in which this spectacle is reproduced, in which man is displayed in his completeness, and excites our entire sympathy. The moral dispositions which impose this necessity upon poetry will not change; but we shall see them, on the contrary, manifesting themselves more plainly, and receiving greater development, day by day. Interests, duties, and a movement common to all classes of citizens, will strengthen among them that chain of habitual relations with which all public feelings connect themselves. Never could dramatic art have taken its subjects from an order of ideas at once more popular and more elevated; never was the connection between the most vulgar interests of man and the principles upon which his highest destinies are dependent, more clearly present to all minds; and the importance of an event may now appear in its pettiest details as well as in its mightiest results. In this state of society, a new dramatic system ought to be established. It should be liberal and free, but not without principles and laws. It should establish itself like liberty, not upon disorder and forgetfulness of every check, but upon rules more severe and more difficult of observance, perhaps, than those which are still enforced to maintain what is called order against what is designated license.
Two powerful families of Verona, the Montecchi and the Capelletti (the Montagues and Capulets), had long lived on terms of such hostility to each other, that it had frequently led to sanguinary conflicts in the open streets. Alberto della Scala, the second perpetual captain of Verona, had ineffectually endeavored to reconcile them; but he succeeded so far in bridling their enmity, that "when they met," says Grirolamo della Corte, the historian of Verona, "the younger men made way for their elders, and they mutually exchanged salutations."
In the year 1303, under the reign of Bartolommeo della Scala, who had been chosen perpetual captain on the death of his father Alberto, Antonio Capelletto, the leader of his faction, gave a great entertainment during the carnival, to which he invited most of the nobility of Verona. Romeo Montecchio, who was about twenty-one years of age, and one of the handsomest and most amiable young men in the city, went thither in a mask, accompanied by some of his friends. After some time, taking off his mask, he sat down in a corner, from which he could see and be seen. Much astonishment was felt at the boldness with which he had thus ventured in the midst of his enemies. However, as he was young and of agreeable manners, the Capulets, says the historian, "did not pay so much attention to his presence as they might have done if he had been older." His eyes and those of Giulietta Capelletto soon met, and being equally struck with admiration, they did not cease to look at each other. The festivities terminated with a dance, which "among us," says Girolamo, "is called the hat-dance (dal cappello)," in which Romeo engaged; but, after having danced a few figures with his partner, he left her to join Juliet, who was dancing with another. "Immediately that she felt him touch her hand, she said, 'Blessed be your coming!' And he, pressing her hand, replied, 'What blessing do you receive from it, lady?' And she answered, with a smile, 'Be not surprised, sir, that I bless your coming; Signor Mercurio had been chilling me for a long while, but by your politeness you have restored me to warmth.' (The hands of this young man, who was called Mercurio the Squinter, and who was beloved by every one for the charms of his mind, were always colder than ice.) To these words, Romeo replied, 'I am greatly delighted to do you service in any thing.' When the dance was over, Juliet could say no more than this: 'Alas! I am more yours than my own.'"
Romeo having repaired on several occasions to a small street upon which Juliet's windows looked out, one evening she recognized him "by his sneezing or some other sign," and opened the window; they saluted each other very courteously (cortesissimamente), and, after having conversed for a long while of their loves, they agreed that they must be married, whatever might happen; and that the ceremony should be performed by Friar Leonardo, a Franciscan monk, who was "a theologian, a great philosopher, an admirable distiller, a proficient in the art of magic," and the confessor of nearly all the town. Romeo went to see this worthy; and the monk, thinking of the credit he would gain, not only with the perpetual captain, but also with the whole city, if he succeeded in reconciling the two families, acceded to the request of the young couple. On Quadragesima Sunday, when confession was obligatory, Juliet went with her mother to the church of St. Francis in the citadel; and having entered first into the confessional, on the other side of which Romeo was stationed, they received the nuptial benediction through the window of the confessional, which the monk had had the kindness to leave open. Afterward, by the connivance of a very adroit old nurse of Juliet's, they spent the night together in her garden.
However, after the festival of Easter, a numerous troop of Capulets met, at a little distance from the gates of Verona, a band of Montagues, and attacked them, at the instigation of Tebaldo, a cousin-german of Juliet, who, seeing Romeo use every effort to put an end to the combat, went up to him, and, forcing him to defend himself, received a sword-thrust in his throat, from which he fell dead on the spot. Romeo was banished; and a short time afterward, Juliet, on the point of finding herself compelled to marry another, had recourse to Friar Leonardo, who gave her a powder to swallow, by means of which she would appear to be dead, and would be interred in the family vault, which happened to be in the church attached to Leonardo's convent. The monk was to deliver her immediately from her grave, and to send her in disguise to Mantua, where Romeo was residing; and he promised to inform her lover of their design.
Matters were arranged as Leonardo had suggested; but Romeo, having been informed of Juliet's death by an indirect source, before he received the monk's letter, set out at once for Verona with a single domestic, and, having provided himself with a violent poison, hastened to the tomb, opened it, bathed Juliet's body with his tears, swallowed the poison, and died. Juliet awaking from her trance the instant afterward, seeing Romeo dead, and learning from the monk, who had come up in the meanwhile, all that had happened, was seized with such violent paroxysms of grief, that, "without being able to utter a word, she fell dead upon the bosom of her Romeo." [Footnote 19]
[Footnote 19: See Girolamo della Corte, "Istorie di Verona," vol. i., p. 89, et seq ed. 1594.]
This story is told as true by Girolamo della Corte, and he assures his readers that he had often seen the tomb of Romeo and Juliet, which, rising a little above the level of the ground, and being situated near a well, then served as a laundry to the orphan asylum of St. Francis, which was being built in that locality. He relates, at the same time, that the Cavalier Gerardo Boldiero, his uncle, who had first taken him to this tomb, had pointed out to him, at a corner of the wall, near the Capuchin Convent, the place from which he had heard it said that the bones of Romeo and Juliet, and of several other persons, had been transferred a great number of years before. Captain Bréval, in his Travels, also mentions that he saw at Verona, in 1762, an old building which was then an orphan asylum, and which his guide informed him had once contained the tomb of Romeo and Juliet, but that it no longer existed.
It was probably not in accordance with the narrative of Girolamo della Corte that Shakspeare composed his tragedy. It was first performed, as it would appear, in 1595, under the patronage of Lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain of Queen Elizabeth, and was printed for the first time in 1597. Now the work of Girolamo della Corte, which was intended to contain twenty-two books, was interrupted in the middle of the twentieth book, and in the year 1560, by the illness of the author. We learn, moreover, from the editor's preface, that this illness was prolonged, and terminated in the death of the historian; that the necessity for revising a work, to which Girolamo himself had been unable to give the finishing stroke, occupied a considerable period; and, finally, that the lawsuits, "both civil and criminal," with which the editor was tormented, prevented him from bringing his undertaking to a conclusion as promptly as he could have desired; so that the work of Girolamo could not have been published until a long while after his death. The edition of 1594 is, therefore, to all appearance, the first edition, and could scarcely have fallen into Shakspeare's hands so early as 1595.
But the history of Romeo and Juliet, which was doubtless very popular at Verona, had already formed the subject of a novel by Luigi da Porto, published at Venice in 1535, six years after the death of the author, under the title of "La Giulietta." This novel was reprinted, translated and imitated in several languages, and furnished Arthur Brooke with the subject of an English poem, which was published in 1562, and from which Shakspeare certainly derived the subject of his tragedy. [Footnote 20]
[Footnote 20: The title is, "The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, containing a rare Example of true Constancie; with the Subtill Counsels and Practises of an old Fryer, and their ill event." This poem has been reprinted at the end of the tragedy in the large editions of Shakspeare; among others, in Malone's edition.]
The imitation is complete. Juliet, in Brooke's poem, as well as in the novel of Luigi da Porto, kills herself with Romeo's dagger, instead of dying of grief, as in the history of Girolamo della Corte; but it is a singular circumstance, that both Arthur Brooke's poem and Shakspeare's tragedy make Romeo die, as in the history, before Juliet awakes, whereas, in the novel of Luigi da Porto, he does not die until after he has witnessed her restoration to life, and had a scene of sorrowful farewell with her. Shakspeare has been blamed for not having adopted this version, which would have furnished him with a very pathetic position; and it has been inferred that he was not acquainted with the Italian novel, although it had been translated into English. Several circumstances, however, give us reason to believe that Shakspeare was acquainted with this translation. As for his motives for preferring the poet's narrative to that of the novelist, he may have had many; in the first place, to account for his departing in so important a point from the novel of Luigi da Porto, which he has followed most scrupulously in almost every other particular, perhaps Arthur Brooke, the author of the poem, may have had some knowledge of the true history, as related by Girolamo della Corte. Being a contemporary of Shakspeare, he may have communicated this to him, and Shakspeare's careful conformity, as far as he was able, to history, or to the narratives received as such, would not have allowed him to hesitate as to his choice. Moreover—and this was probably the true reason of the poet—Shakspeare very seldom precedes a strong resolution by long speeches. As Macbeth says:
"Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives."
Whatever anguish reflection may add to grief, it fixes the mind on too large a number of objects not to distract it from the single and absorbing idea which leads to desperate actions. After having received Romeo's farewell, and lamented his death in concert with him, it might have happened that Juliet would have bewailed him all her life instead of killing herself on the spot. Garrick rewrote the scene in the monument, in accordance with the supposition adopted in the novel of Luigi da Porto; the scene is touching, but, as was perhaps inevitable in such a situation, which it would be impossible to delineate in words, the feelings are too much and too little agitated, and the despair is either excessive or not sufficiently violent. In the laconism of Shakspeare's "Romeo and Juliet," in these last moments, there is much more passion and truth.
This laconism is all the more remarkable, because during the whole course of the play, Shakspeare has abandoned himself without constraint to that abundance of reflection and discourse which is one of the characteristics of his genius. Nowhere is the contrast more striking between the depth of the feelings which the poet describes, and the form in which he expresses them. Shakspeare excels in seeing our human feelings as they really exist in nature, without premeditation, without any labor of man upon himself, ingenuous and impetuous, mingled of good and evil, of vulgar instincts and sublime inspirations, just as the human soul is, in its primitive and spontaneous state. What can be more truthful than the love of Romeo and Juliet, so young, so ardent, so unreflecting, full at once of physical passion and of moral tenderness, without restraint, and yet without coarseness, because delicacy of heart ever combines with the transports of the senses! There is nothing subtle or factitious in it, and nothing cleverly arranged by the poet; it is neither the pure love of piously exalted imaginations, nor the licentious love of palled and perverted lives; it is love itself—love complete, involuntary and sovereign, as it bursts forth in early youth, in the heart of man, at once simple and diverse, as God made it. "Romeo and Juliet" is truly the tragedy of love, as "Othello" is that of jealousy, and "Macbeth" that of ambition. Each of the great dramas of Shakspeare is dedicated to one of the great feelings of humanity; and the feeling which pervades the drama is, in very reality, that which occupies and possesses the human soul when under its influence. Shakspeare omits, adds, and alters nothing; he brings it on the stage simply and boldly, in its energetic and complete truth.
Pass now from the substance to the form, and from the feeling itself to the language in which it is clothed by the poet; and observe the contrast! In proportion as the feeling is true and profoundly known and understood, its expression is often factitious, laden with developments and ornaments in which the mind of the poet takes delight, but which do not flow naturally from the lips of a dramatic personage. Of all Shakspeare's great dramas, "Romeo and Juliet" is, perhaps, the one in which this fault is most abundant. We might almost say that Shakspeare had attempted to imitate that copiousness of words, and that verbose facility which, in literature as well as life, generally characterize the peoples of the South. He had certainly read, at least in translation, some of the Italian poets; and the innumerable subtleties interwoven, as it were, into the language of all the personages in "Romeo and Juliet," and the introduction of continual comparisons with the sun, the flowers, and the stars, though often brilliant and graceful, are evidently an imitation of the style of the sonnets, and a debt paid to local coloring. It is, perhaps, because the Italian sonnets almost always adopt a plaintive tone, that choice and exaggeration of language are particularly perceptible in the complaints of the two lovers. The expression of their brief happiness is, especially in the mouth of Juliet, of ravishing simplicity; and when they reach the final term of their destiny, when the poet enters upon the last scene of this mournful tragedy, he renounces all his attempts at imitation, and all his wittily wise reflections. His characters, who, says Johnson, "have a conceit left them in their misery," lose this peculiarity when misery has struck its heavy blows; the imagination ceases to play; passion itself no longer appears, unless united to solid, serious, and almost stern feelings; and that mistress, who was so eager for the joys of love, Juliet, when threatened in her conjugal fidelity, thinks of nothing but the fulfillment of her duties, and how she may remain without blemish the wife of her dear Romeo. What an admirable trait of moral sense and good sense is this in a genius devoted to the delineation of passion!
However, Shakspeare was mistaken when he thought that, by prodigality of reflections, imagery, and words, he was imitating Italy and her poets. At least he was not imitating the masters of Italian poetry, his equals, and the only ones who deserved his notice. Between them and him, the difference is immense and singular. It is in comprehension of the natural feelings that Shakspeare excels, and he depicts them with as much simplicity and truth of substance as he clothes them with affectation and sometimes whimsicality of language. It is, on the contrary, into these feelings themselves that the great Italian poets of the fourteenth century, and especially Petrarch, frequently introduce as much refinement and subtlety as elevation and grace; they alter and transform, according to their religious and moral beliefs, or even to their literary tastes, those instincts and passions of the human heart to which Shakspeare leaves their native physiognomy and liberty. What can be less similar than the love of Petrarch for Laura, and that of Juliet for Romeo? In compensation, the expression, in Petrarch, is almost always as natural as the feeling is refined; and whereas Shakspeare presents perfectly simple and true emotions beneath a strange and affected form, Petrarch lends to mystical, or at least singular and very restrained emotions, all the charm of a simple and pure form.
I will quote only one example of this difference between the two poets, but it is a very striking example, for it is one in which both have tried their powers upon the same position, the same feeling, and almost the same image.
Laura is dead. Petrarch is desirous of depicting, on her entrance upon the sleep of death, her whom he had painted so frequently, and with such charming passion, in the brilliancy of life and youth: