5 The Tragedy of the Will
The tragedy of the good and evil will, is sometimes followed, sometimes preceded by another tragedy, that of the will itself. Here the will, instead of holding the passions in control—making its footstool of them—allows itself to be dominated by them in their onrush; or it seeks the good, but remains uncertain, dissatisfied as to the path chosen; or finally, when it fails to find its own way, a way of some sort, and does not know what to think of itself or of the world, it preys upon itself in this empty tension.
A typical form of this first condition of the will is voluptuousness, which overspreads a soul and makes itself mistress there, inebriating, sending to sleep, destroying and liquefying the will. When we think of that enchanting sweetness and perdition, the image of death arises at the same instant, because it truly is death, if not physical, yet always internal and moral death, death of the spirit, without which man is already a corpse in process of decomposition. The tragedy of Anthony and Cleopatra is composed of the violent sense of pleasure, in its power to bind and to dominate, coupled with a shudder at its abject effects of dissolution and of death.
He moves in a world all kisses and caresses, languors, sounds, perfumes, shimmer of gold and splendid garments, flashing of lights or silence of deep shadows, enjoyment, now ecstatic, now spasmodic and furious. Cleopatra is queen of this world, avid for pleasure, which she herself bestows, diffusing around her its quivering sense, instilling a frantic desire for it into all, offering herself as an example and an incitement, but while conferring it on others, remaining herself a regal and almost a mystical personage. A Roman who has plunged into that world, spoke then of her, astonished at her power, demoniac or divine;
“Age cannot wither nor custom stale
Her infinite variety.”
Cleopatra asks for songs and music, that she may melt into that sea of melody, which heightens pleasure:
“Give me some music; music, moody food
Of us that trade in love!”
She knows how to toy with men, keeping their interest alive by her denials:
“If you find him sad,
Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report
That I am sudden sick.”
Her words express sensual fascination in its most terrible form:
“There is gold, and here
My bluest veins to kiss; a hand that kings
Have lipped, and trembled kissing.”
All around her dance to the same tune and imitate the rhythmic folly of her life. Note the scene of the two waiting women, who are joking about their loves, their future marriages, and the manner of their deaths, with the soothsayer. Listen to the first words of Carminia, so mirthful and caressing in her playful coquetry: “Lord Alexas, sweet Alexas, most anything Alexas, almost most absolute Alexas, where’s the soothsayer that you praised so to the queen? O, that I knew this husband, which, you say, must charge his horns with garlands!”...
Anthony is seized and dragged into this vertiginous course of pungent pleasures, as soon as he appears. In his inebriation the rest of the world, all the active, real world, seems heavy, prosaic, contemptible and displeasing. The very name of Rome has no longer any power over him.
“Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch
Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space.
Kingdoms are clay: one dungy earth alike
Feeds beast as man.”
As he folds Cleopatra in his arms, he feels that they form a pair who make life more noble, and that in them alone it assumes real significance.
This feeling is not love: we have already called it by its proper name: voluptuousness. Cleopatra loves pleasure and caprice, and the dominion, which both of them afford her; she also loves Anthony, because he is, and in so far as he is, part of her pleasures and caprices, and serves her as an instrument of dominion. She busies herself with keeping him bound to her, struggles to retain him when he removes himself from her, but she always has an eye to other things, which are equally necessary for her, even more so than he, and in order to retain them, she would be ready if necessary to give Anthony in exchange. Anthony too, does not love her; he clearly sees her for what she is, imprecates against her, and enfolds her in his embrace without forgiveness.
“Shed not a tear; give me a kiss:
Even this repays me.”
Love demands union of some sort between two beings for an objective end, with the moral consent of both; but here we are outside morality, and even outside the will. We are caught in the whirlwind and carried along.
Anthony it is, who weakens and is conquered. He has lived an active life, which, in the present moment of folly, he holds of no account. He has known war, political strife, the government of States; he has even been brushed with the wing of glory and of victory. He tries several times to grasp his own past and to direct his future. He has not lost his ethical judgment, for he recognizes Cleopatra as she really is, bows reverently before the memory of Fulvia, and treats his new wife Octavia, whom also he will abandon, with respect. For a brief moment, he returns to the world he once knew, takes part in political business, comes to terms with his colleagues and rivals. It would seem that he had disentangled himself from the chain that bound him. But the effort is not lasting, the chain encircles him again; vainly and with ever declining power of resistance, he yields to that destiny, which is on the side of Octavius, the man without loves, so cold and so firm of will. Bad fortune dogs every step of the voluptuary: those that surround him remark a change in his appearance from what he was formerly. They see him betray this change by uttering thoughts that are almost ridiculously feeble, and making inane remarks. They are led to reflect that the mind of man is nothing but a part of his fortune and that external things conform to things internal. He himself feels that he is inwardly dissolving, and compares himself to the changing forms of the clouds, dissolved with a breath of wind, like water turning to water. Yet the man, who is thus in process of disaggregation, was once great, and still affords flashes of greatness, bursting forth in feats of warlike prowess, accompanied with lofty speech and generous actions. His generosity confounds Enobarbus, who had deserted him and now takes his own life for very shame. Around him are yet those ready to die for sake of the affection that he inspires. Cleopatra stands lower or higher: she has never known nor has ever desired to know any life but that of caprice and pleasure. There is logic, will, consistency, in her vertiginous abandonment. She is consistent also in taking her own life, when she sees that she would die in a Roman prison, thus escaping shame and the mockeries of the triumphant foe, and selecting a death of regal voluptuousness. And with her die her faithful handmaids, by a similar death; they have known her as their queen and goddess of pleasure, and now as despising this vile world and a life no longer worthy of being lived, because no longer beautiful and brilliant. Carminia, before she slays herself takes a last farewell of her mistress:
“Downy windows close;
And golden Phoebus never be beheld
Of eyes again so royal! Your crown’s awry;
I’ll mend it, and then play.”
The tragedy of the will, which is most poetically lofty in Anthony and Cleopatra, is nevertheless morally a low form, that is to say, it is simple and elementary in its roughness, such as would manifest itself in a soldier like Anthony, the bloody, quarrelsome, pleasure-seeking, crapulous Anthony.
It shows itself in an atmosphere far more subtle with Hamlet. Hamlet, the hero so refined intellectually, so delicate in taste, so conscious of moral values, comes to the action, not from the Roman forum or from the battlefields of Gaul or Pharsalia, but from the University of Wittenberg. In Hamlet, the seductions of the will are altogether overcome; duty is no longer a condition, or a vain effort, but a spontaneous and regular attitude. The obstacle against which it strives is not external to it, it is no inebriation of the senses; it is internal, the will itself in the dialectic of its becoming, in its passage from meditation to purpose and from purpose to action, in its becoming will, true, concrete, factual will.
Hamlet has with reason often been recognised as a companion and precursor of Brutus in Julius Caesar, a play which differs from the “historical tragedies,” more substantially even than Anthony and Cleopatra, which is restricted to the practical activity. Hamlet attains to a more lofty significance. Here too we find a tragedy of the will in a man whose ethical conscientiousness is not internally troubled, for he lives upon a sublime plane; and here too the obstacle arises from the very bosom of the will. Brutus differs from Hamlet, in that he comes to a decision and acts; but his action is accompanied with disgust and repugnance for the impurity with which its accomplishment must be stained. He reproves, condemns and abhors the political end towards which Caesar is tending, but he does not hate Caesar; he would like to destroy that end, to strike at the soul of Caesar, but not to destroy his body and with it his life. He bows reluctantly to necessity and with the others decides upon his death, but requests that honours should be payed to Caesar dead, and spares Anthony contrary to the advice of Cassius, because, as he says, he is a priest bound to sacrifice the necessary victim; but he is not a butcher. Melancholy dogs every step toward the achievement of his end. He differs here from Cassius, who does not experience like scruples and delicacy of feeling, but desires the end, by whatever means. He differs too from Anthony, who discovers at once the path to tread and enters it; cautious and resolute, he will triumph over him. He finds everywhere impurity: Cassius, his friend, his brother, behaves in such a way as to make him doubt his right to shed the blood of the mighty Julius, because, instead of that justice, which he has thought to promote and to restore by his act, he now sees only rapine and injustice. But if the spiritual greatness of Brutus shrouds him in sadness, it does not deprive him of the capacity for feeling and understanding human nature. His difference with Cassius comes to an end with his friend’s sorrow, that friend who loves and admires him sincerely, and yet cannot be other than he is, hoping that his friend will not condemn too severely his faults and vices, but pass them over in indulgent silence. The reconciliation of the two is sealed when Brutus reveals his wounded heart, as he briefly tells his friend of Portia’s death. He enfolds himself in his grief. Brutus is among those who have always meditated upon death and fortified themselves with the thought of it. His suffering is not limited to virtue forced into contamination; for he is haunted by doubt unexpressed. He feels that man is surrounded with mystery, the mystery of Fate, or, as we should say, with the mystery surrounding the future history of the world; he seems to be anxiously asking of himself if the way that he has chosen and followed is the best and wisest way, or whether some evil genius has not introduced itself into his life, in order to drive him to perdition? He hears at night the voice of the evil genius amid the sounds and songs that should give rest and repose to his agitated spirit. He prepares himself to face the coming battle, with the same invincible sadness. It is the day that will bring to an end the work begun on the Ides of March. He takes leave of Cassius, doubtful if he will ever see him again, saying farewell to him for ever:
“If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;
If not, why then, this parting was well made.”
O, if man could know the event of that day before it befell! But it must suffice to know that day will have an end, and that the end will be known. Mighty powers govern the world, Brutus resigns himself to them: they may have already judged him guilty or be about to do so.
Hamlet has generally been considered the tragedy of Shakespearean tragedies, where the poet has put most of himself, given us his philosophy, and with it the key to the other tragedies. But strictly speaking, Shakespeare has not put himself, that is to say his poetry, into Hamlet, either more or less than into any of the others; there is not more philosophy, as judge of reality and of life here than in the others; there is perhaps less, because it is more perplexed and vague than the others, and even the celebrated monologue (To be or not to be,) though supremely poetical, is irreducible to a philosopheme or to a philosophic problem. Finally, it is not the key or compendium of the other plays, but the expression of a particular state of the soul, which differs from those expressed in the others. Those who read it in the ingenuous spirit in which it was written and conceived, find no difficulty about taking it for what it is, namely the expression of disaffection and distaste for life; they experience and assimilate that state of the soul. Life is thought and will, but a will which creates thought and a thought which creates will, and when we feel that certain painful impressions have injured and upset us, it sometimes happens that the will does not obey the stimulus of thought and becomes weak as will; then thought, feeling in its turn that it is not stimulated and upheld by the will, begins to wander and fails to make progress: it tries now this and now that, but grasps nothing firmly; it is thought not sure of itself, it is not true and effective thought. There is, as it were, a suspension of the rapid course of the spirit, a void, a losing of the way, which resembles death, and is in fact a sort of death. This is the state of soul that Shakespeare infused into the ancient legend of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, on whom he conferred many noble aptitudes and gifts, and the promise or the beginning of a fervent life. He then interrupted and suspended Hamlet’s beginning of life, and let it wander, as though seeking in vain, not only its proper task, but even the strength necessary to propose it to himself, with that firmness which becomes and is, indeed, itself action. Hamlet is a generous and gentle youth, with a disposition towards meditation and scientific enquiry, a lover of the beautiful, devoted to knightly sports, prone to friendship, not averse to love, with faith in the human goodness and in those around him, especially in his father and mother, and in all his relations and friends. He was perhaps too refined and sensitive, too delicate in soul; but his life proceeded, according to its own law, towards certain ends, caressing certain hopes. In the course of this facile and amiable existence, he experienced, first the death of his father, followed soon after by the second marriage of his mother, who seems to have very speedily forgotten her first husband in the allurement of a new love. He feels himself in every way injured by this marriage, and with the disappearance of his esteem for his mother, a horrible suspicion insinuates itself, which is soon confirmed by the apparition of his father’s restless ghost, which demands vengeance. And Hamlet will, nay must and will carry it out; he would find a means to do so warily and effectually, if he had not meanwhile begun to die from that shock to his sentiments. That is to say, he began to die without knowing it, to die internally: the pleasures of the world become in his eyes insipid and rancid, the earth and the sky itself lose their colours. Everything that is contrary to the ideal and to the joy of life, injustice, betrayal, lies, hypocrisy, bestial sensuality, greed of power and riches, cowardice, perversity and with them the nullity of worldly things, death and the fearful unknown, gather themselves together in his spirit, round that horrible thing that he has discovered, the assassination of his father, the adultery of his mother; they tyrannise over his spirit and form a barrier to his further progress, to his living with that former warmth and joyous vigour, as indispensable to thought as it is to action. Hamlet can no longer love, for love is above all love of life; for this reason he breaks off the love-idyll that he had begun with Ophelia, whom he loved and whom in a certain way, he still loves infinitely, but as we love one dead, knowing her to be no longer for us. Hamlet can laugh no more: sarcasm and irony take the place of frank laughter on his lips. He fails to coordinate his acts, himself becoming the victim of circumstances, though constantly maintaining his attitude of contempt, or breaking out into unexpected resolves, followed by hasty execution.
Sometimes he still rises to the level of moral indignation, as in the colloquy with his mother, but this too is a paroxysm, not a coordinated action. Joy is needed, not only for love, but also for vengeance; there must be passion for the activity that is being exercised; but Hamlet is in such a condition that he should give himself the same advice as he gives to the miserable Ophelia—to get her to a nunnery and there practice renunciation and restraint. But he is not conscious of the nature of his malady, and it is precisely for this reason that he is ill; instead of combating it by applying the right remedy, he cultivates, nourishes and increases it. At the most, what is taking place within him excites his astonishment and moves him to vain self-rebuke and equally vain self-stimulation, as we observe after his dialogue with the players, and after he has heard the passion, fury and weeping they put into their part, and when he meets the army led by Fortinbras against Poland.
“I do not know
Why yet I live to say ‘This thing’s to do’;
Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means
To do’t. Examples, gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army, of such mass and charge,
Led by a delicate and tender prince;
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff’d,
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is miserable and unsure
To all that fortune death and danger dare
Even for an egg-shell.... O, from this time forth,
My thought be bloody or be nothing worth!”
Finally, he accomplishes the great vengeance, but alas, in how small a way, as though jestingly, as though it were by chance, and he himself dies as though by chance. He had abandoned his life to chance, so his death must be due to chance.
We too have termed the condition of spirit that ruins Hamlet, an illness; but the word is better applied to a doctor or a moralist, whereas the tragedy is the work of a poet, who does not describe an illness, but sings a song of desperate and desolate anguish, and so lofty a song is it, to so great a height does it attain, that it would seem as though a newer and more lofty conception of reality and of human action must be born of it. What was perdition for Hamlet, is a crisis of the human soul, which assumed so great an extension and complexity after the time of Shakespeare as to give its name to a whole historical period. Yet it has more than historical value, because, light or serious, little or great, it returns to live again perpetually.