Character of the Hero. It has been aptly remarked that the hero and heroine of this play, though in love, are not love-sick. Romeo, however, as we have seen, is something love-sick before his meeting with Juliet. His seeming love for Rosaline is but a matter of fancy, with which the heart has little or nothing to do. That Shakespeare so intended it, is plain from what is said about it in the Chorus at the end of the first Act, especially the two quaint lines, Now old desire doth in his death-bed lie, The same thing is worked out, with a higher grace of art and a much riper insight of nature, in the case of the lovesick Duke Orsino, of Twelfth Night, in his wordy, sighful quest of Olivia. There is evidently no soul-seizure nor any thing genuine about it; and Orsino himself knows it was only a mock-spell, as soon as he gets disenchanted. Accordingly Romeo's first passion is airy, affected, fantastical, causing him to think much of his feelings, to count over his sighs, and play with language, as pleased with the figure he is making; which shows that his thoughts are not so much on Rosaline, or any thing he has found in her, as on a figment of his own mind, which he has baptized into her name, and invested with her form. This is just that sort of love with which people often imagine themselves about to die, but which they always manage to survive, and that, without any further harm than the making them somewhat ridiculous. For when a man is truly in love, it is not his own health, but the health of another person, that he thinks about. Romeo's love is a thing infinitely different. A mere idolater, Juliet converts him into a true worshipper; and the fire of his new passion burns up the old idol of his fancy. Love works a sort of regeneration upon him his dreamy, sentimental fancy giving place to a passion that interests him thoroughly in an external object, all his fine energies are forthwith tuned into harmony and eloquence, so that he becomes a true man, with every thing clear and healthy and earnest about him. As the Friar suggests, it was probably from an instinctive sense that he was making love by rote, and not by heart, that Rosaline rejected his suit. The dream, though, has the effect of preparing him for the reality, while the contrast between them helps our appreciation of the latter. Hazlitt pronounces Romeo to be Hamlet in love; than which he could not well have made a greater mistake. In all that most truly constitutes character, the two, it seems to me, have nothing in common. To go no further, Hamlet is all consideration, Romeo all precipitancy: the one prefaces action with "large discourse"; the other acts first, and does his reflecting afterwards. With Hamlet, it is a necessity of nature to think; with Romeo, to love the former, studious of consequences, gets entangled with a multitude of conflicting passions and purposes; the latter, absorbed in one passion and one purpose, drives right ahead, regardless of consequences. It is this necessity of loving that, until the proper object appears, creates in Romeo an object for itself: hence the love-bewilderment in which he first comes before us. Which explains and justifies the suddenness and vehemence of his passion, while the difference between this and his fancy-sickness amply vindicates him from the reproach of inconstancy. Being of passion all compact, Romeo of course does not generalize, nor give much heed to abstract truth. Intelligent, indeed, of present facts and occasions, he does not however study to shape his feelings or conduct by any rules: he therefore sees no use of philosophy in his case, unless philosophy can make a Juliet; nor does he care to hear others speak of what they do not feel. He has no life but passion, and passion lives altogether in and by its object: therefore it is that he dwells with such wild exaggeration on the sentence of banishment. Thus his love, by reason of its excess, exalting a surbordinate into a sovereign good, defeats its own security and peace. Had he stayed himself more on general considerations of life; had he tempered his interest in the transient with a due thoughtfulness of the permanent; he would have been a wiser man indeed, but not so entire a lover. Yet there is a sort of instinctive rectitude in his passion, which makes us rather pity than blame its excess; and we feel that death comes to him through it, not for it. We can scarce conceive any thing more full of manly sweetness and gentleness than his character. Love is the only thing wherein he seems to lack self-control; and this is the very thing wherein self-control is least a virtue. He will peril his life for a friend, but he will not do a mean thing to save it; has no pride and revenge to which he would sacrifice others, but has high and brave affections to which he will not shrink from sacrificing himself. Thus even in his resentments he is in noble contrast with those about him. His heart is so preoccupied with generous thought, as to afford no room for those furious transports which prove so fatal in others: where their swords jump in wild fury from the scabbards, his sleeps quietly by his side: but then, as he is very hard to provoke, so he is very dangerous when provoked. For so it is when Tybalt would force him to a duel : Romeo still speaks him fair, bids him bethink How nice the quarrel is; and this he urges With gentle breath, calm look, knees humbly bow'd. He will not be stung out of his propriety by words of insult. But when he learns that the mad fire-spouter has killed his bold friend Mercutio, and is coming back in triumph, then all his manhood boils with irrepressible energy: Away to Heaven, respective lenity! And fire-eyed fury be my conduct now ! — Staying for thine to keep him company: Either thou, or I, or both, must go with him. In all this affair he plays the man, and all the parts of honour are held true to their just aim; thus exemplifying in perfect form the great law of heroism, that he who rightly fears to do wrong has nothing else to fear. Shakespeare has few passages in a higher pitch of eloquence than Romeo's soliloquy at the tomb; where we have a tempest of various emotions, love, sorrow, pity, regret, admiration, despair, all subdued and blended in a strain of the most plaintive, sweetly-solemn music : What said my man, when my betossed soul Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet, Have they been merry !—O, my love! my wife ! Depart again: here, here will I remain With worms that are thy chambermaids; O, here Will I set up my everlasting rest; And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh. With what vividness every article of this speech tells of the speaker's whereabout! All is surpassingly idiomatic of the spot, supremely characteristic of the man; not a thought, not an image, not a word, that could have come from any one but Romeo, or could have come from him at any other time, or in any other place. How prompt, how piercing, how kindling, his mental eye! seeing every thing just as it is, and yet, from his preternatural illumination of mind, looking every thing full of his own passion, and turning it into something rich and rare. For his essential grace of imagination, touched with new virtue, as it is, by the genius of the place, beautifies all the dishonours of the grave, and sweetens its very offences into dearness: he sees but the presence of his Juliet; and he knows no home, no paradise but that; and whatever shares in that is precious to his sense. Such is the strength, such the elevation, such the spiritualizing power of wedded love, as here depicted! |