CHAP. IX. Cassius. That now on Pompey's basis lies along, So oft as that shall be, So often shall the knot of us be call'd Catas 6 Enter a servant: this simple stage-direction is the trophe, and catastrophe,' the turning-round of the whole action; the ment of the arch has reached its apex and the Reaction has begun. Reaction. commence 122. So iii. i, from instantaneous is the change, that though it is only the servant of Antony who speaks, yet the first words of his message ring with the peculiar tone of subtly-poised sentences which are inseparably associated with Antony's eloquence; it is like the first announcement of that which is to be a final theme in music, and from this point this tone dominates the scene to the very end. 125. Thus he bade me say: Brutus is noble, wise, valiant, and honest, Cæsar was mighty, bold, royal, and loving, Say I love Brutus, and I honour him; Say I fear'd Cæsar, honour'd him, and lov'd him. If Brutus will vouchsafe that Antony May safely come to him, and be resolv'd How Cæsar hath deserved to lie in death, Mark Antony shall not love Cæsar dead In the whole Shakespearean Drama there is nowhere such a swift swinging round of a dramatic action as is here marked by this sudden up-springing of the suppressed individuality ii. i. 165. in Antony's character, hitherto so colourless that he has been spared by the conspirators as a mere limb of Cæsar. The tone of exultant triumph in the conspirators has in an iii. i. 144. instant given place to Cassius's 'misgiving' as Brutus grants Antony an audience; and when Antony enters, Brutus's first from 164. words to him fall into the form of apology. The quick subtlety of Antony's intellect has grasped the whole situation, and with irresistible force he slowly feels his way towards using the conspirators' aid for crushing themselves and avenging their victim. The bewilderment of the con- CHAP. IX. spirators in the presence of this unlooked-for force is seen in Cassius's unavailing attempt to bring Antony to the point, iii. i. 211; compare as to what compact he will make with them. Antony, on 177. the contrary, reads his men with such nicety that he can indulge himself in sailing close to the wind, and grasps fervently the hands of the assassins while he pours out a from 184. flood of bitter grief over the corpse. It is not hypocrisy, nor a trick to gain time, this conciliation of his enemies. Steeped in the political spirit of the age, Antony knows, as no other man, the mob which governs Rome, and is conscious of the mighty engine he possesses in his oratory to sway that mob in what direction he pleases; when his bold plan has succeeded, and his adversaries have consented to meet him in contest of oratory, then ironical conciliation becomes the natural relief to his pent-up passion. Friends am I with you all and love you all, Upon this hope, that you shall give me reasons 220. It is as he feels the sense of innate oratorical power and of the opportunity his enemies have given to that power, that he exaggerates his temporary amity with the men he is about to crush: it is the executioner arranging his victim) comfortably on the rack before he proceeds to apply the levers. Already the passion of the drama has fallen under the guidance of Antony. The view of Cæsar as an innocent victim is now allowed full play upon our sympathies when Antony, left alone with the corpse, can drop the from 254. artificial mask and give vent to his love and vengeance. The success of the conspiracy had begun to decline as we 231-243. marked Brutus's ill-timed generosity to Antony in granting him the funeral oration; it crumbles away through the cold iii. ii, from unnatural euphuism of Brutus's speech in its defence; it is 13. hurried to its ruin when Antony at last exercises his spell iii. ii, from 78. upon the Roman people and upon the reader. The speech CHAP. IX. of Antony, with its mastery of every phase of feeling, is a perfect sonata upon the instrument of the human emotions. iii. ii. 78. Its opening theme is sympathy with bereavement, against which are working as if in conflict anticipations of future 95, 109, themes, doubt and compunction. A distinct change of movement comes with the first introduction of what is to be 133. the final subject, the mention of the will. But when this new movement has worked up from curiosity to impatience, there 177. is a diversion: the mention of the victory over the Nervii &c. turns the emotions in the direction of historic pride, which 178. harmonises well with the opposite emotions roused as the orator fingers hole after hole in Cæsar's mantle made by the daggers of his false friends, and so leads up to a sudden 200. shock when he uncovers the body itself and displays the popular idol and its bloody defacement. Then the finale 243. begins: the forgotten theme of the will is again started, and from a burst of gratitude the passion quickens and intensifies to rage, to fury, to mutiny. The mob is won to the Reaction; and the curtain that falls upon the third Act rises for a moment to display the populace tearing a man to pieces simply because he bears the same name as one of the conspirators. The mob won to the Reaction. iii. iii. Last stage. ceases. The final stage of the action works out the development Develop- of an inevitable fate. The emotional strain now ceases, ment of an inevitable and, as in the first stage, the passion is of the calmer order, fate: passion-strain the calmness in this case of pity balanced by a sense of justice. From the opening of the fourth Act the decline in the justification of the conspirators is intimated by the logic of events. The first scene exhibits to us the triumvirate that now governs Rome, and shows that in this triumvirate Acts iv, v. Antony is supreme: with the man who is the embodiment iv. i. of the Reaction thus appearing at the head of the world, the fall of the conspirators is seen to be inevitable. The decline of our sympathy with them continues in the following iv. ii. 3. scenes. The Quarrel Scene shows how low the tone of 239. Cassius has fallen since he has dealt with assassination as a CHAP. IX. political weapon; and even Brutus's moderation has hardened into unpleasing harshness. There is at this point iv. iii. 148, plenty of relief to such unpleasing effects: there is the &c. iv. iii, from exhibition of the tender side of Brutus's character as shown in his relations with his page, and the display of friendship iv. iii. maintained between Brutus and Cassius amid falling fortunes. But such incidents as these have a different effect upon us from that which they would have had at an earlier period; the justification of the conspirators has so far declined that now attractive touches in them serve only to increase the pathos of a fate which, however, our sympathy no longer seeks to resist. We get a supernatural foreshadowing of the end in the appearance to Brutus of Cæsar's Ghost, and the iv. iii. 275. omen Cassius sees of the eagles that had consorted his army v. i. 80. to Philippi giving place to ravens, crows, and kites on the morning of battle: this lends the authority of the invisible world to our sense that the conspirators' cause is doomed. And judicial blindness overtakes them as Brutus's authority iv. iii. 196 in council overweighs in point after point the shrewder -230. advice of Cassius. Through the scenes of the fifth Act we see the republican leaders fighting on without hope. The Justificalast remnant of justification for their cause ceases as the conspirators themselves seem to acknowledge their error and as the confate. Cassius as he feels his death-blow recognises the very recognise spirators weapon with which he had committed the crime: Cæsar, thou art revenged, Even with the sword that kill'd thee. And at last even the firm spirit of Brutus yields: O Julius Cæsar, thou art mighty yet! Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our swords tion entire ly vanishes Cæsar's v. v. 94. CHAP. X. The plot of Lear highly complex. The main plot ex hibits the Problem form of X. How CLIMAX MEETS CLIMAX IN IN THE CENTRE OF LEAR. A Study in more complex Julius Cæsar we have seen how, in the case of a very simple play, a few simple devices are sufficient to produce a regular rise and fall in the passion. We now turn to a highly elaborate plot and trace how, notwithstanding the elaborateness, a similar concentration of the passion in the centre of the play can be secured. King Lear is one of the most complex of Shakespeare's tragedies; its plot is made up of a number of separate actions, with their combinations accurately carried out, the whole impressing us with a sense of artistic involution similar to that of an elaborate musical fugue. Here, however, we are concerned only indirectly with the plot of the play: we need review it no further than may suffice to show what distinct interests enter into it, and enable us to observe how the separate trains of passion work toward a common climax at the centre. Starting from the notion of pattern as a fundamental idea we have seen how Plot presents trains of events in human life taking form and shape as a crime and its nemesis, an oracle and its fulfilment, the rise and fall of an individual, or even as simply a story. The particular form of action underlying the main plot of King Lear is different from any we have yet noticed. It may be described as a Problem Action. A mathematician in his problem assumes some unusual com |