3. The same fact emerges when we take the complete figures and consider them, as has been
done, from a purely literary standpoint. We need not go over the whole story again; it will be sufficient if we cast our eye back over each group and seize upon the most prominent figures in it. Take Trouble-all, Meleander, Shattillion, and the Passionate Madman, and, following the prescription which Paulina gives to Leontes in the “Winter’s Tale,” choose the best traits from each, concentrate, add, improve—and you are still far from the august figure of Lear. Surround Ophelia with the heroines of Beaumont, Fletcher, and Ford. Will anyone assert that either Aspatia, or the Gaoler’s Daughter, or Penthea approaches the fair Ophelia? Take the Pretenders: where have you so admirable a pretence as that of Hamlet, a pretence so realistic that many critics of to-day maintain that it is reality, and most allow that, if not actually mad, the Prince of Denmark was perilously near a state of insanity? It is certainly not in the antics of the boy of Polymetes, or of the fool “Tony” represented in “The Changeling.” Considered from this point of view alone, there is no pretender who does the thing so well as Hamlet,—as a masterpiece of literary art no character can touch him. If anyone could be said to have the slightest claim to do so it would be Shakespeare’s own Edgar, less important in relation to the plot, far less universal in his appeal to mankind as a representative of humanity, yet perhaps
more wonderfully impressive in the place he occupies than any other personage could possibly be.
Or let us look at that unimportant yet not wholly negligible group of persons who have been made the victims of others, written down as asses by the world at large, and are cowering over there in a corner. Even here we see that Shakespeare’s figures are by far the most noteworthy. Morose is not uninteresting, and the dismay of Bellamont, the “reverent” poet, as he is apprehended for a madman and seems to be in danger of confinement in Bedlam, is quite a diverting incident in the plot. But compare them with Shakespeare’s figures. Here is Christopher Sly, “old Sly’s son of Burton-heath, by birth a pedlar, by education a card-maker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker.” There is individuality here, conveyed in a few lines,—which are quite sufficient, notwithstanding, to stamp the character with the impress of Shakespeare’s seal. Better still, take Malvolio, who is accused of madness for a jest, but whose character as previously drawn would make an admirable reason for the jest being taken seriously. So much does he take things to heart that Sir Toby thinks he may actually go mad through disappointment. “Why, thou hast put him in such a dream that when the image of it leaves him
he must run mad.”[183:1] Thorough as always, true to life, this is very Shakespeare: none other can approach him in his own arena of the stage.
The last figure seems to have disappeared from the stage, the unmeaning groups of madmen have dispersed, and with them the crowd. We turn to go. Yet, as for a moment we look back on the scene we have just left, a solitary figure meets our eye. It is no madman, no pretender, and no dupe. It is just the Fool, the Fool unparalleled, the Fool of Lear. Ere his master’s afflictions could drive him mad like that master, he went “to bed at noon.” Now he returns to remind us of his other master,—of his creator,—who painted him on the same canvas which holds Edgar and Lear, a figure
“sublime
With tears and laughter for all time.”
With no more fitting words, inasmuch as they describe not alone the Fool but all Shakespeare’s mad folk, could we close our study.