effectual: Othello's pang at his first stab (iii. 3, 35) is not less sharp than the heart's wound of young Romeo by the first shaft from Juliet's eyes. The dramatist is very well aware that the first suggestion commonly works more slowly he makes Iago say—

'Dangerous conceits are, in their natures, poisons,

Which at the first are scarce found to distaste,

But with a little act upon the blood

Burn like the mines of sulphur."

But his poison must work swiftly; inflammatory insinuations must be accumulated and compressed so as to force the passion at once into a blaze: before an hour is over, Iago exclaims in agony

'Not poppy, nor mandragora,

Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,

Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owedst yesterday."

Hamlet's action is tempered by subsequent reflections, but his desire for revenge attains its utmost vehemence at the first supernatural solicitation: he at once passionately vows to wipe from his memory every record but the ghost's commandment. Macbeth does not proceed instantly to murder Duncan ; but the confirmation of part of the promise of the witches immediately raises the terrible suggestion

"Whose horrid image doth unfix his hair

And make his seated heart knock at his ribs,
Against the use of nature."

The great stages of the growth of passion are indicated in Shakespeare's dramas with all the power of his genius, but the development proceeds with fiery vehemence. Slight and stealthy development belongs to the domain of the novelist.

VI. THE TRANQUILLISING CLOSE OF HIS TRAGEDIES.

I have already drawn attention (p. 380) to the presence of Destiny or Fortune as an impelling or thwarting influ

ence in Shakespeare's dramas. In all his tragedies the influence of this mighty World-power on the concerns of men is more or less suggested. Romeo takes refuge in death from its persecutions: "O, here," he cries at the tomb of Juliet

"O, here

Will I set up my everlasting rest,

And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh."

Before the battle of Philippi, when even Cassius begins partly to credit things that do presage, Brutus, who in the end prefers leaping into the pit to tarrying. till he is pushed, is resolute to hold out while any hope remains

"Arming himself with patience

To stay the providence of some high powers
That govern us below."

Macbeth at first is disposed to commit himself to the control of Chance ::

"If Chance will have me king, why Chance may crown me, Without my stir."

And his wife sees the hand of Fate in the half-fulfilled predictions of the witches and the entrance of Duncan under her battlements. The bastard Edmund ridicules the excellent foppery of the world in making guilty of our disasters the sun, moon, and stars; but later in the play old Kent can find no other satisfactory way of accounting for the cruelty of Goneril and Regan, and the kindness of Cordelia :

"It is the stars,

The stars above us, govern our conditions."

Othello exclaims of the supposed treachery of Desde

mona :

"'Tis destiny unshunnable as death."

And when he calls to mind his prowess in happier days, cries :

"O vain boast!

Who can control his fate?"

The magnanimous Antony rises superior to the enmity of Fate when his soldiers are lamenting round him, he says to them :

"Nay, good my fellows, do not please sharp Fate
To grace it with your sorrows: bid that welcome
Which comes to punish us, and we punish it
Seeming to bear it lightly.”

The thought of inevitable Destiny, iron Fate, is a great tranquilliser, and rolls over tragic catastrophes like the calm grandeur of stars after a storm. When our minds are fatigued by the spectacle of horrors, or poignant griefs, or violent struggles of fatal issue, this thought unfolds itself to soothe the tumult. We subdue the keen agitation of particular calamities by fixing our eyes on the calm majesty of the irresistible forces of the universe: we take some part of the disturbing culpability of individual agents off their shoulders, and lay it on the Stars, dread agents equally above our love and our hatred. Before the awful magnificence of their doings, our fierce detestation of individual malice is subdued, and the sorrows of the individual lose their sharpness merged in the sorrows of mankind.

The power that overhangs Shakespeare's tragedies appears also in the aspect of an inexorable and relentless Justice, blindly dealing out the punishment of death to all who are wilfully or accidentally brought within the sweep of her sword. Not the slightest culpability is left unavenged. None remain alive at the end who have been so intimately mixed up with the chief victims that their survival would chafe our sense of justice and vex our meditations on the impartial rigour of the Destinies. Not one false step within the tragic circle can be withdrawn. Conscious or unconscious, intentional or unintentional, all com

plicity is fearfully punished. We ask what poor Cordelia had done that she should perish untimely; and Justice points to her wayward refusal to humour the exacting irritability of her doting old father. Ophelia? She was thrust for a moment by the wretched rash intruding Polonius between Hamlet and his revenge: for one moment she was the innocent tool of the guilty, and though her sad fate was avenged on Hamlet, she could not escape. Consider how you should have felt had Cordelia survived Lear or Ophelia survived her father, her brother, and her lover, and you will recognise the dramatic justice of involving them in the general ruin of their friends and enemies. The fate of Desdemona is too harrowing if we miss the completeness of the dramatist's design in the outlines of her character. In the first frenzy of our grief and anger, our thoughts run fiercely towards revenge. We do not regret the death of Emilia, remembering that she had been guilty of stealing the fatal handkerchief. We behold with savage satisfaction the remorse of Othello, and his desperate retribution on himself. We exercise our ingenuity in devising tortures for Iago, the fiendish contriver of all the mischief. Then when justice has been surfeited, and the awful question-Who can control his fate? rolls its starry grandeurs over the fatigued spirit, we revert to the life of the victim, and in that mood we recognise a sinister influence even in the stars of poor Desdemona. She was not a pale creature of colourless blood, framed for a long unruffled life. Her nature was capable of the intemperate passion that leads too surely to tragic consequences. That passionate love of hers for the warlike Moor, which seemed so monstrous and unnatural to her father, and which was construed so craftily by Iago, was too immoderate to be innocuous: "such violent delights have violent ends." The powers that gave her the heart to slight men of her own complexion and degree and fix her affections on a Moor, had destined her to unhappiness. Remove this vicious mole of nature from Desdemona, leave her a cold pattern of propriety reserved

to her lover and obedient to her parents, and you find it much more difficult to quell your uneasiness at the crushing of such a flower under the wheel of Destiny. The vicious mole is small in proportion to the retribution: but the fact that she was in a measure, however faint, accessory to her own ruin, blends with other mitigations of the final horror.