56 L. A. Sherman 



spise. We have perhaps often noted how men in fraternities and 

 lodges condone faults in comrades whom they have learned to 

 know, hating the sin, but loving, like Infinite Charity, the sinner. 

 There are potential qualities, could we but probe to them, in 

 abandoned men, good impulses that urge at times towards better 

 things. ^'^ Falstafif is at point, and especially when his chance (I 

 Henry IV. V. iv. 169) seems to have come, to slough his skin, to 

 repudiate his falser, his ironic self. 



Again, it seems safe to say that, when Shakespeare has won us 

 with a froward or untoward nature, he keeps us from taking the 

 frO'Wardness or untowardness in that nature seriously. We are 

 clearly rescued, in this case of Falstaff, from the' consciousness 

 that we could not have the fellow by us, that by no sufferance 

 could we neighbor with him. Shakespeare's resources in this 

 kind are infinite. When, as in tragedy, he cannot help our taking 

 some character, in itself worthy, seriously, he finds expedients to 

 prevent the effect he does not want."^ We do not take the 



2'i' This seems the essence of the meaning summarized, at the close, 

 from The Ring and the Book. If we could send Osbornes into jails, to 

 companion with alleged criminals, we should find out the truth without 

 confessions or the third degree. We should both ' see and say,' to inquir- 

 ing justice, and bring art to the help of blundering and inefifctual tribunals. 



28 We are not permitted, for instance, to discern Brabantio in his essen- 

 tial character. Here is a refined true man, doubtless a son of the Renais- 

 sance, whose elegant palace abounds in classic curios, Greek manuscripts, 

 and choice products of the Aldine press. He is a member of the Signory, 

 but admits men of parts, without reference to birth or race, to his circle 

 of associates and friends. But Shakespeare, for dramatic reasons, must 

 mask all his accomplishments and worth from us. He is made to appear 

 before us, directly from his bed, unclad, and receive rebuke, in which we 

 are fain to join. In the recoil of pride, he ventures the slander of the 

 drugs, of whose quality and action he admits he has no knowledge. He 

 indicts Othello, whose integrity and greatness of soul we have been made 

 to feel, and finds his case, with us as with his peers, thrown out of court. 

 He asserts a father's advantage over Desdemona, and is vanquished grace- 

 fully, with our applause. He resigns her ignobly to Othello, with a warn- 

 ing which we resent. These and other dynamic measures put the man 

 forever out of the reach of sympathy. 



But Shakespeare could have reversed all this, had the case demanded. 

 Expedients of the opposite effect lay beneath his hand in Brabantio's na- 

 ture. Antony is one conception in Julius Coe.yar,. and quite another in 



158 



