235 sure for XIV THE HIGHest themES OF TRAGEDY UNDER the incentive of such exalted patronage, Shakespeare's activity redoubled, but his work shows 'Othello' none of the conventional marks of literature and Mea- that is produced in the blaze of Court favour. Measure. The first six years of the new reign saw him absorbed in the highest themes of tragedy, and an unparalleled intensity and energy, which bore few traces of the trammels of a Court, thenceforth illumined every scene that he contrived. To 1604 the composition of two plays can be confidently assigned, one of which-Othello '-ranks with Shakespeare's greatest achievements; while the other-' Measure for Measure'-although as a whole far inferior to 'Othello,' contains one of the finest scenes (between Angelo and Isabella, II. ii. 43 sq.) and one of the greatest speeches (Claudio on the fear of death, III. i. 116-30) in the range of Shakespearean drama. 'Othello' was doubtless the first new piece by Shakespeare that was acted before James. It was produced at Whitehall on November 1. December 26. 'Measure for Measure' followed on Neither was printed in Shakespeare's 1 These dates are drawn from a memorandum of plays performed at Court in 1604 and 1605 which is among Malone's manuscripts in the lifetime. The plots of both ultimately come from the same Italian collection of novels-Giraldi Cinthio's 'Hecatommithi,' which was first published in 1565. Cinthio's painful story of 'Othello' (decad. iii. nov. 3) is not known to have been translated into English before Shakespeare dramatised it. He followed its main drift with fidelity, but he introduced the new characters of Roderigo and Emilia, and he invested the catastrophe with new and fearful intensity by making Iago's cruel treachery known to Othello at the last, after Iago's perfidy has impelled the noblehearted Moor in his groundless jealousy to murder his gentle and innocent wife Desdemona. Iago became in Shakespeare's hands the subtlest of all studies of intellectual villany and hypocrisy. The whole tragedy displays to magnificent advantage the dramatist's fully matured powers. An unfaltering equili Bodleian Library, and was obviously derived by Malone from authentic documents that were in his day preserved at the Audit Office in Somerset House. The document cannot now be traced at the Public Record Office, whither the Audit Office papers have been removed since Malone's death. Peter Cunningham professed to print the original document in his accounts of the revels at Court (Shakespeare Society, 1842, pp. 203 et seq.), but there is no doubt that he forged his so-called transcript, and that the additions which he made to Malone's memorandum were the outcome of his fancy. Collier's assertion in his New Particulars, p. 57, that Othello was first acted at Sir Thomas Egerton's residence at Harefield on August 6, 1602, was based solely on a document among the Earl of Ellesmere's MSS. at Bridgwater House, which purported to be a contemporary account by the clerk, Sir Arthur Maynwaring, of Sir Thomas Egerton's household expenses. This document, which Collier reprinted in his Egerton Papers (Camden Soc.), p. 343, was authoritatively pronounced by experts in 1860 to be ‘a shameful forgery' (cf. Ingleby's Complete View of the Shakspere Controversy, 1861, pp. 261-5). brium is maintained in the treatment of plot and characters alike. Cinthio made the perilous story of 'Measure for Measure' the subject not only of a romance, but of a tragedy called' Epitia.' Before Shakespeare wrote his play, Cinthio's romance had been twice rendered into English by George Whetstone. Whetstone had not only given a somewhat altered version of the Italian romance in his unwieldy play of 'Promos and Cassandra' (in two parts of five acts each, 1578), but he had also freely translated it in his collection of prose tales, 'Heptameron of Civil Discources' (1582). Yet there is every likelihood that Shakespeare also knew Cinthio's play, which, unlike his romance, was untranslated; the leading character, who is by Shakespeare christened Angelo, was known by another name to Cinthio in his story, but Cinthio in his play (and not in his novel) gives the character a sister named Angela, which doubtless suggested Shakespeare's designation.' In the hands of Shakespeare's predecessors the tale is a sordid record of lust and cruelty. But Shakespeare prudently showed scant respect for their handling of the narrative. By diverting the course of the plot at a critical point he not merely proved his artistic ingenuity, but gave dramatic dignity and moral elevation to a degraded and repellent theme. In the old versions Isabella yields her virtue as the price of her brother's life. The central fact of Shakespeare's play is Isabella's inflexible and unconditional chastity. Other of Shakespeare's altera' Dr. Garnett's Italian Literature, 1898, p. 227. tions, like the Duke's abrupt proposal to marry Isabella, seem hastily conceived. But his creation of the pathetic character of Mariana 'of the moated grange' -the legally affianced bride of Angelo, Isabella's would-be seducer-skilfully excludes the possibility of a settlement (as in the old stories) between Isabella and Angelo on terms of marriage. Shakespeare's argument is throughout philosophically subtle. The poetic eloquence in which Isabella and the Duke pay homage to the virtue of chastity, and the many expositions of the corruption with which unchecked sexual passion threatens society, alternate with coarsely comic interludes which suggest the vanity of seeking to efface natural instincts by the coercion of law. There is little in the play that seems designed to recommend it to the Court before which it was first performed. But the two emphatic references to a ruler's dislike of mobs, despite his love of his people, were perhaps penned in deferential allusion to James I, whose horror of crowds was notorious. In act I. sc. i. 67-72 the Duke remarks: Of like tenor is the succeeding speech of Angelo (act The general [i.e. the public], subject to a well-wish'd king, . . . Must needs appear offence, 'Macbeth.' In 'Macbeth,' his 'great epic drama,' which he began in 1605 and completed next year, Shakespeare employed a setting wholly in harmony with the accession of a Scottish king. The story was drawn from Holinshed's Chronicle of Scottish History,' with occasional reference, perhaps, to earlier Scottish sources.' The supernatural machinery of the three witches accorded with the King's superstitious faith in demonology; the dramatist lavished his sympathy on Banquo, James's ancestor; while Macbeth's vision of kings who carry 'twofold balls and treble sceptres' (IV. i. 20) plainly adverted to the union of Scotland with England and Ireland under James's sway. The allusion by the porter (II. iii. 9) to the 'equivocator . . . who committed treason' was perhaps suggested by the notorious defence of the doctrine of equivocation made by the Jesuit Henry Garnett, who was executed early in 1606 for his share in the 'Gunpowder Plot.' The piece was not printed until 1623. It is in its existing shape the shortest of all Shakespeare's plays, and it is possible that it survives only in an abbreviated acting version. Much scenic elaboration characterised the production. Dr. Simon Forman witnessed a performance of the tragedy at the Globe in April 1611, and noted that Macbeth and Banquo entered the stage on horseback, and that Banquo's ghost was materially represented (III. iv. 40 seq.) Like 'Othello,' the play ranks with the noblest tragedies either of the modern or the ancient world. The characters of hero and heroine Cf. Letter by Mrs. Stopes in Athenæum, July 25, 1896. |