Biographia Literaria
Without power, virtue would be insufficient and incapable of revealing
its being. It would resemble the magic transformation of Tasso’s heroine
into a tree, in which she could only groan and bleed. Hence power is
necessarily an object of our desire and of our admiration. But of all
power, that of the mind is, on every account, the grand desideratum of
human ambition. We shall be as Gods in knowledge, was and must have been
the first temptation: and the coexistence of great intellectual lordship
with guilt has never been adequately represented without exciting
the strongest interest, and for this reason, that in this bad and
heterogeneous co-ordination we can contemplate the intellect of man more
exclusively as a separate self-subsistence, than in its proper state
of subordination to his own conscience, or to the will of an infinitely
superior being.
This is the sacred charm of Shakespeare’s male characters in general.
They are all cast in the mould of Shakespeare’s own gigantic intellect;
and this is the open attraction of his Richard, Iago, Edmund, and others
in particular. But again; of all intellectual power, that of superiority
to the fear of the invisible world is the most dazzling. Its influence
is abundantly proved by the one circumstance, that it can bribe us into
a voluntary submission of our better knowledge, into suspension of all
our judgment derived from constant experience, and enable us to peruse
with the liveliest interest the wildest tales of ghosts, wizards,
genii, and secret talismans. On this propensity, so deeply rooted in our
nature, a specific dramatic probability may be raised by a true poet, if
the whole of his work be in harmony: a dramatic probability, sufficient
for dramatic pleasure, even when the component characters and incidents
border on impossibility. The poet does not require us to be awake and
believe; he solicits us only to yield ourselves to a dream; and this
too with our eyes open, and with our judgment perdue behind the curtain,
ready to awaken us at the first motion of our will: and meantime,
only, not to disbelieve. And in such a state of mind, who but must be
impressed with the cool intrepidity of Don john on the appearance of his
father’s ghost:
“GHOST.--Monster! behold these wounds!
“D. JOHN.--I do! They were well meant and well performed, I see.
“GHOST.------Repent, repent of all thy villanies.
My clamorous blood to heaven for vengeance cries,
Heaven will pour out his judgments on you all.
Hell gapes for you, for you each fiend doth call,
And hourly waits your unrepenting fall.
You with eternal horrors they’ll torment,
Except of all your crimes you suddenly repent. (Ghost sinks.)
“D. JOHN.--Farewell, thou art a foolish ghost. Repent, quoth he!
what could this mean? Our senses are all in a mist sure.
“D. ANTONIO.--(one of D. Juan’s reprobate companions.) They are not!
’Twas a ghost.
“D. LOPEZ.--(another reprobate.) I ne’er believed those foolish tales
before.
“D. JOHN.--Come! ’Tis no matter. Let it be what it will, it must be
natural.
“D. ANT.--And nature is unalterable in us too.
“D. JOHN.--’Tis true! The nature of a ghost can not change our’s.”
Who also can deny a portion of sublimity to the tremendous consistency
with which he stands out the last fearful trial, like a second
Prometheus?
“Chorus of Devils.
“STATUE-GHOST.--Will you not relent and feel remorse?
“D. JOHN.--Could’st thou bestow another heart on me I might. But
with this heart I have, I can not.
“D. LOPEZ.--These things are prodigious.
“D. ANTON.--I have a sort of grudging to relent, but something holds
me back.
“D. LOP.--If we could, ’tis now too late. I will not.
“D. ANT.--We defy thee!
“GHOST.--Perish ye impious wretches, go and find the punishments laid
up in store for you!
(Thunder and lightning. D. Lop. and D. Ant. are swallowed up.)
“GHOST To D. JOHN.--Behold their dreadful fates, and know that thy
last moment’s come!
“D. JOHN.--Think not to fright me, foolish ghost; I’ll break your
marble body in pieces and pull down your horse.
(Thunder and lightning--chorus of devils, etc.)
“D. JOHN.--These things I see with wonder, but no fear.
Were all the elements to be confounded,
And shuffled all into their former chaos;
Were seas of sulphur flaming round about me,
And all mankind roaring within those fires,
I could not fear, or feel the least remorse.
To the last instant I would dare thy power.
Here I stand firm, and all thy threats contemn.
Thy murderer (to the ghost of one whom he had murdered)
Stands here! Now do thy worst!”
(He is swallowed up in a cloud of fire.)
In fine the character of Don John consists in the union of every thing
desirable to human nature, as means, and which therefore by the well
known law of association becomes at length desirable on their own
account. On their own account, and, in their own dignity, they are here
displayed, as being employed to ends so unhuman, that in the effect,
they appear almost as means without an end. The ingredients too are
mixed in the happiest proportion, so as to uphold and relieve each
other--more especially in that constant interpoise of wit, gaiety,
and social generosity, which prevents the criminal, even in his most
atrocious moments, from sinking into the mere ruffian, as far at least,
as our imagination sits in judgment. Above all, the fine suffusion
through the whole, with the characteristic manners and feelings, of a
highly bred gentleman gives life to the drama. Thus having invited the
statue-ghost of the governor, whom he had murdered, to supper, which
invitation the marble ghost accepted by a nod of the head, Don John has
prepared a banquet.
“D. JOHN.--Some wine, sirrah! Here’s to Don Pedro’s ghost--he should
have been welcome.
“D. LOP.--The rascal is afraid of you after death.
(One knocks hard at the door.)
“D. JOHN.--(to the servant)--Rise and do your duty.
“SERV.--Oh the devil, the devil! (Marble ghost enters.)
“D. JOHN.--Ha! ’tis the ghost! Let’s rise and receive him! Come,
Governour, you are welcome, sit there; if we had thought you would
have come, we would have staid for you.
* * * * * *
Here, Governour, your health! Friends, put it about! Here’s
excellent meat, taste of this ragout. Come, I’ll help you, come
eat, and let old quarrels be forgotten. (The ghost threatens him
with vengeance.)
“D. JOHN.--We are too much confirmed--curse on this dry discourse.
Come, here’s to your mistress, you had one when you were living:
not forgetting your sweet sister. (devils enter.)
“D. JOHN.--Are these some of your retinue? Devils, say you? I’m
sorry I have no burnt brandy to treat ’em with, that’s drink fit
for devils,” etc.
Nor is the scene from which we quote interesting, in dramatic
probability alone; it is susceptible likewise of a sound moral; of a
moral that has more than common claims on the notice of a too numerous
class, who are ready to receive the qualities of gentlemanly courage,
and scrupulous honour, (in all the recognised laws of honour,) as the
substitutes of virtue, instead of its ornaments. This, indeed, is the
moral value of the play at large, and that which places it at a world’s
distance from the spirit of modern jacobinism. The latter introduces
to us clumsy copies of these showy instrumental qualities, in order to
reconcile us to vice and want of principle; while the Atheista Fulminato
presents an exquisite portraiture of the same qualities, in all their
gloss and glow, but presents them for the sole purpose of displaying
their hollowness, and in order to put us on our guard by demonstrating
their utter indifference to vice and virtue, whenever these and the like
accomplishments are contemplated for themselves alone.
Eighteen years ago I observed, that the whole secret of the modern
jacobinical drama, (which, and not the German, is its appropriate
designation,) and of all its popularity, consists in the confusion and
subversion of the natural order of things in their causes and effects:
namely, in the excitement of surprise by representing the qualities of
liberality, refined feeling, and a nice sense of honour (those things
rather which pass amongst us for such) in persons and in classes where
experience teaches us least to expect them; and by rewarding with all
the sympathies which are the due of virtue, those criminals whom law,
reason, and religion have excommunicated from our esteem.
This of itself would lead me back to BERTRAM, or the CASTLE OF ST.
ALDOBRAND; but, in my own mind, this tragedy was brought into connection
with THE LIBERTINE, (Shadwell’s adaptation of the Atheista Fulminato to
the English stage in the reign of Charles the Second,) by the fact, that
our modern drama is taken, in the substance of it, from the first scene
of the third act of THE LIBERTINE. But with what palpable superiority of
judgment in the original! Earth and hell, men and spirits are up in arms
against Don John; the two former acts of the play have not only prepared
us for the supernatural, but accustomed us to the prodigious. It is,
therefore, neither more nor less than we anticipate when the Captain
exclaims: “In all the dangers I have been, such horrors I never knew.
I am quite unmanned:” and when the Hermit says, that he had “beheld the
ocean in wildest rage, yet ne’er before saw a storm so dreadful, such
horrid flashes of lightning, and such claps of thunder, were never in
my remembrance.” And Don John’s burst of startling impiety is equally
intelligible in its motive, as dramatic in its effect.
But what is there to account for the prodigy of the tempest at Bertram’s
shipwreck? It is a mere supernatural effect, without even a hint of any
supernatural agency; a prodigy, without any circumstance mentioned that
is prodigious; and a miracle introduced without a ground, and ending
without a result. Every event and every scene of the play might have
taken place as well if Bertram and his vessel had been driven in by a
common hard gale, or from want of provisions. The first act would have
indeed lost its greatest and most sonorous picture; a scene for the sake
of a scene, without a word spoken; as such, therefore, (a rarity without
a precedent), we must take it, and be thankful! In the opinion of not a
few, it was, in every sense of the word, the best scene in the play.
I am quite certain it was the most innocent: and the steady, quiet
uprightness of the flame of the wax-candles, which the monks held
over the roaring billows amid the storm of wind and rain, was really
miraculous.
The Sicilian sea coast: a convent of monks: night: a most portentous,
unearthly storm: a vessel is wrecked contrary to all human expectation,
one man saves himself by his prodigious powers as a swimmer, aided by
the peculiarity of his destination--
“PRIOR.------All, all did perish
FIRST MONK.--Change, change those drenched weeds--
PRIOR.--I wist not of them--every soul did perish--
Enter third Monk hastily.
“THIRD MONK.--No, there was one did battle with the storm
With careless desperate force; full many times
His life was won and lost, as tho’ he recked not--
No hand did aid him, and he aided none--
Alone he breasted the broad wave, alone
That man was saved.”
Well! This man is led in by the monks, supposed dripping wet, and to
very natural inquiries he either remains silent, or gives most brief and
surly answers, and after three or four of these half-line courtesies,
“dashing off the monks” who had saved him, he exclaims in the true
sublimity of our modern misanthropic heroism--