So quick bright things come to confusion. Her. If, then, true lovers have been ever crossed, It stands as an edict in destiny.” — Act I. Sc. 1. Wherein we have a repetition of this same confusion, this sympathy, and these principles more deep and fatal. And for this play, the scene shall be "Athens; and a wood not far from it." It is very much such a scene as that of "the Forest of Arden," in the "As You Like It," or that of the "Timon," which was "Athens; and the woods adjoining"; but the object, in this play, is "the culture and cure of the mind," in respect of this matter of love, and not now "in points of fortune." And the subject compasses the entire scale of being, and stretches, in like manner as in the "Timon," from "the woodlands, as it were, of nature," even into the commonwealth of Athens, and endeavors "to climb by regular succession to the height of things, like so many tops of mountains.” 1 At least, the writer will himself view the subject from these tops and these “ uppermost elevations of nature, where his station will be serene and his "prospects delightful," as from that cliff of Plato, which, says Bacon, was “raised above the confusion of things: ". "We will, fair Queen, up to the mountain's top, And mark the musical confusion Of hounds and echo in conjunction. So musical a discord, such sweet thunder."— Act IV. Sc. 1. But the scene is, for the most part, in "a wood near Athens," where fairies and spirits "do wander everywhere, for "Our intent Was to be gone from Athens, where we might 1 Scaling-ladder. Ege. Enough, enough! my lord, you have enough. I beg the law, the law, upon his head.” — Act IV. Sc. 1. And we are now to be taken into the very region of this Love, which is "the appetite or instinct of primal matter," says Bacon, "or, to speak more plainly, the natural motion of the atom; which is indeed the original and unique force that constitutes and fashions all things out of matter;" as in the imagery of these lines of the "As You Like It,” thus: "Phebe. Thou tell'st me there is murther in my eye; 'Tis pretty, sure, and very probable, - Act III. Sc. 5. "For," continues the philosopher, "the summary law of nature, that impulse of desire impressed by God upon the primary particles of matter which makes them come together, and which by repetition and multiplication produces all the variety of nature, is a thing which mortal thought may glance at, but can hardly take in":1— "Tit. . . . Fairies, be gone, and be all ways away.2 So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle Gently entwist; the female ivy so Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.". And again, in the "As You Like It": Act IV. Sc. 1. : "Ros. There's a girl goes before the priest: and, certainly, a woman's thought runs before her actions. Orl. So do all thoughts; they are wing'd."— Act IV. Sc. 1. Even the animals partake of the universal enchantment in this play : "When in that moment (so it came to pass), Titania wak'd, and straightway lov'd an ass."— Act III. Sc. 2. 1 Wisd. of the Anc. (Cupid), Works (Boston), XIII. 123. 2 Mr. White reads, " be a while away," adopting one of Collier's forgeries, which is too tame: it was of the very nature of these fairies, representing the spirit of universal Nature, to be "all ways away.” But, says the philosopher again, "the fable relates to the cradle and infancy of nature, and pierces deep," and we shall have a play, now, which shall be and things "As the remembrance of an idle gawd, "More strange than true: I never may believe Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, Are of imagination all compact": Act V. Sc. 1. like a child; for Cupid "is described with great elegance as a little child, and a child forever; for things compounded are larger and are affected by age; whereas the primary seeds of things, or atoms, are minute, and remain in perpetual infancy."—1 "Thes. Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity In least speak most, to my capacity."— Act V. Sc. 1. And therefore, we will have here a dumb show of “Wall and Moonshine," and a mere piece of child's play: - "Hip. This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard. Thes. The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worse are no worse, if imagination amend them."-Act V. Sc. 1. "Dem. These things seem small, and undistinguishable, Like far-off mountains turned into clouds. Her. Methinks I see things with parted eye, When every thing seems double. That yet we sleep, we dream." — Act IV. Sc. 1. Very like; but, nevertheless, "all compounds (to one that considers them rightly) are masked and clothed. 1 Wisd. of the Anc. (Cupid), Works (Boston), XIII. 124. .... ... The blindness, likewise, of Cupid, has an allegorical meaning full of wisdom. For it seems that this Cupid, whatever he be, has very little providence; but directs his course, like a blind man groping, by whatever he finds nearest; which makes the supreme divine Providence all the more to be admired, as that which contrives out of subjects peculiarly empty and destitute of providence, and as it were -blind, to educe by a fatal and necessary law all the order and beauty of the universe":1 And, "Hel. Things base and vile, holding no quantity, Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, As waggish boys in game themselves forswear, So the boy Love is perjur'd everywhere." -Act 1. Sc. 2. "When they next wake, all this derision Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision; And back to Athens shall the lovers wend, With league, whose date till death shall never end." And the whole thing, Act III. Sc. 2. "Such tricks hath strong imagination," shall pierce so deep, that "it shall be called Bottom's dream, because it hath no bottom"; for this Cupid is, "next to God, the cause of causes itself without a cause." 2 And such certainly is the judgment of the sacred philosopher, when he says, "He hath made all things beautiful according to their seasons; also he hath submitted the world to man's inquiry, yet so that men cannot find out the work which God worketh from the beginning to the end.” And again, we have a touch of this same deep-sounding philosophy, in the "As You Like It," thus: 1 Wisd. of the Anc. (Cupid), 125. 2 Ibid. (Cupid), 123. "Ros. O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou didst know how many fathom deep I am in love! But it cannot be sounded; my affection hath an unknown bottom, like the Bay of Portugal. Cel. Or rather, bottomless; that as you pour affection in, it runs out. Ros. No; that same wicked bastard of Venus, that was begot of thought, conceived of spleen, and born of madness; that blind rascally boy, that abuses every one's eyes, because his own are out, let him be judge how deep I am in love."— Act IV. Sc. 1. The object and purpose of these plays may receive some further illustration from the following account of Orpheus' Theatre, where, says Bacon, "all beasts and birds assembled, and forgetting their several appetites, some of prey, some of game, some of quarrel, stood all sociably together, listening to the airs and accords of the harp; the sound whereof no sooner ceased, or was drowned by some louder noise, but every heart returned to his own nature: wherein is aptly described the nature and condition of men, who are full of savage and unreclaimed desires of profit, of lust, of revenge; which as long as they give ear to precepts, to laws, to religion, sweetly touched with eloquence and persuasion of books, of sermons, of harangues, so long is society and peace maintained; but if these instruments be silent, or that sedition and tumult make them not audible, all things dissolve into anarchy and confusion." 1 This last expression may call to mind the "Tempest," in which all things were to dissolve and "leave not a rack behind," and "deeper than did ever plummet sound," he would drown his book; which word drown, having got much into use with the writer, will drop out occasionally even in much graver works: as when he speaks of the Lord Chancellor Morton, who proposed a law against conspiring the death of a King's Counsellor, as "drowning the envy of it in a general law." 2 And this same teaching, drawn from "Orpheus' Theatre," reappears more largely in the "Merchant of Venice," thus: 1 Adv. of Learn.; Works (Mont.), II. 177. 2 History of Henry VII.; Works (Boston), XI. 131. |