On Some of Shakespeare's Minor Characters

— The great characters in Shakespeare are so large and heroic, with lofty mien, and of such generous amplitude and grand stature, that in our human weakness anti pettiness we are ashamed to approach them. What man does not retreat behind a piece of scenery when he hears a flourish within, and knows that Othello is coming on, surrounded by his veterans, sunburnt, bearded, and scarred by Turkish scimeters ? Who dare jostle the noble Brutus, or cross the path of Caius Marcius Coriolanus ? Are we, in our innocent simplicity, worthy to greet the lady Imogen, or to pick flowers with Perdita? Are our souls so white that we will front the look of Portia, Cato’s daughter ? What roisterer would make bold to drink with Antony ? What high-reaching man dare unbosom his puny ambitions to the gaze of Lady Macbeth ?

These noble persons, the proud possessions of humanity, have the privilege of living aloof from the throng. We shall not press them, content to gaze at them from afar. But there are a great many people in Shakespeare like ourselves, common men and women, who eat and sleep, and do not ruffle the surface of the great emotional oceans of life. Like them, on our stage, we do not affect the plot ; we come on, as they do, while the great ones are taking breath. Our parts can be played by the supernumeraries, but, like these minor characters, we show the medium in which the heroes live, the atmosphere they breathe. We are the inches that serve to measure their cubits. By meeting these common people from scene to scene, the spectators gather courage to go on through the play, and in the fifth act to peer at the mighty quarry or to listen to the wedding bells.

Chief among these minor personages are our Roman friends, 1st cit., 2d cit., 3d cit. Does Shakespeare rail at democracy ? Is he one of your natural aristocrats ? Are these citizens mere dolls ? Are they not rather the very people who, free, equal, and nobly pursuing their own happiness, stuff our city directories and puff us out into this commanding nation ? They are fickle ; but, on any basis of intellectual equation, what is loyalty but conservatism, what is conservatism but dullness, what is dullness but the one failing which the d-v-l lacks ? Fickleness is but one aspect of a readiness to accept new truths ; it is the frequent sloughing off old views, the just attention to what is going on in the world. These Roman plebeians are illogical ; but logic is a dangerous thing : it destroyed Athens, it ruined Florence ; its absence is the inner force of the expansive power of England, and the prop of her great empire. Though they are fickle and illogical, they are by no means unintelligent. Does not the 1st cit. see into Coriolanus at the very opening of the play ? 1st cit. to his fellows : “ I say unto you, what he hath done famously, he did it to that end [to pay himself with being proud] : though soft-conscienced men can be content to say it was for his country, he did it to please his mother and to be partly proud ; which he is, even to the altitude of his virtue.”

The great-great-grandchildren of these, the citizens in Julius Cæsar, lived in very troublous times. Faction, anarchy, despotism, hemmed them in. The wisest men did not know what to do. There was then no “party of moral ideas,” such as we have had the good fortune to possess for thirty years and more. The only prudent course was to get on the winning side. In truth, the citizens are much misrepresented by the tribunes, who, feeling the immediate effect of popular variability, take gloomy views of their characters. See how responsive they are, how emotional, how quick to set the act upon the heels of their intent. Brutus speaks, and they listen, they follow his discourse, they yield assent, they approve and are ready for action. Antony delivers his oration. What would happen on Boston Common or in Union Square? Who would open his ears to hear, who would bring a plastic mind, who would succumb to argument and persuasion ? These men listen to Antony, they catch his feelings, they see with his eyes, they soften their hardened hearts, they reverse their determination ; they are inconsistent, and are not ashamed.

These fellows are more interesting than attractive, but there are others who make larger demands upon our sympathies. Take from the shelf, for instance, your King Richard II. “ The life and death of King Richard II.” How quiet the room becomes : the lamp burns gently, the flame no longer flickers, the shadow of the shade stiffens and is still. Do kings live and die in the brief compass of five acts ? Is it so indeed ? Read the list of persons represented. Their great English names swell out the tragedy. But is there anything more in accord with the contemptuous disdain of Nature than this ? “ Bushy, Bagot, Green, creatures to King Richard.” Creatures to the King ! The appellation excludes them from the company of other men, God’s creatures. How it brands them ! Poor fellows, thrice they come on, dangling at the skirts of majesty, their creator.

Then comes the fall. Proud Bolingbroke, the king to be, doth uncreate Bushy and Green. Bagot fled to Ireland, and coming back to England, to save himself, did, at Bolingbroke’s instigation, accuse the lord Aumerle of treason. And then no more of Bagot. Thus end these three appendages to royal state ; lit up by brief candle-light, and then into the dark.

Robin Ostler is another that sticks in one’s memory. He used to tend the horses at the Inn in Rochester, not far from Gadshill. It was an excellent inn in his day, but thereafter things did not go well. In the stable the peas and beans were suffered to grow dank. The house itself dropped into uncleanliness. For one night, at least, neighbor Mugs and his fellow carrier were greatly annoyed by fleas. Robin was a frugal, prudent soul, possibly with a drop or two of Scotch blood in him. “ Poor fellow, never joyed since the price of oats rose ; it was the death of him.” (Henry IV. Part I. Act II. Sc. i.)

And Mugs and the other, how human they are ! While they are making ready to leave the yard at two o’clock in the morning, out comes another traveler, and asks them, each in turn, to lend him their lanterns, that he may see his gelding in the stable. One says, “ I know a trick worth two of that.” The other, “ Marry, I ’ll see thee hanged first.” Here are two poor carters, unlettered, ignorant of cities, and yet redolent of that cautious, man o’ the world policy, which ennobles men with solidity, broadcloth, sterling silver, and four per cents. It raises these poor carriers to the level of “ business men.” How the cubic contents of this wisdom contrasts with that old gaud of the vagrant, unsettled, parishless imagination, “ Thou shalt trust thy neighbor as thyself”! Their good sense is approved by the event, that touchstone among the successful. This traveler, the would-be borrower, was no other than a thief. And so wisdom is justified of her children ; priests, Levites, and carriers go their ways and prosper.

And what can be more charming than the fairies four who are sent to minister to Bottom, the weaver ? What do we wish, when we are oppressed by the feeling of an ass’s head upon our shoulders, but that some such breaths from fairyland should blow about our ears ? How could oblivion and fancy deck themselves in fairer imaginings ? The four are all obedience, “ loyal to the least wish of their Queen,” and when summoned to purge Bottom’s mortal grossness, what do they say? “Ready,” “And I,” “ And I,” “ Where shall we go ? ”

Who has not in

dreamed that his mistress’s thoughts but for a moment turn towards him ? He hears their tinkling voices call, “Hail, mortal ! Hail! ” And in the delicacy of his young dreams, his imagination dare not give these thoughts mortal shapes ; it only feels their exquisite presence. Then he plucks up courage to ask them who they are ; and his diffident fancies, true to the maiden’s modesty, answer him in masks and dominoes : “ We are Cobweb, Peasblossom, Mustardseed, and Moth.” And thus the springtime tends upon the lover’s state. (Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III. Sc. 1.)

How different is the field of Agincourt, where the sick English show their bulldog breeding. Here the French soldier, pauvre “ gentilhomme de bonne maison,” meets the valiant Pistol, and falls before “the whiff and wind of his dread sword.” What awful moments of uncertainty and agony he must have undergone while he watched the rolling of terrible eyes, and heard the rough English syllables !

“ Fr. Soldier. Est-il impossible d’eschapper la force de ton bras ?

“ Pistol. Brass, cur !

Thou damned and luxurious mountain goat, Offer’st me brass ? ”

The reader is spared the Frenchman’s fears, for he knows Pistol’s weakness for French crowns. But magnanimity is of no avail ; the order to kill all prisoners is given in a moment of alarm, and the French gentleman does not survive his dishonor. Yet he has a long progeny, being one of the first Frenchmen to illustrate the great truth, since then rammed home so forcefully by Mr. Punch, Captain Marryat, and other Englishmen of all sorts and sizes, that one Englishman is worth three Frenchmen any day in the week, and five on Sundays. (Henry V. Act IV, Sc. iv.)

There was another and a finer scene on this same battlefield. The Duke of York is cousin to the king, and stands high on the list of characters. He does not come upon the stage until Mountjoy, the French herald, has made his last demand for surrender, and is denied by Harry the King. Enter the Duke of York —

That is all. Exeter saw him and the Eail of Suffolk die together.

And so he died commending his service to his king. It is on this field of Agincourt, and many another its co-rival, that British valor in all its bloody fame stands like a tower, not without honor.

To many of our young minds this Duke of York was the preuX chevalier of soldiers. Few words, the leader of the van, and death in victory. So did our young men from Harvard in the civil war “keep together in their chivalry ; ” and their sons untried bear it in memory.

The doctor in Macbeth is another man who greatly provokes sympathy. Why did he not tend his apothecary shop, put leeches upon peasant arms, cull his simples on the village green, and range upon his shelves “ green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds ” ? What called him from his ointments, vases, and vials ? Why was he, rather than another, summoned to attend the Queen of Scotland ? Two nights he watched from even unto morn. Did he not sigh with relief that naught had happened? But his fate had written that he should see that royal spirit wrapped round in sinuous folds by the huge instinct of remorse, which does not yield to will,— great perturbation in nature,—a soul self-realizing, as if one, seeking to escape herself, should see nothing but herself, herself mirrored from every lifeless thing, stared at in sleep, watched by unsleeping dreams, crying for darkness and dear oblivion.

Was this not enough —to see Lady Macbeth walk by night ? Must he likewise attend Macbeth by day, — Macbeth grown lean on horrors, — and listen to despair, alive, awake, mutter the bitterness of death ? Poor man of medicines, yet he did well and gravely.

What is there in these strange compounds of clay that can create a hell or heaven ? How get they power to shed angelic radiance, or hurl up deeds that shift the steps of nature from her course, cause “ hunentings to be heard in the air,”and shriek “strange screams of death ” ? Poor doctor, perhaps he wore the mark of his strange experience to an early death : perhaps he lived to a serene old age, and taught his grandchild tales of hospitality and honor.

Thus these small personages step quickly o’er the stage, leaving their tracks behind them. Peace be with them.