Give me the crown. Here, cousin, seize the crown;
Here cousin;
On this side my hand, and on that side yours.
Now is this golden crown like a deep well
That owes two buckets, filling one another,
The emptier ever dancing in the air,
The other down, unseen and full of water.
That bucket down and full of tears am I,
Drinking my griefs while you mount up on high[112].
(ββ) The other aspect to which we would now draw attention is this, namely, that a character which is already made one with its interests, its sorrow, and its destiny, endeavours by means of the simile to release itself from this immediate union, and makes this deliverance obvious to us by the very fact that it shows itself still able to deduce such similitudes. In "Henry VIII,"[113] for instance, the Queen Katherine, on being forsaken by her royal consort, expresses the depth of her desolation in the words:
I am the most unhappy woman living!
Alas, poor wenches, where are now your fortunes?
Shipwreck'd upon a kingdom, where no pity,
No friends, no hope; no kindred weep for me;
Almost no grave allow'd me: like the lily,
That once was mistress of the field and flourish'd,
I'll hang my head and perish.
In a still more admirable manner in "Julius Caesar"[114] Brutus exclaims to Cassius, to whose want of spirit he has vainly striven to give the spur:
O Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb
That carries anger as the flint bears fire;
Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark,
And straight is cool again.
That Brutus in such a situation can find room for a simile is already an excellent proof that he himself has thrust his scorn into the background, and has begun to assert himself as master of it.
For the most part Shakespeare, by endowing his criminal characters with greatness of soul in crime no less than in misfortune, exalts them before he leaves them above their own evil passions: he will not let them rest in the purely abstract assertion of crimes they are for ever going to do, but never really commit, as is the French style, but actually infuses them with the imaginative power, by means of which they stand out before us as distinctly as any other personification that is new to us. Macbeth, for instance, when his last hour has struck[115], exclaims in the well-known words:
Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
The same thing may be said of those last words of Cardinal Wolsey in "Henry VIII,"[116] uttered at the close of his career when struck down from the summit of his greatness:
Farewell! a long farewell to all my greatness!
This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hopes: to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost;
And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do.