Wit, Humor, and Shakspeare: Twelve Essays

by John Weiss

"Thence it came,
That she, whom all men prais'd, and whom myself,
Since I have lost, have lov'd, was in mine eye
The dust that did offend it."

He is at first superior in rank and inferior in nature, his blood and virtue contending for empire in him. She is still the woman whom Nature has elected for him, notwithstanding his surprise and contempt when she summons him out of the crowd of courtiers in pursuance of the boon she had craved of the King, if he recovered by the use of her prescriptions. In her the voice of Nature spoke more truly than Bertram's passing inclination. As she claims the precious fee, the blushes in her cheeks whisper,—

"We blush that thou shouldst choose: but, be repuls'd,
Let the white death sit on thy cheek for ever;
We'll ne'er come there again."

Bertram feigns compliance with the wishes of the King; but, determining to get rid of her, he hurries from the marriage rite to the Florentine wars. There was a technical marriage of two persons who are not yet wedded, for he does not yet deserve her. The shadow of her plebeian origin is large enough to obscure her merit; so that poetic justice requires that he must wait till she is appreciated, when he will find that he has gained every thing in yielding every thing to the supremacy of pure womanhood. He flings himself away to the wars, exclaiming, "Till I have no wife, I have nothing in France."

When she perceives that she is the cause of his expatriation, her decision is made to leave France, so that he may be free to enter it again. She becomes a pilgrim, with bared feet, to do penance for ambitious love, wandering here and there, keeping out of the way that he may be recalled from the dangers of war:—

"He is too good and fair for death and me;
Whom I myself embrace, to set him free."

By and by, Bertram, believing that she is dead, is overwhelmed with an access of love for her. His awakened conviction "cries to see what's done." Supposing that she is departed, he finds that she is for the first time present. Although he has been full of faults, and does not hesitate to screen himself by the most ungentlemanly prevarications, there is a strain of his nature that sounded when he thought that death had snapped her string. The vibration woke the tone of Helena, and married him to her without a priest save death. "Sweet Helen's knell" became the joy-peals of her marriage morn. Then he receives his true patent of nobility; for her soul converts him to a man.

In this play, Shakspeare has followed the incidents of an old story; but, in doing so, Helena grew upon his hands to be so fine that we dislike to see her submit to a certain one of the circumstances of that borrowed plot. And we wonder that Shakspeare should not have shielded her by a better invention.

We are not satisfied to know that such incidents were very common in the novels of that day, whence Shakspeare derived many of his plots; for the greatest moments of his genius have taught us reverently to demand of him more than that he should be content to take the old threads and weave the old strand over. We expect to follow them as clews that lead through subtle labyrinths of Nature where the heart has stored its secrets. Whenever we venture with him on that raft of some light tale of Boccaccio, we are not surprised if we drop into deep water whose cresting waves admonish Shakspeare to brace and fortify the slim float he started on. We do not relish the idea that Shakspeare is mainly interested to work out a plot into a good acting play, and so takes the nearest coarse things that may suit such a purpose. It is true they have been immersed till they are encrusted all over with his imagination, and their cheapness is concealed. The Chinese drop a shot into the shell of a pearl oyster, and by and by reclaim it all cased in an iris. It seems to be a drop distilled from many sunsets; but the kernel is still a shot. Shakspeare dips the coarse narratives of the Italian writers into his many-colored verse; and they are turned into necklaces to heave on the breath of fair women, and signet-rings to stamp the sense and sovereignty of manhood. But we expect of Shakspeare something more than cunning ornament. The splendor of his poetry does not dazzle us so that we cannot look for hidden meanings and transcendent allusions to the soul of things, as we so often find in him.

But in her character Shakspeare clearly rose to a conviction that love may put such emphasis upon a woman that she must declare herself, notwithstanding the tradition of the sex, that the man's love must have the opening word. Yet, upon reflection, have not women always spoken before men ask them? The shyest and most timorous heart that scuds to covert at every rustle of discovery has already put man upon its track. Some conniving hour has dropped a softer tone into the voice which she never heard from her own tongue before. It surprises her into a faint blush, and surprises him into a sudden observation; as when a new planet steps into the field of view, and startles the watcher with one more world. It was but a blush's shadow, such as a bubble drops on the bed of a clear brook; but it goes athwart his eyes. As they look whence it came, he sees it has already pulled down the lids of hers and set them for a snare. She has spoken: she has made a declaration. With all the enterprise of Helena, she could not have advertised herself more fully.