In the same play, when Rosalind hears that Orlando is in the wood, she cries out, “Alas the day! what shall I do with my doublet and hose?” And when Orlando asks her, “Where dwell you, pretty youth?” she answers, tripping in her rôle, “Here in the skirts of the forest, like fringe upon a petticoat.”
In the second part of “King Henry IV.,” act iv. scene 3, Falstaff says of Prince John: “Good faith, this same young sober-blooded boy doth not love me; nor a man cannot make him laugh;—but that’s no marvel: he drinks no wine.” This is the Prince John who betrays the insurgents afterwards by the falsest of quibbles, and gains his revenge through their good faith.
In “King Henry IV,” act i. scene 2, Poins does not say Falstaff is a coward like the other two; but only—“If he fight longer than he sees reason, I’ll forswear arms.” Associate this with Falstaff’s soliloquy about honour in the same play, act v. scene 1, and the true character of his courage or cowardice—for it may bear either name—comes out.
Is there not conscious art in representing the hospitable face of the castle of Macbeth, bearing on it a homely welcome in the multitude of the nests of the temple-haunting martlet (Psalm lxxxiv. 3), just as Lady Macbeth, the fiend-soul of the house, steps from the door, like the speech of the building, with her falsely smiled welcome? Is there not observance in it?
But the production of such instances might be endless, as the work of Shakspere is infinite. I confine myself to two more, taken from “The Merchant of Venice.”
Shakspere requires a character capable of the magnificent devotion of friendship which the old story attributes to Antonio. He therefore introduces us to a man sober even to sadness, thoughtful even to melancholy. The first words of the play unveil this characteristic. He holds “the world but as the world,”—
“A stage where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.”
The cause of this sadness we are left to conjecture. Antonio himself professes not to know. But such a disposition, even if it be not occasioned by any definite event or object, will generally associate itself with one; and when Antonio is accused of being in love, he repels the accusation with only a sad “Fie! fie!” This, and his whole character, seem to me to point to an old but ever cherished grief.
Into the original story upon which this play is founded, Shakspere has, among other variations, introduced the story of Jessica and Lorenzo, apparently altogether of his own invention. What was his object in doing so? Surely there were characters and interests enough already!—It seems to me that Shakspere doubted whether the Jew would have actually proceeded to carry out his fell design against Antonio, upon the original ground of his hatred, without the further incitement to revenge afforded by another passion, second only to his love of gold—his affection for his daughter; for in the Jew having reference to his own property, it had risen to a passion. Shakspere therefore invents her, that he may send a dog of a Christian to steal her, and, yet worse, to tempt her to steal her father’s stones and ducats. I suspect Shakspere sends the old villain off the stage at the last with more of the pity of the audience than any of the other dramatists of the time would have ventured to rouse, had they been capable of doing so. I suspect he is the only human Jew of the English drama up to that time.
I have now arrived at the last and most important stage of my argument. It is this: If Shakspere was so well aware of the artistic relations of the parts of his drama, is it likely that the grand meanings involved in the whole were unperceived by him, and conveyed to us without any intention on his part—had their origin only in the fact that he dealt with human nature so truly, that his representations must involve whatever lessons human life itself involves?