The Man Shakespeare and His Tragic Life Story Part 7
"A hardy wildehead, tough and venturous,"
and he talks and acts the character to the life. In "The Troublesome Raigne," as in "King John," he is proud of his true father, the lion-hearted Richard, and careless of the stain of his illegitimate birth; he cries:
"The world 's in my debt, There's something owing to Plantaginet.
I, marrie Sir, let me alone for game He act some wonders now I know my name; By blessed Marie He not sell that pride For England's wealth and all the world beside."
Who does not feel the leaping courage and hardihood of the b.a.s.t.a.r.d in these lines? Shakespeare seizes the spirit of the character and renders it, but his emendations are all by way of emphasis: he does not add a new quality; his b.a.s.t.a.r.d is the b.a.s.t.a.r.d of "The Troublesome Raigne." But the gentle, pathetic character of Arthur is all Shakespeare's. In the old play Arthur is presented as a prematurely wise youth who now urges the claims of his descent and speaks boldly for his rights, and now begs his vixenish mother to
"Wisely winke at all Least further harmes ensue our hasty speech."
Again, he consoles her with the same prudence:
"Seasons will change and so our present griefe May change with them and all to our reliefe."
This Arthur is certainly nothing like Shakespeare's Arthur. Shakespeare, who had just lost his only son Hamnet, [Footnote: Some months before writing "King John" Shakespeare had visited Stratford for the first time after ten years absence and had then perhaps learned to know and love young Hamnet.] in his twelfth year, turns Arthur from a young man into a child, and draws all the pathos possible from his weakness and suffering; Arthur's first words are of "his powerless hand," and his advice to his mother reaches the very fount of tears:
"Good my mother, peace!
I would that I were low laid in my grave; I am not worth this coil that's made for me."
When taken prisoner his thought is not of himself:
"O, this will make my mother die with grief."
He is a woman-child in unselfish sympathy.
The whole of the exquisitely pathetic scene between Hubert and Arthur belongs, as one might have guessed, to Shakespeare, that is, the whole pathos of it belongs to him.
In the old play Arthur thanks Hubert for his care, calls him "curteous keeper," and, in fact, behaves as the conventional prince. He has no words of such affecting appeal as Shakespeare puts into Arthur's mouth:
"I would to heaven I were your son, so you would love me, Hubert."
This love and longing for love is the characteristic of Shakespeare's Arthur; he goes on:
"Are you sick, Hubert? You look pale to-day.
In sooth, I would you were a little sick, That I might sit all night and watch with you: I warrant, I love you more than you do me."
A girl could not be more tender, more anxious for love's a.s.surance. In "The Troublesome Raigne," when Hubert tells Arthur that he has bad news for him, tidings of "more hate than death," Arthur faces the unknown with a man's courage; he asks:
"What is it, man? if needes be don, Act it, and end it, that the paine were gon."
It might be the b.a.s.t.a.r.d speaking, so hardy-reckless are the words. When this Arthur pleads for his eyesight, he does it in this way:
"I speake not only for eyes priviledge, The chiefe exterior that I would enjoy: But for thy perill, farre beyond my paine, Thy sweete soules losse more than my eyes vaine lack."
Again at the end he says:
"Delay not, Hubert, my orisons are ended, Begin I pray thee, reave me of my sight."
And when Hubert relents because his "conscience bids him desist," Arthur says:
"Hubert, if ever Arthur be in state Looke for amends of this received gift."
In all this there is neither realization of character nor even sincere emotion. But Shakespeare's Arthur is a masterpiece of soul-revealing, and moves us to pity at every word:
"Will you put out mine eyes?
These eyes that never did, nor never shall, So much as frown on you?"
And then the child's imaginative horror of being bound:
"For heaven's sake, Hubert, let me not be bound.
Nay, hear me, Hubert: drive these men away, And I will sit as quiet as a lamb; I will not stir, nor wince, nor speak a word."
When Hubert relents, Shakespeare's Arthur does not promise reward, he simply breathes a sigh of exquisite affection:
"O, now you look like Hubert: all this while You were disguised."
And finally, when Hubert promises never to hurt him, his words are:
"O heaven! I thank you, Hubert."
Arthur's character we owe entirely to Shakespeare, there is no hint of his weakness and tenderness in the original, no hint either of the pathos of his appeal--these are the inventions of gentle Shakespeare, who has manifestly revealed his own exceeding tenderness and sweetness of heart in the person of the child Prince. Of course, there are faults in the work; faults of affectation and word-conceit hardly to be endured. When Hubert says he will burn out his eyes with hot irons, Arthur replies:
"Ah, none, but in this iron age, would do it! The iron of itself, though heat red-hot,"
and so forth. ... Nor does this pa.s.sage of tinsel stand alone. When the iron cools and Hubert says he can revive it, Arthur replies with pinchbeck conceits:
"An if you do you will but make it blush, And glow with shame at your proceedings,"
and so forth. The faults are bad enough; but the heavenly virtues carry them all off triumphantly. There is no creation like Arthur in the whole realm of poetry; he is all angelic love and gentleness, and yet neither mawkish nor unnatural; his fears make him real to us, and the horror of his situation allows us to accept his exquisite pleading as possible. We need only think of Tennyson's May Queen, or of his unspeakable Arthur, or of Thackeray's prig Esmond, in order to understand how difficult it is in literature to make goodness attractive or even credible. Yet Shakespeare's art triumphs where no one else save Balzac and Tourgenief has achieved even a half-success.
I cannot leave this play without noticing that Shakespeare has shown in it a hatred of murder just as emphatically as he has revealed his love of gentleness and pity in the creation of Arthur. In spite of the loyalty which the English n.o.bles avow in the second scene of the fourth act, which is a quality that always commends itself to Shakespeare, Pembroke is merely their mouthpiece in requesting the King to "enfranchise Arthur." As soon as John tells them that Arthur is dead they throw off their allegiance and insult the monarch to his face. Even John is startled by their indignation, and brought as near remorse as is possible for him:
"I repent; There is no sure foundation set on blood; No certain life achieved by others' death--"
--which reads like a reflection of Shakespeare himself. When the b.a.s.t.a.r.d asks the n.o.bles to return to their allegiance, Salisbury finds an astonishing phrase to express their loathing of the crime:
"The King hath dispossess'd himself of us; We will not line his thin bestained cloak With our pure honours, _nor attend the foot That leaves the print of blood where'er it walks_."
In all literature there is no more terrible image: Shakespeare's horror of bloodshed has more than Aeschylean intensity. When the dead body of Arthur is found each of the n.o.bles in turn expresses his abhorrence of the deed, and all join in vowing instant revenge. Even the b.a.s.t.a.r.d calls it
"A d.a.m.ned and b.l.o.o.d.y work, The graceless action of a heavy hand,"
and a little later the thought of the crime brings even this tough adventurer to weakness:
"I am amazed, methinks, and lose my way Among the thorns and dangers of this world."
--a phrase that suits the weakness of Richard II. or Henry VI. or Shakespeare himself better than it suits the hardy b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Even as a young man Shakespeare hated the cruelty of ambition and the savagery of war as much as he loved all the ceremonies of chivalry and observances of gentle courtesy.