SECT. 10. Of Diligence, Sobriety, and Chastity. I have already been led to speak, in the eighth section of this chapter, on the sacred character and manifold obligations of the Conjugal Relationship. It is a relationship whereby the wife becomes, in the highest and noblest sense, the property of the husband, and the husband the property of the wife. A British Churchman may be allowed to please himself in fancying Shakspeare as an occasional hearer of Bp. Andrewes*-the greatest poet listening to the greatest preacher of the age-and had he been present when that admirable divine delivered his 'Exposition of the Seventh Commandment,' he could not have laid down its first principles more accurately than he has done in Troilus and Cressida, where Hector thus speaks respecting the duty of restoring Helen to her husband Menelaus: Nature craves All dues be rendered to their owners; now, What nearer debt† in all humanity Than wife is to the husband? If this law Of nature be corrupted thro' affection, There is a law in each well-order'd nation, * Born in 1555, died 1626; one of the translators of the Bible. † Mr. Malone interprets the word 'propriety' as used by Olivia in Twelfth Night, Act v. Sc. 2, in this sense, viz. to mean the right of property which a married couple have in each other, and which Milton speaks of as the 'sole propriety in Paradise;' but I rather think it means in that place, 'proper state.' To curb those raging appetites that are If Helen then be wife to Sparta's king- To have her back returned :-Thus to persist In doing wrong, extenuates not wrong, Act ii. Sc. z. And in Measure for Measure our poet follows. the severity of the Mosaic Law, that those who commit the sins more immediately forbidden by this commandment are worthy of death,* no less than they who commit murder : It were as good To pardon him, that hath from nature stolen A man already made, as to remit † Their saucy sweetness, that do coin Heaven's image Act ii. Sc. 4. an aphorism not the less profound because enunciated by a hypocrite, of which the author gives us intimation, with admirable skill, by the phrase chosen to describe the sin which is at once palliated and proscribed. In like manner, no exception can be taken against the truth of what follows-in regard either to the imprudence of hasty marriage or the criminality of divorce-however we may abhor the speaker, the wicked Gloster : Hasty marriage seldom proveth well. * But comp. S. John viii. 11. See also King Lear, Act iv. Sc. 6. † Pardon. Inordinate indulgençe of sensual appetite. Yet God forbid that I should wish them severed, And so marriage is called in Love's Labour's lost, A world-without-end bargain. Act v. Sc. z. There is a sentiment, too often realised in the experience of inordinate affection and unhallowed intercourse between the sexes, which our poet might have adopted from the miserable history of Amnon and Tamar, recorded in 2 Samuel xiii. 2-15 Sweet love, I see, changing his property, Turns to the sourest and most deadly hate. K. Richard II. Act iii. Sc. 2. And where shall we find the unhappy passion which sometimes seizes upon true and pure affection, and which Shakspeare has delineated with overwhelming power in Othello,* and again in Winter's Tale and Comedy of Errors, more justly characterised than in the Song of Solomon ? Jealousy is cruel as the grave; the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.-viii. 6. Comp. Prov. vi. 34. In mitigation of the horror which the conduct of Othello inspires, it would be well if it could be proved that he was not a Christian. Schlegel regards him so, and points this out as an instance in which Shakspeare has improved upon the novel, the Moor of which he says 'is a baptised Saracen.' But to say nothing of the language which Othello himself uses in Act i., Sc. 3, quoted below, in p. 225; or of the reference which Iago (who surely must be considered of the same religion as his general) makes to 'proofs of Holy Writ' in Act iii. Sc. 3; it is plain that Schlegel must have overlooked the passage in Iago's soliloquy, Act ii. Sc. 3. That the plays of Shakspeare are not free from passages which may minister food to an impure imagination, cannot be denied ;* but that their general tendency is of an opposite and wholly virtuous character, is no less certain.† Nor has he omitted, on fit occasions, to set forth the best of lessons for the control of passion, and the avoiding of excess. See, for instance, in the Tempest, Act iv. Sc. 1, the earnest caution given to lovers before marriage; in All's well, &c., Act v. Sc. 5, the advice of Mariana to the widow's daughter; the passage in the Comedy of Errors, quoted above, p. 125; and the song of the Fairies, in Merry Wives of Windsor, Act v. Sc. 5. I may also refer to the severe rebuke which the Duke, disguised as a friar, administers to the Clown upon his profligate course of life, in Measure for Measure, Act iii. Sc. 2; and to Othello, where Cassio, after he had been betrayed into intoxication, delivers the following lecture against intemperance : Oh! that men should put an enemy to their mouths to steal where he speaks of Othello as ready even 'to renounce his baptism' for the love of Desdemona. See below, p. 275. * That he himself was penitently conscious of this may perhaps be inferred from expressions in one or more of his Sonnets. But compare my remarks below in the Conclusion, p. 352. † In confirmation of this judgment see the remarks of Mr. Keble in Prælectiones Academica, quoted below in Tercentenary Sermon preached at Stratford, pp. 389, 390; also the Archbishop of Dublin's Sermon, preached on the same occasion, p. 10, upon the general excellency of Shakspeare's female characters. away their brains! that we should with joy, revel, pleasure and applause, transform ourselves into beasts! Iago. Why, but you are now well enough. How came you thus recovered? Cassio. It hath pleased the devil Drunkenness to give place to the devil* wrath: one imperfectness shows me another, to make me frankly despise myself. To be now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and presently † a beast! O strange! Every inordinate cup is unblessed, and the ingredient is a devil. Act ii. Sc. 3. The drinking bout had ended in a quarrel, and in the midst of the disturbance, Othello, coming in, exclaims : Why, how now, ho! from whence ariseth this? For Christian shame, put by this barbarous brawl. The last line is one of those which make it difficult to believe that Shakspeare had altogether forgotten his schoolboy classics. Surely when he wrote it he was thinking of Horace : Natis in usum lætitiæ scyphis Pugnare Thracum est; tollite barbarum In like manner we are warned against idleness, as the certain mother of all evil, and especially of * See Ephes. iv. 27. + Compare what the clown, in Twelfth Night, says of a drunken man that he is like a drowned man, a fool, and a madman.' Act i. Sc. 5. Mahometans, Q |