starting... Wash your hands, put on your night-gown; look not so CHAP. VII. pale... Fie! a soldier and afear'd? And there is an inmost thought of all: the uprising of her feminine nature against the foulness of the violent deed. Out, damned spot!... Here's the smell of blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand and the 'sorely charged heart' vents itself in a sigh which the attendants shudder to hear. On Macbeth Nemesis heaps itself in double form. The purely practical man, without resources in himself, finds nemesis in an old age that receives no honour from others. My way of life Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf; And that which should accompany old age, V. iii. 22. Again, as the drunkard finds his refuge in drink, so the victim of superstition longs for deeper draughts of the supernatural. Macbeth seeks the Witches, forces himself to hear iv. i. the worst, and suffers nemesis in anticipation in viewing future generations which are to see his foes on his throne. iv. i. 110Finally from the supernatural comes the climax of retribution 135. when Macbeth is seen resting in unquestioning reliance on an from iv. i. ironical oracle: till the shock of revelation comes, the pledge of his safety is converted into the sign of his doom, and the 33; v. viii, brave Macbeth, hero of a hundred battles, throws down his from 13. sword and refuses to fight. 80. V. v, from V. viii. 22. VIII. JULIUS CESAR BESIDE HIS MUrderers AND HIS AVENGER. A Study in Character-Grouping. CH. VIII. EVERY lover of art feels that the different fine arts form not Character- a crowd but a family; the more familiar the mind becomes Grouping. with them the more it delights to trace in them the applica tion of common ideas to different media of expression. We are reminded of this essential unity by the way in which the arts borrow their terms from one another. 'Colour' is applied to music, 'tone' to painting; we speak of costume as 'loud,' of melody as 'bright,' of orchestration as 'massive.' Two classes of oratorical style have been distinguished as 'statuesque' and 'picturesque'; while the application of a musical term, harmony,' and a term of sculpture, 'relief,' to all the arts alike is so common that the transference is scarcely felt. Such usages are not the devices of a straitened vocabulary, but are significant of a single Art which is felt to underlie the special arts. So the more Drama is brought by criticism into the family of the fine arts the more it will be seen to present the common features. We have already had to notice repeatedly how the idea of pattern or design is the key to dramatic plot. We are in the present study to see how contrast of character, such as was traced in the last study between Lord and Lady Macbeth, when applied to a larger number of personages, produces an effect on the mind analogous to that of grouping in pictures and statuary: the different personages not only present points of contrast with one another, but their varieties suddenly fall into a unity of CH. VIII. effect if looked at from some one point of view. An example The of such Character-Grouping is seen in the play of Julius grouping in Julius Casar, where the four leading figures, all on the grandest Casar rests scale, have the elements of their characters thrown into on the antithesis of the relief by comparison with one another, and the contrast practical stands out boldly when the four are reviewed in relation to one single idea. and inner life. v. public policy. This idea is the same as that which lay at the root of the Character-Contrast in Macbeth-the antithesis of the practical and inner life. It is, however, applied in a totally different sphere. Instead of a simple age in which the lives coincide with the sexes we are carried to the other extreme of civilisation, the final age of Roman liberty, and all four personages are merged in the busy world of political life. Naturally, then, the contrast of the two lives takes in this play a different form. In the play of Macbeth the inner life was seen in the This takes force of will which could hold down alike bad and good individual the form of impulses; while the outer life was made interesting by its sympathies confinement to the training given by action, and an exhibition of it devoid of the thoughtfulness and self-control for which the life of activity has to draw upon the inner life. But there is another aspect in which the two may be regarded. The idea of the inner life is reflected in the word 'individuality,' or that which a man has not in common with others. The cultivation of the inner life implies not merely cultivation of our own individuality, but to it also belongs sympathy with the individuality of others; whereas in the sphere of practical life men fall into classes, and each person has his place as a member of these classes. Thus benevolence may take the form of enquiring into individual wants and troubles and meeting these by personal assistance; but a man has an equal claim to be called benevolent who applies himself to such sciences as political economy, studies the springs which regulate human society, CH. VIII. and by influencing these in the right direction confers benefits upon whole classes at a time. Charity and political science are the two forms benevolence assumes correspondent to the inner life of individual sympathies and the outer life of public action. Or, if we consider the contrast from the side of rights as distinguished from duties, the supreme form in which the rights of individuals may be summed up is justice; the corresponding claim which public life makes upon us is (in the highest sense of the term) policy: wherever these two, justice and policy, seem to clash, the outer and inner life are brought into conflict. It is in this form that the conflict is raised in the play of Julius Cæsar. To get it in its full force, the dramatist goes to the world of antiquity, for one of the leading distinctions between ancient and modern society is that the modern world gives the fullest play to the individual, while in ancient systems the individual was treated as existing solely for the state. 'Liberty' has been a watchword in both ages; but while we mean by liberty the least amount of interference with personal activity, the liberty for which ancient patriots contended was freedom of the government from external or internal control, and the ideal republic of Plato was so contrived as to reduce individual liberty to a minimum. And this subordination of private to public was most fully carried out in Rome. 'The common weal,' says Merivale, 'was after all the grand object of the heroes of Roman story. Few of the renowned heroes of old had attained their eminence as public benefactors without steeling their hearts against the purest instincts of nature. The deeds of a Brutus or a Manlius, of a Sulla or a Cæsar, would have been branded as crimes in private citizens; it was the public character of the actors that stamped them with immortal glory in the eyes of their countrymen.' Accordingly, the opposition of outer and inner life is brought before us most keenly when, in Roman life, a public policy, the cause of republican freedom, seems to be bound up with the supreme crime against justice and CH. VIII. the rights of the individual, assassination. character Brutus is the central figure of the group: in his character Brutus's the two sides are so balanced that the antithesis disappears. so evenly This evenness of development in his nature is the thought of developed those who in the play gather around his corpse; giving antithesis prominence to the quality in Brutus hidden from the casual disappears. observer they say: His life was gentle; and the elements So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up that the V. V. 73. character. Of another it would be said that he was a poet, a philosopher; of Brutus the only true description was that he was a man! It is in very few characters that force and softness are each carried to such perfection. The strong side of Force of his Brutus's character is that which has given to the whole play its characteristic tone. It is seen in the way in which he appreciates the issue at stake. themselves what it is they do; foulness of conspiracy at the moment in which he is conspiring. Weak men sin by hiding from Brutus is fully alive to the O conspiracy, Shamest thou to show thy dangerous brow by night, When evils are most free? O, then by day Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough His high tone he carries into the darkest scenes of the play.. ii. i. 77 setting his face against the proposal to include Antony in ii. i. 162. Cæsar's fate, and resolving that not one life shall be unneces sarily sacrificed. He scorns the refuge of suicide; and with warmth adjures his comrades not to stain |