Non-Fiction > Uncollected essays > Volumes 33-38, 1876-1878 - Cornhill magazine > Volume 34

169
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With tlie single exception of Falstaff, all Sliakespeai-e's characters are
what we call mariying men. ISIercutio, as he was own cousin to Bene-
dick and Biron, would have come to the same end in the long run. Even
lago had a wife, and, what is far stranger, he was jealous. People like
Jacques and the Fool in Lear, although we can harfUy imagine they
would ever many, kept single out of a cynical humour or for a bioken
heart, and not, as we do now-a-days, from a spii-it of incredulity and
jn-eference for the single state. For that matter, if you turn to George
Sand's French version of As You Like It (and I think I can promise
you will like it but little), yoxi will find Jacques man-ies Celia just as
Orlando marries Eosalind.
At least there seems to have been much less hesitation over marriage
in Shakespeare's days ; and what hesitation there was was of a laughing
sort, and not much more serious, one way or the other, than that of
Panurge. In modem comedies the heroes are mostly of Benedick's
way of thinking, but twice as much in earnest, and not one quai-ter so
confident. And I take this difiidence as a proof of how sincere their
teiror is. They know they are only human after all ; they know what
gins and pitfalLs lie about theii- feet ; and how the shadow of matrimony
waits, resolute and awful, at the cross-roads. They would wish to keep
their liberty ; but if that may not be, why, God's will be done !
" What, are you afraid of marriage 1 " asks CecUe, in Maitre Guerin.
" Oh, mon Dieu, non ! " replies Arthur ; " I should take chloroform."
They look forward to marriage much in the same way as they prepare
themselves for death : each seems inevitable ; each is a great Perhaps,
and a leap into the dark, for which, when a man is in the blue devils,
he has specially to harden his heart. That splendid scoundrel, Maxime
de Trailles, took the news of man-iages much as an old man hears the
deaths of his contemporai-ies. " C'est desesperant," he cried, throwing
himself down in the arm-chair at Madame Schontz's ; " c'est desesperant,
nous nous marions tous ! " Every marriage was like another grey hair
on his head ; and the jolly church bells seemed to taunt him with his
fifty years and fau* round belly.
The fact is, we are much more afraid of life than our ancestors, and
cannot find it in our hearts either to marry or not to marry. Marriage
is terrifying, but so is a cold and forlorn old age. The friendships of
men are vastly agreeable, biit they are insecure. You know all the