must have experienced before he overstepped the distance between Titus Andronicus and Lear and Macbeth. Sanguinary scenes, as we remarked before, were common at that time in real life, and were often so terrible that poet and public alike were hardened with regard to them. The fine artistic sense of his riper years may not yet have been developed in the young poet. Or he may have entered into competition with those who were at that time rivals for the favour of the theatrical public, such as with Christopher Marlowe, and hence strove to attack him on his own ground of blood-and-terror tragedy, which so took the fancy of the people. We also know from trustworthy witnesses that Titus Andronicus long continued a favourite and an oftrepeated piece of stage repertoire. There are great differences also in form between that and the later, riper plays; the versification is more regular, the speeches are lacking in ornament, in metaphors, in wise sentences, in profound turns of thought. The mad rage of passion, the almost beastly fury of hate, of delight in crime, placed in the mouth of the Moor Aaron, is in complete contradiction to the safe instructions which the poet causes Hamlet to enjoin upon the actors, recalling that very out-Heroding of Herod against which he warns. But even here it is possible that a novice was led astray by the bombast and exuberance of speech which corresponded to the popular taste of the day. We might also doubt the authenticity of the narrative poems, if they had not been handed down to us on incontestable evidence as Shakespeare's. The concettisti style which prevails in them, and also appears in the early dramas, and of which echoes are even heard in Romeo and Julict, is as far removed from Shakespeare's great tragedies as is the outrageous bombast of Titus, and the poet may just as likely have imitated the one as the other. The strongest evidence, however, in proof that the play was not conceived by Shakespeare, but was merely a paraphrase of some other writer, is the distorted characters, the inconceivable roughness of the psychology, and the extreme improbability of the action. Titus Andronicus returns from a victorious campaign against the Goths, bringing with him as prisoners Tamora, queen of the Goths, and her three sons, Alarbus, Chiron and Demetrius. But he, too, has had to pay for his victory. Two sons were slain in battle, and in his triumphal entry he carries with him their biers. Their corpses are buried solemnly in the ancestral tomb after the eldest son of Tamora is hewn to pieces and burnt as a sacrificial offering. Tamora entreats and beseeches Titus with ardent words to spare her dear son, and as this short passage is almost the only one in which this woman shows any human feeling, we will give it place. TAMORA speaks: Stay, Roman brethren!-Gracious conqueror, A mother's tears in passion for her son: Titus Andronicus, act i. scene 1. The lines seem to me weak in comparison with the richness of the Shakespearian diction as shown in his greater works. The prayer of the queen is vain; her son is offered to the Manes of the fallen sons of Titus, and these are then solemnly entombed. Titus, in full power and popular with the army, thanks to his victory, might casily make himself master of the vacant Roman throne, for which the late Emperor's two sons, Saturninus and Bassianus, are at strife, and his brother, the Tribune Marcus, counsels him unhesitatingly to seize it. But Titus remains true to Saturninus, and unselfishly makes him Emperor, presenting to him the Gothic queen as a spoil of war, and would also fain give to him in marriage, against the will of his sons, his daughter Lavinia, already betrothed to Bassianus. As Bassianus, assisted by the sons of Titus, tries to seize his bride by force, Titus himself kills one of them. But the ungrateful Emperor forgets these services, and, led away by the luscious beauty of Tamora, makes her his wife. Titus, who has experienced shameful ingratitude from the man he has raised to the throne, is foolish enough to expect gratitude from her who is also indebted to him for her cievation. She, who implored him in vain to spare her son's life, considers only how she can be avenged on him and his family. She brings about, through her sons, the death of Bassianus, and causes. Lavinia to be ravished and mutilated. Titus is ignorant of what has happened. Lavinia, who overhears people speaking of the perpetrators of the deed, gathers that her brothers are accused of murdering Bassianus. She cannot speak, for her tongue has been cut out, but we might fancy she had also lost her hearing, for she, who knows only too well that the conjectures she overhears have no foundation, does not reveal this in any way, either by gesture or movement. Only by chance a method is discovered of getting her evidence, viz., the placing of a staff in her mouth, with which she writes in the sand the names of the guilty. Tamora is enticed through a most clumsy trick into a position in which she is sacrificed to the vengeance of Titus. So badly is the play put together, so stupid are its psychological motives, that we hardly like to regard it as an original work, even an early one, of a poet whose prominent gift was acute and refined psychological characterisation. Tamora seems, at first, worthy of our sympathy when we hear her plead with warm mother-love for her son's life, but our hearts are soon turned away because we perceive that her fundamental character-traits are falsehood, hypocrisy, sensuality, and unbridled thirst for vengeance. She counsels the Emperor to become reconciled with the family of Titus, who had taken part against Saturninus while aiding Bassianus to carry off his bride, Lavinia, by force. She succeeds, too, in effecting the reconciliation, whispering to the Emperor that he may leave vengeance to her; she will annihilate the whole hated race, in atonement for the death of her son, whose life she had begged in vain. The second act shows her in her entire inhuman depravity. Through a perversity difficult to explain, she is seized with a passion that may almost be called bestial in its violence for the hideous and atrociously wicked Moor, Aaron. She gives expression to this passion in shameless words which sound frightful in the mouth of a woman. Surprised by Bassianus and Lavinia, and upbraided by the latter in words which also cannot be called womanly, she induces her sons, Chiron and Demetrius, to stab Bassianus by telling them an absolutely false tale concerning her meeting with the two, sparing Lavinia only for a fate worse than the most painful death. All Lavinia's entreaties are in vain. Incited by their mother, the sons make the helpless woman their victim, they then cruelly mutilate her, tearing out her tongue and cutting off her hands, so that she can neither speak nor write an account of the horrible and inhuman deed. In this scene the characterisation of Tamora reaches its climax; what follows throws no new light upon a figure which arouses only disgust and hatred. This woman is ruled by every evil passion, ready for every dreadful deed, given over to the most unbridled sensuality-in short, a female monster, whose destruction, when she is lured, with incredible want of skill, into the toils of her enemies, we note without any feeling of regret. Lavinia is a pure, innocent being, who clings with tender love to father and brothers. Her terrible fate fills us with heartfelt pity. But her delineation is entirely colourless, and, if we may so express ourselves, indifferent. She has none of the striking power, none of the unspeakable charm, of some others of Shakespeare's women. In the scene where she surprises the Empress in her criminal rendezvous with the Moor, she uses ugly and unfeminine words, inappropriate to so gentle and docile a being. As a whole, we take leave of the play and of its two female figures with a sensation that we should be more content if we could find satisfactory grounds for denying it Shakespeare's authorship. "PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE” Marina-Dionyza The material for this play, which, from good evidence, we know to have been much admired, is derived from a Greek novel of the fifth or sixth century, whose hero was called Appollonius of Tyre. The same story, always under the same name, is found in innumerable romances, popular tales and poems. The maker, whether it be Shakespeare or another, had at least two English versions of the legend to refer to. The fable belongs to that class of tales which, on account of the many events and adventures it contains, were continually used as material for dramatic work, because they pleased and satisfied the public appetite for shows full of action. But the task of bestowing on epic material a dramatic form is inadequately executed in this piece. Narrative and pantomime are called to the aid of dramatic representation. Repeated prologues help out the halting action, which comprises the whole life of Pericles, from youth to latemanhood, and is only held together by the unity of his personality. A certain moralising tendency links the opening of the play with the close. The criminal relation between the daughter of Antiochus and her own |
