Part 27 (1/2)

”Tis well you offer it behind her back, The ould make else an unquiet house”

The blunder is monstrous; not only is the friend prepared to sacrifice all he possesses, including his wife, to save his benefactor, but the friend's friend is content to sacrifice his wife too for the same object Shakespeare then in early manhood was accustomed to put friendshi+p before love; we must find some explanation of what seems to us so unnatural an attitude

In the last scene of ”The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” which is due to a later revision, the sonnet-case is emphasized And at this time Shakespeare has suffered Herbert's betrayal As soon as the false friend Proteus says he is sorry and asks forgiveness, Valentine, another impersonation of Shakespeare, replies:

”Then I aain I do receive thee honest: Who by repentance is not satisfied, Is nor of heaven nor earth, for these are pleas'd; By penitence the Eternal's wrath's appeased; And that my love ive thee”

This incarnation of Shakespeare speaks of repentance in Shakespeare's most characteristic fashi+on, and then coolly surrenders the woman he loves to his friend without awhether the woman would be satisfied with the transfer The words admit of no misconstruction; they stand four-square, not to be shaken by any ingenuity of reason, and Shakespeare supplies us with further corroboration of them

”Coriolanus” ritten fully ten years after ”The Merchant of Venice,”

and long after the revision of ”The Two Gentlemen of Verona” And yet Shakespeare's attitude at forty-three is, in regard to this matter, just what it was at thirty-three When Aufidius finds Coriolanus in his house, and learns that he has been banished froainst his countrymen, he welcomes him as ”more a friend than e'er an enemy,” and this is the way he takes to show his joy:

”Know thou first, I loved the h'd truer breath; but that I see thee here, Thou noble thing! more dances my rapt heart Than when I first my wedded mistress saw Bestride my threshold”

Here's the saance; the same insistence on the fact that the ht in the friend What does it mean? When we first find it in ”The Merchant of Venice” it ive the reader pause; in ”The Two Gentlemen of Verona”

it surprises us; in the sonnets, acco expression of tender affection for the friend, it brings us to question; but its repetition in ”Coriolanus” must assure us that it is a mere pose Aufidius was not such a friend of Coriolanus that we can take his protestation seriously The arguument to Shakespeare: a part of the ordinary furniture of his mind: it is like a fashi+onable dress of the period--the wearer does not notice its peculiarity

The truth is, Shakespeare found in the literature of his time, and in the h appreciation of friendshi+p, coupled with a corresponding disdain for love as we moderns understand it In ”Wit's Commonwealth,” published in 1598, we find: ”The love ofcommon and of course, but the friendshi+p of man to man, infinite and immortal” Passionate devotion to friendshi+p is a sort of mark of the Renaissance, and the words ”love” and ”lover”

in Elizabethan English were commonly used for ”friend” and ”friendshi+p”

Moreover, one et that Lyly, whose euphuistic speech affected Shakespeare for years, had handled this saives up his love to his rival, Apelles

Shakespeare, not to be outdone in any loyalty, sets forth the same fantastical devotion in the sonnets and plays He does this, partly because the spirit of the time infected him, partly out of sincere adine, out of self-interest It is pose, flunkeyism and the hope of benefits to come and not passion that inspired the first series of sonnets

Whoever reads the scene carefully in ”Much Ado About Nothing,” cannot avoid seeing that Shakespeare at his best not only does not minimize his friend's offence, but conderession is in the stealer”

And in the sonnets, too, in spite of hih the snobbish and affected excuses

”Ay ht'styouth, Who lead thee in their riot even there Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth, Hers, by thy beauty te false to me”

Shakespeare was a sycophant, a flunkey if you will, but nothing worse

Further arguest thelass house with a score of curious eyes watching everything he did and with as many ears pricked for every word he said; but this foul accusation was never even suggested by any of his rivals In especial Ben Jonson was always girding at Shakespeare, now satirically, now good-humouredly Is it not manifest that if any such sin had ever been attributed to hiiven the suspicion utterance?

There is a passage in his ”Bartholomew Fair” which I feel sure is meant as a skit upon the relations we find in the Sonnets In Act V, scene iii, there is a puppet-show setting forth ”the ancient modern history of Hero and Leander, otherwise called the Touchstone of true Love, with as true a trial of Friendshi+p between Damon and Pythias, two faithful friends o' the Bankside” Hero is a ”wench o' the Bankside,” and Leander swims across the Thas, and abuse each other violently, only to finish as perfect good friends

”_Damon_ Whore-master in thy face; Thou hast lain with her thyself, I'll prove it in this place

_Leatherhead_ They are whore-masters both, sir, that's a plain case

_Pythias_ Thou lie like a rogue

_Leatherhead_ Do I lie like a rogue?

_Pythias_ A pimp and a scab