AN UNPRIZED MAID. SOME of us play-goers who have been most sensitive to Salvini's masterly interpretation of Lear have paid a certain penalty for the pleasure. We have suffered not merely that obvious drawback from the level greatness of the play taken as a whole involved in seeing only one part adequately represented. We have felt, also, at times, an appreciable hindrance in getting a just impression of the related values of the characters as Shakespeare conceived them. Salvini not only dwarfs the other actors, he dwarfs the other parts unduly; and one of these, Cordelia's, which suffers the most, we can least afford to have belittled. It is so vitally connected with the reasonableness of the play's general plan of action, and so singularly beautiful in itself, that we ought not to lose sight of it, even temporarily; certainly not without becoming conscious of the price we paid for its occultation in the glorious glamour which Salvini's power lends Lear. Of genius we are most exacting. We secretly believe it seems that it may accomplish the impossible. Certainly we ask the more of him who gives us much. We require an actor who has force enough to revivify the central figure of a great drama to passively act and impliedly reveal to us all that is grouped about that central figure. We expect him to show us in his own part the general character of all the others,-to create for our immediate sympathetic comprehension a personage acting and acted upon, in various proportionate degrees, by all the other personages and circumstances of the play. This Salvini does in Othello how miraculously! In his grave dignity when called before the Senate, we could see, without the intervention of any other actors or accessories, the whole imposing splendor and potency of the state of Venice. In his proud gratitude and in the tender love-light of his eyes when Desdemona declared her wifely devotion, we could feel, without the help of any masquerading lay-figure of an actress, the gracious womanly presence of "the gentle lady married to the Moor." Through all the pitiable struggles of his noble soul and in the bitter climax of its tigerish jealousy of love and honor, we could know well enough, without the aid of any insuffi cient heavy villain in the piece, what a lying demonic spirit was snaring the hero in its subtle meshes. In Othello, Salvini mirrors in his one rôle all the other parts; but in Lear, though he is every inch a king," he is not so compelling a magician. Desdemona is not hurt in the least by all our sympathy with Salvini's Othello; rather we see her through him in a kindlier light than that weak-minded fib she told about the handkerchief will bear us out in when we read by the book. But in Salvini's Lear, Cordelia's true-hearted nobleness and long-suffering love we miss somewhat the sense of in our over-wrought sympathy with the royal father. In that first scene where the king calls his daughters into the lists of the open court and baits them on with husbands and kingdoms for the prizes to a strange tongue-match of suborned love, the dignity and fondness of the royal father as Salvini acts it, draws our attention too much aside from the petulance and unreason which also characterizes Shakespeare's Lear, beside and in spite of this same admirable dignity and fondness. In consequence, Cordelia's part loses much of the consistency of its revolt against lip-service and all of its attractive loveliness. Can it be, perhaps, that Salvini himself has not so thorough a liking for Cordelia's reserved and self-respecting character as he has for Desdemona's more yielding and lessupright nature? It would not be strange if this were true, and it would help to account for the greater satisfaction we find in Salvini's Othello, and also for that revulsion from Cordelia and her cool sincerity, which in our kindling enthusiasm for Salvini we feel at once in his interpretation of the first scene of Lear. It is evident that the author of a recent magazine article has felt this and felt it strongly, even so far as to the confusion of her sober memory of Shakespeare. This author, in describing Salvini's characterization of Lear, says: "His own nature is exuberantly and demonstratively affectionate, and in presence of his whole court he asks his daughters who among them loves him best, simply for the delight of hearing their filial and graceful replies. From Regan and Goneril * Salvini's Lear in the Century for May. he AN UNPRIZED MAID. receives dutiful responses; then overflowing with paternal pride and love he turns to his darling and youngest child, the gentlest and meekest of the three, and receives a rebuff, discourteous and irreverent enough to affront even a modern and non-royal father: 'I love you according to my bond, neither more nor less, I am not yet married, but the first stranger who appears and claims me as his wife will obtain from me a greater meed of affection than you can possibly expect.'" Did Shakespeare's Cordelia indeed reply thus? Surely this strange paraphrase of her answer reminds us rudely of the few first words of "the unprized, precious maid." Let us get this speech of Cordelia's at first hand again. Let us speak the speech as Shakespeare pronounced it to us, a few sentences weighted with the internal sense and quick revelation of Cordelia's real character. In a thousand editions de luxe or de pauvreté, the words must shine with the same wholesome sincerity. Lear's first demand is a challenge to Cordelia's unbribed love; ***"Now our joy, Altho' our last, not least, to whose young love The vines of France and milk of Burgundy Strive to be interessed, what can you say to draw A third more opulent than your sisters?'' This palpable bribe Cordelia disdains. To this, according to Shakespeare, and not to the question, "who among his daughters loves him best," she answers: "Nothing, my Lord.' 666 Earlier, when Regan and Goneril pile up before the gaping court the wordy affirmation of their love, Shakespeare gives Cordelia two significant asides. While Goneril is carefully telling the assembly how much her love makes her 'breath poor and speech unable,'"-Cordelia asks herself, "What shall Cordelia speak?'"-and determines to "love, and be silent," and when Regan declares that she is made "of that self metal'" as her sister, and professes herself "an enemy to all other joys'" but her father's love, Cordelia exclaims again,"Then poor Cordelia ! And yet not so, since I am sure my love's 13 666 666 Unhappy, that I am,'"-protests Cordelia,-"I cannot heave my heart into my mouth. I love your majesty according to my bond; no more, nor less.' Mend your How! how! Cordelia. speech a little.'" (Why?)"Lest it may mar your fortunes.'' One could not blame Cordelia, now, if some inherited ready anger and arrogance should prompt her reply. We find, however, that hers is one of those rare purely-truthful natures whose yea is yea, and nay nay, who love measure and follow honesty at the expense of policy. 666 'Good my lord,- you have begot me, bred me, loved me; I Return those duties back, as are right fit, Obey you, love you, and most honor you.' These words weighed are strong enough, and Cordelia weighs hers, but they will not satisfy Lear. They are not prodigal enough. Cordelia also remembered Regan's extravagant and sweeping professions that she is an enemy to all other joys,' and ' alone felicitate'" in the king's love, and puts this shrewd question : 66 6 666 "Why have my sisters' husbands if they Haply when I shall wed That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry Half my love with him, half my care and We can see how this refreshing moderation and uncompromising honesty makes the exacting Lear furious, but we cannot see how it can justify the paraphrase of this speech quoted above. After this, Lear says: 666 'But goes thy heart with this?' "Cordelia. Ay, my good lord. "Lear. So young and so untender? "So young, my lord, and true,'" protests Cordelia; she will not accept the saying that she is untender, and she insists on being true. 666 'Let it be so,' cries Lear: 66 6 thy truth then be thy dower!' and thereupon he curses, casts off and dishonors her, so far as he can dishonor her, her truth is still her dower. This dower she insists on afterward when she desires the king to make known to France that it is 666 No unchaste action or dishonored step, That hath deprived me of your grace and favor, But even for want of that for which I'm richer, A still soliciting eye, and such a tongue, That I am glad I have it not, tho' not to have it Hath lost me in your liking.'" Cordelia is no patient Griselda. She has a saving self-respect that asserts itself again with a touch of captivating humor when Burgundy gives her his regrets that she must lose him for a husband. "Peace be with Burgundy,'"-says Cordelia 66 Since that respects of fortune are his love I shall not be his wife.' As for us, we will do well, like France, to find Cordelia "most rich, being poor, most choice, forsaken,'" and be grateful to this "unprized precious' martyr for truth's sake to those false gods, the loaves and fishes, which make bond-slaves enough of most of us. A character like Cordelia's is rare in Shakespeare, and rare enough in life. The more's the pity that when its main lines are so finely and firmly indicated as in this wonderful play of King Lear, we should not get at once an inspiring glimpse of its spiritual beauty and understand the firm and vital fiber of its relation to the moral motive and momentum of the play. "Whoever transports himself mentally into the period, place and circumstances, will not consider the wrath of Lear exaggerated. Only because of our own difficulty in laying aside the knowledge of Cordelia's true character which the later portions of the play reveal, do we here sympathize with her, and condemn the perfectly justifiable indignation of the aggrieved parent and monarch." Salvini may give us warrant for a view like this; does Shakespeare? If it is assumed that in this first act we get no indication of what manner of woman this is, then we are authorized in condemning Cordelia and sympathizing thoroughly "with the perfectly justifiable indignation of the aggrieved parent and monarch"; then Salvini is right in giving us so commanding a representation of royalty and fatherhood that we lose all sight of Lear's defects and the unreasonable and petty nature of his exactions, and witness with a just aversion the revolt of Cordelia's self-respecting integrity and self-honoring love. Surely if Cordelia's real character is only revealed in the last act, a surprise to everybody, then it is a very inconsistent character in itself and in its relation to Lear, and we have caught Shakespeare nodding in its portrayal. This may not be impossible. Is it true? Is Cordelia's real character only revealed in the later portions of the play? Take the book,-Shakespeare, like Cordelia, means his words, and see whether the dozen or two lines he gives Cordelia mean nothing in particular, or whether they do not mean to embody the expression of a quiet, womanly, true-hearted, self-respecting soul: one which promises to be not easily hoodwinked, to repay the truest loving, and to be depended upon if need be in the evil day that this first scene of the play forebodes. Salvini has received so much amply-merited praise for his interpretations of Shakespeare that we may excuse ourselves from any ungraciousness in looking for a sun-spot or two. If any of us who gratefully acknowledge his genius should discover on Cordelia's side of the account any foreign grain in the delicate balance of his King Lear, it may be assumed that it is not because we love Salvini less but The author before quoted, speaking of this that we love Shakespeare more. first scene of Lear, says: Charlota Porter ON THE IMBARRING" OF "CROOKED TITLES." "Imbar" has the authority (not lightly to be set aside by conservative criticism) of the four Folios. In the first and second it stands "imbarre," in the others imbar." The earliest Quartos, however, read, “imbace," to which I believe no satisfactory or conjectural significance has been attachedthe later quartos read "embrace." The Quartos also substitute "causes" for titles," possibly to avoid the repetition of the latter word from the second line of the extract cited. 66 gives and defends the disputed line as it stands in the later Quartos: Than amply to embrace their crooked causes." Subsequently, however, in Notes and Queries, 6 series, V. 243, for April 1, 1882, he quotes "a passage in Holinshed which has no reference to the reign of Henry V., but which Shakespeare probably had read,'So when he was possessed and not interessed in the same, he uncased the crooked conditions which he had covertly concealed, and in the end as by the sequele you shall see did pull shame and infamy upon himself.'" (Holinshed, Book V., ch. i., p. 553.) In view of this Vaughan suggests "Than amply to uncase their crooked causes," and argues that the "imbace" of the Quartos is a probable misprint for uncace, which he further takes to be a then common orthographical form of uncase. The latest critic, Kinnear, in his readable Cruces Shakespeariana, advocates unbar, following an unadopted suggestion of Steevens, and fortifies it by quoting from Cymbeline, V., iv. 8. : "By the sure physician, death, who is the key To unbar these locks The earliest critical editor, Rowe, changed which he compares with Hen. V, I, i. 86. the word to make bare in his first edition, but afterwards repented of his rashness and adhered to the Folio. Theobald, following Warburton, printed imbare, explained as laying open, making naked, exposing to view, a reading adopted by Dyce, "for want of a better as he candidly says. Knight reverted to the Folio reading "imbar," giving it the meaning of 'bar in, secure.' Schmidt, who accepts the folio form, explains it as, meaning to exclude,' and Hudson, reasoning in the same channel, attaches to it the meaning of 'to set aside.' The exegesis of Schmidt and Hudson seems untenable, for it would make Canterbury say in effect: The kings of France to this day hide themselves in a net of sophistry and subterfuge rather than openly (amply) exclude or set aside their own false titles.' "This," says W. A. Wright, "it would be too much to expect any claimant to do." "The severals and unhidden passages and gives to "unbar the same sense as to H. H. Vaughan, in his New Readings, When the context is carefully considered, it is, I think, reasonably evident that some meaning like Rowe's make bare, or Steevens' unbar as explained by Kinnear, is needful to make sense with "amply "a word which W. N. Lettsom somewhat petulantly pronounced to be as sheer nonsense as 'imbarre.'" W. A. Wright saw this clearly when he wrote: The previous line appears to give the clue to the real explanation. The kings of France, says the Archbishop, whose own right is derived only through the female line, prefer to shelter themselves under the flimsy protection of an appeal to the Salic law, which would exclude Henry's claim, instead of fully securing and defend 66 ing their own titles by maintaining that, though, like Henry's, derived through the female line, their claim was stronger than his." It has seemed somewhat strange to me that among all who have commented upon this passage, no one, so far as I know, has seen in the disputed phrase another illustration of Shakespeare's fondness for employing the language of heraldry on all pertinent occasions. The word "imbar" is not extant as a legitimate heraldic term, but constructively it is as regular as impale, and in an age when the written English language was fluctuating, Shakespeare may readily have coined it to express the idea of setting a bar upon the arms of France to conventionally express the nature and descent of a title. To a mind so keenly alive to the minute shades of meaning of phrases, the verb as clearly indicated the heraldic process and its result as impale denoted the division of an escutcheon per pale, that is, by a straight line down the middle. 66 The bar is one of the mystic heraldic charges" known as "ordinaries," always to be bounded by straight lines. It passes horizontally across the middle of the shield, and occupies about one-fifth of its surface. In ancient times, when the shield was actually borne by the knight as a bodily defense, the bar was probably a band of metal or colored wood (according as the shield itself were of colored material or metal) fastened to its surface, to denote some later title of descent than that expressed by the original ground of the shield. The significance of these superimposed "charges" is well shown. by the best known of them, the bend sinister, which is a band passing diagonally across the shield from left to right, and means that its holder is an illegitimate scion of the knightly house whose shield he carries. Remembering that the tar must be bounded by straight lines, the antithesis implied by the use of the epithet "crooked" to qualify the usurping titles of the reigning kings of France becomes evident. Their titles were inherently crooked, they could not be made straight, and used as a bar to conform to the requirement of the College of Arms, and to set them amply—that is, in the sight of all-bar-wise upon the escutcheon of France would have been to expose their falsity and manifest violation of one of the first canons of heraldry. Shakespeare's meaning seems to have been that the usurping kings of France, instead of boldly, or openly, attempting to make their incurably crooked title through the female descent straight, and placing it prominently on the royal arms as a heraldic bar to denote that their claim was stronger that Henry's, chose rather to take refuge behind a net or web of sophistry and deny that he had any title at all. The qualifying adverb, "amply," supports the heraldic interpretation of the disputed line. Shakespeare uses it elsewhere as meaning "evidently, openly, in the sight of all men "Val. The element itself, till seven years' heat, Shall not behold her face at ample view; But, like a cloistress, she will veiled walk " (TWELFTH NIGHT, I, i, 27.) Alvey A. Aide |