I CANNOT agree with one of the most philosophical of Shakspeare's critics, who has asserted "that the actual truth of particular events, in proportion as we are conscious of it, is a drawback on the pleasure, as well as the dignity of tragedy." If this observation applies at all, it is equally just with regard to characters: and in either case can we admit it? The reverence and the simpleness of heart with which Shakspeare has treated the received 8 and admitted truths of history-I mean according to the imperfect knowledge of his time-is admirable; his inaccuracies are few; his general accuracy, allowing for the distinction between the narrative and the dramatic form, is acknowledged to be wonderful. He did not steal the precious material from the treasury of history, to debase its purity,-new-stamp it arbitrarily with effigies and legends of his own devising, and then attempt to pass it current, like Dryden, Racine, and the rest of those poetical coiners. He only rubbed off the rust, purified and brightened it, so that history herself has been known to receive it back as sterling. Truth wherever manifested, should be sacred; so Shakspeare deemed, and laid no profane hand upon her altars. But tragedy-majestic tragedy! is worthy to stand before the sanctuary of Truth, and to be the priestess of her oracles. "Whatever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable or grave; whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and refluxes of man's thought from within ;"*-whatever is pitiful in the weakness, sublime in the strength, or terrible in the perversion of human intellect, these are the domain of Tragedy. Sibyl and Muse at once, she holds aloft the book of human fate, and is the interpreter of its mysteries. It is not, then, making a mock of the serious sorrows of real life, nor of those human beings who lived, suffered, and acted upon this earth, to array them in her rich and stately robes, and present them before us as powers evoked from dust and darkness, to awaken the generous sympathies, the terror or the pity of mankind. It does not add to the pain, as far as tragedy is a source of emotion, that the wrongs and * Milton. sufferings represented, the guilt of Lady Macbeth, the despair of Constance, the arts of Cleopatra, and the distresses of Katharine, had a real existence; but it adds infinitely to the moral effect as a subject of contemplation and a lesson of conduct.* I shall be able to illustrate these observations more fully in the course of this section, in which we will consider those characters which are drawn from history; and first Cleopatra. Of all Shakspeare's female characters, Miranda and Cleopatra appear to me the most wonderful. The first, unequalled as a poetical conception; the latter miraculous as a work of art. If we could make a regular classification of his characters, these would form the two extremes of simplicity and complexity; and all his other characters would be found to fill up some shade or gradation between these two. Great crimes, springing from high passions, grafted on high qualities, are the legitimate source of tragic poetry. But to make the extreme of littleness produce an effect like grandeur-to make the excess of frailty produce an effect like power-to heap up together all that is most unsubstantial, frivolous, vain, contemptible, and variable, till the worthiness be lost in the magnitude, and a sense of the sublime spring from the very elements of littleness,to do this, belonged only to Shakspeare, that worker of miracles. Cleopatra is a brilliant antitheses-a compound of contradictions-of all that we most hate, with what we * "That the treachery of King John, the death of Arthur, and the grief of Constance, has a real truth in history, sharpens the sense of pain, while it hangs a leaden weight on the heart and the imagination. Something whispers us that we have no right to make a mock of calamities like these, or to turn the truth of things into the puppet and play-thing of our fancies."-See Characters of Shakspeare's Plays.— To consider thus is not to consider too deeply, but not deeply enough. most admire. The whole character is the triumph of the external over the innate, and yet, like one of her country's hieroglyphics, though she present at first view a splendid and perplexing anomaly, there is deep meaning and wondrous skill in the apparent enigma, when we come to analyze and decipher it. But how are we to arrive at the solution of this glorious riddle, whose dazzling complexity continually mocks and eludes us? What is most astonishing in the character of Cleopatra is its antithetical construction-its consistent inconsistency, if I may use such an expression-which renders it quite impossible to reduce it to any elementary principles. It will, perhaps, be found on the whole, that vanity and the love of power predominate; but I dare not say it is so; for these qualities and a hundred others mingle into each other, and shift, and change, and glance away, like the colors in a peacock's train. In some others of Shakspeare's female characters, also remarkable for their complexity, (Portia and Juliet, for instance,) we are struck with the delightful sense of harmony in the midst of contrast, so that the idea of unity and simplicity of effect is produced in the midst of variety; but in Cleopatra, it is the absence of unity and simplicity which strikes us. The impression is that of perpetual and irreconcilable contrast. The continual approximation of whatever is most opposite in character, in situation, in sentiment, would be fatiguing, were it not so perfectly natural; the woman herself would be distracting, if she were not so enchanting. I have not the slightest doubt that Shakspeare's Cleopatra is the real historical Cleopatra-the "Rare Egyptian"-individualized and placed before us. Her mental accomplishments, her unequalled grace, her woman's wit and woman's wiles, her irresistible allurements, her starts of irregular grandeur, her bursts of ungovernable temper, her vivacity of imagination, her petulant caprice, her fickleness and her falsehood, her tenderness and her truth, her childish susceptibility to flattery, her magnificent spirit, her royal pride, the gorgeous eastern coloring of the character; all these contradictory elements has Shakspeare seized, mingled them in their extremes, and fused them into one brilliant impersonation of classical elegance, Oriental voluptuousness, and gypsy sorcery. What better proof can we have of the individual truth of the character, than the admission, that Shakspeare's Cleopatra produces exactly the same effect on us that is recorded of the real Cleopatra ?—She dazzles our faculties, perplexes our judgment, bewilders and bewitches our fancy; from the beginning to the end of the drama, we are conscious of a kind of fascination against which our moral sense rebels, but from which there is no escape. The epithets applied to her perpetually by Antony and others confirm this impression: " enchanting queen!"-" witch," 66 66 -“ spell,”—“ great fairy,"-" cockatrice," serpent of old Nile," "thou grave charm!"*—are only a few of them and who does not know by heart the famous quotations in which this Egyptian Circes is described with all her infinite seductions? : Fie! wrangling queen! Whom every thing becomes-to chide, to laugh, To make itself in thee, fair and admired. |