The Essential Works of Robert G. Ingersoll. Robert Green Ingersoll
freshness
Wrinkles Apollo, and makes stale the morning."
So, in Pericles, when the father finds his daughter, he cries out:
"O Helicanus! strike me, honored sir;
Give me a gash, put me to present pain,
Lest this great sea of joys, rushing upon me,
O'erbear the shores of my mortality."
The greatest compliment that man has ever paid to the woman he adores is this line:
"Eyes that do mislead the morn."
Nothing can be conceived more perfectly poetic. In that marvelous play, the "Midsummer Night's Dream," is one of the most extravagant things in literature:
"Thou rememberest Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid's music."
This is so marvelously told that it almost seems probable.
So the description of Mark Antony:
"For his bounty
There was no winter in't—an autumn t'was
That grew the more by reaping.
His delights
Were dolphin-like—they showed his back above
The element they lived in."
Think of the astronomical scope and amplitude of this:
"Her bed is India—there she lies a pearl."
Is there anything more intense than these words of Cleopatra?
"Rather on Nilus mud lay me stark naked
And let the water-flies blow me into abhorring."
Or this of Isabella:
"The impression of keen whips I'd wear as rubies,
And strip myself to death as to a bed
That longing I've been sick for, ere I yield
My body up to shame."
Is there an intellectual man in the world who will not agree with this?
"Let me not live
After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff
Of younger spirits."
Can anything exceed the words of Troilus when parting with Cressida:
"We two, that with so many thousand sighs
Did buy each other, most poorly sell ourselves
With the rude brevity and discharge of one.
Injurious time now with a robber's haste
Crams his rich thievery up, he knows not how;
As many farewells as be stars in heaven,
With distinct breath and consigned kisses to them,
He fumbles up into a loos'e adieu,
And scants us with a single famished kiss,
Distasted with the salt of broken tears."
Take this example, where pathos almost touches the grotesque.
"O dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair?
Shall I believe that unsubstantial death is amorous,
And that the lean, abhorred monster keeps thee here.
I' the dark, to be his paramour?"
Often when reading the marvelous lines of Shakespeare, I feel that his thoughts are "too subtle potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness, for the capacity of my ruder powers." Sometimes I cry out, "O churl!—write all, and leave no thoughts for those who follow after."
IX.
SHAKESPEARE was an innovator, an iconoclast. He cared nothing for the authority of men or of schools. He violated the "unities," and cared nothing for the models of the ancient world.
The Greeks insisted that nothing should be in a play that did not tend to the catastrophe. They did not believe in the episode—in the sudden contrasts of light and shade—in mingling the comic and the tragic. The sunlight never fell upon their tears, and darkness did not overtake their laughter. They believed that nature sympathized or was in harmony with the events of the play. When crime was about to be committed—some horror to be perpetrated—the light grew dim, the wind sighed, the trees shivered, and upon all was the shadow of the coming event.
Shakespeare knew that the play had little to do with the tides and currents of universal life—that Nature cares neither for smiles nor tears, for life nor death, and that the sun shines as gladly on coffins as on cradles.
The first time I visited the Place de la Concorde, where during the French Revolution stood the guillotine, and where now stands an Egyptian obelisk—a bird, sitting on the top, was singing with all its might.—Nature forgets.
One of the most notable instances of the violation by Shakespeare of the classic model, is found in the 6th scene of the I. Act of Macbeth.
When the King and Banquo approach the castle in which the King is to be murdered that night, no shadow falls athwart the threshold. So beautiful is the scene that the King says:
"This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses."
And Banquo adds:
"This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve
By his loved mansionry that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here; no jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle.
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed
The air is delicate."
Another notable instance is the porter scene immediately following the murder. So, too, the dialogue with the clown who brings the asp to Cleopatra just before the suicide, illustrates my meaning.
I know of one paragraph in the Greek drama worthy of Shakespeare. This is in "Medea." When Medea kills her children she curses Jason, using the ordinary Billingsgate and papal curse, but at the conclusion says: "I pray the gods to make him virtuous, that he may the more deeply feel the pang that I inflict."
Shakespeare dealt in lights and shadows. He was intense. He put noons and midnights side by side. No other dramatist would have dreamed of adding to the pathos—of increasing our appreciation of Lear's agony, by supplementing the wail of the mad king with the mocking laughter of a loving clown.
X.
THE ordinary dramatists—the men of talent—(and there is the same difference between talent and genius that there is between a stone-mason and a sculptor) create characters that become types. Types are of necessity caricatures—actual men and women are to some extent contradictory in their actions. Types are blown in the one direction by the one wind—characters have pilots.
In real people, good