seems to have more discretion than valor, the Archbishop sees himself in a precarious position. There he is at the head of a lot of rebels, and the king demands an accounting. His situation is full of risk; and possibly he may, after all, get what he wants if he does not seem to weaken and at the same time gives a mollifying reply. His answer is a masterpiece in the art of saying nothing; or, at most, of saying something in such an ingenious and evasive way that it amounts to nothing definite. All he makes plain is that he insists upon being received and listened to by the king himself. The Archbishop's reply, of thirty-five lines, is an interesting study in Shakespearean art. He really has nothing to say to Westmoreland, but he starts in promptly as if he had. It is a case of saying nothing and having to think it up as you say it. He begins with large. abstract views of human nature. He has a theological abstraction all ready and he feels his way along with great polemical ability. He gains time, while he is thinking, by making a side allusion to the way of King Richard's death, also vaguely and theologically considered; then he gets into other all-inclusive abstractions which approach a little nearer to his obscure grievance. Suddenly he decides that it is time to seem more pointed and definite; and so, as if all this had been a carefully weighed and profound introduction, he says, "Hear me more plainly." The inference is that he has already said it with scholarly depth. After this announcement of becoming more plain, he goes on in a way no less ruminative and abstract except that he does let it out that the king has not given him a proper hearing regarding certain things he has written down, as he says but the nature of which he does not mention. The Archbishop's whole course of procedure had been essentially politic from the first. The king was not according the church the influence it had been used to as a co-ordinate branch of the government; the Archbishop was being superseded in power by other noblemen; and this was brought to an issue through the churchman's attempts to get a hearing regarding the case of his brother. Now that things had miscarried in war and come to a most ticklish pass, the Archbishop had to temporize in talk and gently feel his way. He could hardly reply that the king himself was the cause of his grievance, and he did not wish to go too far in antagonizing Westmoreland. What sort of reply could he make? He had to be careful. Hence his assuming so fully the tone of a Christian and a wise and really peaceful prelate. Some critics have regarded this long rambling reply as a key to the Archbishop's character weak, vague-minded and verbose. This is a mistaken view. Such things must be looked at in the light of circumstances. To not say anything, and yet not to insult Westmoreland by refusing to talk to him; to keep up his character as a reverend, beneficent churchman and yet make it seem consistent with his present bloody calling; to seem not to weaken and yet hold the way open for a possible reconciliation with the king all this was a difficult thing to do. Altogether the Archbishop did very well. It behooved him to take a shrewd tack in view of the non-arrival of Northumberland's forces. The reply, however, does not mollify Westmoreland. He summarily and flatly denies that the Archbishop has been slighted in any way and that the other noblemen have come between him and the king. Westmoreland's answer is short and forceful. The Archbishop sees that he has got to seem more definite and at the same time put a better face on his present dubious position. Here he brings forth his final artistic answer to the question begun so long before. My brother general, the commonwealth, His referring to the commonwealth as his brother keeps up his beneficent Christian character. His statement that his brother in general has been cruel to his brother born, and his wording this as an "household" cruelty, is a most powerful and skilful turning of the issue in a direction which would excuse him in It is the "common his dangerous course. wealth" (not the king) that has done him wrong and needs chastisement; and he, the Archbishop, is righting an "household" (not a political) grievance. That is, it is the killing of his brother, a thing which struck him in his household, his very home, which has caused the Archbishop to take this armed action for justice. This is wonderfully well done. He could not recede from his real political motives in a shrewder way; it is entirely calculated to put his whole revolt in an excusable light and propitiate the king. In reading such passages we have to stop and remind ourselves that they are not history, not the actual words and scenes from the lives of men, but purely Shakespeare's invention. There is a touch of humor in the plight to which the Archbishop is brought in making "the commonwealth" his quarrel "in particular." But the venerable prelate had to make some show of getting down to the final particulars. The passage as a whole is very simple in structure, as can be seen by leaving out the parenthetical middle line. It may be regarded as abstract in its nature; but it is none the less simple as a sentence and definite in meaning. The punctuation of the Globe edition is as follows: My brother general, the commonwealth, Neilson (1906) in his Cambridge edition, has it differently. Note the period. My brother general, the commonwealth, I make my quarrel in particular. A comparison of these two modern texts will give the reader an idea of the confusion that still invests the passage after so many generations of criticism. Knight tried to make sense of it by dint of exclamation marks. How Clark and Wright could think that any lines had been "lost" I cannot imagine. There is nothing fragmentary about these well-connected lines. If Shakespeare had it at all different in acting, the change consisted merely in cutting out the parenthetic line, as its absence in the Folio would indicate. |