in the one instance it is blind obedience, in face of all tempta- CHAP. III. tions, to the mere whims of a good parent, who is dead, that has been guided to the one issue so passionately desired; in the case of the other couple open rebellion, at every practical risk, against the legitimate authority of an evil father, still living, has brought them no worse fate than happiness in one another, and for their defenceless position the best of patrons. It seems, then, that the introduction of the Jessica Story is justified, not only by the purposes of construction which it serves, but by the fact that its human interest is at once a contrast and a supplement to the main story, with which it blends to produce the ordered variety of a finished picture. stories, A few words will be sufficient to point out how the effects The Rings of the main plot are assisted by the Rings Episode, which, Episode assists the though rich in fun, is of a slighter character than the Jessica mechanism Story, and occupies a much smaller space in the field of view. of the main The dramatic points of the two minor stories are similar. Like the Jessica Story the Rings Episode assists the mechanical working out of the main plot. An explanation must somehow be given to Bassanio that the lawyer is Portia in disguise; mere mechanical explanations have always an air of weakness, but the affair of the rings utilises the explanation in the present case as a source of new dramatic effects. This arrangement further assists, to a certain extent, in reducing the improbability of Portia's project. The point at which the improbability would be most felt would be, not the first appearance of the lawyer's clerk, for then we are engrossed in our anxiety for Antonio, but when the explanation of the disguise came to be made; there might be a danger lest here the surprise of Bassanio should become infectious, and the audience should awake to the improbability of the whole story: as it is, their attention is at the critical moment diverted to the perplexity of the penitent CHAP. III. husbands. The Story of the Rings, like that of Jessica, assists and their the interweaving of the two main stories with one another, interweav- its subtlety suggesting to what a degree of detail this intering; 454. lacing extends. Bassanio is the main point which unites the Story of the Jew and the Caskets Story; in the one he occupies the position of friend, in the other of husband. iv. i. 425- The affair of the rings, slight as it is, is so managed by Portia that its point becomes a test as between his friendship and his love; and so equal do these forces appear that, though his friendship finally wins and he surrenders his betrothal ring, yet it is not until after his wife has given him a hint against herself: and assists in the de character. An if your wife be not a mad-woman, And know how well I have deserved the ring, For giving it to me. The Rings Episode, even more than the Jessica Story, assists in restoring the balance between the main tales. The chief inequality between them lies in the fact that the Jew Story is complicated and resolved, while the Caskets Story is a simple progress to a goal; when, however, there springs from the latter a sub-action which has a highly comic complication. and resolution the two halves of the play become dramatically on a par. And the interweaving of the dark and bright elements in the play is assisted by the fact that the Episode of the Rings not only provides a comic reaction to relieve the tragic crisis, but its whole point is a Dramatic Irony in which serious and comic are inextricably mixed. Finally, as the Jessica Story ministers to Character effect in connection with the general ensemble of the personages, so velopment of Portia's the Episode of the Rings has a special function in bringing out the character of Portia. The secret of the charm which has won for Portia the suffrages of all readers is the perfect. balance of qualities in her character: she is the meetingpoint of brightness, force, and tenderness. And, to crown the union, Shakespeare has placed her at the supreme moment of CHAP. III. life, on the boundary line between girlhood and womanhood, when the wider aims and deeper issues of maturity find themselves in strange association with the abandon of youth. The balance thus becomes so perfect that it quivers, and dips to one side and the other. Portia is the saucy child as she sprinkles her sarcasms over Nerissa's enumeration of the i. ii. 39. suitors in the trial she faces the world of Venice as a heroine. She is the ideal maiden in the speech in which she iii. ii. 150. surrenders herself to Bassanio: she is the ideal woman as she proclaims from the judgment seat the divinity of mercy. iv. i. 184. Now the fourth Act has kept before us too exclusively one side of this character. Not that Portia in the lawyer's gown is masculine: but the dramatist has had to dwell too long on her side of strength. He will not dismiss us with this impression, but indulges us in one more daring feat surpassing all the madcap frolics of the past. Thus the Episode of the Rings is the last flicker of girlhood in Portia before it merges in the wider life of womanhood. We have rejoiced in a great deliverance wrought by a noble woman: our enjoyment rises higher yet when the Rings Episode reminds us that this woman has not ceased to be a sportive girl. It has been shown, then, that the two inferior stories in The Merchant of Venice assist the main stories in the most varied manner, smoothing their mechanical working, meeting their special difficulties, drawing their mutual interweaving yet closer, and throwing their character effects into relief: the additional complexity they have brought has resulted in making emphatic points yet more prominent, and the total effect has therefore been to increase clearness and simplicity. Enough has now been said on the building up of Dramas out of Stories, which is the distinguishing feature of the Romantic Drama; the studies that follow will be applied to the more universal topics of dramatic interest, Character, Plot, and Passion. IV. A PICTURE OF IDEAL VILLAINY IN I RICHARD III. A Study in Character-Interpretation. HOPE that the subject of the present study will not be considered by any reader forbidding. On the contrary, there is surely attractiveness in the thought that nothing is so repulsive or so uninteresting in the world of fact but in some way or other it may be brought under the dominion of artbeauty. The author of L'Allegro shows by the companion poem that he could find inspiration in a rainy morning; and the great master in English poetry is followed by a great master in English painting who wins his chief triumphs by his handling of fog and mist. Long ago the masterpiece of Virgil consecrated agricultural toil; Murillo's pictures have taught us that there is a beauty in rags and dirt; rustic commonplaces gave a life passion to Wordsworth, and were the cause of a revolution in poetry; while Dickens has penetrated into the still less promising region of low London life, and cast a halo around the colourless routine of poverty. Men's evil passions have given Tragedy to art, crime is beautified by being linked to Nemesis, meanness is the natural source for brilliant comic effects, ugliness has reserved for it a special form of art in the grotesque, and pain becomes attractive in the light of the heroism that suffers and the devotion that watches. In the infancy of modern English poetry Drayton found a poetic side to topography and maps, and Phineas Fletcher idealised anatomy; while of the two greatest imaginations belonging to the modern world Milton CHAP. IV. produced his masterpiece in the delineation of a fiend, and Dante in a picture of hell. The final triumph of good over evil seems to have been already anticipated by art. Richard The portrait of Richard satisfies a first condition of ide- The ality in the scale of the whole picture. The sphere in which he villainy of is placed is not private life, but the world of history, in which ideal in its scale, moral responsibility is the highest: if, therefore, the quality of other villainies be as fine, here the issues are deeper. As and in its another element of the ideal, the villainy of Richard is pre-developfulness of sented to us fully developed and complete. Often an artist ment. of crime will rely-as notably in the portraiture of Tito Melema-mainly on the succession of steps by which a character, starting from full possession of the reader's sympathies, arrives by the most natural gradations at a height of evil which shocks. In the present case all idea of growth is kept outside the field of this particular play; the opening soliloquy announces a completed process : I am determined to prove a villain. What does appear of Richard's past, seen through the A grievous burthen was thy birth to me; Thy school-days frightful, desperate, wild, and furious, So in the details of the play there is nowhere a note of the Chop off his head, man; somewhat we will do. His choice is only between different modes of villainy, never between villainy and honesty. i. i. 3 iv. iv. 167. iii. i. 193. |