“Shame and eternal shame, nothing but shame.”
It is curious that Bourbon falls upon the same thought which animated Hotspur. Just before the decisive battle Hotspur cries:
“O, gentlemen! the time of life is short;
To spend that shortness basely were too long.”
And when the battle turns against the French, Bourbon exclaims:
“The devil take order now! I'll to the throng:
Let life be short; else shame will be too long.”
As Jaques in “As You Like It” says of the soldier: they are “jealous in honour” and all seek “the bubble reputation, even in the cannon's mouth.”
It is only in Shakespeare that men have no other motive for brave deeds but love of honour, no other fear but that of shame with which to overcome the dread of death. We shall see later that the desire of fame was the inspiring motive of his own youth.
In the “Second Part of King Henry IV.” there is very little told us of Prince Henry; he only appears in the second act, and in the fourth and fifth; and in all he is the mouthpiece of Shakespeare and not the roistering Prince: yet on his first appearance there are traces of characterization, as when he declares that his “appetite is not princely,” for he remembers “the poor creature, small beer,” whereas in the last act he is merely the poetic prig. Let us give the best scene first:
“P. Hen. Shall I tell thee one thing, Poins?
- - - - - - - -
P. Hen. Marry, I tell thee,—it is not meet that I should
be sad, now my father is sick: albeit I could tell to thee—as
to one it pleases me, for fault of a better, to call my
friend—I could be sad, and sad, indeed, too.
Poins. Very hardly upon such a subject.
P. Hen. By this hand, thou think'st me as far in the
devil's book as thou and Falstaff for obduracy and persistency:
let the end try the man. But I tell thee, my
heart bleeds inwardly that my father is so sick; and keeping
such vile company as thou art hath in reason taken
from me all ostentation of sorrow.
Poins. The reason?
P. Hen. What would'st thou think of me if I should
weep?
Poins. I would think thee a most princely hypocrite.
P. Hen. It would be every man's thought; and thou
art a blessed fellow to think as every man thinks; never
a man's thought in the world keeps the roadway better
than thine: every man would think me an hypocrite indeed.
And what accites your most worshipful thought to
think so?
Poins. Why, because you have been so lewd, and so
much engraffed to Falstaff.”
By far the best thing in this page—the contempt for every man's thought as certain to be mistaken—is, I need hardly say, pure Shakespeare. Exactly the same reflection finds a place in “Hamlet”; the student-thinker tells us of a play which in his opinion, and in the opinion of the best judges, was excellent, but which was only acted once, for it “pleased not the million; 'twas caviare to the general.” Very early in life Shakespeare made the discovery, which all men of brains make sooner or later, that the thoughts of the million are worthless, and the judgment and taste of the million are execrable.