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♦ KNOWLEDGK ♦ 



[March 1, 1888. 



boyhood and jouth. We have a touch also of Shakespeare's 

 own self in the lines : — 



Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods ? 

 Draw near them, then, in being merciful ; 

 Kweet mercy is nobility's true badge. 



The touch is all the truer that it is dramatically inappro- 

 priate. When Portia speaks of mercy as " an attribute to 

 God himself," as " mightiest in the mighty," and as befitting 

 " the throned monarch better than his crown," we feel that 

 it is Portia who speaks ; and, though we need not there- 

 fore regard the passage as wholly without significance 

 respecting Shakespeare's own nature, we have yet in the 

 dramatic fitness of the sentiments a sufBcient explanation 

 independently of Shakespeare's personal character. But 

 when Tamora speaks so nobly of mercy, ignoble of nature, 

 and cruel as she was, our sense of the dramatic impropriety 

 of the sentiment in her mouth enables us the more 

 confidently to regard that sentiment as coming from 

 Shakespeare's own heart. Tamora might have begged 

 abjectly for mercy; but she could no more have pleaded 

 with such earnestness of reasoning than Portia, most intel- 

 lectually gifted of all Shakespeare's women, coidd have 

 pleaded with Shy lock to be merciful only out of pity. 



Later in scene ii. we come in all probability on the 

 materia] of the original play, which Shakespeare can only 

 have left in despite of his better judgment The murder of 

 Mutius by Titus would be repulsive were not the passage 

 made utterly ridiculous by the coolness with which Titus, 

 Lucius, Martins, and the rest treat the whole affair. If 

 Shakespeare kept this play, as it remained after his re- 

 writing and revision, and later looked it over, how his 

 developed dramatic taste must have been at once offended 

 and amused by the remark of Lucius as he enters on hearing 

 his brother's dying cry : — 



My lord, you are unjust ; and, more than so, 

 In wrongful quarrel you have slain your son 1 * 



In the beginning of act 2 four lines occur which no one 

 but Shakespeare could have written — at least, as lines in a 

 play dating so far back as 1589. I refer to the description 

 of sunrise : — 



As when the golden sun salutes the morn 



And having gilt the ocean with his beams 



Gallops the zodiac in his glistering coach. 



And overlooks the highest-peering hills. 



I do not remember, by the way, the use of the word 

 " peer " in the sense here given to it by any of Shakespeare's 

 dramatic contemporaries. Shakespeare himself uses it in a 

 kindred sense in " Henry V.," where Henry, speaking of the 

 French " horsemen on yon hill," says : — 



. . . yet a many of your horsemen peer. 

 Further on in act 2, in the passage which introduces the 

 repulsive lusts of Demetrius and Chiron, we find lines 

 which are remarkable as being the only passage repeated 

 (in effect) thrice over in Shakespeare's works. She is a 

 woman, says Demetrius of Lavinia : — 



She is a woman, therefore may be woo'd ; 

 She is a woman, therefore may be won ; 

 She Is Lavinia, therefore must be lov'd. 



In the first part of " Henry VI.," in a scene unmistakably 

 from Shakespeare's hand, Suffolk says of Margaret: — 



She's beautiful, and therefore to be woo'd ; 

 She is a woman, therefore to be won. 



* Yet even this, regarded as due to mere carelessness, is matched 

 by Imogen's coolness when Guiderius, whom she had loved as a 

 brother (not knowing that he actually was her brother) has been 

 condemned to death. " Thou art dead," says Cymbeline to 

 Guiderius ; and Imogen is only moved to remark that she has mis- 

 taken the man whom Guiderius had killed for her husband. — 

 Oymheline, last scene. 



And if any doubt could remain that these are Shakespeare's 

 words, it is removed when we note that his 41st sonnet has 

 the lines : — 



Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assail'd ; 

 tientle thou art, and therefore to be won. 



The thought here conveyed, and the form in which the 

 thought is presented, must have had a singular charm for 

 Shakespeare, that he (who so seldom repeats himself) thus 

 frequently repeats this idea in almost the same words. 



I know of no passage more truly Shakespearean in 

 "Titus Andronicus" than the forest scene, as described 

 (iuapjiropriately enough) by Tamora, that " unhallowed 

 dam," addre.ssing the ravenous tiger and accursed devil," 

 Aaron the Moor : — 



Jly lovely Aaron, wherefore look'st thou sad. 



When everything doth make a gleeful boast / 



The birds chant melody on every bush ; 



The snake lies rolled * in the cheerful sun ; 



The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind. 



And make a checker'd shadow on the ground ; 



Under their sweet shade, Aaron, let us sit, 



And whilst the babbling echo mocks the hovmds, 



Keplying shrilly to the well-tun'd horns. 



As if a double hunt were heard at once. 



Let us sit down and mark their yelping noise. 



And after conflict, such as was suppos'd 



The wandering prince and Dido once enjoy'd. 



When with a happy storm they were surpris'd, 



And curtain'd with a counsel-keeping cave. 



We may, each wreathed in the other's arms, 



Our pastimes done, possess a golden slumber ; 



While hounds, anrl horns, and sweet melodious bird.^, 



Be unto us, as is a nurse's song 



Of lullaby to bring her babe asleeji. 



One might imagine this addressed by Venus to Adonis ; 

 one might imagine it part of a poem written by Shakespeare 

 on the theme of his " Venus and Adonis," but in another 

 strain ; one may even imagine in it a picture of fair but 

 forward Anne Hathaway pleading with her youthful love : 

 but while one can see no fitness in words such as these 

 placed in the mouth of the fiendish Tamora, one cannot 

 imagine that any penned them but Shakespeare. The style 

 is his, the thoughts are his, the words are his ; but, beyond 

 and above all, the music is his, and none other's. 



Repulsive as is the rest of this scene, no one, I think, who 

 compares the appeal of Lucretia to Tarquin in Shakespeare's 

 " Lucrece " witli the appeal of Lavinia to Tamora and her 

 sons, can doubt that the former is not more certainly Shake- 

 speare's work than the latter. The scene is one on which no 

 reader cares to dwell, even to note what is beautiful amid so 

 much that is horrible, Yet w-hat could be more pathetic 

 than Lavinia's appeal 1 — 



Some say that ravens foster forlorn children, 

 Tlie whilst their own birds famish in their nests : 

 O, be to me, though thy hard heart say no, 

 Nothing so kind, but something pitiful. 



Sciittered throughout " Titus Andronicus " we find many 

 expressions and tones characteristically Shakespearean. 

 Compare, for instance — 



Martins. To prove thou hast a true-divining heart, 

 with 



JiiVuH. Oh God ! I have an ill-divining soul ; 

 and 



Demetrius. I would we had a thousand Roman dames 

 At such a bay, 

 with the lines — 



Ah ! that I had my lady at this bay,t 

 To kiss and clip me till I run away, 



* Probably a misprint for " coiled," a word which might be 

 so wriiten as to be mistaken for " rolled." 



t The word " bay " is here used in the hunter's sense, as again 

 in Titus's speech at the beginning of scene 2, act ii., " Uncouple 



