"Then, throwing himself into the very spirit of the scene, he took up the words:—
| "'[O my offence is rank,] it smells to heaven; It hath the primal eldest curse upon't, A brother's murder!—Pray can I not, Though inclination be as sharp as will; My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent; And, like a man to double business bound, I stand in pause where I shall first begin, And both neglect. What if this cursed hand Were thicker than itself with brother's blood? Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy [top] But to confront the visage of offence; And what's in prayer but this twofold force— To be forestalled ere we come to fall, Or pardoned, being down? Then I'll look up; My fault is past. But O what form of prayer Can serve my turn? Forgive me my foul murder?— That cannot be; since I am still possessed Of those effects for which I did the murder,— My crown, my own ambition, and my queen. May one be pardoned and retain the offence? In the corrupted currents of this world, Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice, And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself Buys out the law; but 'tis not so above. There is no shuffling; there the action lies In its true nature; and we ourselves compelled, Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, To give in evidence. What then? What rests? Try what repentance can; what can it not? Yet what can it when one cannot repent? O wretched state! O bosom black as death! O bruised soul that, struggling to be free, Art more engaged! Help, angels, make assay! Bow, stubborn knees! And heart with strings of steel, Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe; All may be well!' |
"He repeated this entire passage from memory, with a feeling and appreciation unsurpassed by anything I ever witnessed upon the stage. Remaining in thought for a few moments, he continued:—
"'The opening of the play of "King Richard the Third" seems to me often entirely misapprehended. It is quite common for an actor to come upon the stage, and, in a sophomoric style, to begin with a flourish:—
| "'Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York, And all the clouds that lowered upon our house, In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.' |
"'Now,' said he, 'this is all wrong. Richard, you remember, had been, and was then plotting the destruction of his brothers, to make room for himself. Outwardly, the most loyal to the newly crowned king, secretly he could scarcely contain his impatience at the obstacles still in the way of his own elevation. He appears upon the stage, just after the crowning of [top] Edward, burning with repressed hate and jealousy. The prologue is the utterance of the most intense bitterness and satire.' Then, unconsciously assuming the character, Mr. Lincoln repeated, also from memory, Richard's soliloquy, rendering it with a degree of force and power that made it seem like a new creation to me. Though familiar with the passage from boyhood, I can truly say that never till that moment had I fully appreciated its spirit. I could not refrain from laying down my palette and brushes, and applauding heartily upon his conclusion, saying, at the same time, half in earnest, that I was not sure but that he had made a mistake in the choice of a profession, considerably, as may be imagined, to his amusement. Mr. Sinclair has since repeatedly said to me that he never heard these choice passages of Shakspeare rendered with more effect by the most famous of modern actors."
Lincoln's sense of the classic phrase seems to have been native with him, for we find it in his earliest utterances. Such a phrase appears in homely proverbial form in his first speech: "My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman's dance." Impaired in rhythm of thought and sound by an awkward, though logical, parenthetical expression, another phrase stands out in a "spread-eagle" passage from his first formal address, that on "The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions."
"All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of earth (our own excepted) in its military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years."
And in a eulogy on Washington, Lincoln early achieved a line which in phonetic quality, rhetorical figure and rhythmic cadence is pure poetry, though not of an exceptional order.
"In solemn awe we pronounce the name, and in its naked deathless splendor leave it shining on."