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H. N. HUDSON.

ON SHAKSPEARE'S FEMALE CHAR

ACTERS.

IN nothing, perhaps, does Shakspeare so deeply and divinely touch the heart of humanity, as in the representation of woman. Next to the Bible, Shakspeare is the best friend and benefactor of womankind that has yet appeared on our earth; for, next to the Bible, he has done most towards appreciating what woman is, and towards instructing her what she should be. His writings contain at once the reality and the apotheosis of womanhood. The incomparable depth, and delicacy, and truthfulness, with which he has exhibited the female character, are worth more than all the lectures and essays on social morality the world has ever seen. Many think Shakspeare's female characters inferior to his characters of men. Doubtless, in some respects, they are so; they would not be female characters if they were not: but then in other respects they are superior; they are inferior in the same sort as she is superior to him. The people in question probably cannot see how woman can equal man, without becoming man, or how she can differ from him without being inferior to him. In other words, equality with them involves identity, and is therefore incompatible with subordination, and runs directly into substitution; and such, in truth, is the kind of equality which has been of late so frequently and so excruciatingly inculcated upon us. On this ground, woman cannot be made equal with man, except by unsexing and unsphering her; a thing which Shakspeare was just as far from doing as nature is. To say, then, that Shakspeare's women, according to this view of the matter, are inferior to his men, is merely to say they are women, as they ought to be, and not men, as he meant they should not be, and as we have reason to rejoice they are not. The truth is, Shakspeare knew very well (and it is a pity some people do not learn the same thing from him or some other source) that equality and diversity do by no means necessarily exclude one another; and that, consequently, the

sexes can stand or sit on the same level without standing in each other's shoes, or sitting in each other's seats. If, indeed, he had not known this, he could not have given us characters of either sex, but only wretched and disgusting medlies and caricatures of both, such as some people, it is thought, are in danger of becoming.

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How nicely, on the one hand, Shakspeare has discriminated between things really different, so as to embody, in all cases, the soul of womanhood without a particle of effeminacy; and how perfectly, on the other hand, he has reconciled the most seemingly incompatible things, pouring into the female character all the intellectual energy and dignity of the other sex, without expelling or obscuring, in the least degree, the essence of womanhood; and endowing the character of man with all the gentleness and tenderness of woman, without injuring or abating a jot of its essential manliness: things, as they are among the hardest tasks of genius, so they are among the highest perfections of his works. How to modify the same quality by the differences of sex, instead of identifying the sexes by the same quality; and how to make it appear the same quality all the while it is borrowing a difference from the character in which it appears; this, truly, is a thing which a little less than Shakspeare's genius could not perform at all, but which it seems to have required nothing more than his genius to perform in the utmost perfection.

For example, few characters in Shakspeare are more truly or more deeply intelligent than Portia, in the Merchant of Venice. In her judge-like gravity and dignity of deportment; in the extent and accuracy of her legal knowledge; in the depth and appropriateness of her moral reflections; in the luminous order, the logical coherence, and the eloquent transparency of her thoughts, she almost rivals Chief Justice Marshall himself. We do not wonder that the most reverend and learned council in Christendom, bow before her decisions as the wisest judge and profoundest lawyer of the age. yet to us who are in the secret of her sex, all the proprieties, the indefinable, inward

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harmonies of the character, are perfectly preserved; and the pure, sweet divineness of womanhood seems all the while to irradiate and consecrate the dress in which she is disguised. Shakspeare had occasion in several other instances, in Julia, Viola, Rosalind, and Imogen, to exhibit females in the most delicate and trying situations in which they could possibly be placed; namely, in assuming the habit and personating the character of the other sex. How to do this so that they should maintain in the highest integrity all the essential proprieties of their sex, to us who know it, without awakening the least suspicion of it in those from whom they wish to conceal it, is a problem that may well seem almost impossible to be solved; yet Shakspeare has so done it in all cases, that we can hardly see how the appropriate graces of their characters, even as females, could be developed in any other way. It is the inward charm of female honour and modesty triumphing over outward difficulties and rising above them, instead of sacrificing or surrendering itself to them; as true greatness enhances itself and becomes the more conspicuous by surmounting the obstacles that try to impede it. The characters everywhere exemplify the innate dignity of womanhood shining out the more clearly for the disguise in which they are forced to hide it; the irresistible grace of what Spenser calls feminitee, transforming the very impurities it meets with into beauty and sweetness, as fire turns pitch into light. With such matchless decorum and delicacy is the whole conducted, that the characters, or rather persons, descend without the least degradation; and, while moving our sympathies most deeply, they in no wise lose our respect; nay, the sacredness of female honour and innocence seems but the more awful and inviolable for the unnatural straits into which they are driven.

laws in their favour; and nature, in their cases alone, seems delighted to suffer a sweet violation." ,,Such wonders," says this flower of critics, „true poetry and passion can do, to bestow grace and dignity on subjects which naturally seem insusceptible of them." In all this it seems as if the sweetly constituted mind of Shakspeare could not endure to harbour an ugly thought or impure meditation, and in its instinctive pious awe of womanhood turned all that it touched into images of virtue and loveliness.

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Beaumont and Fletcher are the only dramatists within my knowledge, who, in attempts of this sort, have at all approached Shakspeare, and they could not have done it, had he not first shown them how; for even their partial success is plainly due to his example. It is obvious, indeed, that they, together with Ford and Massinger, tried generally to rival Shakspeare in the representation of woman. They might as well have attempted to put the sun and moon in their pockets! The transparent beauty of their female characters often strikes us, indeed, with cold admiration. their unnatural faultlessness, however, they seem, for most part, little but modified repetitions of each other. And they fail to engage our sympathies, because we cannot help feeling that their angelic transparency results from their having no human blood in them. Even in beauty and sweetness of character, they are several grades below Shakspeare's women; yet they have not a hundredth part the warm, breathing, fleshand-blood reality of his. The truth is, these authors could not mould the pure breath of heaven and the clay of humanity into the same being, so that the two should „cohere semblably together." They could produce the beautiful; they could produce the true; could even keep up a sort of innocent, agreeable flirtation between truth and beauty, Some of the poet's female characters even but they could not marry and mould them violate still further the outward proprieties together; could not exhibit them „in mutual of their sex, and to the still further heigh- love and honour joined." In a word, they tening, if possible, of its inward harmo- had not the genius to embody the ideal in nies. They appear as wooers, follow- the real. Of course, therefore, their best ing and serving in disguise the objects of conceptions have little power to raise us; their affections. Here, in the words of for to do this, the ideal must lay hold of us Lamb, „the ordinary rules of courtship are through the real. They often soar, indeed, reversed, the habitual feelings crossed. Yet to a considerable height; but, in their comwith such exquisite address is the dangerous parative littleness, they become invisible to subject handled, that their forwardness loses our mortal sight almost as soon as they get them no honour; delicacy dispenses with its above us. The moment they consent to

abide with us on the firm earth, and work with the genuine flesh and blood of humanity, the inherent -impurity of their genius breaks out in spite of all they can do, even with the help of Shakspeare's instructions.

This is strikingly evinced by Beaumont and Fletcher in one instance, where they have manifestly undertaken to imitate Shakspeare in one of his divinest creations. The Jailor's Daughter in the Two Noble Kinsmen, is undeniably an attempted imitation of Ophelia. So evident, indeed, is the imitation, that some have supposed Shakspeare himself must have had a hand in it; a supposition amply refuted by the very fact of its being an imitation; for Shakspeare was never known to attempt an imitation or repetition of himself; and seems, indeed, to have been as incapable of doing so as nature herself is, or as others are of not doing it. The Jailor's Daughter, however, is, in some respects, a truly wonderful creation, and certainly evinces a portion of Shakspeare's power; but of his purity not a jot. As in the case of Ophelia, owerwhelming calamities, uniting with the anguish of disappointed love, drive the Jailor's Daughter into insanity, and into that dreadfulest and awfulest, but nameless infirmity of the female character when bereft of reason. Upon this circumstance the authors dwell with apparent delight, and seem to revel in exposing and exaggerating the sacred weakness and wretchedness of the victim. When sinking under this most pitiable and heartrending calamity, a calamity which nature almost instinctively shrinks from contemplating, and when the poor creature seems deserted by heaven and earth, or rather, as if her soul had been taken back to heaven while the life yet remained in the body, their innate impurity seems to exult in its shameless and impious sacrilege on this soul-forsaken husk of womanhood.

How differently did Shakspeare handle this awful subject! With inexpressible delicacy of soul, and like some protecting spirit of humanity, sent to guard its 'sacredest possession from unholy eyes and irreverent hands, he barely hints the awful infirmity, just enough to move our deepest and tenderest sympathies; and then draws the veil of silence over it, as if an angel had that instant whispered to him, that such sorrows were too sacred for human eyes, or even human thoughts, and should

be left to Him who alone can sufficiently pity and effectually relieve them. The truth is, Beaumont and Fletcher, though worthy, perhaps, as Lamb says, to be called a sort of inferior Shakspeares, were, however, fallen Shakspeares. Whatever of his genius abode in them, had been shorn of its moral beams; and if, with some vestiges of its original brightness, it seemed not less, it certainly seemed not more than an archangel ruined. Indeed, for innate, unconscious purity of soul, we need not look for Shakspeare's parallel in literature. In this respect, as in respect of genius itself, he is like the sun in the heavens, alone and unapproachable.

. Coleridge says, the excellence of Shakspeare's women consists in their want of character; and that Pope's expression, „most women have no character at all," though intended for satire, really conveys the highest compliment that could be given them. Against this remark, understood as Coleridge meant, there is certainly no objection, but it may be a question whether the language does not rather cover up the idea than express it. The meaning doubtless is that Shakspeare's women are characterless morally in the same sense and for the same reason as Shakspeare himself is characterless intellectually. His women are as thorougly and intensely individual as any of his characters; but they have no one element or quality more than another; so that all characteristic peculiarities are excluded by their very harmony and completeness of character. So exquisite is the proportion, and so perfect the accordance of all their feelings and thoughts with one another, that there can be no preponderance among them, no outjuttings or protuberances, to mark, that is, to characterize the combination. In short, it is their perfect evenness and entireness of being in all their movements and impressions that makes them characterless. There is the same reciprocity, the same unresisting, spontaneous concurrence, among all their feelings, as among all of Shakspeare's faculties. In whatever direction a single impulse starts, thither all the other impulses immediately flock, and join themselves into perfect integrity of movement. Whether the first moving principle be passion, as in Juliet, or affection, as in Cordelia, or religion, as in Isabella, or ambition, as in Lady Macbeth, there is always the same unanimity

and confluence of all their feelings. Nay, when the direction has once been taken, it is scarcely possible to distinguish which is the leading impulse; for each seems pressing foremost in the throng." We cannot tell whether Lady Macbeth, for example, desires the crown more for herself or for her husband; that is, whether she be actuated more by ambition or affection. In her, as in others, all impulses seem bound together into one life, one motion, and one purpose, as if they knew no law but mutuality, and sought no object but harmony with each other.

It is for this reason that woman, in Shakspeare as in nature, surrenders herself up so entirely to whatever object her heart has once fixed itself. In the mind of a true woman there is no division or distraction of aims; no conflicting of impulses; no pulling of different feelings in opposite directions; she moveth altogether, if she move at all." When such a being receives an object into her heart, she locks it there and throws away the key. Accordingly in Shakspeare's female characters, when ,,the rich golden shaft" finds its way into their bosoms, it seems to ,,kill the flock of all affections else that live in them;" when love enters, it absorbs all the other passions into itself, so that the stronger they are the more they strengthen this. In movements of this sort, therefore, they know no reserve and ask no retreat; they give all, or nothing; and when they give, their whole life and being, with all its hopes and all its havings, is bound up in the gift. Hence the wellknown constancy, and devotion, and fortitude of nature's and Shakspeare's women; qualities which form the crowning excellence of the female character, and in which woman so far and so unfortunately surpasses the other sex.

After these remarks, I probably need not say, that Shakspeare's women are actuated by sentiment and principle much more than by fashion, and expediency, and public opinion. Nature is both law and impulse to them. They are always found listening to the dictates of an inward sense, whose voice to them outweighs the world. Of course, therefore, they always have a hand in making their own matches; and as they are not impelled to choose, so they are not to be restrained from their choice, by any prudential considerations whatever. In this

Herrig, American. Literatur. II.

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respect Imogen is a fair specimen of them; and for her the law of nature could not be repealed or suspended by any earthly power, nor could the violation of her faith, her duty, and her honour as a woman, be compensated to her by any earthly rewards. With intelligence enough generally, to supply a whole community of fashionably-educated ladies, Shakspeare's women do not pretend to be governed by the maxims of worldly prudence, nor by the unimpassioned dictates of the understanding. They never undertake, therefore, to exemplify the supremacy or the sufficiency of human reason; never set themselves up as philosophers or logicians; never try to rival, to imitate, to be the other sex. Perhaps nothing is more characteristic of them, than that they are not so rational as to avoid falling in love; nor do they pretend to have any other reason for loving than a woman's reason. They are, indeed, no miracles of discretion; veterans from the cradle in the knowledge of the world; old in their youth, and young in their age: with the prudence of forty at eighteen, and the impulsiveness of eighteen at forty. In short, (for the thing may as well be spoken,) they are neither fashionable, nor philosophic, but romantic women; and that too in the best and truest sense of the term; for it is the romance of noble sentiment and lofty purpose, not of mere vanity and sentimentality. The vitalities of nature are not stifled in them beneath a load of conventionalities; they are governed by affection and conscience, not by the force of custom and public opinion. They plainly were not educated under our modern forcing and freezing system, which suppresses the passions instead of subduing them to higher faculties; which makes them go right by taking from them the power to go wrong; which leaves them to be kept erect by the pressure of outward appliances, not by the inward strength of virtuous principle; and which secures them against the perils of life by crushing every impulse out of them but vanity and selfishness. They are therefore no mere drawing-room ladies, living altogether in the beau-ideal, whose chief business it is to control their feelings and show off their accomplishments; who are as correct, and nearly as heartless as waxen images with glass eyes; in whom the chaste enamel of nature, and all the free blushes of native grace, have been polished off with the brush

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uncouth words or conduct of others. In their perfect simplicity and freedom from outward pretension, they seem to do nothing but what they feel, and to feel nothing but what they do. Strong in themselves, and in the union of reason with right feeling, their virtue is an attribute of themselves, not an accident of their situation; does not spring from circumstances, and is therefore independent of them. Chance and vanity have no hand in leading them right, and consequently have no power to lead them wrong. Unfortunate and unhappy they may be; untrue and unworthy they cannot be. They are not belles at all. They are not like the heroines of common tragedy. They always have other and higher ends in view, than to win admiration, or figure in poems and histories. If heroines, therefore, at all, they are so without knowing it, or wishing it to be known. Always feeling, and think

of artificial manners; who, in their sleepless self-omniscience, force out conscience and affection by forcing in fashion and prudence; and who seem equally incapable of forgetting themselves and of remembering their duties. Every thing about them is direct, entire, and ingenuous; they are always seeking the happiness of others, not their applause; their actions are inspired by a genuine, selfforgetting love of the beautiful, not by the love of being thought beautiful; and the graces of their minds and persons always come from them involuntarily and unconsciously, like the expiration of their breath. They therefore never seek society for the same reason that they resort to the lookingglass; never put off suitors for the sake of being wooed the harder; are as apt to be overpowered by their own feelings, as to overpower the feelings of others; as ready to be the subjects of affection as the objects of it; and take no pride or pleasure in making, and speaking as women, moved by the ing conquests where they do not mean to be conquered, but rather, with the instinct of true modesty and delicacy, shrink from inspiring a passion which they cannot reciprocate, or where they cannot reciprocate it. Secure in their inward truth and innocence, they never try to cover up their own uncouth thoughts with affected frowns at the

real interests of life, not as authors or actors, moved by playhouse vanities, their heroism springs up of its own free will and accord, and because they cannot help it; and their good actions seem done not to be seen, but in the belief that they are not seen; and therefore we feel assured that they are equally good when out of sight.

THE EN D.

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