CHAPTER XIII CYMBELINE Johnson on the plot of Cymbeline-Imperfect sympathies-Truth of imagination, of emotion, and of fact-A critical disability -Shakespeare's magic-His work conditioned by the Elizabethan stage-The theme of Cymbeline-The glory of Imogen -Imaginary letter from Shakespeare to Johnson-Echoes in Cymbeline-The whole greater than the parts-Complexity of the plot. (1) AT the close of his commentary on Cymbeline Dr. Johnson thus dismisses the company : This play has many just sentiments, some natural dialogues, and some pleasing scenes, but they are obtained at the expense of much incongruity. To remark the folly of the fiction, the absurdity of the conduct, the confusion of the names and manners of different times, and the impossibility of the events in any system of life, were to waste criticism upon unresisting imbecility, upon faults too evident for detection and too gross for aggravation. Now if this be the last word upon Cymbeline, or even if it be rather more true than false, we may close our account with the play. But (though I should tremble to utter it in the presence of his ghost, and for more than one reason) I confess that to me the Doctor's unfaltering pronouncement tells little, and in a fashion not unlike that of the four Caledonians who, being at a party when a son of Burns was expected, and hearing Charles Lamb say that he wished it were the father instead of the son, started up at once to inform him. that "that was impossible, because he was dead." The essay in which Lamb tells this simple anecdote is headed "Imperfect Sympathies." I ask my readers to fix that term in their minds for a moment, while I attempt to establish and illustrate a principle of criticism, lacking which we shall be at a loss to understand, as a fortiori to enjoy, a vast deal of good literature, and this Tragedie of Cymbeline in especial. There is a truth of imagination; there is a truth of emotion also; as well as a truth of fact. The first two are often found united, and all three not seldom. Yet all three are distinct; and he alone can be a critic of the first order who by fortunate gift of birth, or of training, has a sense responsive to all three indifferently, whether he catch them together or apart. Let me give an illustration or two, and begin with one almost childish: Once upon a time there lived a man immensely rich, who possessed town-houses and country-houses, retinues of servants, chariots, horses in stable-everything apparently, in short, that the heart could desire. But all this was marred by his beard, a bright blue in colour, at sight of which every woman felt a desire to scream. Now this, of course, is untruthful to fact; historically unsound because lacking name, date, and evidence ; scientifically (one would say) impossible; and, on top of this, offensive to credulity as soon as we reflect that a man so rich had money enough to dye his beard, if scruples of caste or religion forbade his buying a razor. But, the imaginative truth once granted (as childhood grants it with scarcely an effort), the rest of the story of Bluebeard at once becomes real. All of us, in our day, have felt the agony of Fatima as she calls up the stairway to the tower, "Sister Anne! Sister Anne, do you see anyone coming?" For another illustration, let me adduce one of the loveliest, most familiar stanzas in our poetry : Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, The same that oft-times hath Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Upon that, which all catholic taste admits to express the all but inexpressible heart of loveliness, Sir Sidney Colvin remarks: In this joy he [Keats] remembers how often the thought of death had seemed welcome to him, and thinks it would be more welcome now than ever. The nightingale would not cease her song-and here, by a breach of logic which is also, I think, a flaw in the poetry, he contrasts the transitoriness of human life, meaning the life of the individual, with the permanence of the song-bird's life, meaning the life of the type. In other words, nightingales (when you choose to think of it) have even shorter lives than men. True, in fact--in fact profoundly true! To what nonsense, viewed thus, it reduces Callimachus' famous lines, thus rendered by Cory: They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead; They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed. I wept as I remembered how often you and I Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky. And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest, Death can and in fact does, of course, claim nightingales as well as men. Yet was Victor Hugo talking like a fool when he wrote "The flowers, the flowers last always"? Hugo, Callimachus, Keats are all uttering a truth outside mere truth of fact: the same truth that Wordsworth utters more didactically in his farewell to the River Duddon: I thought of thee, my partner and my guide, I see what was, and is, and will abide. 'The function never dies." The nightingale lifts the same chant in this passing hour as was heard In ancient days of emperor and clown, and found a path through the sad heart of Ruth. The nightingale, dying, transmits the invariable secret. We, restless men, exhaust ourselves individually with the weariness, the fever, and the fret," and individually pass to dust. The nightingale sings on.-That, I submit, is a "truth of emotion.” But let us take any poetry. If we press the Odyssey, Paradise Lost, even The Ring and the Book, as if we press Blue Beard, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood-they are almost always true to imagination, usually to emotion, seldom to fact. Circe in fact no more turned the companions of Odysseus into swine than Cinderella's godmother turned the pumpkin into a gilt coach; Satan never addressed that speech of his to the fiends in council: at any rate there were no reporters present. And likely enough Mammon followed Belial with a plain "Hear, hear"; content, like many another eminent financier, to let a clever youngster do his sophistry for him. Nay, if we take The Faerie Queene or The Pilgrim's Progress, or any great allegory, ancient or modern, what have we but a naked, deliberate, and successful attempt to inculcate truth by narrating that which never happened and never could happen? From the allegorist, deliberately didactic, let us pass to the lyrical poet in his ecstasy of love; take Ben Jonson's See the Chariot at hand here of Love, Wherein my Lady rideth! Each that draws is a swan or a dove, And well the car Love guideth. As she goes, all hearts do duty |