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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
In an essay on Sophocles and Shakespeare, the late Professor John Churton Collins makes, about the latter's use of the motive of suicide, some striking remarks which have hitherto, I believe, been allowed to pass unchallenged. The attitude of the two dramatists toward the crime is, he says, exactly similar:
“By neither of them has any glamor of sentiment been cast over it. In no case is it associated with honor, but in all cases with intemperance or ignominy, or with both. … In the suicide of Ajax, the one instance in which Sophocles has represented suicide as a deliberate act, what impresses us throughout is the utter demoralization of the victim… . Labouring at first in a turbid storm of frenzy, he regains self-mastery only to reduce to the dominion of a perverted will an anarchy of conflicting emotions—rage, shame, remorse, pity, grief—perishing desperately, a laughing stock to his foes, a source of sorrow and reproach to his friends. So perish Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Brutus, Cassius, Titinius, Cleopatra, Antony, Enobarbus, Goneril, Othello, and, it would seem, Lady Macbeth. In none of these cases is self-destruction associated with anything but intemperance or retribution. ' The foul'st best fits my latter part of life,' exclaims Enobarbus; and it is remarkable that the poet should have put into the mouth of Brutus, the noblest of those who fall by their own hands in the tragedies, not merely a condemnation of the act generally, but a condemnation of the one suicide which tradition has universally glorified, and which even Bante appears to have excepted from the catalogue of crimes:
Hamlet's remark in his famous soliloquy will occur to every one, but still more striking are the words in which Gloucester expresses his thankfulness that he has been saved from such a crime:
page 380 note 1 Studies in Shakespeare, London, 1904, pp. 162 ff.
page 381 note 1 Julius Cæsar, v, i, 101-8.
page 381 note 2 King Lear, iv, vi, 221-3. Collins refers also to the similar remarks of Imogen, Cymbeline, iii, iv, 80-2; and Gratiano, Othello, v, ii, 204 ff. Cf. also the conventional phrases regarding suicide in Hamlet, v, i, 242 and v, i, l.
page 382 note 1 Antony and Cleopatra, iv, vi, 34 ff.
page 382 note 2 Cymbeline, iii, iv, 80-82.
page 383 note 1 Macbeth, v, viii, 1 ff.
page 383 note 2 Othello, i, iii, 359 ff.
page 383 note 3 Hamlet, v, ii, 262 ff.
page 384 note 1 Antony and Cleopatra, iv, xv, 80-82; v, ii, 4-6.
page 384 note 2 Gloucester, it will be remembered, had a special reason to assent to the popular superstition that suicide was the direct temptation of one's evil angel or of the foul fiend himself. It is only after Edgar's description of the fearful being whom he pretends to have seen that Gloucester ceases to regret his failure to destroy himself.
page 384 note 3 Shakespeare's Plutarch, edited by the Reverend Walter W. Skeat, London, 1892, p. 138: “Brutus answered him, being yet but a young man, and not overgreatly experienced in the world: ‘I trust (I know not how) a certain rule of philosophy by the which I did greatly blame and reprove Cato for killing of himself, as being no lawful nor godly act touching the gods: nor concerning men, valiant; not to give place and yield to divine providence, and not constantly and patiently to take whatsoever it pleaseth him to send us, but to draw back and fly: but being now in the midst of the danger, I am of a contrary mind. For if it be not the will of God that this battle fall out fortunate for us, I will look no more for hope, neither seek to make any new supply again, but will rid me of this miserable world, and content me with my fortune.‘ ” The language of this passage takes its color from the sentiments of the Christian translators. The first sentence is misinterpreted. What Brutus really says is this: “In the younger and less experienced part of my life, I was led, upon philosophical principles, to condemn the conduct of Cato in killing himself, etc.”
page 385 note 1 Julius Cæsar, v, i, 111 ff.
page 388 note 1 Antony and Cleopatra, iv, xiv, 55-58, 95-98.
page 388 note 2 Antony and Cleopatra, iv, xv, 13-15.
page 389 note 1 Ib., 45-49.
page 389 note 2 Cf. IV, xv, 45-50 and 80-82.
page 389 note 3 Antony and Cleopatra, v, ii, 236 ff.
page 390 note 1 Antony and Cleopatra, v, ii, 282 ff.
page 390 note 2 Julius Caesar, v, iii, 34-35.
page 390 note 3 Ib., 87 ff.
page 390 note 4 Antony and Cleopatra, iv, xiv, 89 ff.; v, ii, 317 ff.
page 392 note 1 Julius Cæsar, v, v, 53-59.
page 392 note 2 Antony and Cleopatra, v, i, 19 ff.
page 392 note 3 Antony and Cleopatra, v, ii, 338-40.
page 393 note 1 Book i, Canto ix.
page 393 note 2 The same attitude is suggested at the close of Hamlet where Horatio, contemplating suicide, says, “I am more an antique Roman than a Dane.”
page 393 note 3 v, iii, 117.
page 393 note 4 Ib., 263.
page 394 note 1 Ib., 298 ff.
page 395 note 1 Othello, v, ii, 340 ff.
page 395 note 2 Othello, v, ii, 360-1. Cf. the expressions used by Cleopatra, and Brutus, above, pp. 384 and 385; and the terms in which Octavius Cæsar speaks of the possible suicide of Cleopatra, Antony and Cleopatra, v, ii, 64-5.
page 395 note 3 Shakespearean Tragedy, London, 1904, p. 242.
