Page:On Shakespeare, or, What You Will, Furness, 1908.djvu/21

1908.] we italicize a passage, are we not effecting with type what the French effect with their hands? Let no fair letter-writer curb herself hereafter in underscoring her words, but take cheer from the reflection that therein she is a disciple, at a long interval it is true, of Aeschylus and Sophocles, and enacts thereby the rôle of a classic Greek Chorus.

When Shakespeare disregarded the three Unities (Time, Place and Action), bear stoutly in mind that he did not do it through ignorance. No one knew better than he what they were and how essential they were deemed. He wrote two plays, The Tempest, and The Comedy of Errors, that are faultless in their observance of them; and another, The Winter’s Tale, in which they are ruthlessly flouted. In dealing with Time, he employed a device of consummate art, which, in the English drama, is, as far as I know, all his own, and is to be traced more or less clearly in every one, I think, of his plays, except the two I have just mentioned. Let me illustrate this magic art by two noteworthy examples:

Antonio gives his bond for three thousand ducats to be paid at the end of three months to Shylock. With the ducats thus gained, Bassanio starts that evening for Belmont. He arrives there the next morning and proceeds at once to the choice of the caskets. No sooner is the choice over than Solanio brings a letter from Antonio announcing that the three months are at an end, his bond to the Jew is forfeit, and that he must die under the Jew’s knife.

Again, in Othello, we have the time marked even to the days of the week;—the drama opens at night, and Othello and Desdemona start for Cyprus, and land there on Saturday; that night, in the revelry, Iago plies Cassio with wine and Cassio is disgraced. On Sunday morning he seeks Desdemona and begs her to intercede for him, which Desdemona does. In the evening of that day, Othello receives the Venetian ambassadors, and after the interview, on Sunday night, Desdemona is smothered; within thirty-six hours after her arrival in Cyprus.

When we listen to these plays on the stage, or even when we read them, we are the dupes of Shakespeare’s legerdemain. By the interposition of scenes, or of the secondary plot, by allusions to the flight of time, or by chance impressions of its flight, we see days and months glide by in The Merchant of Venice; and, in