in the most commonplace of everyday conditions - sleep. All other powers may be in full activity when we slumber: the will is entirely paralysed. Hence when Richard, in the weariness of the night before the battle, drops asleep, he is held as in a vice by Destiny, while outraged humanity asserts itself. In his helplessness he must see the rhythmic procession of his victims, counting up the crimes that are to be remembered in the morrow's doom; still helpless, he must watch the ghostlike figures pass over to the opposite camp, foreshadowing the desertion to the foe, whom they bless as the coming victor. If the sleeping powers turn from passive to active, it is but to take part against the helpless sleeper in the play of Destiny upon its victim. Now he is fleeing from the battle and his horse has failed him; another horse secured, he cannot mount for the streaming of his open wounds.1 Another quick change of dream movement, and all around is shining with the livid gleam of hell fire,2 and there goes up a groan— Have mercy, Jesu! It has broken the spell: but there is still to be traversed the horrible stage of the gradual awakening from nightmare, and the ghastly dialogue of the two selves is heard the suppressed self of inherited humanity, and the artificial callousness so painfully built up. In time his will recovers control: but meanwhile Richard himself recognises the shattered nerves with which he is to meet his final fall: By the apostle Paul, shadows to-night Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard Thus the play of Richard the Third exhibits, in its most pronounced form, Shakespeare's treatment of Wrong and Retribution. He has imagined for us an evil nature, set off to the eye by dis 1 V. iii. 177. 2 So I interpret the words on waking, The lights burn blue. torted shape, arising out of a past of historic turbulence, attaining in the present play, a depth of moral degeneration in which villany is accepted as an ideal. Such ideal villany is projected into a universe which, in this one drama, is presented as a complex providential order every element of which is some varied phase of retribution. ކ III INNOCENCE AND PATHOS: THE TRAGEDY OF ROMEO AND JULIET In the preceding chapter we have been reviewing a drama the plot of which presents the universe as an elaborate system of retribution. In turning from this to other stories we are not to expect that in these the same aspect of the universe will be the one emphasised. I believe that no mistake has done more to distort Shakespeare criticism than the assumption on the part of so many commentators that retribution is an invariable principle. Their favourite maxims are that the deed returns upon the doer, that character determines fate. But these specious principles need careful examination. If the meaning be merely this, that the deed often returns upon the doer, that character is one of the forces determining fate, then these are profound truths. But if, as is usually the case, there is the suggestion that such maxims embody invariable laws that the deed always returns upon the doer, that character and nothing but character determines the fate of individuals then the principles are false; false alike to life itself and to the reflection of life in poetry. -- To take a crucial illustration. The Cordelia of Shakespeare is recognised by all as a sweet and loving woman who devotes herself to save her father. In the sequel she is defeated, imprisoned, and cruelly hanged. Commentators who have assumed the invariability of nemesis feel bound to find in Cordelia's character some flaw which will justify such an ending to her career. They suggest that, however noble her aim, in the means employed she has sinned against patriotism, by calling in the French natural enemies of England, we are to understand - to rescue Lear from his evil daughters: this sin against patriotism must be atoned for by suffering and ignominy. I am persuaded that no one who comes to the play without a theory to support will so read the course of the story. There is not a single detail of Shakespeare's poem to which such a violation of patriotism can be attached; those in the story who are most patriotic are on Cordelia's side, and even Albany, whose office obliges him to resist the French invasion, complains that he cannot be valiant where his conscience is on the other side. Cordelia no more sins against patriotism, in using the French army to resist the wicked queens, than the authors of the revolution of 1688 were unpatriotic, when they called in William of Orange to deliver England from King James. How then is the untoward fate of Cordelia to be explained? The plot of the play at this point is dominated, not by nemesis, but by another dramatic motive; it is not satisfying our sense of retribution, but exhibiting the pathos that unlocks the sympathy of the spectator, and sheds a beauty over suffering itself. Cordelia has devoted herself to her father: fate mysteriously seconds her devotion, and leaves out nothing, not even her life, to make the sacrifice complete. It is obvious that to approach dramas with some antecedent assumption as to principles invariably to be found in them is a violation of the inductive criticism attempted in this work, which frankly accepts the details of a poem as they stand in order to evolve from these alone the underlying principles. But I would for the moment waive this point in order to ask, What authority have we for the assumption itself that retribution is an invariable principle of providential government? In the drama of antiquity, as all will concede, no such principle holds; Greek tragedy is never so tragic as where it exhibits the good man crushed by external force of Destiny. But the contention is often made that all this has been changed by modern religion, not any particular theological system, but the whole spirit of modern religion, of which the Bible is the embodiment; that this has introduced such conceptions of God and of man that Shakespeare and other 1 Lear: V. i. 23. modern poets cannot give us a sense of poetic satisfaction unless their dramatic world presents a providence wholly of retribution, under which men face no power determining their individual fates other than the destiny they have made by their individual characters. To me it seems extraordinary that any such contention should have been put forward in the name of biblical religion. Not to mention other objections, such a plea flies in the face of what, from the literary point of view, is the most impressive portion of the Bible itself. the Book of Job. Here we have a hero, whom God himself accepts as perfect and upright, overwhelmed by waves of calamity reducing him to penury and excruciating him with disease. Men gather together to discuss the strange event. The three Friends of Job take up exactly the position I am here impugning the invariable connection of suffering with sin, so that the calamities of Job are proof positive of some unknown guilt. Job tears their argument to tatters; in the excitement of debate he seems to recognise the impunity of the sinner as a principle of providential government not less prominent than the principle of retribution. Who is to decide between these opposite views? In the epilogue to Job God is represented as declaring that the three Friends have not said the thing that is right, as Job has. And all the while the reader of the Book of Job has known from the opening story that the calamities were sent from heaven upon Job for reasons connected with his righteousness, and not with his sin. Thus the biblical Book of Job is the strongest of all pronouncements against the invariability of retribution, the strongest of all assertions that, besides this, other principles are recognised in the providential government of the universe. The attempt to analyse all experience in terms of retribution is false alike to real life and to life in the ideal. In the real life about us a little child dies: how in this experience has character determined fate? Not the character of the child, for there has been no responsibility. There may be cases in which the death of a child is retribution upon the carelessness or folly of parents; but will any one contend that this is always so? Yet the experience is |