Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/237

222 When all purpose of ambition is at an end, and even the chief object of it lost, its instigations are no longer predominent in the poor woman's heart; in the prostrating grief she now endures there is no thought of the lost kingdom ; one monster grief, like Aaron's rod, devours all smaller ones; there is from

henceforth only one thought, one feeling, one mental object, one fixed idea, that her son is for ever lost. King Philip recognizes in her one already dead to the world : “Look who comes here a grave unto a soul Holding the eternal spirit gainst her will, In the vile prison of afflicted breath.” Constance taunts him with his and her own calamities as the

result of his peace, whereas they were in reality the issue of her war. This is the only point on which her quick intellect ever trips. She shews no signs of bending, though her spirit is wounded unto death. Her invincible pride rejects all comfort, all solace.

The charnel-house ideas of her invo

cation to death is poetic delirium, the frenzy of imagi nation. Juliet's imagination, embracing the same ideas, is feeble and prosaic compared with this horror. “No, I defy all counsel, all redress, But that which ends all counsel, true redress. Death, death, O amiable lovely death ! Thou odoriferous stench

sound rottenness

Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,

Thou hate and terror to prosperity, And I will kiss thy detestable bones; And put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows ; And ring these fingers with thy household worms; And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust, And be a carrion monster like thyself: Come, grin on me; and I will think thou smil'st, And buss thee as thy wife! Misery's love, O, come to me!”

In her fierce, unconquerable pride, she would make death itself obey her as a vassal, and would shake the world even in leaving it.