Miranda
We might have deemed it impossible to go beyond Viola, Perdita, and Ophelia, as pictures of feminine beauty; to exceed the one in tender delicacy, the other in ideal grace, and the last in simplicity,—if Shakspeare had not done this; and he alone could have done it. Had he never created a Miranda, we should never have been made to feel how completely the purely natural and the purely ideal can blend into each other.
The character of Miranda resolves itself into the very elements of womanhood. She is beautiful, modest, and tender, and she is these only; they comprise her whole being, external and internal. She is so perfectly unsophisticated, so delicately refined, that she is all but ethereal. Let us imagine any other woman placed beside Miranda—even one of Shakspeare’s own loveliest and sweetest creations—there is not one of them that could sustain the comparison for a moment; not one that would not appear somewhat coarse or artificial when brought into immediate contact with this pure child of nature, this “Eve of an enchanted Paradise.”
What, then, has Shakspeare done?—“O wondrous skill and sweet wit of the man!”—he has removed Miranda far from all comparison with her own sex; he has placed her between the demi-demon of earth and the delicate spirit of air. The next step is into the ideal and supernatural; and the only being who approaches Miranda, with whom she can be contrasted, is Ariel. Beside the subtle essence of this ethereal sprite, this creature of elemental light and air, that “ran upon the winds, rode the curl’d clouds, and in the colors of the rainbow lived,” Miranda herself appears a palpable reality; a woman, “breathing thoughtful breath,” a woman, walking the earth in her mortal loveliness, with a heart as frail-strung, as passion-touched, as ever fluttered in a female bosom.
I have said that Miranda possesses merely the elementary attributes of womanhood, but each of these stand in her with a distinct and peculiar grace. She resembles nothing upon earth; but do we therefore compare her, in our own minds, with any of those fabled beings with which the fancy of ancient poets peopled the forest depths, the fountain or the ocean?—oread or dryad fleet, sea-maid, or naiad of the stream? We cannot think of them together. Miranda is a consistent, natural, human being. Our impression of her nymph-like beauty, her peerless grace, and purity of soul, has a distinct and individual character. Not only is she exquisitely lovely, being what she is, but we are made to feel that she could not possibly be otherwise than as she is portrayed. She has never beheld one of her own sex; she has never caught from society one imitated or artificial grace. The impulses which have come to her, in her enchanted solitude, are of heaven and nature, not of the world and its vanities. She has sprung up into beauty beneath the eye of her father, the princely magician; her companions have been the rocks and woods, the many-shaped, many-tinted clouds, and the silent stars; her playmates the ocean billows, that stooped their foamy crests, and ran rippling to kiss her feet. Ariel and his attendant sprites hovered over her head, ministered duteous to her every wish, and presented before her pageants of beauty and grandeur. The very air, made vocal by her father’s art, floated in music around her. If we can presuppose such a situation with all its circumstances, do we not behold in the character of Miranda not only the credible, but the natural, the necessary results of such a situation? She retains her woman’s heart, for that is unalterable and inalienable, as a part of her being; but her deportment, her looks, her language, her thoughts—all these, from the supernatural and poetical circumstances around her, assume a cast of the pure ideal; and to us, who are in the secret of her human and pitying nature, nothing can be more charming and consistent than the effect which she produces upon others, who never having beheld any thing resembling her, approach her as “a wonder,” as something celestial:—
Be sure! the goddess on whom these airs attend!
And again:—
What is this maid?
Is she the goddess who hath severed us,
And brought us thus together?
And Ferdinand exclaims, while gazing on her,
My spirits as in a dream are all bound up!
My father’s loss, the weakness that I feel,
The wreck of all my friends, or this man’s threats,
To whom I am subdued, are but light to me
Might I but through my prison once a day
Behold this maid: all corners else o’ the earth
Let liberty make use of, space enough
Have I in such a prison.
Contrasted with the impression of her refined and dignified beauty, and its effect on all beholders, is Miranda’s own soft simplicity, her virgin innocence, her total ignorance of the conventional forms and language of society. It is most natural that in a being thus constituted, the first tears should spring from compassion, “suffering with those that she saw suffer:”—
O the cry did knock
Against my very heart. Poor souls! they perished.
Had I been any god of power, I would
Have sunk the sea within the earth, or e’er
It should the good ship so have swallowed,
And the freighting souls within her;
and that her first sigh should be offered to a love at once fearless and submissive, delicate and fond. She has no taught scruples of honor like Juliet; no coy concealments like Viola; no assumed dignity standing in its own defence. Her bashfulness is less a quality than an instinct; it is like the self-folding of a flower, spontaneous and unconscious. I suppose there is nothing of the kind in poetry equal to the scene between Ferdinand and Miranda. In Ferdinand, who is a noble creature, we have all the chivalrous magnanimity with which man, in a high state of civilization, disguises his real superiority, and does humble homage to the being of whose destiny he disposes; while Miranda, the mere child of nature, is struck with wonder at her own new emotions. Only conscious of her own weakness as a woman, and ignorant of those usages of society which teach us to dissemble the real passion, and assume (and sometimes abuse) an unreal and transient power, she is equally ready to place her life, her love, her service beneath his feet.
MIRANDA.
Alas, now! pray you,
Work not so hard: I would the lightning had
Burnt up those logs, that you are enjoined to pile!
Pray set it down and rest you: when this burns,
’Twill weep for having weary’d you. My father
Is hard at study; pray now, rest yourself:
He’s safe for these three hours.
FERDINAND.
O most dear mistress,
The sun will set before I shall discharge
What I must strive to do.
MIRANDA.
If you’ll sit down,
I’ll bear your logs the while. Pray give me that,
I’ll carry it to the pile.
FERDINAND.
No, precious creature;
I had rather crack my sinews, break my back,
Than you should such dishonor undergo,
While I sit lazy by.
MIRANDA.
It would become me
As well as it does you; and I should do it
With much more ease; for my good will is to it,
And yours against.
MIRANDA.
You look wearily.
FERDINAND.
No, noble mistress; ’tis fresh morning with me
When you are by at night. I do beseech you,
(Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers,)
What is your name?
MIRANDA.
Miranda. O my father
I have broke your ‘hest to say so!
FERDINAND.
Admir’d Miranda!
Indeed the top of admiration; worth
What’s dearest to the world! Full many a lady
I have eyed with best regard: and many a time
The harmony of their tongues hath into bondage
Brought my too diligent ear: for several virtues
Have I liked several women; never any
With so full soul, but some defect in her
Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed
And put it to the foil. But you, O you,
So perfect and so peerless, are created
Of every creature’s best!
MIRANDA.
I do not know
One of my sex: no woman’s face remember,
Save, from my glass, mine own; nor have I seen
Mere that I may call men, than you, good friend,
And my dear father. How features are abroad
I am skill-less of: but, by my modesty,
(The jewel in my dower,) I would not wish
Any companion in the world but you;
Nor can imagination form a shape,
Besides yourself, to like of—But I prattle
Something too wildly, and my father’s precepts
Therein forget.
FERDINAND.
I am, in my condition
A prince, Miranda—I do think a king—
(I would, not so!) and would no more endure
This wooden slavery, than I would suffer
The flesh-fly blow my mouth. Hear my soul speak
The very instant that I saw you, did
My heart fly to your service; there resides,
To make me slave to it; and for your sake,
Am I this patient log-man.
MIRANDA.
Do you love me?
FERDINAND.
O heaven! O earth! bear witness to this sound
And crown what I profess with kind event,
If I speak true: if hollowly, invert
What best is boded me, to mischief! I,
Beyond all limit of what else i’ the world,
Do love, prize, honor you.
MIRANDA.
I am a fool,
To weep at what I am glad of.
FERDINAND.
Wherefore weep you
MIRANDA.
At mine unworthiness, that dare not offer
What I desire to give; and much less take,
What I shall die to want—But this is trifling:
And all the more it seeks to hide itself,
The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning;
And prompt me, plain and holy innocence!
I am your wife, if you will marry me;
If not I’ll die your maid: to be your fellow
You may deny me; but I’ll be your servant
Whether you will or no!
FERDINAND.
My mistress, dearest!
And I thus humble ever.
MIRANDA.
My husband, then?
FERDINAND.
Ay, with a heart as willing,
As bondage e’er of freedom. Here’s my hand.
MIRANDA.
And mine with my heart in it. And now farewell
Till half an hour hence.
As Miranda, being what she is, could only have had a Ferdinand for a lover, and an Ariel for her attendant, so she could have had with propriety no other father than the majestic and gifted being, who fondly claims her as “a thread of his own life—nay, that for which he lives.” Prospero, with his magical powers, his superhuman wisdom, his moral worth and grandeur, and his kingly dignity, is one of the most sublime visions that ever swept with ample robes, pale brow, and sceptred hand, before the eye of fancy. He controls the invisible world, and works through the agency of spirits: not by any evil and forbidden compact, but solely by superior might of intellect—by potent spells gathered from the lore of ages, and abjured when he mingles again as a man with his fellow men. He is as distinct a being from the necromancers and astrologers celebrated in Shakspeare’s age, as can well be imagined:46 and all the wizards of poetry and fiction, even Faust and St. Leon, sink into common-places before the princely, the philosophic, the benevolent Prospero.
The Bermuda Isles, in which Shakspeare has placed the scene of the Tempest, were discovered in his time: Sir George Somers and his companions having been wrecked there in a terrible storm,47 brought back a most fearful account of those unknown islands, which they described as “a land of devils—a most prodigious and enchanted place, subject to continual tempests and supernatural visitings.” Such was the idea entertained of the “still-vext Bermoothes” in Shakspeare’s age; but later travellers describe them as perfect regions of enchantment in a far different sense; as so many fairy Edens, clustered like a knot of gems upon the bosom of the Atlantic, decked out in all the lavish luxuriance of nature, with shades of myrtle and cedar, fringed round with groves of coral; in short, each island a tiny paradise, rich with perpetual blossoms, in which Ariel might have slumbered, and ever-verdant bowers, in which Ferdinand and Miranda might have strayed: so that Shakspeare, in blending the wild relations of the shipwrecked mariners with his own inspired fancies, has produced nothing, however lovely in nature and sublime in magical power, which does not harmonize with the beautiful and wondrous reality.
There is another circumstance connected with the Tempest, which is rather interesting. It was produced and acted for the first time upon the occasion of the nuptials of the Princess Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of James I. with Frederic, the elector palatine. It is hardly necessary to remind the reader of the fate of this amiable but most unhappy woman, whose life, almost from the period of her marriage, was one long tempestuous scene of trouble and adversity.
The characters which I have here classed together, as principally distinguished by the predominance of passion and fancy, appear to me to rise, in the scale of ideality and simplicity, from Juliet to Miranda; the last being in comparison so refined, so elevated above all stain of earth, that we can only acknowledge her in connection with it through the emotions of sympathy she feels and inspires.
I remember, when I was in Italy, standing “at evening on the top of Fiesole,” and at my feet I beheld the city of Florence and the Val d’Arno, with its villas, its luxuriant gardens, groves, and olive grounds, all bathed in crimson light. A transparent vapor or exhalation, which in its tint was almost as rich as the pomegranate flower, moving with soft undulation, rolled through the valley, and the very earth seemed to pant with warm life beneath its rosy veil. A dark purple shade, the forerunner of night, was already stealing over the east; in the western sky still lingered the blaze of the sunset, while the faint perfume of trees, and flowers, and now and then a strain of music wafted upwards, completed the intoxication of the senses. But I looked from the earth to the sky, and immediately above this scene hung the soft crescent moon—alone, with all the bright heaven to herself; and as that sweet moon to the glowing landscape beneath it, such is the character of Miranda compared to that of Juliet.
Footnotes
17 Lord Byron remarked of the Italian women, (and he could speak avec connaissance de fait,) that they are the only women in the world capable of impressions, at once very sudden and very durable; which, he adds, is to be found in no other nation. Mr. Moore observes afterwards, how completely an Italian woman, either from nature or her social position, is led to invert the usual course of frailty among ourselves, and, weak in resisting the first impulses of passion, to reserve the whole strength of her character for a display of constancy and devotedness afterwards.—Both these traits of national character are exemplified in Juliet—Moore’s Life of Byron, vol. ii. pp. 303, 338. 4to edit.
18 La sève de la vie, is an expression used somewhere by Madame de Staël.
19 Characters of Shakspeare’s Plays.
20 I must allude, but with reluctance, to another character, which I have heard likened to Juliet, and often quoted as the heroine par excellence of amatory fiction—I mean the Julie of Rousseau’s Nouvelle Héloïse; I protest against her altogether. As a creation of fancy the portrait is a compound of the most gross and glaring inconsistencies; as false and impossible to the reflecting and philosophical mind, as the fabled Syrens, Hamatryads and Centaurs to the eye of the anatomist. As a woman, Julie belongs neither to nature nor to artificial society; and if the pages of melting and dazzling eloquence in which Rousseau has garnished out his idol did not blind and intoxicate us, as the incense and the garlands did the votaries of Isis, we should be disgusted. Rousseau, having composed his Julie of the commonest clay of the earth, does not animate her with fire from heaven, but breathes his own spirit into her, and then calls the “impetticoated” paradox a woman. He makes her a peg on which to hang his own visions and sentiments—and what sentiments! but that I fear to soil my pages, I would pick out a few of them, and show the difference between this strange combination of youth and innocence, philosophy and pedantry, sophistical prudery, and detestable grossièreté, and our own Juliet. No! if we seek a French Juliet, we must go far—far back to the real Héloïse, to her eloquence, her sensibility, her fervor of passion, her devotedness of truth. She, at least, married the man she loved, and loved the man she married, and more than died for him; but enough of both.
21 Constant describes her beautifully—“Sa voix si douce au travers le bruit des armes, sa forme délicate au milieu de cet hommes tous couverts de fer, la pureté de son âme opposée leurs calculs avides, son calme céleste qui contraste avec leurs agitations, remplissent le spectateur d’une émotion constante et mélancolique, telle que ne la fait ressentir nulle tragédie ordinaire.”
22 Coleridge—preface to Wallenstein.
23 In the “Two Gentlemen of Verona.”
24 There is an allusion to this court language of love in “All Well that Ends Well,” where Helena says,—
There shall your master have a thousand loves—
A guide, a goddess, and a sovereign;
A counsellor, a traitress, and a dear,
His humble ambition, proud humility,
His jarring concord, and his discord dulcut,
His faith, his sweet disaster, with a world
Of pretty fond adoptious Christendoms
That blinking Cupid gossips.—Act i Scene 1
The courtly poets of Elizabeth’s time, who copied the Italian sonnetteers of the sixteenth century, are full of these quaint conceits.
25 Since this was written, I have met with some remarks of a similar tendency in that most interesting book, “The Life of Lord E. Fitzgerald.”
26 Juliet, courageously drinking off the potion, after she has placed before herself in the most fearful colors all its possible consequences, is compared by Schlegel to the famous story of Alexander and his physician.
27 Perhaps ’tis pretty to force together
Thoughts so all unlike each other;
To mutter and mock a broken charm,
To dally with wrong that does no harm!
Perhaps ’tis tender, too, and pretty,
At each wild word to feel within
A sweet recoil of love and pity.
And what if in a world of sin
(O sorrow and shame should this be true!)
Such giddiness of heart and brain
Comes seldom save from rage and pain,
So talks as it’s most used to do?
Coleridge.
These lines seem to me to form the truest comment on Juliet’s wild exclamations against Romeo.
28 “The censure,” observes Schlegel, “originates in a fanciless way of thinking, to which every thing appears unnatural that does not suit its tame insipidity. Hence an idea has been formed of simple and natural pathos which consists in exclamations destitute of imagery, and nowise elevated above every-day life; but energetic passions electrify the whole mental powers and will, consequently, in highly-favored natures, express themselves in an ingenious and figurative manner.”
29 The “Giulietta” of Luigi da Porta was written about 1520. In a popular little book published in 1565, thirty years before Shakspeare wrote his tragedy, the name of Juliet occurs as an example of faithful love, and is thus explained by a note in the margin. “Juliet, a noble maiden of the citie of Verona, which loved Romeo, eldest son of the Lord Monteschi; and being privily married together, he at last poisoned himself for love of her: she, for sorrow of his death, slew herself with his dagger.” This note, which furnishes, in brief, the whole argument of Shakspeare’s play, might possibly have made the first impression on his fancy. In the novel of Da Porta the catastrophe is altogether different. After the death of Romeo, the Friar Lorenzo endeavors to persuade Juliet to leave the fatal monument. She refuses; and throwing herself back on the dead body of her husband, she resolutely holds her breath and dies.—“E voltatasi al giacente corpo di Romeo, il cui capo sopra un origliere, che con lei uell’ arca era stato lasciato, posto aveva; gli occhi meglio rinchiusi avendogli, e di lagrime il freddo volto bagnandogli, disse;” Che debbo senza di te in vita più fare, signor mio? e che altro mi resta verso te se non colla mia morte seguirti? “E detto questo, la sua gran sciagura nell’ animo recatasi, e la perdita del caro amante ricordandosi, deliberando di più non vivere, raccolto a se il fiato, e per buono spazio tenutolo, e poscia con un gran grido fuori mandandolo, sopra il morto corpo, morta ricadde.”
There is nothing so improbable in the story of Romeo and Juliet as to make us doubt the tradition that it is a real fact. “The Veronese,” says Lord Byron, in one of his letters from Verona, “are tenacious to a degree of the truth of Juliet’s story, insisting on the fact, giving the date 1303, and showing a tomb. It is a plain, open, and partly decayed sarcophagus, with withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate conventual garden—once a cemetery, now ruined, to the very graves! The situation struck me as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as their love.” He might have added, that when Verona itself, with its amphitheatre and its Paladian structures, lies level with the earth, the very spot on which it stood will be consecrated by the memory of Juliet.
When in Italy, I met a gentleman, who being then “dans le genre romantique,” wore a fragment of Juliet’s tomb set in a ring.
30 Foster’s Essays
31 I have read somewhere that the play of which Helena is the heroine, (All’s Well that Ends Well,) was at first entitled by Shakspeare “Love’s Labor Won.” Why the title was altered or by whom I cannot discover.
32 i. e. I care as much for as I do for heaven.
33 New Monthly Magazine, vol. iv.
34 Percy’s Reliques.
35 i. e. canzons, songs
36 Percy’s Reliques, vol. iii.—see the ballad of the “Lady turning Serving Man.”
37 By this word, as used here, I would be understood to mean that inexpressible something within the soul, which tends to the good, the beautiful, the true, and is the antipodes to the vulgar, the violent, and the false;—that which we see diffused externally over the form and movements, where there is perfect innocence and unconsciousness, as in children.
38 i. e. In the story of the drama; for in the original “History of Amleth the Dane,” from which Shakspeare drew his materials, there is a woman introduced who is employed as an instrument to seduce Amleth, but not even the germ of the character of Ophelia.
39 In the Œdipus Coloneus
40 “And recks not his own read,” i. e. heeds not his own lesson.
41 Blackwood’s Magazine, vol. 11.
42 Act iii. scene 1.
43 Goëthe. See the analysis of Hamlet in Wilhelm Meister
44 The Iphigenia in Aulis of Euripides.
45 Goëthe
46 Such as Cornelius Agrippa, Michael Scott, Dr. Dee. The last was the contemporary of Shakspeare.
47 In 1609, about three years before Shakspeare produced the Tempest, which, though placed first in all the editions of his works, was one of the last of his dramas.
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