neralized. But compare it with the same image in Romeo and Juliet:' "But he, his own affection's counsellor, Is to himself-I will not say how true, particular." It constitutes the peculiar fectly distinct, but also completely har Johnson, as we have already seen, considered this comedy to be wanting in "dimonious. The skill which he attained in versity of character." The action, it must this wonderful mastery over the whole world | be observed, is mainly sustained by Proteus and Valentine, and by Julia and Silvia; the result of continued experiment. In his of materials for poetical construction was and the conduct of the plot is relieved by characters, especially, we see the gradual the familiar scenes in which Speed and growth of this extraordinary power, as Launce appear. The other actors are very clearly as we perceive the differences besubordinate, and we scarcely demand any tween his early and his matured forms of great diversity of character amongst them; but it seems to us, with regard to Proteus expression. But it is evident to us, that, in his very earliest delineations of character, and Valentine, Julia and Silvia, Speed and he had conceived the principle which was Launce, that the characters are exhibited, to be developed in "his splendid pictureas it were, in pairs, upon a principle of very gallery." In the comedy before us, Valendefined though delicate contrast. We will tine and Proteus are the "two gentlemen' endeavour to point out these somewhat nice-Julia and Silvia the two ladies "beloved” distinctions. Coleridge says, "It is Shaksperc's peculiar excellence, that, throughout the whole of his splendid picture-gallery (the reader will excuse the acknowledged inadequacy of this metaphor), we find individuality everywhere, -mere portrait nowhere. In all his various characters we still feel ourselves communing with the same nature, which is everywhere present as the vegetable sap in the branches, sprays, leaves, buds, blossoms, and fruits, their shapes, tastes, and odours. Speaking of the effect, that is, his works themselves, we may define the excellence of their method as consisting in that just proportion, that union and interpenetration of the universal and the particular, which must ever pervade all works of decided genius and true science." Nothing can be more just and more happy than this definition of the distinctive quality of Shakspere's works,-a quality which puts them so immeasurably above all other works," the union and interpenetration of the universal and the *The Friend.' 3rd edit. 1837, vol. in. p. 121. servants. And yet how different is the one -Speed and Launce the two "clownish" from the other of the same class! Proteus, who is first presented to us as a lover, is evidently a very cold and calculating one. He is "a votary to fond desire;" but he complains of his mistress that she has metamorphosed him 66 Made me neglect my studies-lose my time." IIe ventures, however, to write to Julia ; and when he has her answer, "her oath for love, her honour's pawn," he immediately takes the most prudent view of their position:— "Oh that our fathers would applaud our loves!" But he has not decision enough to demand this approbation :— "I fear'd to show my father Julia's letter, Lest he should take exceptions to my love." He parts with his mistress in a very formal and well-behaved style; they exchange rings, but Julia has first offered "this remembrance" for her sake;-he makes a Live here in heaven, and may look on her, But Romeo may not." commonplace vow of constancy, whilst Julia rushes in tears; he quits Verona for away Milan, and has a new love at first sight the We are not wandering from our purpose of instant he sees Silvia. The mode in which contrasting Proteus and Valentine, by show- | he sets about betraying his friend, and woo- ing that the character of Valentine is coming his new mistress, is eminently charac-pounded of some of the elements that we teristic of the calculating selfishness of his nature: "If I can check my erring love, I will; If not, to compass her I'll use my skill." He is of that very numerous class of men who would always be virtuous, if virtue would accomplish their object as well as vice;-who prefer truth to lying, when lying is unnecessary;-and who have a law of justice in their own minds, which if they can observe they "will;" but "if not,"-if they find themselves poor erring mortals, which they infallibly do,-they think 66 Their stars are more in fault than they." This Proteus is a very contemptible fellow, who finally exhibits himself as a ruffian and a coward, and is punished by the heaviest infliction that the generous Valentine could bestow-his forgiveness. Generous, indeed, and most confiding, is our Valentine-a perfect contrast to Proteus. In the first scene | he laughs at the passion of Proteus, as if he knew that it was alien to his nature; but, when he has become enamoured himself, with what enthusiasm he proclaims his devotion! "Why, man, she is mine own; And I as rich in having such a jewel As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl." In this passionate admiration we have the germ of Romeo, and so also in the scene where Valentine is banished : And why not death, rather than living tor ment?" But here is only a sketch of the strength of a deep and all-absorbing passion. The whole speech of Valentine upon his banishment is forcible and elegant; but compare him with Romeo in the same condition : "Heaven is here Where Juliet lives; and every cat, and dog, And little mouse, every unworthy thing, find in Romeo; for the strong impulses of both these lovers are as much opposed as it is possible to the subtle devices of Proteus. The confiding Valentine goes to his banishment with the cold comfort that Proteus gives him : "Hope is a lover's staff; walk hence with that." He is compelled to join the outlaws, but he makes conditions with them that exhibit the goodness of his nature; and we hear no more of him till the catastrophe, when his traitorous friend is forgiven with the same confiding generosity that has governed all his intercourse with him. We have little doubt of the incorrect sense in which the passage is usually received, in which he is supposed to give up Silvia to his false friend -or, at any rate, of its unfinished nature. But it is perfectly natural and probable that he should receive Proteus again into his confidence, upon his declaration of "hearty sorrow," and that he should do so upon principle: "Who by repentance is not satisfied, It is, to our minds, quite delightful to find in this, which we consider amongst the earliest of Shakspere's plays, that exhibition of the real Christian spirit of charity which, more or less, pervades all his writings; but which, more than any other quality, has made some persons, who deem their own morality as of a higher and purer order, cry out against them, as giving encouragement to evil doers. We shall have frequent occasion to speak of the noble lessons which Shakspere teaches dramatically (and not according to the childish devices of those who would make the dramatist write a "moral" at the end of five acts, upon the approved plan of a Fable in a spelling-book), and we therefore pass over, for the present, those profound critics who say “he has no consistent with the characters of the pardoners that they should exercise their power with severity. Shakspere lived in an age when the vindictive passions were too frequently let loose by men of all sects and opinions,-and much too frequently in the name of that religion which came to teach peace and good will. Is it to be objected to him, then, that wherever he could he asserted the supremacy of charity and mercy; that he taught men the "quality" of that blessed principle which moral purpose in view."* But there are | serving of pardon, but that it would be insome who are not quite so pedantically wise as to affirm "he paid no attention to that retributive justice which, when human affairs are rightly understood, pervades them all," but who yet think that Proteus ought to have been at least banished, or sent to the galleys for a few years with the outlaws; that Angelo, in Measure for Measure,' should have been hanged; that Leontes, in "The Winter's Tale,' was not sufficiently punished for his cruel jealousy by sixteen years of sorrow and repentance ;- that Iachimo, in 'Cymbeline,' is not treated with poetical justice when Posthumus says,— - 'Droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven;"— that he proclaimed-no doubt to the annoyance of all self-worshippers-that “the web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together;"-and that he asked of those who would be hard upon the wretched, "Use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping?" We may be permitted to believe that this large toleration had its influence in an age of racks and gibbets; and we know not how much of this charitable spirit may have come to the aid of the more authoritative and holier teaching of the same principle,-forgotten even by the teachers, but gradually finding its way into the heart of the multitude, -till human punishments at length were compelled to be subservient to other influences than those of the angry passions, and the laws could only dare to ask for justice, but not for vengeance. The sole drift of my purpose doth extend Not a frown further: go release them, Ariel." Not so thought Shakspere. He, that never represented crime as virtue, had the largest pity for the criminal. "He has never varnished over wild and bloodthirsty passions with a pleasing exterior-never clothed crime and want of principle with a false show of greatness of soul:" but, on the other hand, he has never made the criminal a monster, and led us to flatter ourselves that he is not a man. It is as a man, subject to the same infirmities as all are who are born of woman, that he represents Proteus, and Iachimo, and other of the lesser criminals, as receiving pardon upon repentIt is not so much that they are de-ancestry-the further advantage of honourable progenitors. ance. * Lardner's Cyclopædia, Literary and Scientific Men,' vol. ii. p. 128. f Ibid., vol. iii. p. 122. A. W. Schlegel, Black's trans., vol. ii. p. 137. The generous, confiding, courageous, and forgiving spirit of Valentine are well apman." In this praise are included all the preciated by the Duke-"Thou art a gentlevirtues which Shakspere desired to represent in the character of Valentine ;—the absence of which virtues he has also indicated in the selfish Proteus. The Duke adds, " and well derived." "Thou art a gentleman," in "thy spirit". valled merit ;" and thou hast the honours of -a gentleman in "thy unri We have dwelt so long upon the contrasts in the characters of the "two gentlemen," Proteus and Valentine, that we may appear to have forgotten our purpose of also tracing | she, indeed, spiritedly avows her love for the distinctive peculiarities of the two ladies Valentine and her hatred for himself; nor "beloved." Julia, in the sweetest feminine is there, in any of the slight distinctions tenderness, is entirely worthy of the poet of which we have pointed out, any real inJuliet and Imogen. Amidst her deep and feriority in her character to that of Julia. sustaining love she has all the playfulness She is only more under the influence of cirthat belongs to the true woman. When she cumstances. Julia, by her decision, subdues receives the letter of Proteus, the struggle the circumstances of her situation to her own between her affected indifference and her will. real disposition to cherish a deep affection is exceedingly pretty. Then comes, and very quickly, the development of the change which real love works, the plighting her troth with Proteus,-the sorrow for his absence, the flight to him,—the grief for his perjury, the forgiveness. How full of heart and gentleness is all her conduct after she has discovered the inconstancy of Proteus! How beautiful an absence is there of all upbraiding either of her faithless lover or of his new mistress! Of the one she says, "Because I love him, I must pity him;" the other she describes, without a touch of envy, as "A virtuous gentlewoman, mild, and beautiful." Silvia is a character of much less intensity of feeling. She plays with her accepted lover as with a toy given to her for her amusement; she delights in a contest of words between him and his rival Thurio; she avows she is betrothed to Valentine, when she reproves Proteus for his perfidy, but she allows Proteus to send for her picture, which is, at least, not the act of one who strongly felt and resented his treachery to his friend. When she resolves to escape from her prison, she does not go forth to danger and difficulty with the spirit of Julia,-"a true-devoted pilgrim,”—but she places herself under the protection of Eglamour ("a very perfect gentle knight," as Chaucer would have called him) "For the ways are dangerous to pass." She goes to her banished lover, but she flies from her father "To keep me from a most unholy match." When she encounters Proteus in the forest, Turn we now to Speed and Launce, the two "clownish" servants of Valentine and Proteus. In a note introducing the first scene between Speed and Proteus, Pope says, "This whole scene, like many others in these plays (some of which I believe were written by Shakspere, and others interpolated by the players), is composed of the lowest and most trifling conceits, to be accounted for only by the gross taste of the age he lived in; populo ut placerent. I wish I had authority to leave them out." There are passages in Shakspere which an editor would desire to leave out, if he consulted only the standard of taste in his own age; just as there are passages in Pope which we now consider filthy and corrupting, which the wits and fine ladies of the court of Anne only regarded as playful and piquant. The scenes, however, in which Speed and Launce are prominent,—with the exception of a few obscure allusions, which will not be discovered unless a commentator points them out, and of one piece of plain speaking in Launce, which is refinement itself when compared with the classical works of the Dean of St. Patrick's, these scenes offer a remarkable instance of the reform which Shakspere was enabled to effect in the conduct of the English stage, and which, without doubt, banished a great deal of what had been offensive to good manners, as well as good taste. The "clown or "fool" of the earlier English drama was introduced into every piece. He came on between the acts and sometimes interrupted even the scenes by his buffoonery. Occasionally the author set down a few words for him to speak; but out of these he had to spin a monologue of doggrel verses created by his "extemporal wit." The 'Jeasts' of Richard Tarleton, the most celebrated of these clowns, were published in 1611; and fortunate it must have been for the morals of our ancestors that Shakspere constructed dialogue for his "Clowns," and insisted on their adhering to it: "Let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them." The "Clown" was the successor of the "Vice" of the old Moralities; and he was the representative of the domestic "Jester" that flourished before and during the age of Shakspere. The "clownish servant was something intermediate between the privileged "fool" of the old drama and the pert lackey of the later comedy. But he originally stood in the place of the genuine "Clown;" and his "conceits" are to be regarded partly as a reflection of the manners of the most refined, whose wit, in a great degree, consisted in a play upon words, and partly as a law of the established drama, which even Shakspere could not dispense with, if he had desired so to do. But his instinctive knowledge of the value of his dramatic materials led him to retain the "Clowns" amongst other inheritances of the old stage; and who that has seen the use he has made of the "allowed fool" in 'Twelfth Night,' and 'As You Like It,' and 'All's Well that Ends Well,' and especially in Lear,'of the country clown in 'Love's Labour's Lost' and 'The Merchant of Venice,'-and of the "clownish" or witty servant in The Two Gentleman of Verona,' will regret that he did not cast away what Pope has called "low" and "trifling," determining to retain a machinery equally adapted to the relief of the tragic and the heightening of the comic, and entirely in keeping with what we now call the romantic drama,-an edifice of which Shakspere found the scaffolding raised and the stone quarried, but which it was reserved for him alone to build up upon a plan in which the most apparently incongruous parts were subjected to the laws of fitness and proportion, and wherein even the grotesque (like the grinning heads in our fine Gothic cathedrals) was in harmony with the beautiful and the sublime. Speed and Launce are both punsters; but Speed is by far the more inveterate one. He begins with a pun-my master "is shipp'd already, and I have play'd the sheep (ship) in losing him." The same play upon words which the ship originates runs through the scene; and we are by no means sure that, if Shakspere made Verona a seaport in ignorance (which we very much doubt),—if, like his own Hotspur, he had "forgot the map,"-whether he would, at any time, have converted Valentine into a land-traveller, and have lost his pun upon a better knowledge. In the scene before us, Speed establishes his character for "a quick wit;" Launce, on the contrary, very soon earns the reputation of "a mad-cap” and “an ass." And yet Launce can pun as perseveringly as Speed. But he can do something more. He can throw in the most natural touches of humour amongst his quibbles; and, indeed, he altogether forgets his quibbles when he is indulging his own peculiar vein. That vein is unquestionably drollery,—as Hazlitt has well described it, the richest farcical drollery. His descriptions of his leave-taking, while "the dog all this while sheds not a tear," and of the dog's misbehaviour when he thrust "himself into the company of three or four gentlemanlike dogs," are perfectly irresistible. We must leave thee, Launce; but we leave thee with less regret, for thou hast worthy successors. Thou wert among the first fruits, we think, of the creations of the greatest comic genius that the world has seen, and thou wilt endure for ever, with Bottom, and Malvolio, and Parolles, and Dogberry. Thou wert conceived, perhaps, under that humble roof at Stratford, to gaze upon which all nations have since sent forth their pilgrims! Or, perhaps, when the young poet was, for the first time, left alone in the solitude of London, he looked back upon that shelter of his boyhood, and shadowed out his own parting in thine, Launce! |