Every
one remembers how Valiant-for-Truth fights in Bunyan's allegory: "I
fought till my sword did cleave to my hand; and when they were joined
together, as if a sword grew out of my arm, and when the blood ran
through my fingers, then I fought with most courage." The mere
expression gives us an understanding of the desperate resolution of
Cromwell's Ironsides.
But if desperate courage is not in Shakespeare, neither are its
ancillary qualities--cruelty, hatred, ambition, revenge. Whenever he
talks on these themes, he talks from the teeth outwards, as one without
experience of their violent delights. His Gloucester rants about
ambition without an illuminating or even a convincing word. Hatred and
revenge Shakespeare only studied superficially, and cruelty he shudders
from like a woman.
It is astounding how ill-endowed Shakespeare was on the side of
manliness. His intellect was so fine, his power of expression so
magical, the men about him, his models, so brave--founders as they were
of the British empire and sea-tyranny--that he is able to use his
Hotspurs and Harrys to hide from the general the poverty of his
temperament.
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