Welsh Journals

SHAKESPEARE'S WELSH CHARACTERS GENERALISATION about national charac- ter is as impossible as it is futile. The "ordinary man" is the rarest of men and the writer who depicts a character and imagines him to be the typical Frenchman or the typical Spaniard entirely ignores the infinitely subtle, personal qualities that lie beneath the most unlikely exteriors. Nevertheless, certain qualities do appear to be dominant in the people of any given race and these qualities form, in a restricted sense, the national character. Shakespeare was endowed with far too great an insight ever to fall into the error of attempt- ing to draw national characters as such. But if Dr. Renier's description of the Welshf — "minute, musical, clever and temperamental" — be at all true, nowhere in literature have the Welsh been more truly portrayed than they are in the plays of Shakespeare. These epithets, arbitrary though they appear to be, are often used to describe tlhe Cymry and Shakespeare, one feels, accepted the usual attitude in his portrayal of Glendower, Fluellen and Sir Hugh Evans. But that was not all; he made the generalisations into personal qualities, he added significant details and idios- yncrasies. They are Welsh, but they are more- they are human beings. It would be rash to assume that Shakespeare held any intimate acquaintance with any Wel h- men merely because his Welsh characters are so real. By similar reasoning one might show that he was a lawyer, a doctor, a Protestant, a Cath- olic and a host of things besides. Suffice it to say that Shakespeare brought to the creation of his Welsh characters that same human insight with which he viewed all his characters. So Sir Hugh Evans is as truly Welsh as Mistress Page is English. A purist might hold that "King Lear" and "Cymbeline" are plays having Welsh themes. This is, in a sense, true, but the periods with which they deal are so obscure and their dramatic purpose is such that they cannot be called Welsh. There remain "Richard II," "Henry IV," "Henry V" and "The Merry Wives of Windsor." These plays are generally held to have been written between 1593 and 1598, so they represent the work of Shakespeare's earlier years as a dra- matist. In no case are the characters of first-rate importance they are incidental rather than essen- tial to the plot of the plays in which they appear. In "Richard II" the Welsh character is not spec- ifically named. He is "a Welsh captain." In the first part of "Henry IV" there are Glendower t "The English: Are they human?" by G. J. Renier, London, 1931. by J. Alban Evans and his daughter, Lady Mortimer, who does not, however make any material contribution to the dialogue of the play -for she is entirely Welsh in speech. In "Henry V" there is Fluellen (which name is apparently an attempt to transcribe phon- etically the Welsh Llewellyn) and in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" we have Sir Hugh Evans. Perhaps the most immediately evident character- istic of these people is their volubility. It is true that in the case of the Captain there is little oppor- tunity to speak. When he does speak, however, it is at length and with gusto. His reply to Salisbury's request that his troops should wait another day to await the coming of the King (Act II scene 4) is full of extravagant imagery. It is, to use Dr. Renier's epithet, temperamental. "The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change." Superstition and a poetic imagination colour his words so that he seems possessed of a "hwyl" that makes his answer a poem, where in the case of an Englishman it would probably have been an unemotional statement of fact. which is perhaps what one would expect of a military officer. But the character is very slightly drawn and is not at all important, though the effect of the failure of the Welsh to support Richard II was far-reach- ing. Glendower in "Henry IV" is a far more fully developed character. In his case, again, the first impression is oi imaginative volubility of speech. To the practical and unimaginative Hotspur Glendower's oratory is bombast and his belief in the supernatural folly. To the Welsh- man's declaration of his birth at my nativity The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes, Of burning cressets; and at my birth The frame and huge foundation of the earth Shaked like a coward." Hotspur cynically replies "Why, so it would have done at the same season if your mother's cat had but kittened, tho' yourself had never been born." Glendower is proud, eloquent, imagina- tive and is not merely a Welsh squire "I can speak English, lord, as well as you; For I was train'd up in the English court." But to Hotspur, impatient of "mincing poetry" lie is "as tedious as is a tired horse, a railing wife." There is an interesting contrast between the two men. It is the eternal clash of the prac- tical with the ideal, the matter-of-fact with the imaginative. To balance Hotspur's prejudiced opinion of Glendower we are given the saner judgment of Mortimer and this seems a true es- timate of his character