and Gonzalo has connection enough with the original crime CH. XIII. to feel his heart stirred by the final issue. Moreover, his personal character is one well fitted to be a stationary point in a moving drama of Providence. He is pre-eminently a man of an even temperament; good, but easy; like an ancient chorus, little elevated or depressed by the storms of circumstance. He has not been heroic to resist evil, though finessing to reduce by his practical compassion the suffering it i. ii. 161. entailed. But the changes of fortune do little to shake him; he does not forget his humour amid shipwreck, he maintains i. i; ii. i. laborious cheerfulness when depression is all around; treason scorns him as merely a 'spirit of persuasion,' yet will do ii. i. 235, murder rather than face his upbraidings.' He has elected to be a spectator of life, so much as may be, and not an actor; and he is valuable in the spectacle of Providence from the eye he has to its fine dramatic effects, while as to the action his place is that of one who stands at an equal distance from the prizes of life and from its crimes. 286 XIV. How 'LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST' PRESENTS SIMPLE A further Study in CH. XIV. The word TH HE title of this chapter contains the word 'humour.' The word is as varied and interesting as the thing it humour describes. Starting from a material signification, moisture,' it became early appropriated by the various forms of moisture within the human body-the blood, the phlegm, the bile. In this connection it encountered the theory of mediaeval physiology, which made the particular tempers and dispositions of men dependant upon the preponderance of one or other of these juices of the body: if a man was 'phlegmatic' in disposition, it was because he had too much phlegm in him, bright (arterial) blood would make him 'sanguine,' and dark (venous) blood 'melancholy' (or black-juiced). It was then an easy transition for men's 'humours' to mean the bent of their individual characters, and a 'humourist' was a painter of character. But these individualities of character in men are a leading source of the ludicrous as the north-country proverb puts it, 'there's nought so queer as folk.' Hence the word 'humour' widens, to include the whole range of the ludicrous. But again, such a wide range must invite fresh specialisation, and a specialisation has taken place which I know not how to describe, unless by calling humour the human interest in the ludicrous, distinguished in the clearest manner from wit, CH. XIV. with its cold intellectual brightness. In this final sense of humour the ludicrous can appear in happy combination with every passion of the human heart, the tragic and pathetic not excepted, and the humour of Dickens and Thackeray is often more nearly allied to tears than to laughter. as the Shakespeare illustrates every phase and variety of humour: a complete analysis of Shakespeare's humour would make a system of psychology. I have here to deal with only a single one among its countless varieties, and one which is intelligible enough. Humour is a complete solvent to every form of Humour affectation. It is a more subtle foe to unnaturalness than solvent of satire itself, because satire is on the face of it hostile: Affectation. humour may be keenly alive to the ludicrous even in that with which it is in sympathy. Satire is the wind in the fable, and may be met by resistance: humour is the sunshine which succeeds by getting the traveller himself on its side. Humour is thus the great vindicator of the natural; it is an exquisite perception of the normal in human affairs; it is common sense etherealised; the readiness with which it is roused by every unreasonable excess constitutes it a sort of comic nemesis. The special interest which dominates the This the play Love's Labour's Lost is the bringing of humour into Central Idea of contact with its antipathetic, with some train of unnatural the play. circumstances, or the various artificial conventionalities of its age: these are, by the mere contact, exposed and shattered. Affectation The unnaturalness to be exposed consists, first, in a forced Main and unnatural social regimen, to which the king and his friends have bound themselves by oath: attacked: CH. XIV. This artificial life prescribed by authority produces timeserving and hypocritical imitation amongst lesser personages, and we have an underplot of Don Armado, who, having discovered a man violating the royal edict by being found in company with a woman within the precincts of the court, shows his zeal by sending the man to the king for punishment, while of the woman (who is a beauty) he undertakes the custody himself. There are further various conventionalities of the age, introduced for incidental effects. One is the euphuism of this Armado. He addresses the king in Lesser Affectations ex posed: Euphuism, his letter: i. i, ii. Great deputy, the welkin's vicegerent and sole dominator of Navarre, my soul's earth's god, and body's fostering patron. The circumstances under which he discovered the guilty pair, were that besieged with sable-coloured melancholy, I did commend the blackoppressing humour to the most wholesome physic of thy health-giving air. When he has had time to make acquaintance with the pretty peasant girl who is his captive, he affects the very ground, which is base, where her shoe, which is baser, guided by her foot, which is basest, has trod. For a second conventionality, word-play and pedantry have their representative in HoloPedantry, fernes. In his extempore epitaph on the deer, he 'something affects the letter, for it argues facility': iv. ii. 58. v. i. 18. The preyful princess pierced and prick'd a pretty pleasing pricket ; If sore be sore, then L to sore makes fifty sores one sorel. iv. ii. &c.; This effect is doubled by the addition of the curate, Sir Nathaniel, who follows Holofernes at an admiring distance, and takes out his tablets to note down his expression 'peregrinate,' as applied to Don Armado. This last is an illus tration of another affectation attacked, the striving after CH. XIV. unusual and at that time new words. Armado employs Costard to carry a letter, and gives him something for Words. ' remuneration': Costard. Now will I look to his remuneration. Remuneration! O, that's the Latin word for three farthings: three farthings- -remuneration.—'What's the price of this inkle?'—' One penny.'—' No, I'll give you a remuneration': why, it carries it. . I will never buy and sell out of this word. Biron comes up and accosts him, and sends him on a similar errand: There's thy guerdon: go.' Novelty in Costard. Gardon, O sweet gardon! better than remuneration, a iii. i. 136– 'levenpence farthing better: most sweet gardon! I will do it, sir, in 174. print. Gardon! Remuneration! ous attack It is quite in accordance with humour, as distinguished Humorfrom satire, that it should to some extent sympathise with not inconwhat it is laughing at; and no one can rise from a perusal sistent with of Love's Labour's Lost without feeling that the dramatist is sympathy. himself, in moderation, a euphuist at heart. Biron is represented as the antagonist of excess in the king's circle; yet Biron when soliloquising, and therefore under no control from his fellows, is found to indulge in sustained hairsplitting. The king he is hunting the deer; I am coursing myself: they have pitched a toil; I am toiling in a pitch,-pitch that defiles: defile! a foul word. Well, set thee down, sorrow! for so they say the fool said, and so say I, and I the fool: well proved, wit! By the Lord, this love is as mad as Ajax: it kills sheep; it kills me, I a sheep: well proved again o' my side! Even when the play at its close turns serious, the euphuistic strain has still a place, and a formidable exhibition of this elaborate style is offered by Biron as 'plain words.' Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief; And by these badges understand the king. For your fair sakes we have neglected time, Play'd foul play with our oaths: your beauty, ladies, iv. iii. 1. v. ii. 763. |