had seen were apprehensive that she was deficient in that elastic and buoyant spirit which the character demands,”—the writer continues;-" We were, however, never more agreeably disappointed. Miss Faucit's Beatrice is a creature o'erflowing with joyousness-raillery itself being in her nothing more than excess of animal spirits, tempered by passing through a soul of goodness." As, again, yet more recently, The Newcastle Courant', of Friday, April 30th, 1847, speaking of this lady's performance there on the previous Tuesday, tells us "The playfulness and sarcastic humour of Beatrice, were given with lady-like grace and girlish buoyancy."

an

It is, indeed, one of the things most marvellous to any fresh student of this actress's personations, to discover that the very being who at one moment had seemed born to breathe the deepest soul of mournful or heroic tragedy, could at the next become a seemgly exhaustless fountain of spontaneous and delicious cheerfulness-that not only do we find a plaintive Imogen thus magically transmuted into a buoyant Rosalind in all the dewy-fragrant sunshine of her spirit, but even the most awfully thrilling Lady Macbeth herself, into the most genuinely laughing Beatrice!

Yet all this only argues-but argues incontrovertibly the existence in the artist herself-rare in any time, and precious in the present-of that whole rich essence of poetic womanhood of which Shakespeare had such perfect and peculiar intuition.

VII.

CHARACTERS IN ROMEO AND JULIET.'

[September 1st, 1845.]

1. INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS.

FEW plays more clearly illustrate the essentially defective state of our Shakespearian interpretation, both in criticism and on the stage, than the one which gives title to the present essay. The very mainspring of the tragic action and the tragic interest in the "Romeo and Juliet" is continually mistaken-a mistake involving, we shall see, a radical misunderstanding of Shakespeare's mode of conceiving and method of combining the leading elements of tragedy in general. In spite of all the diligent and elaborate care which, in this instance, the dramatist has taken to shew, both to hearer and to reader, that the violent sorrows and calamitous end of his "pair of star-crossed lovers" are brought upon them by causes quite independent of any defect of character or impropriety of conduct in both or either of them,-yet we find the piece continually talked and written about as if the misfortunes of the hero and heroine were produced in the main by their own fault," or "rashness," or "imprudence," to the utter oblivion or disregard, in the mind of the verbal or literary critic, of that ever

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adverse destiny-those "inauspicious stars"-of which Romeo is so repeatedly made conscious that he bears the inevitable "yoke."

But it was from no such equivocal germ as this, that Shakespeare's genius ever developed a great ideal tragedy, nor that any genius ever did or ever will unfold one. In Shakespeare, especially, whenever a hero's calamities are to be incurred by his own fault, the character is made one of violent disproportion, both mentally and morally,-producing either the inordinate wickedness of a Macbeth or an Iago, or the inordinate folly of a Timon or a Lear. When, on the contrary, the hero is to be exhibited before us as the victim of ill-fortune, and so to demand our pity in the highest and the purest sense, the character is ever most carefully compounded as one of ideal dignity and harmony. Of Shakespeare's application of this latter principle, 'Hamlet' is the master example of all; but next to Hamlet,' the Romeo and Juliet' is one of the most remarkable.

*

In a former paper, we have shown how that habitually degrading misinterpretation of Shakespeare which has descended to us from the most disgraceful period of English history, whether in politics, in morals, or in taste, still daily inverts, on our stage and in our criticism, the relation which the poet has established between the character and the fortune of Macbeth. We have shown how Shakespeare has made the intensely selfish, cowardly, and remorseless ambition of that hero, plunge him headlong from the highest summit of reputation and prosperity to the lowest depth of calamity and execration, the prescience of the weird sisters, and the moral firmness of his wife-things in themselves good or indifferentbeing converted by himself into helps toward the fulfilment of his own evil purpose, gratuitously and spontaneously conceived. We have also shown how our critics and our actors, absolutely reversing this relation, persist in holding up to us Macbeth as an *See Characters in Macbeth,' pp. 109 to 198 of this volume.

inherently good and feeling man, for whom the poet claims our pity, as the victim of wicked instigations in which earth and hell are combined against him. And we have indicated the deep moral mischievousness of this theatrical and critical perversion.

Now, it is remarkable, that in the acting and the criticism of Hamlet,' an analogous perversion has taken place, though, from the opposite nature of the subject, operating exactly in an inverse direction. Against Hamlet, in Shakespeare, the evil practices of earth, the suggestions of hell, and the enmity of Fortune, are literally and truly combined, to perplex and to crush him; but the just harmony of his mental constitution,

Where every god did seem to set his seal,

To give the world assurance of a man,

bears it out against

The slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune,beaten and shattered indeed, and finally broken, but unswerving to the last. And yet, up to this very hour, cannot the critics of this Shakespearian masterpieceincluding even Goethe, and Schlegel, and Coleridgenotwithstanding that its hero is

benetted round with villanies,

and has a preternatural embarrassment of the most horrible kind superadded-find any adequate source of his calamities, but in what they represent as the "morbid" disproportion of his own character-his "excess" of reflection and imagination-his "deficiency" of passion and of will. We may, ere long, find occasion to shew, that Hamlet's consciousness of "inauspicious stars," so continually recurring throughout the piece, is as well-grounded as that of Romeo himself, and that under their influence alone does he sink, that with sensibility and imagination,-—with judgment and reflection, with passion and will,with sympathy and self-devotion,—and with "the hand to dare," no less than "the will to do,"-Shakespeare

has studiously endowed him,-each in an ideally exalted degree, and all harmoniously combined into a character of perfect ideal strength and beauty.

Meanwhile, those to whom such an announcement may seem startling, notwithstanding our recent demonstration in the instance of Macbeth,' how possible it is for essential misunderstandings of this most profound of artists to establish themselves under the most respectable critical names,-may be somewhat prepared for the like demonstration in the case of Hamlet' by tracing with us, in the following pages, that strictly analogous misinterpretation of Romeo and Juliet' which, as indicated at the opening of this essay, our current criticism and acting concur to uphold.

Even Coleridge* simply tells us, concerning Romeo's fortunes, that "his change of passion, his sudden marriage, and his rash death, are all the effects of youth." And respecting those of Juliet, the authoress of the Characteristics of Women,' who has written so many pages upon this heroine, embodies the prevalent misconception in her concluding paragraph:

"With all this immense capacity of affection and imagination there is a deficiency of reflection and of moral energy, arising from previous habit and education; and the action of the drama, while it serves to develope the character, appears but its natural and necessary result. 'Le mystère de l'existence,' said Madame de Staël to her daughter, 'c'est le rapport de nos erreurs avec nos peines.""†

'Characteristics of Shakspeare's Dramas,' in Coleridge's 'Literary Remains,' 8vo. vol. ii. p. 77.

+ 'Characteristics,' &c.-3rd edit.-vol. i. p. 203. It seems due to Madame de Staël, to point out that she is not at all responsible for this application of her general remark. She says nothing of the kind regarding Juliet, though she speaks of her at considerable length in the second chapter of the seventh book of her 'Corinne.' Not merely her general treatment of the character in those pages, but the very fact of her selecting it for personation by her own heroine under those peculiar circumstances, shews that she conceived the individuality of Juliet as more exalted and vigorous, more nobly womanly, as well as richly poetical, than it appears in Mrs. Jameson's appreciation.

CC