Shakespeare Notes by Alfred J. Drake, Ph.D.

Welcome to Limbs of Alarbus Shakespeare Blog!

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WELCOME TO LIMBS OF ALARBUS SHAKESPEARE BLOG!

A SITE MAINTAINED BY ALFRED J. DRAKE, PH.D.

My name is Alfred J. Drake (Ph.D. in English, UC Irvine 1997), and this is a collection of my notes on most of Shakespeare's plays, along with some introductory material on the types or sub-genres of plays Shakespeare wrote: tragedy, comedy, history, and romance. I'm now using the Norton Shakespeare genre-based volumes, 2nd. edition for teaching, and am in the process of updating and augmenting notes for a number of plays. Comments that haven't yet been updated are generally based on the Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd. edition

I have taught 29 of Shakespeare's plays so far, most of them many times distributed across the seven Shakespeare surveys I've done in recent years at Chapman University and CSU Fullerton, and some other courses where I managed to get in a play or two by the bard. That's a lot of Shakespeare for someone who specializes in romantic and Victorian lit as well as literary theory & history of criticism, and I've built up what I find useful sets of notes on the plays I've taught.

You are welcome to make use of these notes with proper attribution, for non-profit purposes such as teaching and studying. Commercial use or reproduction is prohibited: the original material on this blog is Copyright (C) 2011 Alfred J. Drake. Please view the Copyright & Legal Disclaimer Page.

My general site at www.ajdrake.com/wiki offers material on hundreds of authors aside from Shakespeare, so by all means stop by and see what's available.

The blog's title, of course, comes from the delightfully over-the-top early Shakespeare revenge tragedy Titus Andronicus, in the first act of which one of Titus' sons belts out the line, "Alarbus' limbs are lopped, / And entrails feed the sacrificing fire, / Whose smoke like incense doth perfume the sky." These lines come after he and his brothers have sacrificed the eldest son of captured Tamora, Queen of Goths. Alliteration and human sacrifice in the very same line -- no wonder everybody loves Shakespeare! Alarbus, this blog may not give you as much comfort as Tom Stoppard's 1966 play gave Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but perhaps it will appease your "groaning shade" somewhat. Besides, whatever the outcome in Titus Andronicus, Tamora sure made a hash of clan Andronici, no?

Globe Theater Rebuilt, London UK
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Globe_theatre_london.jpg

Copyright Notice and Legal Disclaimer

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COPYRIGHT NOTICE AND LEGAL DISCLAIMER

Copyright: All original material on this site is Copyright (C) 2011 Alfred J. Drake and may not be reproduced in any format or medium for commercial purposes. You are welcome to use the original material on this site for non-commercial purposes such as studying and teaching, with proper attribution to the source if you decide to quote or paraphrase from it.

Disclaimer: It should be obvious that these notes constitute my own opinions and interpretations only and are not offered as an infallible guide or last word on any of Shakespeare's plays or other works: the ideas herein are meant to encourage further study and, above all, to serve as a catalyst for other people's ideas. As you can see by the status page, I am in process of updating many note sets, and may in fact augment or otherwise alter any of them from time to time. In perusing or quoting from this material, you must agree not to hold me legally responsible for any issues or disagreements that may arise therefrom: in legal terminology, this material is offered "as-is, no warranty implied or offered."

Comments Feature: You are certainly welcome to offer your own insights via the comment feature -- please be aware that comments are moderated to ensure that no spam or other unsavory or obscene material gets through.

My Use of Other Materials: With regard to the inclusion of quoted material from the Norton Shakespeare and other volumes, I aim to quote very sparingly in keeping with the "fair use" doctrine -- a few lines whenever needed for the sake of reference, beyond which point the reader should refer to the relevant stretch of text in a full edition of the play in question. If I want to quote more fully -- say, an entire sonnet or an extended passage from Bacon's Essays -- I intend to use a public domain edition, not a copyright-protected version of the text. I try to keep close track of my sources, rather than incorporating only vague references without publication dates or page numbers, etc.

The coin below is an Elizabethan silver sixpence (dated 1592) that is part of my personal collection. Each post, along with the flipcart thumbnails you see when you visit the home address www.limbsofalarbus.com, contains an image of either the obverse (front) or reverse of this coin.

Current Status of Notes: List

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THE CURRENT STATUS OF MY NOTES ON LIMBS OF ALARBUS

Please view the Copyright & Legal Disclaimer Page

I am in the process of transforming my notes to accord with the Norton Shakespeare 4-volume 2nd. edition. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt, et al. The notes for which I've finished that task are in boldfaced purple. Many other sets need only very minor work to reach that status, so I will update this list as warranted. Those for which there are full or relatively full notes that haven't been updated generally accord with the Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd. edition.

All's Well That Ends Well (1602). Updated to accord with Norton Shakespeare, 2nd. ed.
Antony and Cleopatra (1606). Updated to accord with Norton Shakespeare, 2nd. ed.
As You Like It (1599). Updated to accord with Norton Shakespeare, 2nd. ed.
Comedy of Errors (1589). Updated to accord with Norton Shakespeare, 2nd. ed.
Coriolanus (1607). No notes, but I will work them up from previous lectures soon.
Cymbeline (1609). Updated to accord with Norton Shakespeare, 2nd. ed.
Hamlet (1600). Updated to accord with Norton Shakespeare, 2nd. ed.
Henry IV, Part I (1597). Some notes, need augmenting/updating to Norton Shakespeare, 2nd. ed.
Henry IV, Part II (1597). No notes, but I will work them up from previous lectures soon.
Henry V (1598). Updated to accord with Norton Shakespeare, 2nd. ed.
Henry VI, Part I (1591). No notes; will add them when time permits.
Henry VI, Part II (1590). No notes; will add them when time permits.
Henry VI, Part III (1590). No notes; will add them when time permits.
Henry VIII (1612). Updated to accord with Norton Shakespeare, 2nd. ed.
Julius Caesar (1599). Full notes, need minor updating to Norton Shakespeare, 2nd. ed.
King John (1596). Updated to accord with Norton Shakespeare, 2nd. ed. Need minor work.
King Lear (1605). Updated to accord with Norton Shakespeare, 2nd. ed.
Love's Labour's Lost (1594). No notes; will add them when time permits.
Macbeth (1605). Updated to accord with Norton Shakespeare, 2nd. ed.
Measure for Measure (1604). Some notes, need augmenting/updating to Norton, 2nd. ed.
Merchant of Venice (1596). Updated to accord with Norton Shakespeare, 2nd. ed.
Merry Wives of Windsor (1600). No notes; will add them when time permits.
Midsummer Night's Dream (1595). Updated to accord with Norton Shakespeare, 2nd. ed.
Much Ado about Nothing (1598). Some notes, need augmenting/updating to Norton, 2nd. ed.
Othello (1604). Updated to accord with Norton Shakespeare, 2nd. ed.
Pericles (1608). No notes; will add them when time permits.
Richard II (1595). Updated to accord with Norton Shakespeare, 2nd. ed.
Richard III (1592). Updated to accord with Norton Shakespeare, 2nd. ed.
Romeo and Juliet (1594) Updated to accord with Norton Shakespeare, 2nd. ed.
Taming of the Shrew (1593). Some notes, need augmenting/updating to Norton, 2nd. ed.
Tempest (1611). Updated to accord with Norton Shakespeare, 2nd. ed.
Timon of Athens (1607). No notes; will add them when time permits.
Titus Andronicus (1593). Updated to accord with Norton Shakespeare, 2nd. ed.
Troilus and Cressida (1601). Some notes, need augmenting/updating to Norton, 2nd. ed.
Twelfth Night (1599). Updated to accord with Norton Shakespeare, 2nd. ed.
Two Gentlemen of Verona (1594). No notes; will add them when time permits.
The Two Noble Kinsmen (1613). No notes; will add them when time permits.
Winter's Tale (1610). Updated to accord with Norton Shakespeare, 2nd. ed.

Shakespeare Links

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LINKS TO ONLINE SHAKESPEARE RESOURCES

Please visit the Directory of Shakespeare Resources available at my wiki site.

A great location to start your search for resources is Terry Gray's Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet, which offers a multitude of links and substantive materials.

Shakespeare Online is another fine site, which offers extensive materials. Its author is Amanda Mabillard.

Shakespeare Study Questions

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Study question sets for all of the Shakespeare plays I have taught:

SHAKESPEARE STUDY QUESTIONS IN COMBINED PDF DOCUMENT

Question sets Copyright (C) 2011 Alfred J. Drake. You are welcome to use these sets for non-commercial purposes such as studying and teaching, with proper attribution. Commercial republication in any form is prohibited.

Please view the Copyright & Legal Disclaimer Page

Introduction to Shakespeare's Life

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INTRODUCTION TO WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
HIS LIFE, LANGUAGE, AND ART

SHAKESPEARE THE MAN, 1564-1616

William Shakespeare, born in April 1564 at a home in Warwickshire’s Stratford-upon-Avon, was the third child of John Shakespeare and Mary Elizabeth Arden; only four aside from William survived to adulthood, and only one, his sister Joan, outlived him—Joan lived to 77, and passed away in 1646, four years after the beginning of the English Civil War in 1642. He studied Latin grammar and possibly a bit of Greek (you can still view the popular grammar book by William Lily he would have used) at King Edward IV Grammar School in his hometown from 1571-78, but didn’t go to college like some other Elizabethan playwrights and authors such as the University Wits John Lyly, Thomas Lodge, Christopher Marlowe and Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe, George Peele, and Thomas Middleton. Not much is known of the time between 1578-92, other than that William married Anne Hathaway in 1582 and that he had several children: Susanna (1583-1649) and in 1585 the twins Judith (died 1662) and Hamnet (died 1596).

But whatever he was up to in the so-called “lost years,” by 1592 he was in London and beginning his career as a playwright. Being part of stage life in London must have been exciting—the first theater was built there around 1576, and though there were predecessors to the stage such as the late medieval mystery cycles and morality plays like Everyman, the theater had an air of newness and played a significant part in the vibrant life of the great City. Shakespeare attracted considerable notice from the outset since University Wit Robert Greene refers to him in his September 20, 1592 posthumous pamphlet in the following scornful terms: “there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and beeing an absolute Johannes fac totum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey.” (Now that is an Elizabethan snap, as we would call it today!) His Henry VI, Part I was performed at the Rose Theatre in March 1592 by Lord Strange’s Men. So his career as a poet and dramatist runs from around 1592 to 1610, when he moved back to a fine new home in Stratford, though he seems to have put in some London time even after that since his plays were still being performed to much acclaim. For poetry (the Sonnets, Venus and Adonis, and The Rape of Lucrece), he had an aristocratic patron in Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton (1573-1624). Poetry was much more prestigious than life associated with the stage, so perhaps Shakespeare’s decision to go with drama was in part based on earnings potential. Associated for most of his career with the playing company known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later the King’s Men when James I became monarch in 1603),

Shakespeare produced an astonishing number of plays during his time as a dramatist—the posthumously gathered and printed First Folio of 1623 includes thirty-six plays, divided into comedies, tragedies, and histories. He even acted in some of them, perhaps taking the role of old Adam in As You Like It and the Ghost of Hamlet’s father in Hamlet. But his main players were the magnificent Richard Burbage for the tragic roles, and Will Kempe for comedy until 1599, after him coming the subtler Robert Armin. But there were others as listed in the Folio. Well before his death in 1616 from an illness of some sort, he had become a successful businessman (he owned part of the Globe Theatre that had been built in 1599 and the indoors Blackfriars Playhouse used from 1608 on during the winter, which yielded considerable revenue), and had interests in wheat and malt back home. There were some rough spots in Shakespeare’s life: his son Hamnet died at the age of 11, and later, to this personal tragedy was added a moment of political peril when the rebellious Earl of Essex almost sucked the playwright into a 1599 rebellion by commissioning a performance of Richard II. The performance enraged the savvy interpreter Queen Elizabeth, who got Essex’s point that she, like the king in the play, was a bad ruler who deserved to be deposed. But Shakespeare had of course written the play years before the rebellion, so he wasn’t blamed. It could be dangerous to write and stage plays during his time. But on the whole it was a remarkable and successful career. Shakespeare never cared to publish his work during his lifetime, though somewhat adulterated quarto copies circulated thanks to the lack of any copyright protection back then, but his fame was cemented in the memory of London playgoers and of course by the publication of the First Folio in 1623.

In politics Shakespeare seems to have been royalist enough (the relevant sovereigns are the Tudor Elizabeth I (reigned 1558-1603) and the Scottish Stuart James I (1603-25), and for the most part conservative in the sense that he consistently sides with the nobility over the rabble; the last years of his life were spent mainly in looking after his real estate holdings in Stratford. This outlook stems from his bourgeois roots and lifestyle—Shakespeare grew up in the Warwickshire countryside; his father had some local influence and wealth when William was young (he was a local official and a glover and moneylender), but he seems to have fallen on hard times later on. Shakespeare did pretty well for himself as a businessman, what with his excellent and crowd-pleasing playwright skills (he was also an actor), wise decisions about theater matters at the Globe from 1599 and later at the more intimate Blackfriars, and apparently in local side ventures like money-lending. People who have property and wealth tend to support stability in the social and political realms, and Shakespeare was no different from most in that regard.

In religion Shakespeare may, as biographers such as Peter Ackroyd suggest, have had Catholic leanings even though he conformed to the Anglican Church that took its inception from Henry VIII’s inability to get the Pope to grant him a divorce from his first Queen, Catherine of Aragon. So England joined the Protestant Reformation Martin Luther had begun in October 1517. But it’s expecting a lot to suppose everybody in the “reformed” countries would automatically go along with the program. Many English people tried to keep up the old faith, though they had to keep a lid on their activities since Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth in particular didn’t want their subjects reverting to Catholic forms and allegiances. Shakespeare seems to have had a few closet Papists in his family—quite possibly his father John—and he also seems to have had connections with powerful Catholics beyond his family.

Shakespeare was probably more or less a traditionalist, affable (if brilliant) Englishman, not some atheist radical like Christopher Marlowe or an irascible ruffian like Ben Jonson, even if he knew and liked such men. What does this biography mean for his poetics? It’s hard to say, really. John Keats wrote admiringly in his letters of the “chameleon poet” endowed with “negative capability” or the ability to explore a personality or a situation without need for immediate certainty in the moral or factual sense. I suppose Keats must have been thinking of Shakespeare when he wrote that. What besides “negative capability” and chameleonic tendencies would allow an artist so completely to enter into the mindset of a charming but thoroughly wicked character such as Richard III or Iago; or a flawed but noble one like the Roman general Coriolanus; or an all-purpose rogue like Jack Falstaff; or an intelligent, sensitive character like Macbeth whose ambition traps him in a downward spiral of preventive-strike murder and psychological “hardness,” to borrow a term from today’s hip-hop culture? You couldn’t generate so many wonderful characters if you were intent on propagating some stolid moral drawn from your politics or religion. Shakespeare disappears with remarkable ease into his multifarious characters, so that he really is what Samuel Johnson and others have called him: “a poet of nature” (human nature, animal nature, everything).

SHAKESPEARE'S ERA: TUDOR AND EARLY STUART ENGLAND

The Tudor Era begins with Henry VII (1485-1509), victor over the last Yorkist king, Richard III (1483-85); it continues through the reigns of Henry VIII (1509-47), Edward VI (1547-53), Mary (1553-58), and ends after Elizabeth I (1558-1603). The Stuart Era begins with the son of Mary Queen of Scots, James I (1603-25), his son Charles I (1625-49), and then after an interregnum period in which Cromwell and his Puritans ruled, is restored in the person of Charles II (1660-85).

The Hanoverian line, by the way, begins with George I (1714-27); the name changed to Saxe-Coburg-Gotha when Victoria’s son Edward VII (1901-10, the Edwardian Period) by the German Prince Albert of Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha reigned, and then changed again in the wake of WWI when that came to sound too Germanic, to the elegant “Windsor” with George V (1910-36) and stretches to today’s Elizabeth II, who has been Great Britain’s Queen since George VI died in 1952.

Henry VII put an end to the Wars of the Roses, a period of dynastic strife between the descendants of Edward III (1327-77) stretching from 1455 to Henry’s ascension and even a few years after that, to 1487. In essence, the throne was tossed back and forth between the Houses of Lancaster and York, with the incompetent Lancastrian Henry VI (son of Henry V, victor of Agincourt) ruling from 1422-61, and Yorkist Richard III getting rid of the heirs of his deceased brother and fellow Yorkist Edward IV (1461-83), who had defeated Henry VI, to rule in his own right for three fitful years. Finally, Henry, Earl of Richmond, an exiled member of the Welsh Tudor clan, married Edward IV’s daughter Elizabeth of York to unite the two great houses. This Henry VII, of course, is the grandfather of that greatest of English rulers, Shakespeare’s own Queen Elizabeth I. So the recent political past had been one of considerable strife and instability, with great nobles traversing England and at times treating the people with as little respect as foreign invaders might.

Elizabeth’s Tudor reign was also a time of international danger, with the massive Catholic Spanish Armada sent by Philip II of Spain (Elizabeth’s half-sister!) sent on a mission in 1588 to crush the English navy and then invade England itself; the Armada failed, but the threat was real. This was a time of growing English nationalism, naval power, and exploration, with the Queen encouraging men such as Sir Walter Ralegh and Sir Francis Drake to set sail for the new world. Royal power had been much centralized from the time of feudalism and the Court was a great factor in English life during Tudor and Stuart times, but Queen Elizabeth and her successor James I were by no means unencumbered absolutists, however fond the latter was of the doctrine of the so-called “divine right of kings.” (In truth there was no coherent political philosophy in England until after the Restoration.) In particular, the growing commercial class in London began to feel its power as an important economic force in the life of the nation, and religious Puritans began to take issue with the authority of the Crown and the Church of England (or Anglican Church) that Henry VIII had turned into a nationalist instrument when Pope Paul III excommunicated him in 1534. The struggle between Puritans and the State intensified in the reigns of the Stuart James I and then of his son Charles I, who was executed in 1649 during the course of a bloody Civil War won by Oliver Cromwell and his faction, who were determined to establish the Rule of the Saints on English soil. These theater-closing, anti-pleasure Puritans ruled for only a decade or so, with Charles II returning from the Continent to initiate the Restoration of 1660, but the monarchy has never been as powerful since their regicidal Interregnum. Shakespeare, of course, didn’t live to see the Civil strife of the 1640s, though his sister Joan did, and so did his last descendant, granddaughter Lady Elizabeth Hall Barnard, who died childless in 1670, ten years after the Restoration.

LONDON

But let’s leave aside political and religious history and move on to consider briefly Shakespeare’s London. It was a thriving city of perhaps 200,000 people by his day, and the whole of England had perhaps five million inhabitants. The neoclassical critic Samuel Johnson later wrote proudly that “he that is tired of London is tired of life.” I don’t know if that eighteenth-century boast should be carried back to the late sixteenth century, but in any case the City must have been an exciting place to live, if not exactly a safe one. Many of the protections you and I take for granted now simply didn’t exist in Shakespeare’s time. Safe food and good sanitation? Forget it. Health care? Not available—aside from perhaps some decent herbal remedies and advice to “take the waters” or avoid strenuous exertion, your physician was about as likely to kill you as cure you. Consider that the germ theory of disease was unknown (in fact it’s more or less a nineteenth-century development) and that the average lifespan seems to have been around 35 years. If you were very lucky and never contracted a serious illness or needed surgery, you might live to the biblical threescore and ten (70), but more likely you would go much sooner. And there was still the Bubonic Plague to deal with in both London and the countryside—read Daniel Defoe’s post-Restoration book Journal of the Plague Year if you want to see just how horrifying and deadly a prospect that was. Material life for London’s working class of servants and apprentices, etc., must have been rough, always a struggle. It had its guildsmen and prosperous merchants, too, but all were subject to the difficulties of life in a noisy, dirty, dangerous environment.

One thing to draw from this characterization is that life in early modern London retained some of the old uncertainties of medieval times, most particularly a profound sense of the tenuousness of existence itself—you never knew when you or someone you loved would be carried off by the plague or some other sickness, or by an accident thanks to unsafe conditions. Death was an acknowledged, if feared, part of everyday life—that makes for a very different sensibility from ours because our culture tends to distance us from the presence and processes of death. At the same time, London offered a new sense of possibility and liveliness, a sense of the larger world “out there,” the one beyond Europe being explored by Ralegh and Drake and others. London was becoming to some degree cosmopolitan, a place that invited the world in rather than excluding it.

THE THEATER

The advent of the public theater in the 1580’s certainly testifies to a thriving intellectual climate in the City. The Victorian critic Matthew Arnold was surely right when he mentioned Elizabethan London in the same sentence as Classical Athens in this regard. Arnold wrote that Shakespeare didn’t need tremendous book-learning because a lot of his acumen came just from living in a culture that was truly alive to all that life had to offer in the early modern age. He grew up in this heady atmosphere, and his audiences were receptive to the secular imaginative spectacles he staged for them. So true was this that some acting companies performed up to twelve plays a week, so they had to foster a community spirit among the actors, who in truth didn’t seem to get much rehearsal time for their skilled performances. Many Londoners of all classes had at least some leisure time, and aside from their attendance at crude spectacles such as bear-baiting and public executions, they flocked in impressive numbers to the several theaters (the Rose, the Swan, and others even before the Globe’s opening in 1599). In Shakespeare’s Audiences, Alfred Harbage suggests that on any given day, several thousand inhabitants probably paid their penny or more to attend an afternoon theater performance, and the demand only went away when the Plague struck from time to time and closed the theaters down. Harbage also deals temperately with the question of audience composition: the most extreme characterizations of the London playgoers, to be sure, are the product of Puritan loathing. Not all of Shakespeare’s groundlings were prostitutes or pickpockets, though some of them were. The profession wasn’t exactly considered rock solid in terms of class status, and women were not allowed to become actors because it was not deemed a respectable craft for them to practice. Still, respectable people, male and female, attended the London theatres, which were a meeting ground for citizens from various stations and walks of life. For that matter, Shakespeare’s players strutted their stuff at times even before the nobility and monarchs, so drama was an interest that cut across large sections of Elizabethan and Stuart society. It was an impressive part of the life of a burgeoning early-modern nation.

SHAKESPEARE’S THEMES AND METHOD OF COMPOSITION

We might expect an active playwright like Shakespeare to deal directly with the flow of modern life, but unlike Ben Jonson and some others of his time, for the most part he doesn’t do that. London’s mercantile class was increasing, and nationalism was beginning to flex its muscle. So why don’t we find London’s social structure “ripped from the headlines” in Shakespeare? He deals with courtly environments and characters, and often at some historical distance, spanning from ancient Greece and Rome to the late Middle Ages in Europe: he represents monarchs as nearly unconstrained, not as having to deal with Parliament as they did by his own day, and his treatment of rank reinforces this preference. Shakespeare concentrates on the parallel order of society and the grand cosmos, as in the Troilus and Cressida passage that runs “take but degree away . . . and hark what discord follows.” Kings and high nobles, not commoners, are the center of his tragedies and histories in particular, but the same statement holds to a great extent for his comic and romance plays. This may be due in part to what I called above a degree of conservatism in his approach to life and to his mid-level propertied station. There’s also the simple fact that censorship was a fact of life in England; a dramatist’s scripts had to be cleared by Elizabeth’s Master of Revels before they were performed, and it was safer not to try to deal with current political affairs or great personages.

QUESTIONS TO ASK ABOUT SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS

To what extent do the main characters step out as strong individuals?

-- Generally, in comedy we are dealing with characters who fit into some recognizable pattern or type, but does that truism do justice to the play you’re studying?

What do the characters seek?

-- Consider the varieties of desire and objects of desire.

-- Characters seek not only love but also transcendence, security, understanding,
clarity, etc. (Evidently, there’s more to life than news, weather, and Cupid’s Arrow.)

What obstacles stand in the way of characters’ fulfilling their desires?

-- There are both internal and external hindrances.

-- That is, not everything is a matter of stern patriarchs getting in the way, etc.

How do the main characters react to the obstacles that stand in their way?

-- Reactions, as always, can tell us a lot about a character’s depth and understanding.

What is the disposition of time and chance?

-- Time is on the comic protagonist’s side, but what more is to be said in this regard
about the comic or romance or history play you are studying?

-- Are time and chance dealt with in a more or less realistic manner, or a fantastical
one? Why might the playwright be dealing with these things in such a way?

METHOD OF COMPOSITION

The plays fall loosely into four categories: comedy, history, tragedy, and romance (though this last category doesn’t appear in the 1623 First Folio edition). Shakespeare was clearly aware of basic theories about what a comedy or tragedy (the most “established” dramatic types) ought to be like, but he doesn’t seem to have spent much time worrying about whether he was conforming to such theories, and it’s extremely unlikely that he read Aristotle’s Poetics. As Coleridge says in a lecture on Shakespeare, “no work of genius dare want its appropriate form.” That’s downright romantic organicism, but when it comes to Shakespeare, I’ll pledge allegiance to it: I’ve long thought that Shakespeare, in spite of the occasional loosely constructed plot or reference to non-existent Bohemian seacoasts, anachronistic Roman chimney-tops, or silly devices like the criminal-minded “letter” Edmund the Bastard in King Lear ascribes to his brother “Legitimate Edgar” to fool their father Gloucester (why would you communicate by letter with someone you’re presently living with?), composed as something like a romantic poet. Although he rather unromantically started out by borrowing from some source or other (no one cared about absolute originality in his day) he saw all sorts of possibilities in that source material, and his plays took shape in accordance with the necessities of their own characters, events, and structure. You respond to a work of art as you create it, so that in a sense it “creates itself” processively. Form and meaning aren’t simply imposed upon one’s material in cookie-cutter fashion; they develop dynamically in accordance with the “inner laws” of the work itself. The romantic theorists and poets understood the creative process well, I think—imagine a sculptor facing his or her medium of blank stone: the first creative act is performed; the sculptor stands back and beholds the results in altered stone, which prompts another act, and on it goes in a ceaseless dialectic between mind and medium, until the demand for a “product” halts the process. Or consider Beethoven starting with those famous four initial notes of the Fifth Symphony. Well, he followed those notes where they just had to go—and where they had to go wasn’t always where you or I might have thought. Beethoven consistently surprises us in this way, and so does Shakespeare.

None of this is to say that Shakespeare didn’t care what his audiences wanted—of course he did; he wasn’t a “nightingale” singing alone in the woods like Shelley’s wan “unacknowledged legislator,” and he doesn’t seem to have assumed a deep chasm between art and the rest of life the way some of the romantic poets would later do. But what I’m talking about is the inner core of the compositional or creative process, and I think any great artist is something of a romantic in this regard. Jacques Diderot gives us a saucier, less dreamy way of describing literary creation: “my thoughts are my whores; they run, and I follow after.”

In practical terms for us as readers, this need not mean that we seek absolute coherency in the material; rather, it means we should be looking to tease out potential of whatever sort we find in one textual location and connect it to other locations in the same or other plays. Shakespeare is capable of logical precision, but that’s schoolboy stuff: what really drives his plays is the sympathetic, imaginative connections he makes between character and character, event and event, predicament and predicament. His brand of realism is psychological, not the realism of historical happening (though you can learn a lot about English history from his history plays).

Above all, it seems best not to superimpose some scheme or pattern on any Shakespeare play prematurely—the plays make sense, but the sense they make isn’t and shouldn’t always be immediately reducible to neat formulae or critical principles. Be especially mindful of this advice if you consult online materials like Sparknotes, etc. Some of this stuff is actually pretty good nowadays; it isn’t always churned out by illiterate fools for lame students the way it used to be. All the same, it comes at you saying “hey you, here are three key themes you can use to write a paper on The Merchant of Venice.” The themes identified may be worthwhile, but the more you allow yourself to be bound by them, the less room will there be for your own perhaps eccentric and more interesting interpretation of the play. Maybe you will notice something in Act 2, Scene 4 that relates to other things that happen in the play but aren’t really dealt with by the geniuses over at Spark Notes. And maybe that “something” is the thing you should really be writing about. Good critics are basically good storytellers: they tell interesting, compelling (and yes, informative) stories about other people’s stories. So if you use net-notes, use them to open up possibilities, not to reduce complex works of art to utter comprehensibility.

SHAKESPEARE’S LANGUAGE

Grammar and Rhetoric Issues (borrowed and slightly adapted from Shakespeare Resource Center’s Grammar Introduction.

A) Inverted syntax (word order): “John caught the ball” may be “John the ball caught.”

B) Rhetorical devices abounding:

alliteration: “When to the sessions of sweet silent thought....” {Sonnet XXX})

metaphor: “Now is the winter of our discontent.” “My love is a red rose.”

metonymy: “Lend me your ears,” etc. (replacing a word with one closely related—here “ears” replaces “attention”); synechdoche substitutes the part for the whole, the general for the specifice, etc: “all hands on deck.” (hands for “sailors”)

Elliptical expressions: “And he to England shall [go] along with you.” Hamlet, III, iii}
and a host of other devices.

C) Grammar Irregularities:

Anthimeria. One part of speech is often substituted for another; this happens especially with nouns and verbs: Prospero says to Miranda in The Tempest: “What seest thou else / In the dark backward and abysm of time?” The word “backward” is an adverb, but it is used as a noun here, producing a verse that is both beautiful and strangely apt, considering that Prospero is asking his daughter Miranda to recall her remote childhood—something hazy and mysterious, yet intimate.

Pronoun irregularity: “Yes, you may have seen Cassio and she together.” Othello 4.2.3.

Omission of relative pronoun: “I have a brother [who, omitted] is condemn’d to die. Measure for Measure 2.2.34.

Verb #: “Three parts of him / Is ours already.” Julius Caesar 1.3.154-55.

Aside from these features identified by the Internet site, I should add the following point: Shakespearean verse is so powerful on the stage in part because of a key feature, antithesis. This is of course a rhetorical figure, which Hamlet is made to characterize generally as “setting the word against the word.” Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.” The effect of antithesis (implied or outright) is to render an utterance emphatic. Consider the following part of Richard of Gloucester’s opening soliloquy in Richard III, which offers both alliteration and antithetical pairings to strengthen its appeal:

GLOUCESTER. Now is the winterof our discontent
Made glorious summerby this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the oceanburied.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visag'd war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front,
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

This sort of oppositional pairing is partly what makes Shakespeare’s verse so memorable; the words are knit together by alliteration and by antithetical imagery and concepts. This is strong blank verse, the sort of stuff you can speak boldly without losing the sensitivity and psychological subtlety necessary for the successful representation of a complex character. Rhyme is another way of making verse memorable and comprehensible, though Shakespeare uses that device less and less as he matures in his art. The end of a scene is a good place to serve up a rhyme, as in Hamlet’s quip, “The play’s the thing, / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king” or Claudius’ anguished ending to a prayer for absolution, “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below; / Words without thought never to heaven go.” Such rhymes, as in the latter example, often have something of the effect of medieval moral sayings known as sententiae, summings up of an ethical principle or lesson.

One other point worth making is that while we may sometimes agree with Anatole France, who said that “Shakespeare tried every style except simplicity,” it’s not quite fair to persist in that view because the more flowery or purple or difficult patches one finds in the plays are usually cast as they are to suit the mentality of a silly or pompous character, a word-mangler like Dogberry from Much Ado about Nothing, or someone speaking in regional or other dialect, like Kent or Edgar disguised as Poor Tom in King Lear. Under extreme pressure, too, a character’s speech may break down and become fragmented, as does Lear’s towards the end of King Lear. There is some fine simplicity in Shakespeare, just as there is some deliberately hollow eloquence, like that of Macbeth as his life winds down and his only remaining strategy is to deaden his soul to the evil he has done. He speaks beautifully, but the words seem to mean little to him and are cut off from a vital orientation towards action in the world, even if we find them moving. I’m sure we can find some passages that seem to us rather ornate for the purpose or the person, but that’s because we are moderns and revel less in the sheer beauty of speech than we demand from it a consistent level of utility. Keep that in mind (along with the situation and character’s mindset) when you hear a luxurious temporal description like the one Benvolio offers Lady Montague in Act 2 of Romeo and Juliet:

Madam, an hour before the worshipp'd sun
Peer'd forth the golden window of the East,
A troubled mind drave me to walk abroad;
Where, underneath the grove of sycamore
That westward rooteth from the city's side,
So early walking did I see your son.

In 2.4 of the same play, you’ll find the time described in a much lower register, when the rascal Mercutio scandalizes Juliet’s Nurse with the following classic: “the bawdy hand of the dial is now / upon the prick of noon.” Shakespeare wrote both descriptions, and wasn’t one to pass up a bawdy pun—such things pleased his audiences, whose sensibilities were by no means delicate.

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Introduction to Shakespearean Comedy

2011-11-06T17:06:00.001-08:00

INTRODUCTION TO SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

Samuel Johnson tells us that Shakespeare was most comfortable when writing comic plays because they suited his genius best. Tragedy, according to Johnson, did not come naturally to Shakespeare, and there was always something a bit forced about his work in that vein. I don’t agree with him since I like the comedies, tragedies, histories, and romance plays equally, with a slight nod in favor of the tragedies.

Since Shakespeare wrote from ancient models, we should discuss ancient comedy at least briefly. It’s customary to distinguish between Greek Old Comedy like that of Aristophanes (circa 456-386 BCE) and the Greek New Comedy of Menander (circa 342-291 BCE) and other playwrights, such as his later Roman followers Plautus and Terence.

GREEK OLD COMEDY

If you’ve ever read or seen a comedy by Aristophanes (The Clouds, Lysistrata, The Birds, etc.), you know that it’s pretty rough stuff—mainly topical satire about famous politicians and philosophers. The Clouds, for example, is about Socrates as proprietor of the Thinkery or Think-Shop, where all sorts of ridiculously improbable notions are propagated for the benefit of fools. Outrageous, bawdy, bubbly humor is the essence of such plays, and they can pack a genuine political wallop as well: Lysistrata sets forth a plot in which Greek women withhold sexual favors from men until they agree to put an end to the ruinous Peloponnesian War. On the whole, characters are ridiculous in Old Comedy—a main subject is the perennial nature of human folly, selfishness, and vice.

GREEK AND ROMAN NEW COMEDY

The Greek Menander, and his later Roman followers Plautus (circa 254-184 BCE) and Terence (circa 190-158 BCE), offer a different brand of comic play. The emphasis is on domestic matters rather than broad political issues. Love, or at least sexual desire treated sympathetically, is central to the action, and there’s also some concern for the relationship between the older generation and the younger, particularly between a father and his son, as well as some interest in relations between people of different status, such as masters and their clever slaves. Still, there’s plenty of fun at the expense of fools, dupes, lovers too old for the person they desire, etc. Stock characters are the order of the day in both kinds of ancient comedy, it seems. New Comedy is hardly rigorous in its morals: the characters who win out tend—surprise!—to be the ones the playwright reckons the audience will like. Sympathy trumps propriety. The popularity of comic mix-ups and disguises suggests that identities can be swapped at will, and because considerations such as wealth and social status are so important in structuring others’ perceptions of a given character, the new identity will be accepted long enough to get the job done.

The structure of Terentian drama is as follows:

A. First comes the protasis, in which the basic characters and situation are established. This stage corresponds roughly to the first act of a modern five-act play.

B. Then comes the epitasis in which events and characters are interwoven and complicated. This stage corresponds roughly to the second and third acts of a five-act play.

C. Next comes the catastasis, in which the plot has just reached its high point, the action seems to be fully wound up, and starts to make its turn downhill, so to speak, towards the concluding event. For example, in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, Petruchio asserts his power and marries Kate towards the end of Act 3. But of course that important event hardly concludes the story: Kate must still be “tamed,” which takes place partly during the trip back to Petruchio's lodgings.

D. Last comes the final action, the catastrophe, which in comedy turns out to be a happy ending: errors are discovered, and situations become settled.

The modern situation comedy—Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm would be sophisticated examples—is remarkably like New Comedy: a number of silly but mostly sympathetic characters get themselves into and out of preposterous scrapes from one episode to the next in a competitive world, and through it all they don’t change much. They get insulted, taken advantage of, take advantage of others (though not mean-spiritedly), fall in and out of love, misunderstand one another at every turn, get jobs and get fired from jobs, obtain pleasure and ease and then throw it all away on a whim or through error, and they’re ready for the next absurd thing life brings.

Comedy reminds us that we seldom learn as much as we should from our mistakes, but it also gives us credit for being optimists and opportunists in spite of the misfortunes life throws our way. There’s a bit of Bugs Bunny and the Roadrunner in many a comic character: that fur-bearing evildoer Wiley Coyote isn’t going to keep the “poor little Roadrunner” from its appointed rounds (BeepBeep!), nor is Elmer Fudd going to stop Bugs from doing whatever the wascally wabbit wants to do. In comedy, desire is subject to deferral and detour, but not to permanent frustration. The comic orientation towards time is a favorable one: time and chance (accident) are on our side, at least if we are amongst the likeable or generous. In comedy, life is rich and full of opportunities—la vita è bella, as the Italians say. This attitude contrasts markedly with that of tragedy, where the world is stark and unforgiving, and our attention is riveted upon the thoughts and actions of a superior character in confrontation with that stark world

SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY

Shakespeare borrows a fair amount from the ancients in terms of his plots, conventions, and character delineation. Especially in his more rollicking, semi-farcical comedies like The Taming of the Shrew, we encounter a generous heap of characters pursuing their desires in a competitive environment, which results in complicated plots. Such light fare can get confusing at times—as James Calderwood of UC Irvine used to say, you really have to work hard to keep all those Demetriuses (not to mention Hortensios, Lucentios, Gremios, Grumios and Tranios) straight in your head. And again in the lighter comedies, our seekers of pleasure, wealth, and ease tend to be stock characters rather than three-dimensional ones like those in the more substantive comedies. Shakespeare’s genius, it should be said, often pushes a character towards lifelikeness even when a cardboard cutout would have met the minimum standard for success. Petruchio may not be Hamlet, but he’s a clever, thoughtful fellow all the same—one of greater substance than you’ll find in most ancient comedy.

To a recollection of ancient conventions, we must add an understanding of the Christian context that informs Shakespeare’s plays. This is not to say that Shakespeare wears his religious beliefs (be they Protestant or crypto-Catholic, as some biographers claim) on his Elizabethan shirt-sleeve or that he aims to promote whatever religious views he may hold. It is only to say that Christian theology and customs inform his plays of all kinds and figure indirectly to an important extent.

As a main example, let’s consider the concept of charity. I mentioned likeability with respect to ancient comedy: sympathetic characters win. We might reinterpret this notion by applying the Christian opposition between generosity and selfishness or, to use more productive terminology, between charity (charitas) and cupidity (cupiditas). Charitas has to do with a generous outflowing of love for one’s fellow human beings—it is something that helps to unite not only individuals into couples but indeed entire communities into a functioning civil society. It enjoins forgiveness of wrongs and a bearing of optimism and faith in the teeth of adversity. Cupiditas, by contrast, has to do with individual selfishness—a cupiditous person seeks and accumulates riches and status more to lord it over others than really to enjoy what has been gained. Perhaps Jesus’ remark, “he that would save his life shall lose it” (Matthew 16:25) says it best: selfish, greedy, mean-spirited people are losers because they misunderstand the purpose of life, and lose all the more when they win on their own terms. Charles Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge is a fine example of this “lose-by-winning” outlook.

As in ancient comedy, in Shakespeare the comic orientation towards time is favorable: time and chance are friendly, at least if a character is amongst the likeable and generous. Consider the following passage from the Hebrew scriptures, specifically Ecclesiastes 9:11-12, which I’ll copy from the Bishop’s Bible of 1568 that Shakespeare would have known:

11. So I turned me unto other thinges under the sunne, & I sawe that in running it helpeth not to be swift, in battell it helpeth not to be strong, to feeding it helpeth not to be wyse, to riches it helpeth not to be a man of muche understanding, to be had in favour it helpeth not to be cunning: but that all lieth in tyme and fortune.

12. For a man knoweth not his tyme: but like as the fishes are taken with the angle, and as the byrdes are caught with the snare: even so are men taken in the perillous time, when it commeth sodaynly upon them.

(Studylight.org’s online Bishop’s Bible, Ecclesiastes 9:11-12.)

In comedy, the characters may want change to happen in just the ways they specify (so that they can obtain their heart’s desire, whatever that may be). They may even want things to stay the same, but that kind of wish is seldom, if ever, granted. Situations—accidents and “tyme” seem to get the better of even the most fervent resolutions, the most serious invocations of dignity. As the Bible says, “all lieth in tyme and fortune.” A generous or charitable character, as described above, will most likely respond to the coming-on of time and accident in an open-minded, open-hearted way and will thereby befriend change, at least implicitly. The best example I can think of in this vein is what the shipwrecked maiden Viola says near the beginning of Twelfth Night: neither giving in to despair about the possible loss of her brother nor worrying about the particulars of her new plan to serve a widowed Illyrian noblewoman (she ends up serving the Duke instead), she declares, “What else may hap, to time I will commit” (1.2.60). Viola will face whatever comes with a bold, open spirit. She is both a woman of substance and a comic optimist. And in at least some of Shakespeare’s comedies, there’s a hint of Providence about the patterns of human desire that drive the plays towards successful resolution.

It is possible to deepen comedy and concentrate on human beings’ potential to change and grow and to accept the limitations imposed upon them by the world. Shakespeare’s best comedies do just that. While his earliest comedies tend towards farce, his more mature work strays from the standard models of ancient comedy and explores characters and subjects at will. The structure of this deeper Shakespearean romantic comedy, according to Northrop Frye and M. H. Abrams, is as follows: several characters leave the corrupt city and go to the forest or some other magical green world, and at last when all is well they return to the city or are about to do so when the play ends. In As You Like It, for example, Rosalind and Celia head for the Forest of Arden when the usurping Duke Frederick banishes Rosalind. In the romance play The Tempest, the setting is a strange island to which fortune or Providence has led Prospero after his banishment as Duke of Milan. In Twelfth Night, Viola and her brother wash ashore in Illyria after a shipwreck.

The aim of romantic comedy is broadly social: the kingdom or other city space is at first badly ruled or in turmoil for some reason—perhaps the values and institutions of the citizens and/or rulers are in need of some re-examination. What is the basis of those values and institutions—can people live comfortably or at all within them? How does a given society preserve order and its values from one generation to the next? Political and social regeneration, continuity for the ruling order, are central. The main characters leave (willingly or otherwise) the city setting and wind up in the countryside, in a pastoral setting. This setting is an enchanted, magic space that allows for the necessary re-examination of values and social roles. Magical transformations occur; characters are put in situations that could not subsist in the city or the kingdom; the forest or countryside’s magic opens up new possibilities. After this reappraisal and readjustment period has been completed, the main characters come together—the young by marriage, the foundational institution of the civil order and its only hope for regeneration, and the path is clear for a return to the corrupt setting from which they came.

Questions to Ask about Shakespeare’s Comic Plays.
To what extent do the main characters step out as strong individuals?

-- Generally, in comedy we are dealing with characters who fit into some recognizable pattern or type, but does that truism do justice to the play you’re studying?

What do the characters seek?

-- Consider the varieties of desire and objects of desire.

-- Characters seek not only love but also transcendence, security, understanding, clarity, etc. (Evidently, there’s more to life than news, weather, and Cupid’s Arrow.)

What obstacles stand in the way of characters’ fulfilling their desires?

-- There are both internal and external hindrances.

-- That is, not everything is a matter of stern patriarchs getting in the way, etc.

How do the main characters react to the obstacles that stand in their way?

-- Reactions, as always, can tell us a lot about a character’s depth and understanding.
What is the disposition of time and chance?

-- Time is on the comic protagonist’s side, but what more is to be said in this regard about the comic or romance or history play you are studying?

-- Are time and chance dealt with in a more or less realistic manner, or a fantastical one? Why might the playwright be dealing with these things in such a way?

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Introduction to Shakespearean Histories

2011-11-06T17:05:00.003-08:00

INTRODUCTION TO SHAKESPEARE’S HISTORY PLAYS

TIMELINE OF THE ENGLISH MONARCHY: PLANTAGENET TO STUART

House of Plantagenet’s “Angevin” line

The line is so named in modern times due to the following lineage: Geoffrey Plantagenet, Fifth Count of Anjou, France married Matilda, daughter of English King Henry I (this king was one of William the Conquerors’ sons). Matilda’s son by Geoffrey Plantagenet became English King Henry II.

Henry II (1154-89; his queen was Eleanor of Aquitaine; see the film The Lion in Winter)
Richard I (1189-99; Berengaria of Navarre)
John (1199-1216; Isabel of Gloucester; Isabella of Angoulême)
Henry III (1216-72; Eleanor of Provence)
Edward I (1272-1307; Eleanor of Castile; Margaret of France)
Edward II (1307-27; Isabella of France, who deposed him with the aid of Roger Mortimer)
Edward III (1327-77; Philippa of Hainault)
Richard II (1377-99; Anne of Bohemia; Isabella of Valois)

After this line comes the Plantagenet branch called Lancaster

The line was descended from John of Gaunt, Edward III’s third son; Gaunt married Blanche of Lancaster, daughter of Henry of Grosmont, First Duke of Lancaster. Their son became Henry IV (who was born in Bolingbroke Castle, Lincolnshire, thus “Bolingbroke”).

Henry IV (Bolingbroke, 1399-1413; Mary de Bohun; Joan of Navarre)
Henry V (victor over the French at Agincourt in 1415; ruled 1413-22; Catherine de Valois)
Henry VI (two interspersed reigns 1422-61, 1470-71, murdered; Margaret of Anjou)

Then follows the Plantagenet branch called York:

The line was descended paternally from Edmund of Langley, First Duke of York, who was the fourth son of Edward III; maternally descended from Edward III’s second son Lionel, Duke of Clarence—this latter descent constituted their claim to the throne.

Edward IV (1461-70 [Henry VI captive], 1471-83 after Henry VI’s murder; Elizabeth Woodeville)
Edward V (briefly in 1483, perhaps killed)
Richard III (1483-85, killed at Bosworth Field by Henry Tudor’s forces; Anne Neville, widow of Edward Prince of Wales and daughter of the Earl of Warwick) The action at Bosworth largely ended the struggle between Yorkists and Lancastrians from 1455-85 known as the Wars of the Roses because the Yorkist emblem was a white rose and the Lancastrian a red rose.

The Tudor line begun by Henry Tudor runs as follows:

Henry Tudor’s grandfather was the Welshman Owen Tudor (who fought for Henry V at Agincourt in 1415 and lived until 1461, when he was executed by Yorkists led by the future King Edward IV). Henry’s father was Edmund Tudor, First Earl of Richmond (Edmund’s mother was apparently Henry V’s widow Catherine de Valois, whom Owen Tudor is said to have secretly married). Henry Tudor’s mother was Lady Margaret Beaufort, and it is from her that he claimed his right to the throne since she was the great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt by his third wife Katherine Swynford.

Henry VII (i.e. Henry Tudor; 1485-1509; Elizabeth of York, Edward IV’s daughter)
Henry VIII (1509-47), Edward VI (1547-53; Catherine of Aragon through 1533; Anne Boleyn; Jane Seymour; Anne of Cleves; Catherine Howard; Catherine Parr)
Mary I (1553-58, co-ruler Philip of Spain)
Elizabeth I (1558-1603; never married)

Then come the Stuarts

The Stuarts’ claim to the English throne was initiated when in 1503, Scottish King James IV married English King Henry VII’s daughter Margaret Tudor, and they had a son who became Scottish King James V. His daughter Mary became Queen of Scots; Mary’s son by Lord Darnley (Henry Stuart) became English King James I.

James I (1603-25; Anne, daughter of Frederick II of Denmark and Norway)
Charles I (1625-49; Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henri IV of France), beheaded by Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan forces during the English Civil War (1642-51).

After 1660, we have the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in the person of

Charles II (1660-85, the Restoration; Catherine of Braganza).

SHAKESPEARE’S FOCUS IS MAINLY ON TWO PERIODS:

Setting the Stage for the Hero-King Henry V: Richard II / Henry IV Parts 1, 2 / Henry V.

Wars of the Roses, Setting the Stage for the Tudors: Henry VI, Parts 1, 2, 3 | Richard III.

GENERAL AIMS OF SHAKESPEARE’S HISTORY PLAYS

Shakespeare didn’t invent the dramatic genre we call “history plays”; it was a phenomenon of the 1590s, Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II is one fine example. But there wasn’t a long theatrical tradition to draw from; a growing sentiment of nationalism in Early Modern England probably led to the flourishing of this genre – the English apparently wanted to see their history reflected back to them, and Shakespeare was happy to oblige. But we should give him his due: if he didn’t invent the history play, it’s still true that English history retains its fascination for us moderns in large part because certain lucky kings and queens had a great dramatist to help them strut their stuff.

Consider a modern example: while JFK was a complex, intelligent man whose presidency was already consequential by the time he was cut down in November 1963, does anybody think he would exercise the continuing fascination that he does without the “Camelot” legend woven around him by his family, his advisors, and above all by his wife Jackie? She is the one who made her husband’s funeral an unforgettable national event – something for the ages. The business of life in D.C. and of governing the country went on with cold dispatch almost from the moment John Kennedy’s body was flown back from Texas to the Capitol: Lyndon Johnson was sworn in on the plane. But the Camelot legend ensured that “JFK” won’t fade into history. In an older context, Abraham Lincoln was remarkable enough to have been remembered no matter what, but Walt Whitman cemented his status as an American symbol with the elegy “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.”

That is what Shakespeare has done for English history – Great Britain is a sophisticated little island country nowadays, not a great power like America, but to this day they cast a huge shadow over us: who is going to forget Richard II, Richard III, Henry IV, Henry V, or John of Gaunt, Buckingham, Clarence, and any number of other great nobles, now that they have been so well memorialized? America has a fine history, but as yet lacks the Brits’ long record of colorful rulers and events that Shakespeare borrowed for his history plays.

Are those plays history in the sense of “objectively true narration”? No. While there’s a factual basis for WS’s histories and they certainly render the grand sweep of English history, the playwright does a great deal of rearranging and telescoping of events, and the sources from which he drew (Holinshed’s Chronicles chief among them) were not objective in the first place – they read more like what Winston Churchill (himself a fine writer who penned A History of the English Speaking People) called the right kind of account: history as it ought to have been, not as it happened down to the last detail. There’s no proof, for instance, that Richard III really ordered those famous lads in the Tower snuffed out, but it’s logical to assume that either he or his high-ranking follower Buckingham were responsible since both wanted Edward IV’s heirs out of the way. Shakespeare’s play, in accordance with the Tudor bias against the Yorkist Richard III, casts this conviction as a moral imperative, an “ought.”

Aristotle sets the precedent in his Poetics that historians are at a disadvantage with respect to poets because they, unlike poets, are bound to represent the ugly and sometimes chaotic scenes of actual history. We know that sometimes the bad guys win and the good guys lose; things don’t always or even usually happen in an ethically satisfying or even coherent manner. History is the record of modern life, and it’s often a mess. Aristotle wisely points out that “the difference [between the historian and the poet] is that the former relates things that have happened, the latter things that may happen.” For that reason, he suggests, “poetry is a more philosophical and more serious thing than history; poetry tends to speak of universals, history of particulars” (1451b). So if we like that line of thinking, poets are free to give us an intelligible and, at least at times, morally satisfying representation of historical events and personages: they are at liberty to construct recognizable scenes from chaotic events, and to derive ethical and intellectual clarity from the welter of motivations that have driven the great men and women of history. Shakespeare’s history is at base teleological in that it leads us to the rightness of Queen Elizabeth I’s Tudor reign: all roads lead to Gloriana, the real-life Faery Queen celebrated by Edmund Spencer.

None of this is to say that Shakespeare gives us “history for dummies,” tales so black-and-white in their simplification that they insult our intelligence. In fact, if you read widely enough in his histories, what you’ll find is that the playwright manages to do two things at once: one, pay tribute to the muddiness of history and the complexity of historical agents, and two, give us a sense that it all still adds up to something, that there are some lessons to be learned about ethics and power from this pageant of people and deeds. This accomplishment is apparent in a few plays we don’t have time to study, but that are among Shakespeare’s best engagements with English history: let’s begin with some information about the Wars of the Roses and then briefly examine Richard III.

THE WARS OF THE ROSES PERIOD: SETTING THE TUDOR STAGE WITH THE REIGN AND DEMISE OF KING RICHARD III

The Tudor Era begins with Henry VII (1485-1509), victor over the last Yorkist king, Richard III (1483-85) at Bosworth Field; it continues through the reigns of Henry VIII (1509-47), Edward VI (1547-53), Mary (1553-58), and ends with Elizabeth I (1558-1603).

Henry VII put an end to the Wars of the Roses, a period of late-feudal dynastic strife between the descendants of the Angevin Plantagenet line’s Edward III (1327-77) stretching from 1455 to Henry VII’s ascension and even a few years after that, to 1487. In essence, the throne was tossed back and forth between the Houses of Lancaster and York (branches of the old Plantagenet line), with the incompetent Lancastrian Henry VI (son of Henry V, victor of Agincourt in October, 1415) ruling from 1422-61, and Yorkist Richard III getting rid of the heirs of his deceased brother and fellow Yorkist Edward IV (1461-83), who had defeated Henry VI, to rule in his own right for three fitful years. Finally, Henry, Earl of Richmond, an exiled member of the Welsh Tudor clan, married Edward IV’s daughter Elizabeth of York to unite the two great houses. This Henry VII is the grandfather of Shakespeare’s own Queen Elizabeth I.

So the recent political past had been one of considerable strife and instability, with great nobles traversing England and at times treating the people with as little respect as foreign invaders might. The larger historical background places the English strife as the immediate aftermath of the European Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453) between the House of Anjou (the Plantagenets, that is) and the House of Valois for the throne of France with the extinction of the direct Capetian line after French kings Philip V (1316-22) and Charles IV (1322-28). The House of Valois, though at great cost, succeeded by 1453 in expelling the English claimants from France, so Henry V’s victory at Agincourt was short-lived and his son failed to hold the lands previously secured. The English couldn’t sustain their larger territorial ambitions on the Continent, and withdrew to their own island. From that territory they would eventually enter the world scene as an impressive naval and commercial empire.

Biography is the easiest way to learn about history – dry descriptions of battles and analyses of treaties aren’t exciting, but the people behind them are often fascinating. Shakespeare starts from that insight, and the best of his history plays are vehicles for the stellar personalities of the English monarchs. Richard III seems much more gripping in this regard than its early companion Wars of the Roses plays, 1, 2, and 3 Henry VI. Richard of Gloucester, at least as Shakespeare paints him (thereby melodramatizing the already biased narrations of the Tudor chroniclers), was a charismatic monster somewhat like our modern fictional predator and scourge of the free-range rude, Dr. Hannibal Lecter. It’s this strange charm that Shakespeare makes the center of the play. Let’s watch a very brief segment from an excellent modern production in which Ian McKellen plays Richard of Gloucester and gets this quality just right. [SHOW CLIP – 1.2 in which Richard woos Anne Neville, wife of Henry VI’s heir Prince Edward]. As Richard himself asks, “Was ever woman in such humour woo’d?” Shakespeare, speaking through Richard’s boast, flaunts his own dramatic abilities in pulling off such a stunt worked up from the chronicles. The courtship scene is as unrealistic as anything we can imagine, but it works as drama: we can easily understand that the vulnerable Anne was buffeted about by ruthless dynastic forces, so seeking safety in a powerful man makes sense, and one can’t help but give Richard high marks for audacity in so enthusiastically seeking the hand of the woman whose princely husband he has just murdered. Her husband Edward was in fact killed at Tewkesbury in 1471, and Richard married Anne in mid-1472, so the remarriage happened quickly, but not practically the day Edward died, as Shakespeare represents it. There is still over a decade remaining in the reign of Richard’s brother Edward IV, too, so the play has greatly telescoped events originally spanning a few decades into what seems to theater-goers only months, or even weeks.

But Richard’s dynamic personality isn’t all the play gets right, at least in dramatic terms: there’s also the tangled web of relations and loyalties amongst the various characters to cover, and here there seems to be considerable historical truth in the portrayals. Shakespeare’s George, Duke of Clarence (Richard’s older brother) is given a sensitive, riveting speech about a nightmare he had – one that obliquely warns him that his brother Richard isn’t as friendly towards him as he pretends to be – but Shakespeare takes care to remind us that Clarence had once upon a time been a supporter of the embattled Henry VI and Warwick the Kingmaker against the current King Edward IV, before switching sides when that proved convenient. Neither do the other main characters escape critical portrayal – details aside, they appear as the men and women of fierce ambition, resentment, and divided loyalties that they were in life. To an extent, this is true even of the play’s Tudor hero, Richmond, who takes the crown from Richard in 1485 and becomes Henry VII, an icon of early English nationalism of the sort Queen Elizabeth I would come to depend on during her reign (1558-1603). Henry Earl of Richmond is certainly contrasted in a stark manner to the villainous Richard of Gloucester, but he’s still a human being, not a god or an angel. By Shakespeare’s own day, the chivalric ideals, the feudal loyalties, of older times had disappeared, but in Richard III the playwright brings them to life well at the point of their final disintegration. I’m suggesting by the above that in spite of the melodramatic quality of Richard III and its clear-cut contrast between hero Henry and rascal Richard, there’s no lack of sophistication or ambivalence, so in that broad sense the play is true to history. Shakespeare always gets human nature right, however much license he takes with the chronological unfolding of history.

But in the end, we must emphasize the both-and quality of the history plays and not insist too heavily on the tribute they pay to the maelstrom of historical confusion, as if Shakespeare were anachronistically channeling postmodern sentiments and expectations. Richard III’s mastery is short-lived, and the medieval-style moral pattern reinforced by this play is never in doubt. Richard’s own words suggest the reason for his speedy failure as a king: “I am in / So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin. / Tear-falling pity dwells not in this eye” (4.2.63-5). However courageous and crafty Richard may be, he has become the creature of his own evil deeds, doomed to repeat them with less and less control over the outcome, until disaster can no longer be kept at bay. Only his death at the hands of Henry Tudor, and Henry’s marriage as Henry VII to the Yorkist King Edward IV’s daughter Elizabeth, will put an end to the bloody chaos of The Wars of the Roses. The lesson of Richard III seems starkly Augustinian: sin begets sin, and free will negates itself thereby, so that all of Richard’s cunning schemes and furious action come to nothing. Shakespeare’s “speaking picture” (Philip Sidney’s phrase) of incarnate evil, like all evil, ultimately has no substance, no staying power – those who try to harness evil as the vehicle of their own advancement end up destroying themselves. That’s why Richard III isn’t a true tragedy but is instead a brilliant melodrama looking back to the late medieval period of English history.

BACK TO AN EARLIER TIME: RICHARD II, 1 AND 2 HENRY IV, and HENRY V

If Richard III partly showed us a consummate Machiavellian ruler going about his murderous business, Richard II serves as a prime example of Shakespeare’s interest in what happens when those who are the center of the whirlwind that is English history don’t know how to use the power they have. Richard II, in Shakespeare’s casting, is a wicked man but also a doomed poet-king who philosophizes about and dramatizes his downfall even as it is happening to him. The following passage from 3.2 speaks for itself as an indicator of Richard Plantagenet’s mindset; Richard is in the midst of preparations for battle with Henry Bolingbroke, who has returned from the Continent with an army to claim first the rights he lost when Richard stripped him of his inheritance from his father John of Gaunt (the third son of Edward III), and then the throne itself:

AUMERLE. Where is the Duke my father with his power?

KING RICHARD. No matter where--of comfort no man speak.
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.
…………………………………………

For God's sake let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings ...

CARLISLE. My lord, wise men ne'er sit and wail their woes,
But presently prevent the ways to wail.

Richard II is a master of words, but not a good ruler. As Carlisle tries to tell him, men in his position haven’t the luxury of sitting around and poeticizing: their task is to act quickly and resolutely. Chairman Mao famously said that “political power grows from the barrel of a gun.” That was largely true of the English monarchs in the time period Shakespeare covers – violence was never far from the throne, either in its getting or its defending. “Use it or lose it” is the first lesson of political power: if you are entrusted with authority and fail to use it, someone else will, whether their claim to wield that power is textbook legitimate or not. Legitimate is as legitimate does. (I suppose all the English rulers knew that primogeniture, legitimacy, and allied concepts were partly fictions.) I can’t do better than quote il brutto, Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez, from the 1966 Sergio Leone classic The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: “When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk.” Ultimately, what we can draw from Richard II is Shakespeare’s interest in the pitiless dynamics of royal power; his concern for the necessarily close relationship between rhetoric and political action; and the fundamental need of a ruler to understand his own people. Richard II failed in all three regards, and so he fell to the ruthless and efficient claim to the throne advanced by Henry Bolingbroke.

From 1 and 2 Henry IV, I have time only to mention that the plays show the comic, redemptive disposition of time we have discussed in relation to Twelfth Night. Henry Bolingbroke or Henry IV was a powerful and competent man, but in Shakespeare’s handling, he is a guilt-ridden stage-setter for his prodigal son Prince Hal, who will in Henry V be represented as a great warrior-king and an icon of early English nationalism. Much of the two plays is taken up with Shakespeare’s interest in the playful, redemptive development of Hal from his troubled youth to maturity. The young man has time enough to run with the jovial but morally dangerous Sir John Falstaff and his crowd, even turning the tables on the old knight when he robs Sir John of the spoils he himself had won during an earlier robbery at Gadshill. What Hal learns during that long interval is not only who he is but who his subjects are – unlike Richard II, he is not an alien in his own land, but the living symbol of England whose power comes from the fact that he understands the kingdom he must govern and lead to victory in war; Hal understands as well that while being a king involves game-playing or role-playing, this “play” is no joke: it’s done in a spirit of deadly earnestness. It’s hard to miss the emphasis on the burdens of kingship in the Henry IV and Henry V plays.

Ultimately, the comic spirit or pattern pervades this set, and in fact it applies to all of Shakespeare’s history plays – even the ones labeled “tragedies” like Richard II, Richard III, and 3 Henry VI. That’s because in the future lies the teleological endpoint of Elizabeth’s Tudor reign and the Stuart line of James I, the two rulers during whose time Shakespeare lived and wrote: all of the events the playwright represents, we might say, were necessary to make the present possible, and all of the rulers and the great nobles were in that sense actors in a pageant larger than they could have comprehended. It seems that true tragedy is only possible when the universe crumbles around the characters who fall to their ruin, or at least it is shaken and shown to be fundamentally indifferent or even hostile to human aspirations. With the felicitous Tudor/Stuart endpoint of Shakespeare’s own day always in an audience’s mind, the tragic dimension cannot have been the primary one in his history plays; those plays essentially represent a comic or happy swath of time.

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Introduction to Shakesperean Tragedy

2011-11-06T17:05:00.001-08:00

INTRODUCTION TO TRAGEDY AND ANCIENT GREEK THEATER

I still need to write a proper introduction to Shakespearean tragedy, but for now, perhaps the following more general introduction will be of use: it has been developed for students in my world literature courses.

Books and Online Resources:

Didaskalia: Ancient Theatre Today. http://www.didaskalia.net/index.html. 3-D theatre and mask reconstructions, excellent introductory material on Greek and Roman theatre and stagecraft.

Easterling, P. E. The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Kaufmann, Walter. Tragedy and Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992.

Ley, Graham. A Short Introduction to the Ancient Greek Theater. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1991.

McLeish, Kenneth. A Guide to Greek Theatre and Drama. London: Methuen, 2003.

Perseus Project. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/. Electronic texts (original languages and translations), critical studies, etc. An impressive resource for classicists.

Pomeroy, Sarah et al. Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999.

Religious Roots of Tragedy: The Festivals of Dionysus at Athens were called the City Dionysia, which was held in March or April, and the Lenaea, which was held in January. Though classical theater flourished mainly from 475-400 BCE, it developed earlier from choral religious ceremonies dedicated to Dionysus.

The God of Honor: Dionysus was an Olympian god, and the Greeks celebrated his rites in the dithyramb. In mythology, his followers were satyrs and mainades, or ecstatic females. We sometimes call him the god of ecstasy, and as Kenneth McLeish says, he “supervis[ed] the moment when human beings surrender to unstoppable, irrational feeling or impulse” (1-2). His agents are wine, song, and dance. Song and dance were important to Dionysian rites, and the participants apparently wore masks.

At the festivals, three tragic writers would compete and so would three or five comedic playwrights. The idea was that each tragedian would present three plays and a satyr play; sometimes the three plays were linked in a trilogy, like The Oresteia. So the audience had a great deal of play going to do during the festival seasons; the activities may have gone on for three or four days, with perhaps four or five plays per day. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival provides something like this pace.

Organization: How were the festivals organized? Well, the magistrate was chosen every year by lot—the archon. Then, dramatists would apply to the magistrate for a chorus, and if they obtained a chorus, that meant that they had been chosen as one of the three tragic playwrights. After that affair was settled, wealthy private citizens known as choregoi served as producers for each playwright. The state paid for the actors, and the choregos paid chorus’ training and costumes. So there was both state and private involvement in the production of a tragedy or comedy.

The Playwrights: Aeschylus 525-456 B.C. / Sophocles 496-406 B.C. / Euripides 485-406 B.C.

Aeschylus composed about 80 dramas, Sophocles about 120, Euripides perhaps about 90. Aristophanes probably wrote about 40 comedies. Dramatists who wrote tragedies did not compose comedies, and vice versa.

The playwright was called a didaskalos, a teacher or trainer because he trained the chorus who were to sing and dance. As drama developed, the playwright also took care of the scripts and the music. He was something like a modern director, and may at times have acted in his own plays, especially in the early stages of his career. A successful dramatist could win prizes, but generally, playwrights were able to support themselves independently by land-holdings. Sophocles, for example, was a prominent citizen—he served as a general and treasurer. Aeschylus was an esteemed soldier against the Persian Empire, and his tombstone is said to have recorded his military service, not his prowess as a playwright.

The Theater: The theater for the City Dionysia was located on the south slope of the citadel of Athens, the Acropolis. The Didaskalia Classics site offers 3-D images of a later reconstruction: http://www.didaskalia.net/studyarea/recreatingdionysus.html.

The theater had three parts:

1. Theatron: this was for seating around 14,000 spectators; it was probably at first of wood, but later it was of stone. 2. Orchestra: this was for the chorus to sing and dance in and for the actors, when their function was developed. 3. Skene: this was at first a tent-like structure that served as a scene-building, and it had a door for entrances and exits. The Oresteia requires one, though perhaps the earliest plays didn’t. Costume was important, too, because it could be used to determine factors like status, gender, and age.

The chorus remained important in drama, especially in Aeschylus. At some point, a choregos (legend says it was “Thespis,” hence actors are “thespians”) stepped forth and became the first actor, or answerer (hypocrites). So the composer was the first participant to turn choral celebration into what we call drama, with a plot and interaction between characters. Apparently Aeschylus or Sophocles added a third actor. The former’s early plays required only two actors, but even that was enough to make for interesting exchanges between the chorus and the actors and, to some extent, between the actors and each other. With three actors, of course, the possibilities for true dramatic dialogue and action are impressive.

Audience: Would have consisted mostly of male citizens—the ones who ran Athenian democracy by participating in the Assembly. There would probably have been very few, if any, slaves or women present, and perhaps some resident aliens or “metics” and visiting dignitaries. Drama was surely a male-centered affair, as was the political life of Athens. Public speaking was vital in democratic Athens—anyone who was someone in the legal/political system needed to know how to move and convince fairly large numbers of men. Theater and political life, as we shall see from Aeschylus, were in fact closely connected: the same skills were required, and the same class of people participated (male kyrioi, or heads of households who also performed military service). So while the stuff of tragedy seems almost always to have been the ancient myth cycles, the audience watching the plays would have felt themselves drawn in by the dramatists’ updating of their significance for the major concerns of the 5th-century B.C. present. And that present was, of course, the age of the great statesman Pericles (495-429 B.C.), who drove home the movement towards full Athenian democracy from 461 B.C. onwards and who at the same time furthered a disastrous course of imperial protection and aggression that had ensued from victory in the Persian Wars around 500 B.C. Greek tragedy grew to maturity in the period extending from the battles of Marathon on land in 490 B.C. and the naval engagement at Salamis in 480 B.C., on through the Second Peloponnesian War from 431-404 B.C., in which the Athenians lost to Sparta the empire they had gained during half a century of glory following the victories over Persia. Athens’ supremacy didn’t last long as such things go, but it burned brightly while it lasted, and festival drama, along with architecture, sculpture, and philosophy, was among its greatest accomplishments. So the dramas took place in one of the most exciting times in Western history—both heady and unsettling at the same time, shot through with violence, democratic and artistic flowering, victory, and great loss.

Tragic Masks: The masks tell us something about tragedy: with linen or clay masks, a single actor might play several roles, or wear several faces of the same character. (Visit Didaskalia’s interactive 3-D mask page at http://www.didaskalia.net/studyarea/visual_resources/images/masks/mask_mm/rotmask1.html.) Wilde said, “give a man a mask, and he’ll tell you the truth.” His quip should remind us that masks don’t discourage expression—as Kenneth McLeish says, they had religious significance in the theater: participants in Dionysian rites offered up their personal identity to the god, and further, he continues:

“Wearing a mask does not inhibit or restrict the portrayal of character but enhances it, allowing more, not less, fluidity and suppleness of movement; and the character created by or embodied in the mask and the actor who wears it can feel as if it has an independent identity which is liberated at the moment of performance—an unsettlingly Dionysian experience” (9).

That emphasis on what we might call expression is important especially because—Aristotle’s claims about plot being the soul of tragedy notwithstanding—not much happens in many Greek tragedies. Instead, chorus members and characters “take up an attitude” towards the few well-packaged, exciting events that take place on or off the stage. The action is important, but the characters’ words and attitudes help us, in turn, gain perspective on the action. Perhaps when Aristotle emphasizes plot so much, he’s taking for granted the great power of the Dionysian mask to support the plot in driving the audience towards catharsis. Character, he says, will reveal itself in relation to the play’s action.

Aristotle’s Theory of Drama and Shakespeare’s Practice as a Dramatist

We will cover Aristotle briefly in our class, but if you would like to read something more detailed about his theory of drama, please see my Fall 2007 E491 Literary Theory blog (http://www.ajdrake.com/blogs/491_fall_07/), where (in the entry for Week 2) I cover The Poetics in some detail. In Aristotle’s view, a well constructed plot that follows probability and necessity will induce the proper tragic emotions (pity and fear or terror), with the result being “catharsis,” a medical term that may be interpreted as “purgation” (of emotion) and/or as “intellectual clarification.” I should think that the tragic emotions, once aroused, become the object of introspection; thereafter, the audience attains clarification about an issue of great importance—for instance, our relation to the gods, the nature of divine justice, etc.

Aristotle's theory of tragedy in The Poetics is simple in its essentials: the dramatist must craft a plot ("an arrangement of incidents") that follows the laws of necessity and probability and thereby represents a unified action. If the dramatist follows the precept that "plot is the soul of tragedy," the proper emotional effect should follow: the audience's pity and fear will lead them toward catharsis. The latter was a Greek medical term that had to do with purging the body by means of cutting a vein and "bleeding" the patient; it is usually interpreted to mean that a tragic play stirs up powerful feelings but also renders them harmless or puts them in the service of artistic reflection. To extrapolate broadly, we may leave the theater emotionally purified and much "clearer" intellectually about our own nature as human beings, our place in the universe, and our relationship with the gods. Aristotle was a scientist, and he considered the arts intellectually significant: he suggested that mimesis (imitation, representation) is one of the main ways we learn things from the time we are children onwards. Dramatic mimesis is a species of representation in general, so in that sense it's continuous with life beyond the theater. We find in Aristotle, then, a view that says carefully structured works of theatrical art open a window to an important emotional and intellectual experience, one that makes painful sights and stories worthwhile to see and reflect upon.

As for the precise nature of tragic insight, well, it varies from play to play. Aristotle knew that just saying a tragedy ends unhappily wasn't much of a description – what would we do then with Aeschylus' The Oresteia, a trilogy that ends in triumph for its remaining protagonist and glory for the city of Athens? But to take a prominent example of a play that really does end badly for its protagonist, what is the nature of the insight gained in Sophocles' Oedipus the King? Surely the lesson isn’t simply that you shouldn’t kill your father and then sleep with your mother. Those are primal taboos. Perhaps, then, we see the iron law of prophecy and divine sway brought home to us: Oedipus had tried to flee a prophecy, but the god’s words catch up with him anyway. Even this admirably clever character cannot outwit his own fate, and his very strengths (cleverness and determination, self-sufficiency in the face of hardship) become the engines of his destruction. Or perhaps we come to understand the painful process of gaining insight into the nature of things and of ourselves. Oedipus the King tells us something—to our discomfiture—about how we fit into a cosmic order presided over by difficult gods. Another example would be Sophocles’ Antigone—there are competing sets of laws and rights in the cosmos. Antigone asserts familial piety (she wants to bury her slain brother), while Creon asserts his prerogative to be obeyed as a king who had decreed it fitting to leave Antigone's brother unburied since the man had made himself an enemy to Thebes. Both are in their own context taking the moral high ground, so situation thereby yields us the Hegelian notion of tragedy that pits incompatible rights against each other.

There doesn't seem, then, to be any one thing to learn from ancient tragedy, except perhaps that the world never works they way we want it to but instead has its own ways. Greek tragedy teaches us that (contrary to what Protagoras said) man is not the measure of all things; humanity is certainly not the boss of the universe. We are caught up in nets of significance beyond our power to escape or perhaps even to understand fully, and the best we may be able to do is to seek clarity and maintain our dignity in the face of that harsh insight. But that's important, too: the Greeks cared a lot about how you faced up to a fate imposed upon you by forces beyond your control, about what attitude you struck up in the face of disaster and, sometimes, divine indifference or even hostility. In tragedy, as Northrop Frye and others have long said, it is death that gives meaning to life: which means that the art form pays homage to a kind of magnificent powerlessness: life only yields its full significance when we are on the verge of losing it. What good does "insight" do the protagonist (and us by implication) if consciousness is about to be extinguished and we won't be able to act upon our hard-won insight? Well, that's a very human question, one we might suppose tragedy to ask but not, I think, to answer to everyone's satisfaction. Maybe there's some value in not going to one's grave a dupe, an unwitting plaything of a hostile or uncaring universe: there's dignity in getting clear on things.

Of course, we need not suppose Shakespeare bothered much with literary theory; he almost surely never studied Aristotle's Poetics. He seems to have had a general (and not necessarily favorable) acquaintance with what would eventually become in eighteenth-century drama a rigid doctrine of the unities of action, time, and place, and of course he knew from any number of sources and influences (Horace, etc.) that art was a species of imitation. A dramatist or an actor "holds the mirror up to nature," as he makes Hamlet say. Aristotle offers us valuable insights in his own right, which can serve as a point of departure for thinking about Shakespeare's own idiosyncratic way of developing tragic plays. It's often said that the Renaissance's great minds drew from classical authors the courage they needed to step forth into the full development of their own humanity; that makes sense as a broad generalization, but there's another and more disturbing set of insights to be drawn from the Greeks and Romans all the way back to Homer, a poet often described as reassuring but who at least implicitly recognizes the "dark side" of Greek culture and thought: the stuff, that is, of Greek tragedy. This sense for the dark side, for the gap between knowledge and power, for the great distance between our need for intelligibility and security and the way the world and the gods treat us, may be what Shakespeare drew from the classical tradition.

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Introduction to Shakespearean Romance

2011-11-06T17:04:00.001-08:00

INTRODUCTION TO SHAKESPEARE'S ROMANCE PLAYS

I will provide an introduction as soon as time permits, but in the meantime, here are some adapted excerpts from my notes for The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale.

From Notes on The Tempest

In Fools of Time: Studies in Shakespearean Tragedy (U of Toronto Press, 1967, repr. 1985), Northrop Frye writes with precision about the defining characteristics of tragic vision; what underlies this vision, he posits, “… is being in time, the sense of the one-directional quality of life, where everything happens once and for all, where every act brings unavoidable and fateful consequences, and where all experience vanishes, not simply into the past, but into nothingness, annihilation. In the tragic vision death is … the essential event that gives shape and form to life” (3). By contrast, in Frye’s schema, the romance pattern is cyclical, not linear; death does not define life but rather the characters in the romance will have a chance to redeem themselves and the order within which they function. The social order in Shakespeare’s romance plays and comedies borrows from the stability and perpetuity of the great seasonal cycles that literary cultures have envied and invoked for thousands of years.

Shakespearean romance (Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, and The Two Noble Kinsmen) clearly differs from the straightforwardly tragic mode of action and perception, but it isn’t identical with comedy, either. While both comedy and romance depend partly on the renovation of a corrupt social order, often by temporary removal into a green world of nature where magic rules and people can turn things around, romance is to be distinguished from tragedy and comedy is its Janus-like quality, its ambivalence about even the bittersweet endings it supplies. In The Tempest, for instance, we enjoy a felicitous ending with the expectation of a marriage between Ferdinand and Miranda back in Naples and a return to power for Prospero as Duke of Milan. The old wizard shows himself a benevolent ruler on his island and, we presume, he will be equally benevolent when he returns to his Italian duchy. All of that sounds “comic” enough. Still, it is easy to see that Prospero is potentially a tyrant and could plausibly misuse his powers: death, disorder, and tyranny are real threats in The Tempest, even though things turn out for the best.

From Notes on The Winter’s Tale

Ultimately, Shakespearean romance reorients us towards an attitude of wonder not only at our own follies but also at the depth of our potential for vision and respect for our own and others’ humanity.

Finally, we know that romance in general tries to take to itself some of the permanence and profundity of the great natural cycles of death and rebirth, decay and renewal. There is something in romance time of Shelley’s “destroyer and preserver” the West Wind (the Greeks called it Zephyros; the other three wind gods or anemoi were Boreas the North Wind, Notos the South Wind, and Euros the East Wind), and in a more quiet vein, some readers may recall the unseen but healing operations of “the secret ministry of Frost” in Coleridge’s “Frost at Midnight.” Shakespeare’s romance plays don’t simply sweep away the passage of time or cancel out its ravages: romance time offers regeneration, but it also encompasses death and destruction as necessary. (Norton editor Jean E. Howard’s introduction to The Winter’s Tale 191-200 is excellent on the above aspects of Shakespeare’s romances, and the great myth critic Northrop Frye’s work on the romance genre can hardly go without mention.) There is a general embrace of the miraculous and the improbable in such plays, but it’s no less true that what has been lost can’t always be recovered fully, and sometimes not at all. Antigonus and Mamillius do not share in the reconciliations and recoveries that constitute the ending of The Winter’s Tale. What we get is not second chances or “do-overs” in the simplest sense but rather second chances in altered circumstances; events and persons may come full circle, but there is loss and sorrow along the way, leaving even triumphant conclusions with a bittersweet taste. None of this is to say, however, that the romance plays are anything but ultimately hopeful and mostly uplifting: they offer what may well be the most realistic orientation towards life with its recurrent opportunities and travails—not a proffer of ultimate insight and intense clarity near the point of being crushed by inexorable forces, as in tragedy; not a sunny representation of individual satisfaction and happy communities, as in the lighter of Shakespeare’s comedies; but a kind of wisdom that allows us to abide in uncertainty, accept the changes and loss that time brings, and be thankful for the rare and all but miraculous “second chances” we may receive, however partial the outcome.

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All’s Well That Ends Well

2011-11-06T09:53:00.000-08:00

Alfred J. Drake's Notes on All's Well That Ends Well, by William Shakespeare

NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE’S ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

Notes accord with the text in Greenblatt, Stephen et al., eds. The Norton Shakespeare. 2nd edition. Four-Volume Genre Paperback Set. Comedies. Norton, 2008. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93152-5. Document timestamp: 11/7/2011 8:28 AM

Act 1, Scene 1 (919-24, Elders’ hopes for the young; Helen’s idolatry of Bertram; Paroles)

The countess and Lafeu posit a balance in the young between inherited virtue and acquired grace and honor. The Countess says of Helen that she “derives her honesty and achieves her goodness” (920, 1.1.40), while the wish for Bertram is, “Thy blood and virtue / Contend for empire in thee” (920, 1.1.55-56). Helen, however, looks forward to her immediate future with the unsparing determination we find in Tolstoy’s story “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.” The tears she cries are not for her father, and her grief seems to be more pretense than sincere affection. The obstacle in her way is Bertram’s great rank. The affection she feels for this man amounts to the product of “idolatrous fancy” (921, 1.1.92), says Helen, especially since it is not reciprocated by Bertram: “’Twere all one / That I should love a bright particular star / And think to wed it, he is so above me” (921, 1.1.80-82).

Helen’s conversation with Paroles centers upon the concept of virginity, which of course this rascal dismisses out of hand as worthless, or at best a fashionable commodity to be sold to the highest bidder at the best time: “Off with’t while ‘tis vendible. Answer the time / of request. Virginity like an old courtier wears her cap out of fashion …” (922, 1.1.143-45). Helen’s regard for this parasite, whom she sees for what he is, stems from her admiration for Bertram. Nonetheless, she manages to get in some excellent barbs: “The wars hath so kept you under that you must needs be born under Mars” (923, 1.1.101).

Paroles dismissed after his pledge to “return perfect courtier” (923, 1.1.192), we see Helen’s faith in merit properly showcased over destiny and the handicaps such quality sometimes confronts: “Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie / Which we ascribe to heaven…. / … Who ever strove / To show her merit that did miss her love?” (923, 1.1.199-200, 209-10) Helen already has it in mind to pay the king a visit and try her father’s cure: “The King’s disease—my project may deceive me, / But my intents are fixed and will not leave me” (924, 1.1.211-12).

Act 1, Scene 2 (924-25, King welcomes Bertram, but praises Bertram’s father more)

In the second scene, there is still more praise amongst the elders when the king showers encomiums upon Bertram’s father: “He had the wit which can well observe / Today in our young lords, but they may jest / Till their own scorn return to them unnoted / Ere they can hide their levity in honour…” (924-25, 1.2.32-48). The Second Lord Dumaine suggests that young aristocrats need the exercise of war to keep them sharp and in line: though the king won’t send the Florentines any help directly because the Duke of Austria has asked him to refrain, some martial experience “well may serve / A nursery to our gentry, who are sick / For breathing and exploit” (924, 1.2.15-17). This advice no doubt plays to the aging king’s anxiety about the transference of deep qualities and proper forms from the old to a new generation. (We might question whether or not military experience does anything for Bertram, but that’s a question for later.)

The king reflects that Bertram’s father had said young people care for nothing but fashion, implying that the young inevitably exhaust their energy upon unworthy objects: “‘Let me not live’, quoth he, / ‘After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff / Of younger spirits, whose apprehensive senses / All but new things disdain, whose judgements are / Mere fathers of their garments, whose constancies / Expire before their fashions’” (925, 1.2.58-63). What’s in doubt here, as mentioned above, is the success of a process central to many of Shakespeare’s comedies: the transference of virtue from one generation to the next. Is there any continuity beyond the lowest common denominator, the shallowest patterns of conduct and belief? Yet this anxiety is set forth with becoming humility: of himself, the king says in response to the Second Lord Dumaine’s praise, “I fill a place, I know’t” (925, 1.2.69). Bertram exits after his warm reception by the king.

Act 1, Scene 3 (925-31, Lavatch the pragmatics, materialist; countess sides with Helen, who will go to court to try a cure)

Lavatch doesn’t pay much attention to the concept of virtue, whether inner or outer. Parodically recycling this play’s emphasis on organic imagery implying nourishment and growth, he even praises adultery: “He that / ears my land spares my team, and gives me leave to in the / crop…. / He that comforts my wife is the cherisher of my flesh and blood …” (926, 1.3.38-41). This character is a naturalist who doesn’t suppose there is any way to escape from the world, the flesh, or the devil: as he says while explaining to the countess why he intends to marry, “My poor body, madam, requires it. I am driven on by / the flesh, and he must needs go that the devil drives” (926, 1.3.24-25).

When Reynaldo reports on Helen’s affection for Bertram (927-28, 1.3.94-98), the countess sides entirely with natural desire and quality in the person of Helen: “Even so it was with me when I was young” (928, 1.3.112-13). She is charitable where this young woman is concerned, and somewhat shocked when Helen seems afraid of the term “mother” (928, 1.3.139-40). Helen certainly shows her merit when she confesses her thoughts about Bertram to the countess, saying, “I follow him not / By any token of presumptuous suit, / Nor would I have him till I do deserve him …” (929, 1.3.181-83). She shows it too in her determination at this early point to risk her life in administering her father’s medicines to cure the king: “I’d venture / The well-lost life of mine on his grace’s cure …” (930, 1.3.233-34).

A key issue in the play is the propensity in individuals and entire societies to hollow out even their deepest values and become empty formalists. Bertram is such a formalist. No doubt Shakespeare’s Renaissance women liked a project. But is Bertram a project that can be redeemed from failure—is he worth the effort? That is a question to ask as we go through the play and see how things turn out.

At this point, I’ll just suggest that perhaps this play is not so much about the usual happy transition of a value system intact to a younger generation but instead about accommodation between old and young, and one young person and another by arrangement; it’s about mediating between the common lot of any rank and excellence so that a satisfactory solution can be obtained. The eventual marriage between Helen and Bertram may be nothing more than an excellent marriage of convenience backed by the power of a countess and a king. In a sense, the countess is doing what aristocrats eventually must do: invigorating her stock with new blood.

Act 2, Scene 1 (931-35, Paroles counsels Bertram to pay homage to military fashion; Helen succeeds in her pitch to the king)

In advising Bertram to show more regard for the Lords Dumaine, Paroles intimates that he’s always willing to fit in, to conform and follow the courtly and military fashions of great lords: “for they wear themselves / in the cap of the time” (932, 2.1.51-52). Belonging is his imperative, not merit.

Lafeu cajoles the king into admitting Helen: “… I have seen a medicine / That’s able to breathe life into a stone …” (932, 2.1.70-71). The king at first refuses Helen’s offer to cure him since he believes it would be indecorous and perhaps even undermine his dignity: he “may not be so credulous of cure, / When our most learned doctors leave us …” (933, 2.1.112-13). But in the end, Helen wins the argument by her boldness: “Oh heaven, not me, make an experiment” (934, 2.1.153). The young woman must venture her very life (935, 2.1.173) for this royal place-filler, but in return she will gain exemption from the charge of trying to rise beyond her place. There will be a suspension of the ordinary rules in this matter: “Then shalt thou give me with thy kingly hand / What husband in thy power I will command. / Exempted be from me the arrogance / To choose from forth the royal blood of France …” (2.1.192-95). Historically, the rules weren’t exactly rigid in the first place, and even illegitimacy wasn’t necessarily a bar to advancement if one had the right backing. But I leave that aside.

Act 2, Scene 2 (936-37, Lavatch’s courtly critique: “O Lord, sir!”)

Bantering with the countess, Lavatch utters his wonderful catch-phrase “O Lord, Sir!” (936, 2.2.36) redolent of courtly deception and evasion: it’s the kind of thing you’d say when you want to intimate that you can’t believe your interlocutor would be so naïve or impertinent as to ask such a question. This is the opposite of Helen’s bluntness in advancing her love for Bertram, even though she resorts to a species of sanctioned deception to complete the match. The countess drives home the play’s interest in youth and age in her manner of soliciting Lavatch to make good on his offer of courtly insight: “To be young again, if we could! I will be a fool in / question, hoping to be the wiser by your answer. I pray you, sir, / are you a courtier?” (936, 2.2.32-34)

Act 2, Scene 3 (937-43, King’s recovery; Bertram rejects Helen, overawed by king; Lafeu pegs Paroles; Bertram decides to escape Helen and France for the Florentine wars)

The king enters fully recovered, and even dancing: says Lafeu, “Why, he’s able to lead her a coranto” (938, 2.3.40), and again we see that the old in this play are not so irrelevant after all. They are not stage props. But when Helen chooses him out of an aristo-lineup with the formula, “I dare not say I take you, but I give / Me and my service ever whilst I live / Into your guiding power” (939, 2.3.98-100), Bertram rejects what is effectively the king’s choice and will not take Helen for his wife. This rejection is obviously understandable in purely human terms: Helen has said she will not force herself on the young man, but nonetheless she forcibly gives herself to him even though he does not want her. Under the circumstances, Bertram’s request, “In such a business give me leave to use / The help of mine own eyes” (939, 2.3.103-04) sounds reasonable. Still, reciprocity may not be the issue here: the king’s will is supreme in such a society as Shakespeare conjures, and Bertram is being disrespectful since he’s the king’s ward.

It’s clear that the king believes his authority has been impudently challenged by a subject. Part of his reasoning with Bertram lies in trying to explain to the brittle young man where “honor” comes from in the first place: “’Tis only title thou disdain’st in her, the which / I can build up” (939, 2.3.113-14) and “From lowest place when virtuous things proceed, / The place is dignified by th’doer’s deed” (940, 2.3.121-22). But when that logic fails, the king gets to the point: “My honour’s at the stake, which to defeat / I must produce my power” (940, 2.3.145-46). Overawed at last, Bertram makes a hollow submission: “I submit / My fancy to your eyes” (940, 2.3.163-64).

And then comes Paroles, who comically rejects the category of servitude to which Bertram has just offered unsuccessful battle. Lafeu is always needling Paroles, playing him like a fiddle: “Your lord and master did well to make his recantation,” offers Lafeu, to which Paroles replies, “Recantation? My lord? My master?” (941, 2.3.182-83). One wants to say of this character much the same thing Kent says about the corrupt servant Oswald in King Lear: “Nature disclaims in thee: / a tailor made thee” (Norton Tragedies, 762, 2.2.48). The clothes really do make this man, and he is not well-made. Lafeu’s put-down of Paroles is classic: “I did think thee for two ordinaries to be a pretty wise / fellow…. / Yet the scarves and the bannerets about thee did mani- / foldly dissuade me from believing thee a vessel of too great a / burden… (941, 2.3.195-199).

The elderly Lafeu has the perspicacity to make this judgment after a few suppers’ talk with Paroles, a man whose words and decking-out don’t match his true qualities or deeds. Perhaps we had best not make too much of this species of wisdom since, after all, Bertram comes by it without too much of a struggle later in the play (Act 4), allowing the Lords Dumaine to demonstrate the true mettle of one Paroles, liar and coward.

In any case, Bertram huddles with Paroles after Lafeu is finished insulting the fop, and decides to leave France and Helen in favor of participating in the Florentine wars: “Wars is no strife / To the dark house and the detested wife” (943, 2.3.275-76).

Act 2, Scene 4 (943-44, Lavatch’s pessimism; Helen obeys Bertram’s wish through Paroles: leave the court)

Lavatch insists that the countess is not well for two simple reasons: “One, that she’s not in heaven …. / The other, that she’s in earth …” (943, 2.4.9-10). He is ever the pessimist, and as the Norton editors point out, he is echoing the ancient notion of Solon and later the Greek tragedian Sophocles in Oedipus Rex: count no one happy until he or she has died well. This insight gives way to a silly wit-match between Lavatch and Paroles (943-44, 2.4.15-34), and a simple declaration of obedience from Helen when she hears that Bertram wants her to take her leave from the king’s court and go home: “In everything / I wait upon his will” (944, 2.4.50-51). She will not keep to this declaration, we should note with approval.

Act 2, Scene 5 (944-46, Lafeu needles Paroles in Bertram’s presence; Bertram gives Helen a letter, refuses a parting kiss, prepares to leave France)

Lafeu continues to needle Paroles, hoping to disabuse Bertram of his admiration for this fool. “The soul of this man is in his clothes. / Trust him not in matter of heavy consequence” (945, 2.5.40-41). But it is too soon for Bertram to accept such a verdict against a man who is, after all, counseling him to do precisely what he wants to do. Bertram hands Helen a letter to be opened by his mother, rudely refuses his bride’s polite request for a kiss, and prepares to take his leave from France without bothering to visit the king as required (946, 2.5.65-82). It would be difficult for our opinion of Bertram to get any worse, but he will manage to do something in that regard later.

Act 3, Scenes 1-2 (946-50, Bertram’s letters to the countess and Helen: his impossible conditions for accepting Helen; Helen stricken with guilt, determines to depart)

The Duke of Florence prepares for battle in the first scene (946-47, 3.1.1-23), and the second scene takes us to the countess, Helen, and Lavatch in France. First comes Bertram’s letter explaining why he has run away to the wars, and this of course earns the countess’s disapproval (947, 3.2.19-25). In a separate letter to Helen, Bertram sets forth what he thinks are the impossible conditions for his acceptance of her: “When thou canst get the ring upon my finger, which never / shall come off, and show me a child begotten of thy body that / I am father to, then call me husband …” (948, 3.2.55-57).

We learn Helen’s fearful reaction to this piece of news: she believes she has driven Bertram to this extreme and put him in deadly peril: “And is it I / That drive thee from the sportive court … / to be the mark / Of smoky muskets?” (949, 3.2.105-08) This is what determines her to leave Roussillon: “My being here it is that holds thee hence” (949, 3.2.123). Apparently, she has not yet conceived of her device to satisfy Bertram’s conditions.

Act 3, Scenes 3-4 (950-51, Bertram’s at the wars, Helen’s gone, the countess hopes for a reconciliation)

In the third scene, we learn that Bertram pays homage to drums of war, not thoughts of love: “Great Mars, I put myself into thy file” (950, 3.3.9), and in the fourth, Reynaldo informs the countess that Helen has supposedly decided to go on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James in Compostela, Spain. The countess still hopes for a reconciliation in the aftermath of this news, and finds that she can’t choose between them: “Which of them both / Is dearest to me I have no skill in sense / To make distinction” (951, 3.4.38-40).

Act 3, Scene 5 (951-53, Widow Capilet and Diana watch soldiers pass, Helen invites them to dinner)

The action now moves to Florence, where Widow Capilet and her daughter Diana (along with Mariana) are watching the soldiers file by below (951-52). Helen (who has apparently changed her plans from that visit to the shrine in Spain) finds out in talking to them that Paroles has been badmouthing her, and she is hardly surprised to hear it (952, 3.5.55-59). Helen invites the two women to supper (953, 3.5.95-96).

Act 3, Scene 6 (953-55, Lords Dumaine prevail upon Bertram to try Paroles’ mettle)

Bertram’s two friends, the first and second Lord Dumaine, are trying to disabuse him of his regard for Paroles (953-55). By now, Bertram is open to the idea of testing this detestable character, having heard his friends declare the man “a most notable coward, an infinite and endless / liar, an hourly promise-breaker …” (954, 3.6.10-11). The idea is to pretend to capture Paroles, and get him to betray everyone he knows to the enemy. As we shall see, Paroles will go them one better, insulting his comrades with abandon. But for the moment, all we have is the plan. The two lords are very good at predicting exactly what the rascal will do: he’s the sort of person who might escape condemnation for a week because he’s a good talker, but as the first Lord Dumaine says, “when you find him out, you have him ever after” (955, 3.6.84).

Act 3, Scene 7 (956-57, Helen enlists Widow Capilet’s Diana into her Bertram-scheme: bed trick)

Helen now draws the widow and her daughter into her device to win back Bertram: first she admits that she is his wife, and then instructs the daughter to consent to Bertram’s advances (956, 3.7.17-36). She is to demand of him the ancestral ring he wears, and then get out of the way so that Helen may occupy her place in bed with Bertram. Helen describes the virtue of this trick as “… wicked meaning in a lawful deed / And lawful meaning in a wicked act, / Where both not sin, and yet a sinful fact” (957, 3.7.45-47). She admits, in other words, that she is practicing deception and that he is attempting adultery, but what they do will be legitimate. Thwarting Bertram’s will is entirely acceptable in this play.

Act 4, Scene 1 (957-59, Self-aware Paroles is trapped, baited by “barbarians” Dumaine & Co.; he offers to betray his own side)

Paroles opens up the gap between words and action, and (in his case, anyway) the infinite space between those realms terrifies him. He’s quite self-aware, which makes him interesting, knave though he is. In him we can hear the strains of self-disgust, and a proof, if one were needed, that Oscar Wilde’s quip about action making us puppets and slaves of mere necessity needs some glossing: certain kinds of talk is more likely than others to lead us into that trap, isn’t it? Here we catch Paroles narrating the story of himself to himself, so to speak. He doesn’t make sense to himself—why, oh why do I do it?he asks, and there’s no reason given why he’s pledged himself to a thing impossible: “What the devil should move me to undertake the / recovery of this drum …?” (957, 4.1.31-33) Shakespeare is interested in the power of the lie, the seeming groundlessness of human dishonesty at times. Queen Elizabeth’s sometime Lord Chancellor Sir Francis Bacon muses in his 1601 essay “Of Truth” the following, which is very relevant to us in trying to understand Paroles and other such rogues, and perhaps ourselves:

But it is not only the difficulty and labor, which men take in finding out of truth, nor again, that when it is found, it imposeth upon men’s thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a natural, though corrupt love, of the lie itself. One of the later school of the Grecians, examineth the matter, and is at a stand, to think what should be in it, that men should love lies; where neither they make for pleasure, as with poets, nor for advantage, as with the merchant; but for the lie’s sake. But I cannot tell; this same truth, is a naked, and open day-light, that doth not show the masks, and mummeries, and triumphs, of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond, or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men’s minds, vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds, of a number of men, poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves? (public domain e-text source)

The lie, then, knits men together in a web of pleasurable, optimistic deceit, and makes them “pleasing to themselves.” The truth makes us feel common and limited, but the dim light of falsity shows us to ourselves and others as things precious. But Bacon’s essays deliberately never try to exhaust their subject matter, so there is more to it than this, we can be sure. And that “more to it” seems to be what troubles Paroles—that “corrupt love of the lie” to which Bacon alludes is something of a mystery, and perhaps all one can do to cover up the abyss of the thing is to point towards some concept like original sin or the inherent depravity of mankind. The Second Lord Dumaine suggests as much with his incredulous question, “Is it possible he should know / what he is, and be that he is?” (957, 4.1.39-40)

Shakespeare has some linguistic fun in this scene, with those nonsense fake-Russian phonemes or whatever they are—good old polyglot Europe! Their purpose, as the Second Lord Dumaine has already explained (957, 4.1.1-5), is not to be comprehensible, but instead to be ferocious and put up a wall between Paroles and his hopes for deliverance. They are the sauce to his plate of fear, and underlying that fear is Paroles’ own insight into his nature. Well, language is a surprisingly varied and effective means of miscommunication: “Oscorbidulchos volivorco!” (958, 4.1.74) Paroles, of course, offers his captors nothing less than total knowledge: “all the secrets of our camp I’ll show” (958, 4.1.79).

Act 4, Scene 2 (959-60, Diana procures Bertram’s ring as he tries to seduce her)

Bertram employs the rhetoric of youthful dalliance and passion, which we know as carpe diem talk. “If the quick fire of youth light not your mind,” he says to Diana, “You are not maiden but a monument” (959, 4.2.5-6). But Diana, whose very name reminds us of the most chaste goddess among the Greeks, is more than a match for Bertram’s seductive words, thanks to Helen’s assistance. Diana easily procures the ring from Bertram, doing her part in Helen’s scheme. She promises Bertram that she will give him a ring in turn along with her chastity (960, 4.2.55-66). Diana is very much a believer in the logic of the play’s title—all’s well that ends well: she has no plans to marry, but doesn’t mind helping Helen: “… in this disguise I think’t no sin / To cozen him that would unjustly win” (960, 4.2.76-77).

Act 4, Scene 3 (961-67, Bertram’s conscience awakens at false news of Helen’s death; Paroles is completely humiliated, unmasked as a liar and coward, but he’s resilient in knavery)

Does shallow Bertram now feel the sting of conscience? That seems to be what the second Lord Dumaine thinks at the beginning of the scene. Upon reading his mother’s letter, Bertram, we are told, “changed almost into another man” (961, 4.3.5). The first Lord Dumaine reports and apparently believes that Helen has passed away at the end of her pilgrimage to St. Jacques the grand. Bertram, as he tells us himself, has been extremely busy taking his leave of the Duke, burying his supposedly deceased wife, writing to his mother and planning to go home and visit her, and other things. He is still looking forward to Paroles’s unmasking. This trick of course parallels the trick that is being played upon Bertram himself, though he does not know that: a good example of dramatic irony since we, the audience, know something Bertram doesn’t.

Paroles is utterly humiliated in this scene (963-67), and infers the lesson from this experience for himself. He is drawn into insulting just about everyone he knows, including the brothers Dumaine, the Duke of Florence, and Bertram. He assails their virtue in every possible way, military and otherwise. And his response to this humiliating episode is priceless: “Who cannot be crushed with a plot?” (967, 4.3.302). The two key things he says to conclude the scene are as follows: “Simply the thing I am / Shall make me live.” And again, “There’s place and means for every man alive” (967, 4.3.310-11, 316). He has been found out as a liar, a coward, and a knave, but there’s still a place for him in the saucy world—it’s big enough to accommodate a relatively harmless rascal like Paroles.

But as the Norton editors imply, he is not the kind of mover and shaker that Helen is. She puts her body behind her words, and Paroles is all talk and no action, no body, and ultimately nobody important. The editors describe Paroles’ method well when they suggest that he keeps introducing himself in ever-diminished ways into an environment that obviously has no love for him (917). The world is by no means perfect, but at least it can be patient. There is opportunity for many talents, not all of them honorable and Paroles, we might add, is useful as a touchstone against which to measure one’s own honor. Honor, we should remember from what the king has said about it in praising Bertram’s departed father (924-25, 1.2.32-48), has much to do with the willingness to speak chastely and modestly and to back up one’s words with actions.

Act 4, Scene 4 (967-68, Helen informs Diana of plan’s next step: to French court)

Helen fills in Diana and her mother about the next part of her plan—Diana must go to the French court—and tells her that “All’s well that ends well; still the fine’s the crown / Whate’er the course, the end is the renown” (968, 4.4.35). We forget the hazy details that shape and conduce towards an action: what matters is the virtuous result. The chaos of youthful desire must give way to the order of responsible maturity. I believe that’s what Helen is implying here, at least indirectly.

Act 4, Scene 5 (968-70, Countess and Lafeu praise Lavatch; Lafeu’s daughter Maudlin set to marry “widower” Bertram)

Lafeu and the countess are still mourning the loss of Helen, or so they think. Lavatch lays claim to a kind of virtue we know he doesn’t possess: “… I am for the house with the narrow gate” (969, 4.5.40-44). Both the countess and Lafeu consider Lavatch’s bitter foolishness appropriate (969, 4.5.52-57). It seems appropriate to the time. Lafeu plans to have his own daughter marry Bertram now that the young man is supposedly a widower, and the countess finds the plan unobjectionable.

Act 5, Scene 1 (970-71, the king’s at Roussillon, so Helen gives her petition to a gentleman)

Helen proposes to petition the king in Marseille, but he is not there and has gone to Roussillon. She asks a traveling gentleman to convey her petition to that place (970-71, 5.1.32-37).
Act 5, Scene 2 (971-72, Paroles will have a place at Lafeu’s table: diminished but resilient)

Paroles enters and must ingratiate himself at Roussillon, and finds that Lafeu is more than tolerant: “Though you are a / fool and a knave, you shall eat” (972, 5.2.44-45).

Act 5, Scene 3 (972-79, Ring device explains all thanks to Diana and then Helen; Bertram professes love for Helen; “all’s well”: accommodation and/or true love?)

The king grieves for Helen, and informs the countess that he has “forgiven and forgotten all” with regard to Bertram (972, 5.3.9). The young man will be only “a stranger, not an offender” (972, 5.3.26). Should we believe Bertram when he says that now that Helen is gone, he sincerely loves her? (973, 5.3.45-56) The king holds it a decent thing to say, but it obviously does not altogether excuse Bertram’s conduct: “That thou didst love her strikes some scores away …” (973, 5.3.57).

In any case, it’s time for Bertram to get married to Lafeu’s daughter Maudlin. Now we are on to “the ring device” (973-end) by which the play’s contradictions will be resolved. Bertram gives Lafeu the ring that Diana, at the behest of Helen, had given him at their supposed tryst. Lafeu recognizes the very same ring as the one he saw on Helen’s finger before she left court (973-74, 5.3.80-82). The king, to make matters worse, takes a look at the ring and realizes it is the one he had given Helen as a token if she ever needed his help. He now suspects that Bertram has done away with Helen by foul play since she told him before she left the court that she would never part with the ring “Unless she gave it to yourself [Bertram] in bed” or “sent it us / Upon her great disaster” (974, 5.3.105-13). Bertram is promptly arrested.

Now the Florentine gentleman shows up with Diana’s petition and when the king reads it aloud (975, 5.3.141-47), it accuses Bertram of seducing her. She follows him to the court, she says, to obtain justice. Diana soon walks onto the scene (975, 5.3.161-62), and Bertram tries to dismiss the entire affair as the invention of “a fond and desperate / creature (976, 5.3.179). The countess is certain that Bertram has married Diana—the ring proves it (976, 5.3.200-01). Paroles is called in by Diana to witness the truth of her claims, and before he comes forward, Bertram is at least forced to admit that he knows Diana, but he insists that it is she who seduced him, not the other way around (976-77, 5.3.213-21). Paroles gives his turgid testimony: “He loved her, sir, and loved her not” (977, 5.3.249, see also 977-78, 5.3.257-63), and then Diana perplexes and enrages the king by refusing to clear up for him how she came by the ring in the first place. She states the central riddle of the recent action: Bertram is “guilty, and he is not guilty,” and she is both a maiden and not a maiden (978, 5.3.286-90, 292-301).

Helen enters and clears up everything at long last, pointing out to Bertram that his conditions have been fulfilled (979, 5.3.306-10). The astonished Bertram says only, “If she, my liege, can make me know this clearly / I’ll love her dearly, ever ever dearly” (979, 5.3.312-13). I take it that “ever ever” means “always and very” rather than “very, very” (a phony double asseveration). Either way, is it sincere emotion, or hollow declamation to suit the king’s will, now that Bertram has learned what a bad move it is to run against that will?

The king pronounces the final variation on the play’s title: “All yet seems well; and if it end so meet, / The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet” (979, 5.3.329-30). The question of ethics is addressed in the sense that deception has been turned to good ends; what Bertram thought he was doing was not in fact what he ends up having done. This forgotten or at least forgiven, the result is a livable accommodation between Bertram and Helen, and a rich dower for whomever Diana may choose to marry. Indeed, seldom outside of Nietzsche’s needling prose has the work of civilization been so sorely in need of that ruthless “forgetting” necessary to its perpetuation. The sweet puts us out of mind of the bitter, like a mellow glass of red wine at the end of a difficult day.

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Antony and Cleopatra

2011-11-06T09:50:00.000-08:00

Alfred J. Drake's Notes on Antony and Cleopatra, by William Shakespeare

NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE’S ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA

Notes accord with the text in Greenblatt, Stephen et al., eds. The Norton Shakespeare. 2nd edition. Four-Volume Genre Paperback Set. Tragedies. Norton, 2008. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93152-5. Document timestamp: 11/20/2011 11:41 AM

Act 1, Scene 1 (890-91, Our first image of Antony with Cleopatra: he is both a Roman and a man of the east)

Antony and Cleopatra are introduced first by Antony’s friends, but almost at once we hear a dialogue between the two lovers. What is their image at this early point? How does the dialogue and presentation of Antony capture the dual impulse that runs through the man’s character? He is both a Roman and a man of the East: “Let Rome in Tiber melt ... / ... Here is my space” (890, 1.1.35-36). And what is he doing in this place of his? Well, he spends part of his time carousing and walking the streets to “note / The qualities of people” (891, 1.1.35-36).

Act 1, Scene 2 (891-96, Antony resolves to go back to Rome and deal with pressing matters; Enobarbus concurs about prioritizing war, politics over women)

Antony is clearly aware of Cleopatra’s influence on him, and admires her whimsicality, excess, and sense for the absolutism of the dilatory moment as opposed to Roman thoughtfulness and adherence to necessity. Enobarbus is just as aware, and he thinks women should not be so highly esteemed in proximity to great political and military matters: “Under a compelling occasion let women die” (894, 1.2.125, see 125-31). Antony’s response to the military movements of Labienus (Roman commander of a Parthian army) and to the death of his wife Fulvia is characteristically complex; with regard to the first issue, he says “These strong Egyptian fetters I must break, / Or lose myself in dotage” (894, 1.2.105-06). As for the second, Antony is riven by genuine sympathy for Fulvia and yet realizes that he had more or less wished this on her: “What our contempts doth often hurl from us / We wish it ours again” (894, 1.2.112-13). By the end of this scene, Antony is determined to make his way back to Rome. Amongst other things, there’s Sextus Pompeius to deal with since this son of Pompey the Great is menacing the triumvirate by sea (895, 1.2.167-69). He evidently feels he must get Cleopatra’s approval to take care of business, but he admits this freely (895, 1.2.161-63). But in truth, he won’t have too much trouble with her in getting that approval, a fact that is apparent from her insightful remark, “on the sudden / A Roman thought hath struck him” (893, 1.2.72-73). Antony is open to the pleasures and attractions of the east, but it’s just as certain that “Roman thoughts” will strike him when that becomes necessary.

Act 1, Scene 3 (896-98, Cleopatra manipulates Antony, but he understands her eastern self-fashioning; in the end his decision holds to return to Rome)

Cleopatra manipulates Antony, calling him a dissembler and an actor when it comes to loyalty: “Good now, play one scene / Of excellent dissembling, and let it look / Like perfect honor” (898, 1.3.77-80). And throughout this scene, we see him trying to justify his decision to return to Rome to deal with pressing matters. Cleopatra knows how to speak the language of Roman honor: “Your honor calls you hence” (898, 1.3.98) she says to Antony, and to some extent seems actually to mean it: it’s time to let Antony be Antony. This scene is subtle in its revelation of what the two lovers know about each other: when Cleopatra declares that her “oblivion is a very Antony, / And I am all forgotten” (898, 1.3.91-92), Antony’s response is, “But that your royalty / Holds idleness your subject, I should take you / For idleness itself” (898, 1.3.92-94). In other words, he understands that she is just as much an actor as she claims he is: the “eastern extravagance” pose is something that this female Ptolemy (i.e. a Greek) employs to her advantage, not something she can’t help but assume.

Act 1, Scene 4 (898-900, Octavius Caesar’s complaints about Antony’s “wassails” and neglect, but also confidence in the man)

Here and elsewhere, we should attend to Caesar’s (Octavius’) view of Antony’s conduct in the east. Caesar has complaints about Antony’s unseemly behavior, and suggests that he, at least (young as he is), knows how to wield power. Caesar references Antony’s longstanding reputation for valor, he feels that this reputation will shame him into returning to the field: “Leave thy lascivious wassails” (900, 1.4.56), he scolds the older man in absentia, and expresses confidence that Antony’s shame at abandoning his Roman manner will “Drive him to Rome” (900, 1.4.74). Antony’s later admission of “neglect” (in Act 2, Scene 2) won’t go over well with Caesar the corporation man, whose model is Aeneas, with a twist of Machiavellian guile to produce the appearance of piety.

Act 1, Scene 5 (900-02, Cleopatra’s love for Antony and extravagant view of him foregrounded while he’s away in Rome)

We see another side of Cleopatra here, the one that is truly in love with Antony and would just as well “sleep out this great gap of time” (900, 1.5.5) in his absence. Theirs is not simply a political alliance, it’s beyond that, and while Cleopatra’s motives are complex, her connection with Antony is one of the world’s grandest tragic loves. She muses fondly about him, and mentions her earlier affair with Julius Caesar, who, she is certain, considered her “A morsel for a monarch” (900, 1.5.31). Cleopatra has an extravagant sense of Antony’s worth, one that fits his sense of himself and that he repays with similar extravagance towards her. Nowhere is this more evident than when she calls him, “The demi-Atlas of this earth, the arm / And burgonet of men” (901, 1.5.33-34). We may not see this godlike Antony in action through most of the play, but a genuinely admiring mutual representation bonds the two lovers together.

Act 2, Scene 1 (902-04, Sextus Pompeius finds fault with Caesar and Antony, feels confident in his victory)

Sextus Pompeius, the son of Pompey the Great, thinks the people love him, while he’s convinced that Caesar wins no hearts with his soulless efficiency and that Antony is wasting his strength with Cleopatra in Egypt (903, 2.1.9-16). Sextus has an illustrious father in the late Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus or “Pompey the Great,” a member of the unofficial first triumvirate from 59-53 BCE along with Julius Caesar and Marcus Licinius Crassus; the more official “second triumvirate” from 43-33 BCE and current in this play is composed of Marcus Antonius or “Antony,” Octavius (grand-nephew and adopted son and heir of Julius Caesar), and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus.

Act 2, Scene 2 (904-10, Octavius confronts Antony over his shortcomings; Agrippa proposes a match between Antony and Octavia; Enobarbus describes Cleopatra grandly and pays tribute to her appeal for Antony)

Caesar and Antony confront each other, each bringing his own grievances and assumptions to the table. Caesar’s claims are very ponderous: he tasks Antony with the fact that Fulvia and Antony’s brother stirred up wars against him in Antony’s name (905, 2.2.46-48) and that Antony ignored his messengers while carousing in Alexandria (906, 2.2.75-78). But worst of all, says Caesar, in refusing to assist him with military supplies and money when required, he has broken faith (906, 2.2.85-87, 93-94). Antony’s admission that he “Neglected, rather” (906, 2.2.94) doesn’t go over well with Caesar as Rome’s ultra-steady, responsible corporation man, so to speak: his model is Virgil’s Aeneas, with a twist of Machiavellian guile to produce the appearance of piety. While Antony goes around behaving like a wild Greek or luxurious Egyptian, Octavius is a high-level antecedent of our modern 1950s “man in the gray flannel suit”: he thinks of Rome first and does what’s needed to keep the machinery of state running and the coffers full.

Enobarbus is mildly rebuked for trying to butt in, but Agrippa helps resolve the tension between them, at least for the present, by successfully proposing a match between Caesar’s sister Octavia and Antony: “Thou hast a sister by the mother’s side ...” (907, 2.2.124). Dynastic obligation will bring these two men of very different character together and keep them from tearing the country apart, or at least that’s the plan.

Enobarbus then talks with Agrippa and Maecenas, offering us a new image of the famous Cleopatra, one that Shakespeare has borrowed for him from the historian Plutarch’s Lives, specifically, “The Life of Julius Caesar,” which along with “The Life of Antony” is Shakespeare’s main source for the entire play. (Sources for Antony and Cleopatra.) He describes her almost as a goddess, as a woman beyond description: “The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne / Burned on the water.... / … / For her own person, it beggared all description” (908-09, 2.2.197-98, 203-204; see 197-211). He also mentions how savvy she is, how well she plays her charms to her advantage, making Antony visit her rather than the other way around (909, 2.2.225-27). Cleopatra, he knows, exercises a strong hold over Antony’s imagination and passions. She instills a kind of desire that doesn’t lead to satiation (235ff), and sanctifies things that would otherwise be vile, beyond the strict Roman sense of appropriateness and inappropriateness: “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale / Her infinite variety” (909, 2.2.240-41). That capacity is a big part of her attraction—Cleopatra is charismatic and larger than life.

Act 2, Scene 3 (910-11, a soothsayer tells Antony to stay away from lucky Caesar; uneasy, Antony resolves to return to Egypt)

Antony speaks to a soothsayer, who tells him to stay away from Caesar because this opponent is bound to rise higher than Antony: “If thou dost play with him at any game / Thou art sure to lose…” (910, 2.3.23-24). Caesar is almost as much an “evil spirit” (Norton Tragedies, 311, 4.2.333) for Antony as Julius Caesar was for Brutus on the plain at Philippi. In his presence, the great Roman is afraid, unmanned. Antony knows this, and says that “the very dice obey” Caesar (910, 2.3.31). Fortune seems to be on the younger man’s side, even though Antony is a ladies’ man and ought to be on better terms with Lady Fortune. Antony resolves to return to Egypt: “though I make this marriage for my peace, / I’th’ East my pleasure lies” (911, 2.5.37-38).

Act 2, Scenes 4-5 (911-14, Lepidus will be late to meet the triumvirs; Cleopatra teases absent Antony about their fishing trips, but is then stricken with jealousy when she hears about the match with Octavia: she strikes the messenger)

In the fourth scene, we learn that Lepidus will be late on his way to Misenum where the triumvirate will meet. No doubt we are to understand his lateness as symptomatic of his weak position within the second triumvirate (911, 2.4.1-10).

In the fifth scene, Cleopatra has fun at Antony’s expense, saying that he’s like the great fish she proposes to catch in the Nile: “I’ll think them every one an Antony” (911, 2.5.14; see lines 10-14). And Charmian reminds Cleopatra of the time when she tricked Antony while they were fishing together, hanging an already dead fish on his hook for him to haul in (911-12, 2.5.15-18). Cleopatra seems to delight in stealing from Antony his masculine symbolic power (the sword with which he earned victory against the conspirators Brutus and Cassius, who killed his friend Julius) and donning it herself: she recounts how she drank him to bed and then “put my tires and mantles on him whilst / I wore his sword Philippan” (912, 2.5.22-23).

Cleopatra soon learns that Antony will marry Octavia, and this causes her to strike the messenger (913, 2.5.61), but then invites him back so that he may inform her about Octavia’s looks (914, 2.5.112-14).

Act 2, Scene 6 (914-17, Sextus Pompeius reconciles with Caesar and Antony; Menas and Enobarbus trade wisdom on Sextus and Antony)

Sextus Pompeius makes a deal with Caesar in which he’s to take Sicily and Sardinia, but rid the seas of piracy and send wheat to Rome (915, 2.6.34-39). He reconciles with Caesar and Antony, and Menas says to Enobarbus, “Pompey / doth this day laugh away his fortune” (917, 2.6.103-04). Enobarbus, for his part, says that Antony “will to his Egyptian dish again; then shall the sighs of / Octavia blow the fire up in Caesar” (917, 2.6.123-24; see 122-27). Enobarbus realizes that the marriage with Octavia is purely a matter of convenience. Antony’s heart is in Egypt with Cleopatra, and that is where he will return.

Act 2, Scene 7 (918-21, Antony wins a drinking contest with Lepidus and Octavius; Sextus Pompeius puts honor before success and loses Menas’ respect)

Lepidus, the weakest member of the second triumvirate, is made quite drunk at the meeting between the three and their attendants at Misenum. Antony makes sport of him by answering his silly questions about crocodiles with ludicrous tautologies: he tells Lepidus, the crocodile “is shaped, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it hath / breadth” (919, 2.7.39-40).

Meanwhile, Sextus Pompeius shows himself to be so indebted to the concept of Roman honor that it prevents him from taking Menas’ advice: why not simply invite the triumvirs on board his ship and kill them (919, 2.7.67-70)? Pompeius says that the man ought to have done this without telling him about it (919, 2.7.70-74). Menas loses faith in Pompeius because of this rigidity—such an opportunity, he knows, will not come again: “Who seeks and will not take when once ‘tis offered, / Shall never find it more” (920, 2.7.78-79).

Scene 7 shows the triumvirs’ attitude towards drinking. As the saying goes, in vino veritas. We find out that Lepidus can’t hold his liquor, which suggests that he lacks self-mastery and is a follower, not a leader; Antony bows to nobody as a wassailer; and Caesar would just as well stay sober (920, 2.7.91-93, 96-97). It’s obvious that he is determined to keep his wits about him, and is more responsible in his relationship to power than Antony. Judgments are being made in this scene about who is a “real Roman” and who is most likely to succeed.

We have seen how other Romans accuse Antony of “turning on, tuning in, and dropping out,” to adapt a line from the 1960’s guru Timothy Leary. But at this point in the play, Antony seems the strong master of revels; his range of experience and his appeal to others extends beyond Roman austerity and severity. In his openness to experience, Antony is more of an Odyssean Greek than a Roman. But as T. S. Eliot writes in his 1921 essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” “only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.”

Act 3, Scene 1 (921-22, Ventidius explains the Roman political star system: subordinates don’t upstage their commanders)

We might take the first few scenes as a commentary on Roman values. Ventidius in Syria has returned in triumph, having defeated the Parthians who had done so much harm to Roman armies. But he doesn’t pursue the Parthians simply because doing so would mean upstaging his commanding officer, Antony: “I have done enough. A lower place, note well, / May make too great an act” (921, 3.1.12-13). In a fiercely competitive Roman political universe, there is something like a star system in place: subordinates do not upstage their betters, if they know what’s good for them.

Act 3, Scene 2 (922-24, Octavia and Caesar are sad at parting; Enobarbus’ gloss of the historical Antony)

Octavia weeps, and Caesar is sad at parting (922, 3.2.3-6). Enobarbus undercuts the notion put forth by Agrippa that Antony wept without complication at the death of Julius Caesar: he says, “What willingly he did confound he wailed, / Believe’t, till I wept too” (923, 3.2.59-60). Shakespeare seems concerned to remind us that we are dealing with historical events that have become shaded over with mythology, and the view he prefers at some points is the practical Roman perspective we find in Enobarbus’s clear-eyed statements. What Enobarbus is suggesting is that Antony’s grief over the death of Caesar was no doubt sincere but also that his political wheels were spinning all the while, and the subject to be determined was how, exactly, Antony was going to position himself in the wake of this sad event.

Act 3, Scene 3 (924-25, Cleopatra rewards the messenger for reporting that she’s better looking than Octavia)

Cleopatra finds out that Octavia isn’t as beautiful as she—in fact, interprets Cleopatra from what the messenger says, she is “Dull of tongue, and dwarfish” (924, 3.2.16). Cleopatra now rewards the messenger she had earlier struck (924-25).

Act 3, Scene 4 (925-26, War is brewing between Antony and Caesar)

War is brewing between Caesar and Antony, the latter of whom details his grievances to Octavia: Caesar, he says, has “waged / New wars ’gainst Pompey, made his will and read it / To public ear, spoke scantly of me …” (925, 3.4.3-5). Antony agrees that Octavia might be helpful as a go-between, and he seems genuine in his desire that she should follow her heart in choosing sides, if that should become necessary: “Make your soonest haste; / So your desires are yours” (926, 3.4.27-28, see 20-28).

Act 3, Scene 5 (926-27, Caesar has arrested Lepidus)

Lepidus and Caesar have warred with Pompeius, and then Caesar has arrested Lepidus (926, 3.5.10).

Act 3, Scene 6 (927-29, Caesar is angry at Antony’s outrageous Egyptian self-crowning and at his treatment of Octavia)

In the sixth scene, Caesar is outraged when Antony and Cleopatra crown themselves in Asiatic splendor (927, 3.6.3-5). The Roman people know of this, says Caesar (927, 3.6.21), who also declares himself annoyed that Octavia has come to visit him without the appropriate ceremony (928, 3.6.42-43). His contempt for Antony’s conduct shows most when he says of the man, “He hath given his empire / Up to a whore” (928, 3.6.66-67). Well, Caesar had agreed to the match between his rival and Octavia readily enough in spite of his reservations about Antony’s character. Now he invites Octavia to stay on his side, suggesting that Antony has betrayed her: “You are abused / Beyond the mark of thought” (929, 3.6.86-87).

Act 3, Scene 7 (929-31, Cleopatra takes offense at Enobarbus’ suggestion to stay out of the wars; Antony decides to fight Caesar by sea on a dare; Antony is surprised at the speed and efficiency of Caesar’s forces)

Enobarbus tells Cleopatra to stay out of the wars, and she’s insulted at the suggestion, especially his remark that her “presence needs must puzzle Antony” (929, 3.7.10). She will take part in Antony’s wars, declaring that she will, “as the president of my kingdom will / Appear there for a man” 929, 3.7.16-17). She is a ruler and doesn’t accept the role of a “weak woman.” Antony now makes the disastrous decision to fight Caesar by sea because the latter has dared him to do so. Enobarbus is aghast at this “un-Roman” impracticality, at this preference for chance and hazard instead of security (930, 3.7.34-39). Perhaps Antony is foolhardy, but he’s also honorable and noble; power sits lightly upon his shoulders. The hair of wise and responsible rulers turns gray quickly, but one senses that such a transformation isn’t likely to overtake Mark Antony. He’s too reckless to be weighed down by the demands of power, and prefers an unstable alliance between honor and hazard to a more stable one of the sort Enobarbus would counsel, and Caesar would certainly maintain. At the end of the scene, Antony seems very surprised at how briskly Caesar’s forces are moving into position (930, 3.5.56-60). The men around Antony (Camidius in particular) feel that since he’s led by a woman, so are they: “we are women’s men” (931, 3.7.).

Act 3, Scenes 8-10 (931-32, Antony and Cleopatra meet with disaster at sea; Camidius decides to desert, but Enobarbus stays on for the time being)

Caesar and Antony strategize; the former is all about maintaining control over events: “Strike not by land… / … Do not exceed / The prescript of this scroll” (931, 3.8.3-5). By the tenth scene, we hear that the Egyptian fleet has cut and run (931-932, 3.10.1-3). Scarus laments that Antony’s Romans have “kissed away / Kingdoms and provinces” (932, 3.10.7-8) The charge is that Antony is irresponsible in his deployment of military power. He has allowed his love of Cleopatra to blind him to sound counsel, and Scarus laments, “Experience, manhood, honour, ne’er before / Did violate so itself” (932). Incredibly, Antony has followed Cleopatra’s shameful retreat at the first sign of danger. Camidius decides that he might as well go over to Caesar since Antony has lost control over his own destiny (932, 3.10.32-34). Enobarbus knows what Camidius knows, but still can’t bring himself to abandon his commander: “I’ll yet follow / The wounded chance of Antony, though my reason / Sits in the wind against me” (932, 3.10.34-36).

Act 3, Scene 11 (932-34, Antony recognizes his error and loss of identity; he is furious with Cleopatra, but pardons her for a kiss)

Antony is horrified—“I have fled myself…” (933, 3.11.7) and “I have offended reputation; / A most unnoble swerving” (933, 3.11.48-49), he says, understanding that he has thrown away everything he worked for. What makes the situation even more intolerable is Caesar’s relative lack of martial skill and experience; Antony reminds us that it was he who killed his friend Julius’ assassins while the fledgling stood by: “He at Philippi kept / His sword e’en like a dancer ...” (933, 3.11.35-36). Antony has been a world-historical actor, and now his star is eclipsed by a lesser man, at least in his view.

Antony is at first furious with Cleopatra, but reconciles with her almost immediately. When she asks pardon, he grants it, considering himself well repaid with a kiss (934, 3.11. 70-74). He evidently places Cleopatra above victory on the battlefield.

Act 3, Scene 12 (934-35, Cleopatra behaves submissively towards devious Caesar, who demands that she exile or kill Antony)

Antony sends his schoolmaster to treat with Caesar (935, 3.12. 7-10). Cleopatra says she will submit to Caesar and wishes only to remain Queen of Egypt, and while Caesar disregards Antony’s request to live in Egypt, he orders that the queen be comforted and promised all she wants, so long as she either exiles or kills Antony (935, 3.12. 20-24). He supposes this shift will work because women, as far as he is concerned, are infinitely malleable under the pressure of circumstance.

Act 3, Scene 13 (935-40, Enobarbus blames Antony for the military disaster, but still can’t desert him; Antony offers Caesar an absurd challenge to single combat; Cleopatra cooperates with Caesar; Antony tries to recover what Caesar “knew I was” and rages at Cleopatra, though he again reconciles with her; Enobarbus finally decides to desert Antony)

Enobarbus won’t blame Cleopatra. He says Antony has made his will “Lord of his reason” (935, 3.13.4-5). Antony absurdly challenges Caesar to single combat (936, 3.13.24-27). Enobarbus is stunned, and feels that Antony has been entirely bereft of sound judgment: “Mine honesty and I begin to square” (936, 3.13.40). Enobarbus continues to mull his relationship with Antony, and thinks his loyalty will earn him a place in the story books, so to speak: by sticking with Antony, he’ll “conquer” the man who defeated that noble Roman. The loyal friend who does this, he suggests, “… earns a place i’th’ story” (936, 3.13.45; see 42-45). This might be labeled a metadramatic concern because Shakespeare himself is clearly interested in how legends become enmeshed with history. Much of this play (to borrow a phrase from the New Historians) is about a kind of “self-fashioning” that, if successful, becomes the narrative by which we know the boldest among the ancients. Even in Antony and Cleopatra’s own time, mythmaking was at work, and so were its critics.

Cleopatra seems to be going along with Caesar’s program, flattering him with the words “He is a god, and knows / What is most right” (937, 3.13.60-61), while her lover is still saying “I am / Antony yet” (938, 3.13. 92-93). He wants to re-embrace his identity as a valorous Roman commander, and orders Caesar’s messenger soundly whipped (938, 3.13.93). Soon, his anger again turns towards Cleopatra in the memorable line, “You have been a boggler ever” (938, 3.13.111), whom he accuses of latching onto and manipulating famous Roman men like Julius Caesar, Pompey the Great, and himself to enhance her own power, which rests on the different and most un-Roman basis of alliance with divine splendor and awe. “I found you as a morsel cold upon / Dead Caesar’s trencher…” (938, 3.13.117-18), he scolds Cleopatra. The queen is the leader of an ancient personality cult, and while her stylistic affinity with Antony’s grandiose dimension is obvious, he now professes to find the whole affair disgusting. Above all, he says, Cleopatra lacks “temperance” and indeed that she doesn’t even know the meaning of the word (938, 3.13.122).

Antony’s anger also flows toward Caesar for “harping on what I am, / Not what he knew I was” (939, 3.13. 144-45). Antony supposes that the reputation he has justly won entitles him to the continued respect and esteem of those who have overcome him. The scene’s conclusion shows Antony reconciling yet again with Cleopatra (who after all seems to represent a tendency within him), and regains his composure: “I am satisfied,” he declares (939, 3.13.170). Antony calls for a night of drinking and celebration on the eve of the final battle to recover his lost glory: “I and my sword will earn our chronicle. / There’s hope in’t yet” (940, 3.13.178-79). He may yet win at Alexandria.

This strange recovery on Antony’s part is the last straw for Enobarbus: “When valour preys on reason, / It eats the sword it fights with” (940, 3.13.201-02), says Enobarbus, and it’s time to desert his old commander at the earliest opportunity.

Act 4, Scenes 1-6 (940-44, Battle is coming on and true natures are reckoned: Antony is elegiac but resolute and is magnanimous towards Enobarbus the deserter; Caesar shows the nature of his new world order in his ruthless military arrangements; Enobarbus abhors himself and determines to die)

These brief scenes convey the contrasting attitudes and reactions on the part of Antony and Caesar to towards the coming battle. Antony is at times elegiac in tone, as in the second scene: “Perchance tomorrow / You’ll serve another master” (941, 4.2.27-28), he tells his men, and “I hope well of tomorrow…” (942, 4.2.42), to the dismay of Enobarbus.

In the third scene, a soldier takes a noise to be Hercules abandoning Antony (942, 4.3.14-15), which is especially significant since Antony’s family claimed descent from that demigod.

In the fourth scene, Antony seems resolute: he will bring the willing to the battle, and wishes Cleopatra could behold him in all his splendor: “That thou couldst see my wars today, and knew’st / The royal occupation!” (943, 4.4.15-17).

In the fifth scene, Antony learns that Enobarbus has deserted him, and realizes that his “fortunes have / Corrupted honest men” (944, 4.5.16-17). He says these words to Eros and not in soliloquy, but they seem heartfelt.

In the sixth scene, Caesar declares that “the time of universal peace is near” (944, 4.6.4), yet without compunction he also betrays the true nature of this new world order: he advises his lieutenant to place units recently revolted from Antony at the forefront, so that in the first rounds of the battle, Antony will be killing his own men (945, 4.6.8-10). Enobarbus has now come to realize that he has destroyed his self-image in abandoning Antony: “I am alone the villain of the earth …” (945, 4.6.30). When Antony generously sends him his treasure from camp, the desolation of Enobarbus is complete. He resolves to die as quickly and wretchedly as possible: “I will go seek / Some ditch wherein to die” (945, 4.6.37-38).

Act 4, Scenes 7-12 (945-48, Antony enjoys temporary success; Enobarbus dies; Caesar will fight Antony by sea)

So far, Antony’s desperate gambit shows signs of success since, as Agrippa says, Caesar seems to have overextended his forces (946, 4.9.1-3) and Eros is able to announce to Antony, “They are beaten, sir” (946, 4.8.8). For the moment, Caesar has been driven back to his camp, a fact that Antony trumpets in the ninth scene, with special instructions to inform the queen of this great feat (946, 4.9.1).

Enobarbus dies reasserting his admiration for Antony: “Forgive me in thine own particular, / But let the world rank me in register / A master-leaver and a fugitive,” he prays, and his beloved general’s name is the last word he utters. (4.10.19-21). Friendship or amicitia was among the highest Roman values, and it is this value that Enobarbus realizes he has sordidly betrayed.

In the twelfth scene, Caesar announces that he will fight Antony at sea one last time (948, 4.12.1-4).

Act 4, Scenes 13-14 (948-50, the fleet again deserts Antony, who becomes enraged with Cleopatra; Charmian advises Cleopatra to hide in a monument and play dead)

The fleet again deserts Antony (949, 4.13.3-4), even going over to Caesar’s side. Upon this betrayal, Antony declares Cleopatra a “Triple-turned whore” (949, 4.13.13) and himself betrayed and finished, defeated by a cowardly queen and a journeyman politician: “O sun, thy uprise shall I see no more. / Fortune and Antony part here” (949, 4.13.18-19). He is so infuriated with her that he seethes, “The witch shall die” (949, 4.13.47) and for a moment imagines her at the mercy of the Roman plebeians (949, 4.13.33-34).

Charmian advises Cleopatra to hide in a monument, and send false word of her death. The Queen agrees. (950, 4.14.3-4).

Act 4, Scene 15 (950-53, Antony believes Cleopatra has committed suicide, and botches an attempt at the same; Decretas takes his sword to give to Caesar)

Antony continues to lament what he considers Cleopatra’s betrayal, admitting that he “made these wars” for no one but Egypt and her (950, 4.15.15). When he hears that she has supposedly committed suicide, however, he is again instantly reconciled: “I will o’ertake thee, Cleopatra, and / Weep for my pardon” (951, 4.15.44-45). She has shown him the way in conquering herself, he thinks (951, 4.15.59-62), and thereupon makes a botched attempt to fall on his sword after his servant Eros commits suicide rather than assist his master in dying (952, 4.15.92-105). Nobody will help Antony end his life, and Decretas even takes his sword as a token with which to ingratiate himself with Caesar (953, 4.15.111-12).

Act 4, Scene 16 (954-56, Antony and Cleopatra are together one last time, and as he is dying she plans to go out in the Roman way)

Antony and Cleopatra are together for one final scene, and when he tries to get her to seek safety and honor in Caesar, she bravely points out that “honour” and “safety” don’t go together (955, 4.16.49). That has long been the creed Antony has followed, for better or for worse. Antony falls back on the classical notion that glory is a matter of what your peers and descendants think of you. His wretched present, he trusts, will not blot out the glorious remembrance he has earned by his brave deeds in the past: “please your thoughts / In feeding them with those my former fortunes …” (955, 4.16. 54-55; see 53-61). Moments later, he dies. Cleopatra says that she and Charmian, too, will evade the clutches of Caesar; they will exit the world instead “after the high Roman fashion, / And make death proud to take us” (956, 4.16.89-90).

Act 5, Scene 1 (956-58, Caesar, though ruthless, is saddened by Antony’s death; he tells Proculeius to deceive Cleopatra and thereby preserve her for an eventual spot in his triumph)

When Decretas informs Caesar that Antony is dead, he seems genuinely saddened: “The breaking of so great a thing should make / A greater crack” (956, 5.1.14-15). Antony lived prodigiously, and yet his passing has been noted as if it were a thing of nothing, no ceremony. Caesar may not be much of a pageantry promoter, but he shows some regard for the rites due to honor. His sense of loss seems sincere, and he regrets what his need to maintain and increase his power has supposedly forced him to do (957, 5.1.35-48). Which doesn’t, of course, mean that he wouldn’t do it again in a heartbeat.

Caesar serves political expediency as his master, but this doesn’t give us the right to say he’s a mere hypocrite: it is not unreasonable to suggest that his strength consists partly in the attitude he takes up towards what his station as a public man leads him to do. His ruthless actions are taken in the name of “universal peace” and the greater glory of Rome. He sometimes deceives others about the nature of what he does, but he doesn’t deceive himself about the disjunction between his ideals and his deeds.

We see all this in the way he treats Cleopatra: he bids Proculeius to treat the queen kindly and make her what promises he finds suitable, but this is only a shift to bring her in triumph to Rome, where she will be an object of mockery for the rabble: “for her life in Rome / Would be eternal in our triumph” (957, 5.1. 65-66; see 61-68).

Act 5, Scene 2 (958-67, Cleopatra engages in final self-refashioning as a Roman hero, exalts Antony to the skies; Dolabella warns her of Caesar’s plan, and she determines to meet Antony in death; Caesar personally tries to deceive and threaten Cleopatra, but she succeeds in committing suicide; Caesar recognizes his opponents’ mettle after their deaths)

Cleopatra is refashioning herself as heroic in the Roman style, as one determined to take her own life. We might suppose this is a matter of adopting a style; but then, Cleopatra takes style quite seriously, and her Pharaonic self-fashioning is no light matter. It wouldn’t be right to take that quality away from her. She is surrounded by Caesar’s soldiers, and now determines that she will not become the sport of the vulgar in Rome: “Shall they hoist me up / And show me to the shouting varletry / Of censuring Rome?” (959, 5.2.54-56)

In the presence of Dolabella, Cleopatra refashions and aggrandizes Antony to the point of deification, musing, “I dreamt there was an Emperor Antony” and “His legs bestrid the ocean / his reared arm / Crested the world …” (960, 5.2.75, 81-82; see 81-91, 95-99). She has always shown this propensity to exalt the deeds and reputation of Antony, but now that death is closing in, her efforts intensify and take on heightened significance; this is the “Antony” to whom Cleopatra will soon attempt to return in Elysium, reunited there as a still grander couple than they were on earth.
Dolabella plays an honorable role, forewarning Cleopatra of the shameful fate that awaits her in only three days (960-61, 5.2.104-09).

Caesar enters and plays both gracious conqueror and vicious threatener of Cleopatra’s progeny, if she should follow Antony’s self-destructive course (961, 5.2.120-29). When Seleucis betrays Cleopatra over her holding back some treasure from Caesar (961, 5.2.144), she is shocked (962, 5.2.155-60), which reaction suggests that she still doesn’t understand the dynamics of power: people obey those in whom they find real, actionable strength; they don’t long obey those who have only majesty and divine pomp to back their rule. She resents being “worded” by Caesar (962, 5.2.187-88), and loathes the prospect of “Some squeaking Cleopatra boy[ing] my greatness, / I’th’ posture of a whore” (963, 5.2.216-17; see 203-17). She has always been an actor of sorts, but in her own proper sphere as Egyptian Queen, her acting the part of a goddess had been correlated with the exercise of power. In Rome, what had been world-historical drama would be reduced to an entertaining farce for the multitude.

Cleopatra declares that there will be a final meeting with Antony in death: “I am again for Cydnus / To meet Mark Antony” (963, 5.2.224-25). It is noteworthy that the place name refers to her initial seduction of Antony in 41 BCE, when he summoned her to Tarsus and she floated down the river Cydnus on that famous barge we recall from Enobarbus’ description (908-09, 2.2.197-211). Cleopatra will achieve this meeting—essentially a return to an initial triumph—by casting off the supposed weakness of her sex: “I have nothing / Of woman in me” (964, 5.2.234-35).

In comes the Clown, with his prayer that Cleopatra may find “all joy of the worm” or Nile serpent he has brought her (964, 5.2.253). It’s worth considering why Shakespeare has chosen to present Cleopatra with her death in this semi-comic, bizarre rustic. Perhaps it has something to do with the utter strangeness of each person’s ending, at least to that person; perhaps, also, it has to do with the fact that as Cleopatra lived and risked all for an erotic affair, the Clown’s patently phallic references (his puns on “dying” as orgasm in particular at 964, 5.2.244-50) end up being as pertinent as they are indecorous and impertinent on his part. A third consideration is that the Clown presents the queen with one last challenge to her royal and wished-for divine dignity. Be that as it may, Cleopatra meets her death bravely, calling upon Antony to witness her courage, saying, “I have / Immortal longings in me,” and “I am fire and air; my other elements / I give to baser life” (965, 5.2.271-72, 280-81). She dies at (5.2.303), Iras having preceded her in passing just moments before.

Caesar, whom Cleopatra considers almost with her last breath an “ass / Unpolicied” (965, 5.2.298) for allowing her to make away with herself, enters the scene after her death and declares it noble and an act of loyalty to Antony. He ratifies Charmian’s dying words that Cleopatra’s death is “well done, and fitting for a princess / Descended of so many royal kings” (966, 5.2.317-18), and agrees to bury her next to Antony, apparently recognizing the high tragedy of their doomed love match, the “pity” of which equals the “glory” of his current status as military victor and his future as Rome’s sole ruler (967, 5.2.348-53). There’s dignity in sublime failure, it seems, as well as in the establishment of peace and long-continued rule. Rome, Incorporated will have its shiny new CEO, and for Augustus Caesar, apotheosis to heaven can wait. Both Antony and Cleopatra and Octavius Caesar are great in their respective ways, but the former are crushed by the modern world in which Octavius moves more deftly, if not with the same tragic glory.

Antony and Cleopatra’s manner of dying, and Caesar’s of living and governing, together show a clash of value systems, a fissure in the concept of Romanness. I don’t think the play condemns either system, although it shows the consequences and historical import of both: modern, material politics wins. We should bear in mind the strangeness of the final two acts’ tragic arc: Antony’s sudden condemnations and reconciliations, Cleopatra’s dissembling and final adoption of Roman heroism, Caesar’s recognition of the lasting narrative value of the great pair he has hounded to their demise. Throughout the play, Antony and Cleopatra have been both each other’s downfall and salvation: in the end, Cleopatra’s initial false suicide taught Antony to do the right thing in earnest, and that suicide, in turn, led Cleopatra to exit the world’s stage like the hybrid Egyptian Queen and antique Roman she had become.

There is just the hint of an imperfectly realized romance pattern in Antony and Cleopatra: we might say that this hint is to be found in the fourth act when the royal couple are forced to attempt a transition from the loss of supreme power to a more perfect union as lovers. It’s true that this play, in terms of Shakespeare’s chronology, is crafted at the tail end of his so-called dark period and on the cusp of the romance plays that round off his career. But romance entails selective survival; even as it provides second chances and near-miraculous reconciliations, instilling in us a sense that the world isn’t quite as harsh as we thought it was, romance requires us to accept the reality that recovery comes only with partial loss and the admission of alterations wrought by time and foolishness. The romance pattern can’t altogether annihilate time or decay, and it doesn’t seem to allow for straightforward exaltation or apotheosis to perfection. In the end, its miracles are profoundly human, and tinged with sorrow and mortality. The historical record in the case of Antony and Cleopatra, of course, makes the romance pattern impossible: that record tells us of the liquidation of a famous couple at the hands of a power-consolidating corporation man in Octavius. Shakespeare takes the two lovers in a different direction more consonant with tragedy. Their persistent, impressive self-mythologizing and image-projecting lends them a measure of larger-than-lifeness, and they place their love beyond any power that Caesar’s politics and armies can wield against them. The play remains firmly in the tragic camp since the relentless pursuit by Caesar at last yields the results he’s been aiming for: sole possession of the world’s first superpower, the Roman Empire. If there’s success for Antony and Cleopatra, it’s that audiences during and since Shakespeare’s time have probably found it difficult to decide between the romantic status of the two great lovers and the historical achievements of the enigmatic Octavius, thereafter to be known as Augustus Caesar.

What we are treated to, then, is not the bittersweet survival and renewal that we encounter in plays such as The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest, but insteadAntony and Cleopatra's classical attempt by means of soaring words and exuberant perspectives to attain a new and marvelous love beyond the wreckage that was the end of the Roman Republic, with its proscriptions, assassinations, wars and internecine rivalries, and beyond even the birth of the Empire. This sounds like a classical apotheosis to the heavens after the manner of ancient Greek heroes who became demigods after their deaths; this apotheosis involves the transposition of a perfect love into another and diviner key: this attempted transformation, at least if we do not grant Cleopatra her metaphysical reunion with Antony, fits the tragic pattern, and we are left with the crushing of a magnificent couple’s last-minute attempts at projecting themselves to a perpetual match in the heavens and thereby escaping their failure in the material world dominated by Caesar.

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As You Like It

2011-11-06T09:49:00.000-08:00

Alfred J. Drake's Notes on As You Like It, by William Shakespeare

NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE’S AS YOU LIKE IT

Notes accord with the text in Greenblatt, Stephen et al., eds. The Norton Shakespeare. 2nd edition. Four-Volume Genre Paperback Set. Comedies. Norton, 2008. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93152-5. Document timestamp: 11/13/2011 2:58 PM

Act 1, Scene 1 (631-34, Orlando rebels against Oliver’s mistreatment; Oliver schemes with Charles the Wrestler to deal with the young man at the next public match)

First, some general remarks: I especially enjoy the light pastoral quality of As You Like It. Many of Shakespeare’s comedies mix dark and light moods, but in this one the forecast is “mostly clear and sunny.” It’s a mature play from 1599 or early 1600, which makes it roughly kin to Hamlet. It’s based on a pastoral romance by Thomas Lodge named Rosalynde, and pastoral itself is an ancient subgenre going at least as far back as the Greek poets Theocritus (3rd BCE), who wrote the Idylls, and Longus, author of Daphnis and Chloe. Shakespeare gives us a central pair of lovers (Orlando and Rosalind) driven from their urban setting by ungenerous, powerful characters to explore the nearest green place they can find.

What they find is the Forest of Arden, which turns out to be a magical space where the lovers can set themselves playfully against the constraints of gender and explore the rituals of romantic love and courtship. In Arden we will hear some fine perspectives on court, country, love, and life not only from Rosalind and Orlando but also from Celia (Rosalind’s friend) and from Touchstone the Clown and Jaques the melancholy traveler, along with Corin the shepherd. Even the bad guys get something from Arden: Duke Frederick the usurper and Oliver, Orlando’s stingy brother, undergo sudden transformations for the better in the forest, and the play’s several marriages (including that of the rustics Silvius and Phoebe) pave the way for a renewal of social and political harmony at court.

As always, comedy is about the accommodation of individual desire to social demands, and vice versa; it’s also about the generous, perhaps even providential disposition of time itself. In Shakespeare’s comedies, you do what Viola does in Twelfth Night: commit your cause to time, stay open to experience (a classical virtue—just ask Odysseus!) and hope for the best. And as always with Shakespeare, we can look for the playwright both to inhabit his artistic forms with genuine passion and to treat them from a certain distance, whether friendly or satirical—he wasn’t one to be reduced to the moods or demands of any narrow setting or set of conventions, so we’ll see the pastoral ideal of unspoiled, natural innocence laughing at itself from time to time.

Well, the bad characters in comedy tend to be stick figures whose villainous behavior seems rooted in insecurity and selfishness, and that’s what we have in Oliver and the usurping Duke Frederick. We aren’t dealing with the ancient problem of evil here, at least not in a serious way. From the outset, we can see that Oliver is jealous of his brother’s virtues, and holds to an economy of scarcity model of status and virtue: more love and honor for one person means less for him. Orlando deals with him boldly after what has obviously been a great deal of indifference and snubbing from his elder brother: “The courtesy of nations allows you / my better… but the same tradition / takes not away my blood… “ (632, 1.1.39-41). Oliver promptly calls upon Charles the Wrestler to deal with this young whippersnapper, calling his brother “an envious emulator of every man’s good parts, a / secret and villainous contriver against me his natural brother” (634, 1.1.122-23).

On the whole, in comedies such characters as Oliver are bogeymen, not complex evildoers. Oliver is simply an uncharitable brother. Comedies don’t represent the social order or human nature as intractable—there would be no point in bothering with comedy if that were the case. We don’t need to worry about providing compensation for insupportable loss, as in King Lear or Oedipus the King.
The goal is instead to restore happiness to individuals and smooth functioning to the social order, and to allow people to hope for better things to come. A key concept is balance: how can we bring people together in such a way as to achieve happiness and harmony, even if perfection may be beyond our reach? Coleridge says that literary symbols can “balance or reconcile opposite or discordant qualities.” That’s more or less what comedy does: often by strategies involving parallels, contrasts or antithesis, it reconciles and balances out people who might otherwise stay in conflict, and makes possible a dynamic but sustainable social order. In the first scene, Celia and Rosalind give us a fine example of true friendship that further condemns Oliver’s vicious dislike of his brother. Celia and Rosalind are cousins, not sisters, but their reciprocal generosity is no less complete for it.

Act 1, Scene 2 (634-40, Orlando wrestles Charles and wins; Rosalind is love-struck)

As for the attraction between Rosalind and Orlando during his participation in a wrestling match, well, as Marlowe’s poem “Hero and Leander” (1598) runs, “Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?” (Phoebe will later quote these lines at 3.5.82). This notion is typical in comedy. The ancient idea is that love strikes people first through the eyes, as if the lovers had been struck with cupid’s arrow. Accordingly, the love between Rosalind and Orlando begins with sudden attraction, although for the audience the experience is a bit drawn out since it is distributed across Rosalind’s viewing of the wrestling match between Orlando and Charles (637-39). Orlando doesn’t yet know himself and can hardly speak to his new admirer, but Rosalind sees his integrity and potential along with his youth. When he wins, she says, “Sir, you have wrestled well, and overthrown / More than your enemies” (639, 1.2.220-21). It is of course improbable for Orlando to win his match against the powerful Charles, but the big fellow is an important device in that Orlando’s desperation drives him to go forwards with the match, and thereby he wins Rosalind’s heart. The text doesn’t say exactly how Orlando defeats Charles, though the BBC version starring Helen Mirren as Rosalind makes Orlando’s victory a matter of clever strategy.

Act 1, Scene 3 (640-43, Duke Frederick banishes Rosalind; Rosalind and Celia decide to go to the Forest of Arden, and Rosalind will dress as a man)

Duke Frederick is a competitive, ill-spirited ruler. He obviously believes in an economy of scarcity when it comes to virtue: he tells Celia regarding her friend, “she robs thee of thy name, / And thou wilt show more bright and seem more virtuous / When she is gone” (641, 74-76). He is little more than a straw man, and his threat to Rosalind sounds awful, but rings hollow: “if that thou beest found / So near our public court as twenty miles, / Thou diest for it” (641, 37-39).

It doesn’t take Rosalind and Celia long to work out a strategy to beat Frederick: Celia says they ought to go “seek my uncle in the forest of Ardenne” (642, 1.3.101), that uncle being the banished Duke Senior (Rosalind’s father). Rosalind chimes in with an addition she thinks will make the journey safer: “Were it not better, / Because that I am more than common tall, / That I did suit me all points like a man …” (642, 1.3.108-10). And they’ll take Touchstone with them for company.

Act 2, Scene 1 (643-44, Duke Senior muses in the forest: “the uses of adversity”)

There are different perspectives to be heard about the Forest of Arden, and in this scene we hear the view of the banished Duke Senior regarding “the uses of adversity” (643, 2.1.12). He considers the forest a place to gain spiritual insight, and seems to like living there for a time. It suits his contemplative nature, and in this he is almost a Renaissance Henry David Thoreau: he has no difficulty finding “… tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, / Sermons in stones, and good in everything” (643, 2.1.16-17). But his is not the only perspective, as we will find later in Act 2 and throughout the play. Perhaps there’s just a touch in Senior’s statement of the sort of idealism or spaciness that sometimes gets Shakespeare’s rulers booted from office—in a less light-hearted vein, one thinks of Prospero, who lost his dukedom in The Tempest partly because he spent more time reading his books than dealing with the responsibilities of power. But not much is made of that problem in As You Like It.

Act 2, Scene 3 (645-46, Orlando escapes the wrath of Oliver, with faithful old Adam’s help and money)

In this brief scene, Adam warns Orlando of his brother’s plot against him, and offers his life savings to help the young man escape: “… fortune cannot recompense me better / Than to die well, and not my master’s debtor” (646, 2.3.76-77).

Act 2, Scene 4 (646-48, Silvius makes his pastoral lament to Corin about Phoebe; Rosalind offers to help Corin buy Arden: it isn’t paradise, eve if not quite the setting of “The Real Shepherds of Arden Forest”)

Silvius complains to Corin about his unrequited passion for Phoebe (647, 2.4.20-38), and moves Rosalind, who overhears him. Meeting the shepherds, she offers to buy the sheepfold and cottage, which, as Corin informs her, is for sale (2.4.86-88). That part of the Forest is for sale reminds us that while the place is a Green World, it isn’t a paradise: there’s “winter and rough weather” (649, 2.5.8), poverty, ignorance, and commerce. On the whole, the Forest of Arden is closer to Virgil’s reality-tinged pastoral locations in the Eclogues than to an earthly paradise. For the shepherd Corin, indeed, Arden is a rather harsh terrain where a man may eke out a living. (Country people often seem to regard the woods this way.) So while Amiens’ songs sometimes promote an idyllic image of Arden and the Duke is pleased with the “lessons” he learns from the woods, that isn’t the way all the characters regard Arden. It’s a nice place to visit, but most of the characters will need to be getting back home soon. (That view of nature holds as true in Shakespearean comedy as it does in a tragedy such as King Lear, in which raw nature is conceptualized as a kind of bedrock and temporary perspective-gaining ground for common, suffering humanity.) The value in the country/city debate for Shakespeare, I believe, lies in the achievement of a sense of balance: nature (and by proxy, natural desire) isn’t to be denied, but in his plays, artifice is a vital attribute of humanity.

Incidentally, there is a real Forest of Arden, and Shakespeare must have been familiar with it as a child growing up in Warwickshire, even though the forest referred to more directly is the Ardennes in France since that’s where the play is set. But the exact setting doesn’t much matter—I saw a fine production of the play live at UC Irvine years ago, and the director chose to have Corin & Co. herd gigantic orange beach balls across the stage for the pastoral scenes. Everybody loved it. And besides, they had at least one real sheep….

Act 2, Scene 5 (649-50, Amiens sings pleasantly of “winter and rough weather”; Jaques sings to mock the pastoral mood of Duke Senior’s company)

Jaques shows himself a melancholy-making machine, drawing his rather perverse sustenance even from Amiens’ more conventionally comforting songs: “Here shall he see / No enemy / But winter and rough weather” (649, 2.5.6-8). Jaques turns this song into something quite different: “If it do come to pass / That any man turn ass …” (649, 2.5.44-47).

Act 2, Scene 6 (650-50, Adam is near death, so Orlando vows to find help.)

In this brief scene, Adam is on the point of perishing, and Orlando promises to help him. In terms of Christian symbolism, Old Adam or unregenerate man is aided by his younger counterpart, the one who is poised to enjoy the benefits of regeneration in the Forest. But I wouldn’t lean heavily on such symbolic interpretations. Adam is a model of uprightness and faithful service, not a fool or sinner. Orlando treats him tenderly, as a son should treat his elderly father: “I will bear thee to some shelter, and thou / shalt not die for lack of a dinner …” (650, 2.6.12-13).

Act 2, Scene 7 (650-54, Jaques covets Touchstone’s status as fool; Orlando commandeers help and is given it freely instead; Jaques details Seven Ages of Man, Duke Senior welcomes Orlando & Adam for the sake of Sir Rowland)

Jaques tells everyone how impressed he is with Touchstone, whose particular brand of foolery he seems to find attractively broad in comparison to his own narrower spectrum of observation: “A fool, a fool, I met a fool i’th’ forest … (650, 2.7.12; see 12-43). Touchstone is free to draw out what’s valuable in people, but Jaques’ view is more limited; his insight is drawn through a filter. So the latter seeks some of this power, and seeks with his peculiar brand of melancholy foolery that he will “Cleanse the foul body of the’infected world, / If they will patiently receive my medicine” (651, 2.7.60-61).

Orlando bursts in on the bantering, and tries to commandeer some food for Adam, in the name of “necessity” (652, 2.7.89). It soon turns out that there’s more civility in the Forest than he had thought possible, as Duke Senior promises him all he needs: “Your gentleness shall force / More than your force move us to gentleness” (652, 2.7.101-02).

As for Jaques, he delivers his excellent variation on an old theme: the Seven Ages of Man: “All the world’s a stage” (653, 2.7.138), he says, and all of us play our parts, which consist in the seven ages: infant, schoolboy, young lover, soldier, mature professional (a justice), declining pantaloon, and, finally, second child, “Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything” (654, 2.7.165). This is a hollowed-out conception of humanity, whereby even the most heartfelt passion is entirely scripted by one’s time of life. And what is Orlando but a stock lover when he scribbles his bad poems all over Arden’s trees? But if we look at Jaques’ musing in a more brooding way, we can see how much against the generous spirit of comedy they are: in his view, we experience time as an opportunity to run through the paces of life and then vanish. His notions are really neither tragic nor comic since in tragedy, at least death gives meaning to life, whereas for Jacques it makes everything seem pointless. In general, Shakespeare’s comedies deal in a more uplifting way with the fact that our very selves may be mostly the product of typification, of categorizations into which our society wants us to fit. The point is not that you have to be absolutely original in all things; rather, the manner in which you inhabit or dwell resourcefully within your “types” renders you happy or unhappy. Moreover, individuation plays a more important role in comedy than in Jaques’ view, which insistently stresses dis-individuation. Comedy makes fun of us and our pretensions to uniqueness and high-serious significance, but it ultimately accepts us with our follies; Jaques’ melancholic outlook sees life as always being in the shadow of “mere oblivion” (654, 2.7.164).

Jaques himself is a stock melancholy traveler. Melancholia was a popular subject in Elizabethan / Jacobean times and attained something like cultic status later in the 1600’s. Robert Burton’s late-Jacobean Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) attests to its significance in Shakespeare’s era. Depression was thought to be caused by an excess of black bile, and indeed the word “melancholy” comes from the Greek words melas (black) and kholē (bile). Jaques, as a melancholy traveler, goes around looking for things that accord with his sadness and isolation from others. So while his “Seven Ages of Man” speech in 2.7 is excellent, it consists of stock ideas and I don’t think we’re meant to agree with it—he reduces life too willingly to its bleakest and most hopeless level, and his simplistic view is promptly undercut by the entrance of the aged servant Adam, who remains cheerful and kindly disposed towards the younger generations.

The scene ends with Duke Senior welcoming Orlando for the sake of his father, Sir Rowland de Bois, and we find that civility, not the savagery Orlando had expected, reigns here in Arden (654, 2.7.194-203).

Act 3, Scene 1 (655-55, Duke Frederick angrily sends Oliver into the forest to locate Orlando)

The usurping grinch Duke Frederick is at it again, booting Oliver out of the realm to search for Orlando, who has earned his ire by defeating Charles the Wrestler. He commands Oliver to “Seek him with candle. Bring him, dead or living, / Within this twelvemonth …” (655, 3.1.6-7).

Act 3, Scene 2 (655-63, Touchstone battles Corin over value of court and country; Rosalind and Touchstone jest over love/sex; Orlando dismisses Jaques’ gloomy conversation; Rosalind/Ganymede says love is madness and offers Orlando courtship lessons to cure him)

Touchstone, who here engages in an epic battle of wits with Corin the Shepherd, is the play’s “all-licensed fool” who has great scope to offer his perspective (655-56, 3.2.11-73). As such, he is a fine foil for Jaques as well as for the lovers. Touchstone employs a kind of schoolboy chop-logic against Corin. The whole argument should probably go to Corin by a decision, as they say in boxing. The old shepherd has the innate civility of a country fellow who knows his limitations but also his values, so he doesn’t take Touchstone seriously. Touchstone conflates good manners with theological grace: since he’s never been at court, the Shepherd’s “… manners must be wicked, and wickedness is sin, and sin is dam- / nation” (656, 3.2.37-38). This seems ridiculous to Corin, who doesn’t share in his courtly understanding of the supposed affinity between moral goodness and fine appearance. (That there’s a close connection between physical beauty and moral goodness is a Neo-Platonist view that we can find in Castiglione’s The Courtier and other key Renaissance texts).

Touchstone is also more interested in words than in action, even though he is (unlike Jaques) willing to take part in the play’s marriage festivities. Jaques wants nobody, but Touchstone will soon have Audrey to think of, silly as the match may be. In any case, Corin’s response to Touchstone’s quibbling is excellent: as the shepherd says, “Those that are good manners at / the court are as ridiculous in the country as the behaviour of / the country is most mockable at the court” (656, 3.2.39-41).

Also in this scene, Rosalind parries wits with Touchstone (657, 3.2.76-110), who tries to reduce her love for Orlando to mere physical desire: “He that sweetest rose will find, / Must find love’s prick, and Rosalind” (657, 3.2.99-100).

Meanwhile, Orlando, author of those poems that Touchstone calls “the very false gallop of verses” (657, 3.2.101), meets up with an unadmiring Jaques, who begs him, “mar no more trees with writing love-songs in / their barks” (660, 3.2.236-37). But Orlando sends him on his way, dismissing his attempt to typecast him as a stock lover and a bad poet (660-61, 3.2.230-68).

Finally, Rosalind, disguised as Ganymede, meets Orlando and offers to school him in courting his beloved Rosalind (661-63, 3.2.270-388). Claiming to have learned the art of courtship from an elderly uncle, Rosalind/Ganymede tells Orlando that he lacks all the telltale signs of a genuine suitor: “A lean cheek, which you have not; a blue eye and / sunken, which you have not…” (662, 3.2.337-38). But the main piece of advice Rosalind offers is that “Love is merely a madness, and… deserves as / well a dark house and a whip as madmen do…” (663, 3.3.358-59). The plan is for Orlando to visit Ganymede each day and practice his suit until a cure is effected (663, 3.3.380-81).

Act 3, Scene 3 (663-65, Touchstone determines on Audrey and engages with Oliver Martext to marry the pair)

As is evident from his silly courtship of Audrey, Touchstone’s coming marriage to this country lass is more a thing of words, a cover for his lust, than a legitimate institutional act, or at least that’s how the clown at first wanted it: an attitude that shows in his desire to let the incompetent Oliver Martext perform the ceremony. Audrey, as we can see from their conversation in Scene 3, understands very little of what Touchstone says, so there’s no question of their being meet company. He isn’t particularly concerned about Audrey’s not being beautiful, saying “Well, praised be the gods for thy foulness. Slut- / tishness may come hereafter.” (664, 3.3.31-32). Touchstone also doesn’t mind the prospect of becoming a cuckold: “As horns are odious, they are necessary” (664, 3.3.41). It is better, as far as he is concerned, to participate in the institution of marriage and take one’s chances then to languish a bachelor. On the whole, Touchstone is what his name implies: a sharp stone of a wit who draws sparks and tests the quality of others. His verbal wit is his way of staying at the surface of things. He will later join in the marriage rites, but does not much appreciate matrimony’s holier dimension—that key attitude for romantic comedy is left to other characters, most particularly to Rosalind and Orlando, and perhaps to Celia and the transformed Oliver. For Touchstone, marriage isn’t holy and steeped in honor—it is something a person does to keep up appearances and serve his or her own convenience. Shakespeare by no means condemns court life, but here in the attitude of Touchstone, he points out the courtly tendency to slide towards hollowness and ceremonialism. Well, at least Touchstone is honest about his limitations. He doesn’t pretend to be better than he is.

Act 3, Scene 4 (665-66, Rosalind and Celia gossip about Orlando; Corin steers them towards Silvius and Phoebe)

Rosalind and Celia exchange gossip about Orlando and his qualities, and then Corin the Shepherd enters and announces that Silvius and Phoebe are on the scene: “If you will see a pageant truly played / Between the pale complexion of true love / And the red glow of scorn and proud disdain” (666, 3.4.46-48), he tells the pair, all they need do is listen to these humble country folk.

Act 3, Scene 5 (667-69, Rosalind/Ganymede schools Phoebe after overhearing her proudly reject Silvius; Phoebe falls in love with Rosalind/Ganymede)

Rosalind, invited by Corin, eavesdrops on Phoebe as she overplays her hand, while Silvius is loyal to her far beyond her desserts (667, 3.5.1-35). Rosalind briskly reminds Phoebe that she is “not for all markets” and that she ought, therefore, to sell while someone is still willing to buy (668, 3.5.61). This match is hardly going to be perfect; Phoebe, we may assume, will never love Silvius as much as he loves her, but that’s perhaps rather common: do two people generally love each other to precisely the same extent? I doubt it. Silvius and Phoebe it will have to be—they are a match sufficient for civilization’s purposes. Silvius is a good example of the sort of stereotype that Orlando inhabits partly and for a limited time; even so, Silvius is a fine fellow in his way: he is decent and faithful. Even Phoebe’s high ideals, while misplaced, are by no means contemptible. Of course, “Ganymede’s” sage counsel only makes her fall hopelessly in love with him, and we see that firmer guidance will be needed in her case (668, 3.5.65-66). Phoebe eve quotes from Marlowe’s poem “Hero and Leander” (1598): “Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?” (668, 3.5.82)

Act 4, Scene 1 (670-73, Rosalind/Ganymede demolishes Jaques’ anti-social pose; Rosalind/Ganymede instructs Orlando in the rigors of courtship: men and women’s inconstancy: the truth of masks)

Rosalind’s deflation of Jaques at the scene’s beginning is decisive even if not devastating. He professes the goodness of his disposition, saying, “Why, ’tis good to be sad and say nothing” (670, 4.1.8), and Rosalind answers him, “Why then ’tis good to be a post” (670, 4.1.9). She ventures that it seems foolish to her to go about seeking experiences that make you sad: “and to travel for it too!” (670, 4.1.26). With that remark, Rosalind is on to her pretend / real courtship with Orlando, with some assistance from Celia (671-73, 4.1.34-187).

As for the value of the dialogue in 4.1, Shakespeare recognizes that for the most part people inhabit types and that a great deal depends on how they inhabit a given type, or how they inflect it. We are not dealing with romantic originality and uniqueness here, and not with the utilitarian-style bourgeois self of somewhat later times, even if there are perhaps touches of this sensibility in Shakespeare’s plays. There is always some Jaques-like way of describing our present stage of life.

The question is, does the type swallow us up, or do we improve upon it or at least inhabit it competently? Orlando (what with pinning bad verses on trees) has played the lover’s type. We’re not too worried about him actually becoming Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and going mad for love, but still, that thought may remind us of love’s potential to obliterate the boundaries of personal identity—a risky venture that is kept from turning bad by means of reflection, distance, and playfulness. The present scene shows how the Forest allows both Rosalind, who leads the way, and Orlando, who follows gamely, the time and distance they need to play around with love’s lore and with gender typification. Both will emerge the better for their experimentation. The “masks” they wear for a time allow them to speak and act with frankness and a degree of detachment. Often, Shakespeare treats love as something like a game with its own rules and conventions that must be learned. Those rules turn out to be flexible, but they’re not altogether to be dismissed.

What do men and women say about and to one another? It is difficult for them to be honest in real-life situations, so the disguising and conversations that occur in the Forest of Arden are valuable to Rosalind and Orlando as they move towards a more complete accommodation of each other’s desires. Rosalind’s forest performances especially in 4.1 allow her to gain some freedom and insight by playing both a male suitor (Ganymede) and a choosy, unpredictable female object of pursuit (Rosalind-as-Ganymede-as-Rosalind). One thing she explores, of course, is her own anxiety about the constancy or inconstancy of men, women, and romantic love generally. Rosalind/Ganymede’s characterizations of men and women are appropriately mocking: “men are / April when they woo, December when they wed; maids are / May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are / wives” (672, 4.1.124-27). Rosalind/Ganymede goes out of her way to make Orlando understand that a wife will do all sorts of things to set his teeth on edge, including exhibitions of jealousy, screaming, weeping, and laughing (672, 4.1.127-33).

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth,” says Oscar Wilde in his 1891 essay, “The Critic as Artist.” Rosalind’s mask is Ganymede, so we have Rosalind pretending to be Ganymede pretending to be Rosalind: just the right degree of anonymity necessary for her to sort out Orlando’s qualities as a suitor. As for Orlando, those who believe most fully in the ideal vision of love most need distance from such idealism: idealizing eroticism is noble, but it has its risks, disillusionment and eventual cynicism being the most severe among them. Orlando needs to be tested: he must show some capacity to moderate and reflect upon his high passions since that is partly what makes a marriage successful. He plays his role as suitor to Ganymede-as-Rosalind with good cheer, putting up with his opposite’s whims and generally saying and doing the right things. As the play in its entirety shows, Orlando’s inner worth is greater than the silly stereotype he has temporarily inhabited: a successful comic hero, he plays a role without being completely reduced to it or permanently trapped by it.

Shakespeare writes perceptively about love as a potentially destructive experience because it threatens to obliterate a person’s boundaries. (“Sonnet 129” and Othello give us the darkest presentations of what love can do, while the comedies deal with the lighter and more uplifting dimension of love, with its civilizing and uniting power.) Distance and reflection seem appropriate as “preventative medicine,” given this tendency of love to strip us of our capacity to define, judge, and maintain our sense of who we are. The playfulness of Rosalind in particular allows her to keep some sense of an independent identity.

Act 4, Scene 2 (674-74, Jaques again makes fun of Duke Senior’s party: deer-hunting, cuckoldry)

Apparently, Duke Senior’s men have been deer hunting. Jaques offers yet another song to counter the sort generally sung by Duke Senior’s upbeat group: “What shall he have that killed the deer? / His leather skin and horns to wear” (674, 4.2.10-11). As usual, Jaques takes up a counter-perspective, in this case making an obvious pun on infidelity that probably owes something to the classical Ovidian hunting or chase scene to describe love relations.

Act 4, Scene 3 (674-78, Rosalind orders Phoebe to love Silvius; Oliver recounts how he was rescued by Orlando from a snake and a lioness: he’s a changed man!)

Rosalind sees her opportunity to transform Phoebe’s cruelty towards Silvius into acceptance, and, as Ganymede, orders the intransigent shepherdess to love Silvius instead: she tells Silvius to “say this to her: that if she love me, I / charge her to love thee” (675-76, 4.3.70-71). Oliver, rescued by his brother just when he is surrounded by two predators—a snake and a lioness—is suddenly transformed: he tells the ladies, “I do not shame / To tell you what I was, since my conversion / So sweetly tastes, being the thing I am” (677, 4.3.134-36). don’t need to see a painful, penance-driven process of transformation. He doesn’t for a moment believe that Ganymede is male, but goes along with the act nonetheless; Oliver is on an embassy from his younger brother Orlando to communicate what has just happened in the forest (677, 4.3.151-55).

Act 5, Scenes 1-2 (678-81, Touchstone chases away Audrey’s bumpkin suitor; Oliver and Celia suddenly decide to marry; Rosalind/Ganymede promises Orlando he’ll have his Rosalind; comic knot: “and so am I for…”)

In the first scene, Touchstone impresses Audrey by chasing away a rustic suitor with all sorts of prolix talk, but at least the end of it makes sense: “I will kill / thee a hundred and fifty ways. Therefore tremble, and depart” (679, 5.1.51-52).

In the second scene, Oliver’s recent alteration is supplemented by his equally sudden love-struck decision to marry Celia as “Aliena.” As Rosalind/Ganymede tells Orlando, “your / brother and my sister no sooner met but they looked; no sooner / looked but they loved…” (680, 5.2.28-30). This newest change may in part be a perspectival device whereby the brief courtship of one couple appears more credible in comparison to the even briefer one of another—one so brief that it really isn’t a courtship at all. Oliver even tells Orlando that he’s decided to give their father’s estate to him and “here live and die a shepherd” (679, 5.2.11). The suddenness of the transformation makes sense: characters like Oliver (and Frederick) found their hopes on rational calculation over an abyss of ignorance into the real why and wherefore of their stingy, mean temperaments. “Don’t know much about you and me” has ever been their theme song, so some measure of humaneness and empathy come over them like a sudden wave or a lightning strike, not as the fruit of a gradual realization.

Rosalind/Ganymede finally decides to move forward with Orlando, promising him, “If you do love Rosalind so near the / heart as your gesture cries it out, when your brother marries / Aliena shall you marry her” (680, 5.2.55-57). She has a certain magician in mind, supposedly, who can do the trick, and of course that magician is her.

We now come to the comic knot that Rosalind/Ganymede must shortly untie. When Phoebe orders Silvius to explain to Rosalind/Ganymede what it means to love, Silvius says, “It is to be all made of sighs and tears, / And so am I for Phoebe” (680, 5.2.74-75). This is the cue for a number of “And I for…” repetitions: Phoebe is in love with Ganymede, Orlando is in love with Rosalind whom he sees nowhere around, and Rosalind pines “for no woman” (681, 5.2.76-92).

Act 5, Scenes 3-4, Epilogue (681-87, Touchstone makes pleasantries with Audrey to pages’ springtime song; Touchstone recounts his courtly quarrel; Rosalind reveals her identity to Duke Senior and Orlando; Hymen does the honors; Duke Frederick has been convinced by an old hermit to return his brother Duke Senior to power and stay in the forest; Jaques will remain with him; Oliver and Celia will stay, too; Epilogue calls for harmony and applause from men and women in the audience)

Touchstone enjoys some brief conversation with Audrey, and two young pages crown the third scene with a song about the associations between spring and marriage rites: “It was a lover and his lass… / In spring-time, the only pretty ring-time…” (682, 5.3.14, 17), only to be dismissed by Touchstone’s criticism of their voices (682, 5.3.39).

The fourth scene offers the pleasant interlude of Touchstone’s famous recounting of a courtly quarrel which, he claims, began when he professed to “dislike the cut of / a certain courtier’s beard” (684, 5.4.65-66). He sets forth a preposterously detailed series of insults and counter-insults between himself and the courtier with the disagreeable beard. But the whole thing begins and ends in words, and they part company without exchanging a single blow: “I durst go no further than the Lie Circumstantial, / nor he durst not give me the Lie Direct” (684, 5.4.77-78). The reason? Cowardice—neither of them ever had any intention of getting into an actual fight. So much, then, Touchstone suggests, for a great deal of masculine “honor.” This insight allies him with Sir John Falstaff from I and II Henry IV, and certain other of Shakespeare’s deflators of male puffery. Touchstone sings the praises of the circumstantial phrase: “Your ‘if’ is the only peace / maker; much virtue in ‘if’” (684, 5.4.91-92). This play is more tolerant of love-driven exaggerations and rituals than it is of honor-based ones.

To cap things off, Hymen the god of marriage does the honors after Rosalind enters in her own person and clears up the reigning confusion, presenting herself to her father Duke Senior and to Orlando as herself (685, 5.4.105-06). Hymen is an urban god, so his presence is a reminder that most of the characters will soon return to the court. The right matches have been made, and in any case society demands not perfection but adequacy: it needs rustics like Silvius and Phoebe and strange pairings like Touchstone and Audrey as much as it needs the near-perfect Rosalind and Orlando. Touchstone’s phrase “country copulatives” (684, 5.4.53) applies to all equally: they’re all kin by the act of generation. The phrase “as you like it” seems to mean “follow your desire,” so long as your desire doesn’t impede the charitable disposition of things.

Jaques de Bois (the brother of Orlando and Oliver) informs everyone that Duke Frederick has been turned away from his wicked intentions in the forest by an “old religious man,” and now intends to stay on in the Forest, where he will live a retired life of religious devotion (685-86, 5.4.140-54). Jaques the melancholy traveler will follow this newly retired Duke Frederick. He did not join with the lovers in dancing to Hymen’s tune, and now prefers to remain in the Forest of Arden because he believes there’s more to learn there than at court: “To him will I. Out of these convertites / There is much matter to be heard and learned” (686, 5.4.173-74). Jaques is the odd man out, but he only matters a little in this play. As You Like It doesn’t have the bittersweet quality of romances (as we call them; the 1623 Folio classifies them as comedies) such as The Winter’s Tale or The Tempest even though it has about it something of the romance ambience—Orlando, after all, is the name of the hero in Ariosto’s epic romance poem Orlando Furioso (1532)—and in general the play seems satisfied with its sunny comic perspective on life. Comedy is, after all, not only a genre but a perspective on life, just as tragedy and romance are life-perspectives. Shakespeare’s comedies aren’t monolithic in tone or degree of optimism—they range from dark (Measure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice) to light fare such as the present play, which is perhaps the most perfect of its type in Shakespeare’s canon.

Now that all is done, what exactly might we say is the magic of the Forest of Arden? It’s appropriate to borrow the phrase “freedom and variety of situations” from Wilhelm von Humboldt. Arden has a power to transform people, to alter their perspectives, and set things between them to rights. It’s a liberating place where you can either find out over time who you are (like Rosalind and Orlando do by way of romantic experimentation), as well as a place where you can go and “just change,” as Oliver does. It is markedly different from the Court or cityscape, where competition and greed may hold sway. Of course there’s something of the seasonal cycle’s magic there, too: spring is the time of regeneration and hope. But “nature” is a very complex concept in Shakespeare, and his exploration of it varies from play to play. In King Lear, the King sees Edgar in the guise of Poor Tom the Bedlam Beggar, and declares him “the thing itself: a poor, bare, fork’d animal.” But that play as a whole surely doesn’t tell us we should reduce ourselves to such an extreme; we are not most authentically ourselves when stripped and “unaccommodated” by the arts and considerations of civic and family life. Artifice is part of our nature as human beings, it seems. The Forest of Arden encourages artifice and play, and its magic consists in the freedom to experiment with the styles and types that are undeniably part of life.

The Epilogue makes light-hearted reference to the license and experimentation necessary for success in love matters: “It is not the fashion to see the lady / the epilogue …” (687, Epilogue 1-2), but it’s Rosalind who gets the last word. With that last word, she entreats the audience to applaud the play (or at least what they like of it) in remembrance of the love men and women bear to one another, play or no play.

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The Comedy of Errors

2011-11-06T09:48:00.000-08:00

Alfred J. Drake's Notes on The Comedy of Errors, by William Shakespeare

NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE’S THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

Notes still need some fine-tuning, but they accord with the text in Greenblatt, Stephen et al., eds. The Norton Shakespeare. 2nd edition. Four-Volume Genre Paperback Set. Comedies. Norton, 2008. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93152-5. Doc timestamp: 11/10/2011 8:08 AM

Act 1, Scene 1 (253-56)

The Norton editors rightly suggest that the play deals with the theme of identity, and the implication is that Shakespeare is interested in just how easy it is to alienate us from our own personal identity, and make it seem strange, a vexed question rather than something that gives us comfort and comprehension. So how does the wretched merchant Egeon’s situation clue us in to this interest?

Why is he in Ephesus, and why is he condemned to die from the very first page onward? Egeon was on a business trip and his wife had followed him just before having twin boys, and then she wanted to go home, so he went with her. The weather turned bad, and the ship’s crew left the passengers to their fate. The ship split up upon a rock, and the merchant’s wife and one child were taken up by a boat from Corinth, while the merchant himself and another son was rescued by a different ship.

That son eventually wanted to go off and find his lost brother, and the old man searched for this son for five years afterwards, and on his way home he visited Ephesus where he now is. Both of those children had the same name. Now Egeon is condemned to die because of strife between Ephesus and Syracuse. We might say, then, that he is taken unawares on a quest to recover part of his own identity—his own past and future.

But what further can we say about this theme of identity? It almost doesn’t matter who the merchant is—he is caught up in forces larger than himself, and the Duke professes helplessness before those very forces: Egeon is a citizen of Syracuse, and that’s reason enough for him to die. In the world that the play conjures, one’s identity is largely bound up with one’s family and group-based stock, with where one comes from.

Act 1, Scene 2 (256-59)

Antipholus of Syracuse—the child who had been rescued with the old merchant Egeon from the first scene—is in Ephesus on a quest to find his long-lost mother and brother. He now stands in much the same peril that Egeon did. He speaks eloquently of this (257, 1.2.35ff).

Immediately, there is a misunderstanding between Antipholus of Syracuse and the two servants by the same name, Dromio. Antipholus of Syracuse sends his own Dromio off with his money, while Dromio of Ephesus promptly shows up and gets into trouble because he has no idea what Antipholus of Syracuse is talking about regarding the gold he gave the other Dromio. Antipholus of Syracuse seems to think “his” servant must have been cheated out of the money and is ashamed to admit it, so he beats him. This is typical of new comedy in that the relationship between master and servant is often on display. Anyhow, it is not only identity that is called into question by such mix-ups, but also events themselves—it becomes almost impossible to figure out what you just did five minutes ago. What happened?

This is the last thing that Antipholus of Syracuse needs since, as we can see from that earlier passage in which he says, “I to the world am like a drop of water / That in the ocean seeks another drop….” (257, 1.2.35-36). He already has been questioning who he really is in the distant wake of losing his mother and twin brother at sea.

Act 2, Scene 1 (259-61)

Luciana’s marriage philosophy sounds traditional: Luciana says men “Are masters to their females, and their lords” (259, 2.1.24-25). As for Adriana, she seems to be worried that her husband, Antipholus of Ephesus, has grown tired of her and is cheating on her. She both blames him for this and turns the criticism inward, I believe. In this sense, she subscribes to Luciana’s philosophy—the way her husband thinks of her impacts the way she thinks about herself.

Act 2, Scene 2 (262-66)

Dromio of Syracuse is now accused by his rightful master of lying about having received some gold earlier. The master does not appreciate being tricked and confused by his servant—it upends the order of things. There’s quite a witty exchange going on between them, which is common in farcical comedies. But how does Antipholus of Syracuse, when he meets up with Adriana, who of course thinks he is her husband, process the compounding confusion? He begins trading in metaphors of dream and insanity. One interesting point is that Antipholus of Syracuse proposes to himself to “entertain the offered fallacy” (266, 2.2.185). He’s going to run with the chaos in hopes that things will become clearer. For the moment, it’s beyond him to set things right.

As for Adriana, here we may want to compare what she says to what Luciana had already said and to what Antipholus of Syracuse has said about his own quest—their way of understanding things is similar: “[F]or know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall / A drop of water in the breaking gulf….” (264, 2.2.125-26). It’s the same metaphor: to love someone is to risk everything, to venture the dissolution of one’s very self.

Act 3, Scene 1 (267-70)

A man’s home is his castle, as the saying goes—or at least his inn, in this play. It’s hard to imagine getting shut out of your own house by people you think you know—location is part of a person’s identity, along with relationships with material objects and people. To at least some extent, things, places and other people defineus as who we supposedly are.

Antipholus of Ephesus is being forcibly, rudely estranged from who he is: he is an alienated man, a man who has become a stranger to others and even to himself. That’s the bad kind of alienation—not the good kind Woody Allen references sarcastically in a short story when he mentions the greedy garage mechanic who is “so alienated he can’t stop smiling.” And then of course there’s romantic-era alienation, which clever poets such as Byron turned into a mark of genius and superiority over the common run of humankind.

Antipholus of Ephesus’ quandary doesn’t involve that kind of smirking or fashionable alienation: it’s flat confusion because the world he knows has turned bizarre. The merchant advises caution because after all, a man can’t go breaking into his own house, can he? So Antipholus of Ephesus decides instead to visit “a wench of excellent discourse” (270, 3.1.110), and even decides to give her the chain he has ordered made: “Since mine own doors refuse to entertain me, / I’ll knock elsewhere, to see if they’ll disdain me” (270, 3.1.121-22). That is his rather spiteful justification for his conduct.

Act 3, Scene 2 (270-74)

Antipholus of Syracuse experiences something like love at first sight when he meets Luciana, who obviously suspects he is being unfaithful to his wife, Adriana. Luciana is keenly aware that men are a controlling power over women, she does not dispute this fact of Renaissance life, but calls for fidelity in return. She also expects generous flattery, and supposes (271, 3.2.21-24) that women are gullible when it comes to male displays of affection.

Dromio of Syracuse has woman troubles of his own since Adriana’s cooking-maid Nell is enamored of him, thinking he is Dromio of Ephesus. I suppose the geographical references (273, 3.2.116-37) are in part simply rough Elizabethan humor: Shakespeare’s contemporaries did not exactly have delicate sensibilities, so mocking an overweight woman would probably not have seemed out of line to the audience, and of course the topical humor about exploration is obvious. England was in fact beginning to explore the world at that point, and Shakespeare’s audiences would have been curious. The same goes for the unfriendly references to Ireland, Scotland and France—places that were considered troublous for the English.

Act 4, Scene 1 (274-77)

Relationships with objects are part of what constitutes identity, and the gold chain here is just such an object. At the heart of bourgeois identity is the power to command the labor of others by means of the commodity we call money. The chain, in this instance, figures what we might call a cash nexus or tie between Angelo the goldsmith and Antipholus of Ephesus; their relationship is constituted at the point of exchange.

As a result of the misunderstanding between Angelo and the Second Merchant and Antipholus of Ephesus, the latter is arrested. When Dromio of Syracuse advises escape by sea, the irony is palpable. Antipholus of Ephesus is being counseled to escape from his own home. He sends his servant off to Adriana so she can help him make bail. The play’s mix-ups and misunderstandings have by this point become down-to-earth realities. Antipholus of Ephesus is trapped outside his proper self, and he is beginning to suffer the consequences.

Act 4, Scene 2 (277-78)

Adriana is nothing if not constant and devoted to her husband Antipholus of Ephesus. “I think him better than I say” (277, 4.2.25), she admits. This kind of talk is merely protective jealousy on her part. What she says is almost like the sonnets of Shakespeare, only in reverse—it isn’t that “by lies we flattered be” but rather that disparaging language hides genuine affection. This is one of the most optimistic things about the play. Ultimately, the constancy Adriana shows seems likely to guarantee her husband’s identity.

Act 4, Scene 3 (279-81)

At the very beginning of this scene, Antipholus of Syracuse makes a remark that strikes home: “There’s not a man I meet but doth salute me / As if I were their well-acquainted friend, / And everyone doth call me by my name” (279, 4.3.1-3). What a strange experience that must be when you are in a town you’ve never visited before!

When Dromio of Syracuse seems to speak in riddles about the Sgt. who had arrested Antipholus of Ephesus, Antipholus of Syracuse is confused because he was never arrested and Dromio thinks he was. Dromio’s comic mention of “old Adam” (279, 4.3.13) is just what the Norton editors say—a reference to unregenerate man dressed in animal skins. In other words, this sergeant hounds men for their sinful conduct, reminding them that they are fallen and trapped in their own wrongdoing. But it’s also a joke on the determining influence of money since Christian theology often talks about salvation and redemption in straightforwardly economic terms. Dromio of Syracuse is asking if Antipholus of Syracuse has obtained “redemption” by means of bail.

The plan seems to be to set sail away from this bewitched place. Antipholus of Syracuse says, “here we wander in illusions” (279, 4.3.39), and he calls upon some deity, any deity at all, to help him and his servant escape.

The Courtesan decides to play along and serve up a lie of her own (280-81, 4.3.85-91). As she says, she is out forty ducats, and that is just too much money to lose. She will accuse Antipholus of Syracuse of lunacy in front of Adriana, whom she supposes to be his wife. But of course, it’s really the other Antipholus with whom she has the problem. The man she’s accusing does not have her ring, and never attended dinner with her in the first place. That was Antipholus of Ephesus.

Act 4, Scene 4 (281-84)

This scene is a setup for the first scene in Act 5. First of all, Antipholus of Ephesus is disappointed when his servant Dromio of Ephesus brings back not bail money but instead rope. The poor servant complains that he has nothing “for my service / but blows” (281, 4.4.29-30). This is a traditional theme in ancient comedy and indeed in farce, which is itself a very ancient form of entertainment, something like slapstick where we are always at odds with the elements and end up looking ridiculous. Everyone and everything seems to get the better of us. Well, Antipholus of Ephesus finds himself accused by his own wife of being insane, and to make matters worse, Dr. Pinch is called in to effect a cure (282, 4.4.41-43). Adriana insists to her husband that he dined at home with her, when in fact he did no such thing: he was shut out of his own house, and the other Antipholus dined with Adriana. And now Antipholus of Ephesus is told that he was never locked out and that he never asked for anything but rope. But Adriana offers to pay the debt, so it seems as if all should be well—if by “well” you mean that poor Antipholus of Ephesus will be confined as a madman. Just then, Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of Syracuse burst onto the scene armed with rapiers and scare everyone away (284, 4.4.138ff). Their present plan is simply to escape the town by ship.

Act 5, Scene 1 (284-93)

Angelo the goldsmith insists that Antipholus of Syracuse accepted a gold chain from him and then denied it, while this Antipholus acknowledges receiving the chain but not denying that he had. This draws him into a fight with the second merchant just as Adriana and company enter. Adriana pleads for mercy, saying that Antipholus of Syracuse is insane (285, 5.1.33). So Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of Syracuse run into a priory presided over by an abbess (285, 5.1.37ff). Adriana tries to get the abbess to release the two men from the priory, but she will not give them up. The Duke arrives and listens to Adriana’s pleas (287, 5.1.130ff).

Next enters a messenger who says that Antipholus of Ephesus and his servant have broken loose from their confinement with Dr. Pinch and mistreated him, and then Antipholus of Ephesus shows up to everyone’s astonishment (288, 5.1.191). Egeon believes he has just recognized his son and Dromio, but at the moment no one is listening to him because he’s marching towards his death. Antipholus of Ephesus calls for justice against Adriana for locking him out of his own home and imprisoning him as a madman. He complains of his arrest at the behest of Angelo the goldsmith over a chain Antipholus of Ephesus of course never received. And then he was bound as a madman when he showed up at his home to get bail money. Hearing all this, the Duke wonders aloud if the entire bunch of them haven’t “drunk of Circe’s cup” (290, 5.1.271). They all seem to have been transformed from their proper selves into something almost monstrous, and disharmony reigns supreme.

The condemned merchant takes Antipholus of Ephesus for his son and is bewildered when the younger man says he never saw his father in his entire life. Just as things stand like that, in comes the abbess with Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of Syracuse (291, 5.1.330), and this will set up the possibility of recognition. Adriana now sees two husbands, as she puts it (291, 5.1.333ff). Antipholus of Syracuse now recognizes his father Egeon. The Abbess recognizes him as her husband, and we learn that her name is Emilia. These two are the parents of both Antipholus of Syracuse and Antipholus of Ephesus. The Abbess declares, “thirty-three years have I but gone in travail / Of you, my sons, and till this present hour / My heavy burden ne’er deliverèd” (293, 5.1.402-04). I think what she means is that the two men’s true identity as brothers and as themselves had not really come to pass until this very moment; it is as if they have been born anew.

With regard to the theme of identity, and whether or not we are to take the play as a little more than a one-dimensional farce, we should discuss briefly what a farce is. It’s an ancient form of entertainment, though we tend to connect it with the Middle Ages in Europe since that is the time period of one of its main manifestations. Consider Molière’s Tartuffe, which is a farcical comedy. Dramatic farce in this context was used to fatten up the space between one abstraction-happy medieval morality play and the next with some down-to-earth, specific characters, rather like satyr plays were used in the ancient Greek theater to lighten the audience up after a trilogy of tragic dramas. Shakespeare wasn’t the first playwright to realize that while seriousness is excellent, you can have too much of a good thing in one sitting. That’s probably why we meet quibbling gravediggers in Hamlet and all sorts of other silly characters in his most serious plays.

In farce, the characters are delightfully foolish and incapable: they’re not three-dimensional, well-rounded characters of the sort you would expect in a novel, and they certainly don’t have the complexity of a Macbeth or a King Lear. They make fools of themselves all through the play and are made fools of by other fools, and nothing they do by means of their own wit seems to get them out of the fix they are in. Instead, some force like blind fate or random chance helps them out. This farcical tradition includes the Italian commedia dell’arte, with its wonderful characters such as Zanni the smart-aleck servant, who eventually becomes the clown Arlecchino, il Dottore the know-it-all, il Pantalone the money-grubbing rich egotist, and the braggart il Capitano as well as the lovers gli Inamorati. There’s a lot of slapstick when these kinds of characters interact—a lot of trickery and deceit and good old-fashioned physical humor. In the end, farce is good-natured in that while we laugh at the vices of these characters, just as Aristotle said we do with any comedy, we like them for their sheer ineptitude. Jerry Seinfeld said his show was about “unpleasant people being selfish.” Voilà! This is somewhat different from Shakespeare’s romantic comedy, of course, in that very often we don’t find the comic heroes in them “unpleasant” or even particularly selfish. But in farce, we’re basically dealing with rascals, witty or otherwise, and I suppose we like them because we recognize a little of ourselves in them: our confusions, chaotic desires, foolish attempts to control our destiny, and so forth.

A farce need not be logical or probable if the aim is to make fun of how ridiculous we all are while pursuing our selfish wants. So there would be no need to adhere to Aristotle’s formula of “probability and necessity” even if you happened to have heard it, which you hadn’t. The plot of The Comedy of Errors is pretty much unbelievable: it’s obvious that you wouldn’t mistake even identical twins if you were acquainted closely with one of them, and the coincidences in this play are much too preposterous to pass as likely, especially when you pile up so many of them. But that isn’t really the point. What opportunity does such improbable, fantastic stuff open for us? Well, I think it opens up just the one that the Norton editors explore: the craziness to which we are treated generates a usefully intense species of alienation and bewilderment, almost a comic version of the Freudian Unheimlich, wherein something seems to us both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, both intimate and strange, attractive and repulsive. What could be more intimate to us than our own identity, and what could be more strange to us when it’s called into question so that we see how much artifice is involved in its construction, how little we have to do with ourselves? Yet we can’t abandon this construction any more than we can breathe underwater without mechanical aid. It takes the shock of the improbable to make a situation that can best deliver such a feeling, at least in the comic context.

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Coriolanus

2011-11-06T09:46:00.002-08:00

Alfred J. Drake's Notes on Coriolanus, by William Shakespeare

NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE’S CORIOLANUS

No notes on this play are available at present, but I plan to offer some in future.

Notes when posted will accord with the text in Greenblatt, Stephen et al., eds. The Norton Shakespeare. 2nd edition. Four-Volume Genre Paperback Set. Tragedies. Norton, 2008. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93152-5. Document timestamp: 11/6/2011 2:38 PM

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Cymbeline

2011-11-06T09:46:00.000-08:00

Alfred J. Drake's Notes on Cymbeline, by William Shakespeare

NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE’S CYMBELINE

Notes accord with the text in Greenblatt, Stephen et al., eds. The Norton Shakespeare. 2nd edition. Four-Volume Genre Paperback Set. Tragedies. Norton, 2008. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93152-5. Document timestamp: 11/27/2011 8:43 PM.

Act 1, Scene 1 (284-89, Cymbeline has banished Posthumus for marrying his daughter Innogen; Innogen rightly distrusts the queen and stands up to her father; she and Posthumus exchange love tokens—a ring and a bracelet, respectively; Posthumus will go stay with Filario in Rome; Cloten makes an unsuccessful attempt to assault Posthumus)

An irrational old king vexed with his virtuous but stubborn daughter, surrounded by an untrustworthy royal family—this should sound familiar since we have read King Lear, in which Lear and Cordelia are torn asunder while vulture-like Regan and Goneril gobble up their fortuitously enlarged helpings of British land to rule. Posthumus Leonatus is the virtuous obverse of Edmund of Gloucester—not that he’s illegitimate, but his less than royal lineage makes him persona not grata at Cymbeline’s court. Innogen’s vocabulary is much more expansive, however, than Cordelia’s—she fights back spiritedly when the King puts her suitor down as a “basest thing” (287, 1.1.126) and banishes him. Cymbeline, she says, has failed to realize that bringing the two of them up together might lead to this situation, and he will not recognize merit as anything but a property of noble birth. Looking forwards, however, we will find that in Cymbeline law and custom only seem implacable; in truth, they can be revoked with a change of heart, a word. Lear’s decrees are not reversible in time to do anyone good, but Cymbeline’s are. The analogue of the faithful servant Kent in Lear would be the wronged and initially spiteful but ultimately loyal Belarius, who will return Cymbeline’s long-lost sons to him when he least expects it.

None of this is to suggest that Cymbeline is on a par with the masterpiece King Lear—indeed, critics such as Harold Bloom have insisted that Cymbeline is deliberate self-parody, repeating in a tired manner any number of silly plot devices that the Swan of Avon may have become too fond of over the years: a foolish but somehow still magnificent sovereign; a decapitation (whee!); a preposterous violation of the so-called unity of time; identity switches / disguisings sufficient to make a viewer’s head spin; a gender-bending heroine; a presumptuous husband with a potentially lethal Madonna / whore complex; a loquacious villain who does evil—oh, we don’t know why; a foppish oaf who stands on his unimpressive masculinity and threatens Tarquin-ravishment against a chaste woman; a potion that induces a death-like coma; an ultra-unlikely family reunion; and a final-act virtual symphony of improbabilities. Of course, this is Shakespeare we’re talking about: even if the critics are correct that in Cymbeline the Bard is making fun of his worst tendencies, the results are still wonderful. That would be true even if only for Innogen’s sake: she is a memorable heroine who rises above the dramatic environment in which Shakespeare has placed her.

We are told that Cymbeline adopted the orphan Posthumus and raised him as a close servant (285, 1.1.28-42). Innogen has married the young man only to see him banished by her father the King because of the great gap between the two in rank. It seems as if everyone except Cymbeline can see the truth; namely, that Posthumus is a far worthier match for his daughter than Cloten, the aristocratic oaf of a son belonging to Cymbeline’s new queen: “not a courtier—/ … / … hath a heart that is not / Glad of the thing they scowl at” (285, 1.1.11-14), meaning the frustration of Cloten and the banishment of Posthumus. As for that new queen, she is a master dissembler who feigns affection for her daughter-in-law while secretly seething at her for failing to accept her son as husband and heir to Cymbeline’s throne. Innogen, however, is not fooled for a moment: “O dissembling courtesy!” (286, 1.1.85), she exclaims after speaking with this deceptive woman.

Posthumus informs Innogen that he is about to depart to the home of Filario, a friend of his deceased father (287, 1.1.96-99). Innogen and he exchange tokens of their love: she gives him a ring, and he gives her a bracelet (287, 1.1.113-124). But the young man must be gone in haste when Cymbeline storms up and declares him “Thou basest thing” and his daughter a “disloyal thing” (287-88, 1.1.126, 132). But of course, Innogen is by no means disloyal. In fact, her main virtue is her loyalty towards Posthumous, and through the adventures she undertakes she only reconfirms what was already inside of her. In the romance world, adventure and happenstance turn out to have magic properties, or in a broadly Christian scheme, they turn out to be providential with regard to the discovery of truth and the partial fulfillment of desire. As William Hazlitt suggests in his essay on Cymbeline in Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays (1817), Innogen’s loyalty to Posthumus Leonatus sets the play’s tone and centers its action: the reigning passion is loyalty. Innogen shows herself to be as strong as her imperious father when she defies his will as follows: “Sir, / It is your fault that I have loved Posthumus. / You bred him as my playfellow, and he is / A man worth any woman…” (288, 1.1.144-46). These are not the words of a pushover in the face of royal prerogative.

As for the departure of Posthumus, it is not without some drama when Cloten tries to engage the banished husband in a sword fight, but nothing much comes of it (289, 1.1.161-64). As we shall see, this departure profoundly alters the life of Innogen as well as Posthumus. The romance genre emphasizes the necessity of alienation: you don’t know the value of a person or quality or happy situation until you are threatened with its loss. Alienation is one of the main ways we discover what we are. The time will come when Innogen herself must leave the court in order to return to it on a firmer basis, after many accidents. In this first act generally, Innogen confirms the quality of her character: what we can expect isn’t so much growth and development on her part but rather confirmation of and insight into what she already is.

Act 1, Scene 2 (289-90, Cloten preens himself and waxes jealous against the now absent Posthumus while his assistant the second lord cuts him down to size)

The second scene is a comic introduction to the queen’s villainous son Cloten, who shows himself to us as a puffed up, foppish oaf amply given his comeuppance by a wisecracking second lord who undercuts him throughout. It is not difficult to see what is eating away at Cloten: “that she should love this fellow and refuse me!” (290, 1.2.22)

Act 1, Scene 3 (290-91, Innogen’s loyalty to Posthumus shines: she regrets that their parting could not last longer)

Innogen’s loyalty to Posthumus is touching in his absence, and she relates how her parting from her new husband was interrupted by Cymbeline: “comes in my father, / And, like the tyrannous breathing of the north, / Shakes all our buds from growing” (291, 1.3.36-38). With regard to the metaphor she employs, in romance, if winter comes, spring can’t be infinitely far behind: the organicism implied by this metaphor implies the acceptance of loss and death in exchange for the possibility of regeneration and reconciliation. We know that Innogen’s father, though he acts like the stark north wind, will eventually give way and assent to the play’s harmonies and reconciliations. The question is, how much will be lost before he comes round to that orientation?

Act 1, Scene 4 (291-94, Giacomo draws Posthumus into a quarrel over the comparative value of Italian women and Innogen, and lays down a “trial of virtue” wager: Posthumus’ ring for Innogen’s compromised honor)

Giacomo introduces himself to us, and we quickly realize that Posthumus learns little from experience. Immediately after recounting a quarrel he fell into with a Frenchman over the relative qualities of English and French females, he allows Giacomo to tempt him into exactly the same argument, except that now the ladies for comparison are Italian. This clever man needles Posthumus, “I have not seen the most pre- / cious diamond that is, nor you the lady” (292, 1.4.64-65). In other words, he mocks Posthumus for positing naïve ideals about feminine virtue. Giacomo boasts that without much ado he will strip Innogen of her virtue and win the ring her husband wagers: upon only a second meeting with her, he insists, he will take away “that honour of hers which you imagine so / reserved” (293, 1.4.114-15). Posthumus makes the stakes as high as he can, promising that if Giacomo fails in his attempt, he will answer for the insult to Innogen in a duel (294, 1.4.141-43).

As for this “trial of virtue” plot, as Prof. Harold Toliver of UC Irvine pointed out to me years ago, it is a Medieval commonplace, probably because of the martyrdom patterns established in Christian narratives. Chaucer’s “Clerk’s Tale,” which validates the Marquis Walter’s long and painful testing of his wife Griselde, illustrates this penchant for putting female virtue to the test. Posthumus decides to put Innogen’s virtue to a similar test, and allows Giacomo to tempt her. Posthumus isn’t an evil character, but from our modern perspective, we may well question his judgment. As Albany says in Act 1, Scene 4 of King Lear, “Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well” (Norton Tragedies 757, 1.4.325). For all his protestations about her innocence, Posthumus’ proof-by-temptation scheme seems ethically dubious. Shakespeare’s regard for this old plot device doesn’t seem wholehearted. No less a moral authority than Jesus led his flock in prayer, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:13) It’s hard to argue with a statement like that. In modern times, we call what Posthumus does “entrapment.” And then there’s his exhibition of that green-eyed, smothering, all-encompassing monster jealousy. Iago of Othello pins down this passion with his lines about Desdemona’s misplaced handkerchief: “Trifles light as air / Are to the jealous confirmations strong / As proofs of holy writ” (Norton Tragedies 473, 3.3.326-28). Once indulged, such a powerful emotion admits of no going back, and Posthumus must act upon it. Only the fullness of romance time will allow this situation to be made good.

Act 1, Scene 5 (294-96, the queen demands poisonous substances from Cornelius, who gives her a potion that only causes deathlike sleep; the queen gives this potion to Pisanio, whom she attempts to win away from Posthumus; she threatens absent Innogen with death if she does not relent and give in to Cloten)

Cornelius conscientiously asks the queen what she wants with the “poisonous compounds” she has ordered up (294, 1.5.8), and he does not like the answer he receives, which is that she plans to use them on defenseless animals and note the effects the poison has upon them (295, 1.5.18-20). He knows her for what she is, and resolves not to give her what she wants, but rather a simulacrum that will “stupefy and dull the sense a while” (295, 1.5.37). The queen next sets to work on Pisanio, the servant of Posthumus, trying to win him away from his master towards Cloten and giving him a box filled with Cornelius’ fake poison that she hopes the servant himself will swallow, thinking it a remedy. The queen threatens absent Innogen, who, she says, “Except she bend her humour, shall be assured / To taste of too” (296, 1.5.81-82).

Act 1, Scene 6 (296-301, Giacomo comes to Cymbeline’s court and slanders Posthumus as a playboy; Innogen believes him but is uninterested in repaying Posthumus in kind, so Giacomo pretends he was testing Innogen’s faith in her husband and asks if she will store a chest allegedly containing gifts for Cymbeline)

By letter, Posthumus recommends Giacomo to Innogen (297, 1.6.22-24), and the Italian promptly makes excellent use of his first conversation with the lady. He paints a picture of a feckless, adulterous Posthumus living it up in Italy, exhibiting the opposite of the chief qualities Innogen thinks he possesses: earnestness and fidelity. He is known, says Giacomo, simply as “The Briton Reveller” (298, 1.6.22). Giacomo’s wicked suit almost fails when he boldly urges revenge and utters the sentence, “I dedicate myself to your sweet pleasure” (300, 1.6.137), which causes Innogen to denounce him outright: “If thou wert honourable / Thou wouldst have told this tale for virtue…” (300, 1.6.143-44). But Giacomo is more than up for the occasion, declaring just as boldly as before that he meant only to test the strength of Innogen’s virtue (300, 1.6.163-65). With the addition of a simple device—namely, a request to store a chest full of plate and jewels meant as a gift for Cymbeline, Giacomo’s diabolical plot is set (301, 1.6.186-94).

Act 2, Scene 1 (302-03, Cloten again puffs himself up, it worries about meeting anyone of lesser rank, including Giacomo; as usual, the second lord mocks him in a witty aside)

Cloten interprets the actions of others as motivated by what drives him: lust, ambition, and avarice. We often find this oppositional representation of love in romance plays: true and charitable love versus the prideful and empty sort we find in Cloten. The confrontation of heightened, opposed absolutes seems characteristic of romance. Cloten fears losing face, he fears what he calls “derogation” (302, 2.1.40) if he condescends to meet the newly arrived stranger Giacomo. He doesn’t want to mix with those below his station. That fear constitutes the law of his being; it makes him go, so to speak. This tendency in Cloten is interesting since the play in general emphasizes the inherent goodness of aristocratic characters such as Belarius and his sons Guiderius and Arviragus. Shakespeare is careful not to go too far in that direction, but he doesn’t deny the claim that blood bestows nobility, that virtue can in part be inherited. Cloten is rather like the dragon in the old romances—he is the monster who must be slain because he would cut off the quest for reunification and reconciliation, and stop short the generosity of romance time. And the “knight” who slays him, as it will turn out, is Guiderius. Cloten’s destructive lust and self-love are incurable, unlike the less damnable jealousy that besets Posthumus. The second lord has Cloten “pinned and wriggling on the wall,” just like the imaginary insect in T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” The clever queen, he muses, is cursed with a son who “Cannot take two from twenty, for his heart, / And leave eighteen” (303, 2.1.52-53). Well, as they say, talent skips a generation.

Act 2, Scene 2 (303-04, Giacomo emerges from the trunk he asked Innogen to store in her bedchamber, taking note of ornaments and structure in the room as well as a mole on sleeping Innogen’s left breast; he takes her bracelet)

It is time for Giacomo to carry out his wicked designs upon Innogen’s happiness. Emerging from the trunk in which he has stowed himself, the devious fellow describes himself in the grand style: “Our Tarquin thus / Did softly press the rushes ere he wakened / The chastity he wounded” (303, 2.2.12-13). He notes various ornamentation’s and items in Innogen’s chambers, but most damning of all, he remarks a mole on her left breast (304, 2.2.37). And if you are in assiduous reader of Shakespeare, by now you will feel perfectly at home betting your life savings that Giacomo’s perusal of the book Innogen had been studying will yield him Ovid’s recounting of rape and cannibalistic revenge, “The tale of Tereus”(304, 2.2.45). Giacomo’s brand of evil here consists in foreclosing upon Innogen and Posthumus’ love by means of a deceptive command of fact: he cheats at his wager with Posthumus, and is able to describe Innogen’s room and her personal characteristics. It may seem ironic that Giacomo works his wickedness with the aid of facts: they may be “stubborn things,” as President Reagan famously called them, but they don’t often matter very much in Shakespearean romance or in the romance world generally. Cymbeline apparently existed around the time of Caesar, and in fact Holinshed mentions him in the Chronicles. But Giacomo is obviously a Renaissance Italian, one who lives and moves slyly in the age of Machiavelli, which is so far over the top and beyond credibility that it lends credence to the view of critics who insist that Cymbeline is self-conscious parody. Shelley’s friend the satirist Thomas Love Peacock might as well have been thinking of this play, with its ancient and modern “Italians” greeting one another across what simple logic tells us should be a gap of 1600 years, when he mocked the Elizabethans for their disregard of the neoclassical unities:

Shakespeare and his contemporaries … used time and locality merely because they could not do without them, because every action must have its when and where: but they made no scruple of deposing a Roman Emperor by an Italian Count, and sending him off in the disguise of a French pilgrim to be shot with a blunderbuss by an English archer. This makes the old English drama very picturesque … though it is a picture of nothing that ever was seen on earth except a Venetian carnival. (“The Four Ages of Poetry,” 1820)

Act 2, Scene 3 (304-08, Cloten orders up a serenade for Innogen, who despises him to his face; her insults provoke him to vow revenge; Innogen is almost frantic with the thought that she has lost the bracelet Posthumus gave her)

Cloten makes a thoroughly ineffective attempt (if an actual one, unlike Giacomo’s) to win Innogen’s affections. The only good thing that comes of it is the fine air, “Hark, hark, the lark at heave gate sings …” (305, 2.3.17). Face to face, the this declares his love for Innogen, and receives for his reply only a measure of her strength: “I care not for you, / And am so near the lack of charity / To accuse myself I hate you” (307, 2.3.103-05). One is reminded of Fanny Burney’s hilarious journal description of a suitor who just couldn’t understand that his attentions were not welcome (). But while Cloten may be dense, even he gets the point when Innogen tells him the hair on his head isn’t worth the “meanest garment” ever worn by Posthumus (308, 2.3.128). This elicits from Cloten a desire for revenge (308, 2.3.150). Meanwhile, Innogen’s real concern is that (thanks to Giacomo at 304, 2.2.34) she has lost the bracelet given her by Posthumus: “I hope it be not gone to tell my lord / That I kiss aught but he” (308, 2.3.142-43).

Act 2, Scene 4 (308-12, Giacomo returns to Rome and declares victory over Innogen and Posthumus, who unwisely believes him especially because of the bodily “evidence” and denounces all womankind)

As Filario and Posthumus trade views on the prospects of the Romans getting the tribute they’ve demanded from Cymbeline (308-09, 2.4.10-26), Giacomo enters and triumphantly declares his victory in the contest of female virtue. One doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the sight of Posthumus’ pitiful performance here, with Giacomo egging him on and Filario vainly trying to draw the most substantial account possible from Giacomo: “take your ring again; ’tis not yet won” (311, 2.4.114). But when Giacomo brings out his supposedly irrefutable evidence—Innogen’s bracelet and that unfortunately noted lovely mole on her breast, the game is up, and Posthumus is quite certain that this wily stage Italian has (as Machiavellian Iago did with Othello), “prove[d his] love a whore” (Norton Tragedies 474, 3.3.363-64). And the reaction we get from Posthumus is no better than that of the agonized romantic absolutist Othello: the mole, he avers, “doth confirm / Another stain as big as hell can hold …” (312, 2.4.139-40).

Act 2, Scene 5 (312-13, Posthumus makes outlandishly misogynistic statements: loss of faith in Innogen has shattered him)

Posthumus hits enough misogynistic home runs to make it into the woman-bashers’ hall of fame on the first ballot: “We are bastards all …” (312, 2.4.2), he whines, and then comes the grand slam: “there’s no motion / That tends to vice in man but I affirm / It is the woman’s part …” (313, 2.4.20-22). He imagines the act of copulation between Giacomo and chaste Innogen, proving only the deranged state of his own imagination (313, 2.4.15-17). For the moment, at least, he would make fine company for Othello, Leonatus from The Winters’ Tale, or Hamlet in that awful conversation with Ophelia in Act 3, Scene 1. As for this scene, as Hamlet might say, “Go to, I’ll no more on’t.”

Act 3, Scene 1 (313-15, spurred on by the queen and Cloten, Cymbeline refuses to pay tribute to the Romans)

The Roman ambassador Lucius delivers Augustus Caesar’s demand for tribute from the Britons, but the queen and Cloten sway Cymbeline from paying the 3000 pounds Caesar wants. Cloten says arrogantly, “If Caesar can hide the sun from us / with a blanket, or put the moon in his pocket, we will pay him / tribute for light…” (314, 3.1.41-43), and Cymbeline himself, while reminding present company that he spent time at Caesar’s court in his youth, comes round to the idea that failure to resist would “show the Britons cold” (315, 3.1.73), especially because just now the Pannonians and Dalmatians are in open warfare with Roman armies. Cymbeline will not fail to keep up with the barbarian Joneses.

Act 3, Scene 2 (315-17, in separate letters, Posthumus commands Pisanio to kill Innogen and asks Innogen to come to Milford Haven in Cambria, which she immediately makes plans to do)

Pisanio is dismayed at the letter Posthumus has sent requiring him to kill Innogen: “Thy mind to hers is now as low as were / Thy fortunes” (315, 3.2.10-11), he laments. He tries to break this news to Innogen, but only succeeds in rendering her more eager to get to Milford Haven in Cambria than she already was upon reading the deceptive letter Posthumus dedicated to her. Innogen makes her plans which include her female assistant fetching her “… a riding-suit no costlier than would fit / A franklin’s housewife” (317, 3.2.77-78).

Act 3, Scene 3 (317-19, we meet Belarius and his supposed sons Arviragus and Guiderius; Belarius gives us—not the boys—the complete back story as to why they are living in the Welsh countryside; both young men lament their lack of experience)

Cutting off the king’s issue can be a vicious affair in ancient literature—recall Ovid’s tale of Tereus, Procne and Philomela in Metamorphoses—but in this play things aren’t so bad: Belarius has kidnapped Cymbeline’s two sons and raised them with a healthy distrust of courtly deception, but they subsequently get their chance to prove the nobility that is their birthright. The two young men, Arviragus and Guiderius, are understandably reluctant to accept the limitations Belarius has placed upon them. When he says, “this life / Is nobler than attending for a check…” (318, 3.3.22), both of these supposed sons chime in with a rebuttal: Guiderius says of his rough existence, “unto us it is / A cell of ignorance, traveling abed …” (318, 3.3.32-33). Arviragus adds, “our cage / We make a choir, as doth the prisoned bird…” (318, 3.3.42-44). Both of them complain of being inexperienced in the wide world and show themselves very impatient to enter it. The narrative that Belarius has fed them does not satisfy anyone but himself, an older man who has already seen too much of that world and paid the price for it.

Belarius provides us with the back story we need to understand why he and his two young men are living as hunters in the Welsh countryside, a rough place that always gave even the Romans trouble. It seems that Belarius was taken down by a couple of villains who accused him of treason against Cymbeline on behalf of the Romans. Needless to say, Cymbeline believed the lie and banished Belarius from Britain (318-19, 3.3.65-70). Once the boys have made their exit, Belarius is free to tell us the rest of the story, which is simply that in his anger against Cymbeline’s injustice, he decided to take away his futurity and therefore stole by means of Euriphile the king’s two male children, whose names are now Polydore (Guiderius, the heir to Cymbeline’s throne) and Cadwal (Arviragus, the younger of the two). Belarius himself is now called Morgan, and the boys believe he really is their father (319, 3.3.80-107). That’s the way he wants to keep it since he has come to regard them as his own sons.

We might note in passing that Wales is hardly a green world of the Forest of Arden type, and that the court from which Belarius was exiled doesn’t appear to have been particularly corrupt. The setting in romance plays tends to be unrealistic, so there’s no need to escape into the magical world to grow and develop and then return to accomplish social reintegration. The main value of the Welsh setting is that it gives Arviragus and Guiderius a martial edge: they are hunters, not shepherds, so when the time comes, they will be admirably prepared to do heroic service against the Roman invaders, which in turn paves the way for them to regain entry to Cymbeline’s court.

Act 3, Scene 4 (319-24, Pisanio reveals the contents of Posthumus’ letter commanding him to kill Innogen; he has a plan to rescue her: she must dress as a young man and enter the service of the Roman Lucius; Pisanio also gives her the potion-box the queen had given him)

Pisanio takes Innogen part-way to Milford Haven, and at last reveals to her the contents of the letter Posthumus had sent him. Innogen is overwhelmed, and declares herself “a garment out of fashion” that must be ripped to shreds by the owner since it is “richer than to hang by th’ walls …” (321, 3.4.50-51). Pisanio refuses Innogen’s request to run her through with a sword, and reveals his plan to get her out of her predicament: he will deceive Posthumus into thinking that he has indeed killed Innogen; then she must go to Milford Haven and, dressed as a young man, present herself to the Roman ambassador and general, Lucius, in whose service she may come to a place in Rome not far from where Posthumus is staying (322-24, 3.4.124-79). Ominously, Pisanio passes the queen’s potion-box along to Innogen, with the innocent advice, “a dram of this / Will drive away distemper” 324, 3.4.190-91).

Act 3, Scene 5 (324-28, suspected of helping Innogen escape from court, Pisanio deceives Cloten into expecting to come upon Posthumus at Milford Haven; Cloten sets forth his diabolical plans to murder Posthumus and ravish Innogen)

The king begins to miss his daughter, and Cloten points the finger at Pisanio (325, 3.5.53-54), who comes under much questioning. The queen, meanwhile, is spinning her wheels in her usual conspiratorial fashion: of Innogen, she says, “Gone she is / To death or to dishonour, and my end / Can make good use of either” (326, 3.5.2-64). Under Cloten’s pressure, Pisanio pretends to accept his proposal that he should become his servant rather than servant of Posthumus, and Cloten’s first order is to bring him the suit the fellow was wearing when he left to begin his banishment (327, 3.5.125-26). This villain’s plan is to murder Posthumus at Milford Haven, where he believes (in accordance with the original deceptive letter Pisanio gives him) the man is headed. Afterwards, he will compound his evil by sexually assaulting Innogen: “With that suit upon my back will I / ravish her—first kill him, and in her eyes space…” (327, 3.5.134-35). This vicious plan will accomplish three objectives: first, he will slake his jealous rage at Posthumus; second, he will pay Innogen back for her contemptuous words to him earlier, where she cast it in his teeth that the “meanest garment” ever worn by Posthumus was worth more to her than the hair on Cloten’s head (308, 2.3.128-30); third, he will obtain his ultimate objective of forcibly making her his wife, kicking her all the way back to Cymbeline’s court (327, 3.5.139-41). If you want to top this for intent to commit a host of villainies, I suppose, you would need to go straight to Livy’s History of Rome, where he tells the story of Sextus Tarquinius’ rape of the Roman matron Lucretia, or to Shakespeare’s own Titus Andronicus, where you would meet the self-declared supervillain Aaron the Moor. And even Aaron sounded like he was making up some of that stuff about digging up dead men and setting them upright at their dear friends’ doors (Norton Tragedies 170, 5.1.135-40). Of course, we need not worry too much since this is Cloten, and Cloten never accomplishes anything he sets out to do. He’s no Tarquin.

Act 3, Scene 6 (328-30, Belarius and his charges light upon disguised Innogen eating their food, and give “him” a warm welcome)

Belarius, Arviragus and Guiderius light upon the disguised Innogen eating their camp rations, and respond with surprise when she offers them gold and silver for her dinner. She claims her name is Fidele. Belarius tenders her an unexpectedly warm welcome: “Think us no churls, nor measure our good minds / By this rude place we live in” (329, 3.6.62-63), and both brothers experience something like love at first sight: “I’ll love him as my brother …” (329, 3.6.69), declares Arviragus. As is usually the case in Shakespeare, we cannot take for granted that the countryside is a less civilized place than the city or the court, and Innogen is pleasantly surprised to stumble upon the same insight.

Act 3, Scene 7 (330-30, Lucius is appointed proconsul, i.e. Rome’s general against the Britons)

Lucius is appointed proconsul, with the responsibility of marshaling forces against Cymbeline’s Britons.

Act 4, Scene 1 (331-31, Cloten admires himself in the mirror and rehearses his evil designs against Posthumus and Innogen)

Cloten admires himself in the mirror and waxes poetical about his coming destruction of Posthumus and prospective ravishment of Innogen, after which he will “spurn her home to her father” (331, 4.1.16) and expect his mother to smooth things over with Cymbeline. This character wants to be a villain, but cannot manage more than to appear an over-courtly fop, really a stock character in the Shakespearean canon. If he had somewhat better manners, his place would be with false courtiers such as Osric and Oswald from Hamlet and King Lear, respectively. He certainly does not meet the high standards of any of the Bard’s more serious villains.

Act 4, Scene 2 (331-41, Innogen / Fidele is ill and takes Pisanio’s potion; Cloten arrives and is beheaded by Guiderius, to the dismay of Belarius; Arviragus carries in the seemingly lifeless body of Innogen / Fidele and the brothers lament; alone, Innogen awakens to find the headless body of Cloten dressed as Posthumus, and blames Pisanio; a soothsayer for Lucius interprets portents favorably to Rome; Lucius finds Innogen / Fidele and offers “him” a chance to join up with the Romans)

Innogen is increasingly impressed at this ability she finds here away from Cymbeline’s palace: “what lies I have heard! / Our courtiers say all’s savage but at court” (332, 4.2.32-33). Arviragus falls more deeply in love with Innogen as Fidele, while Innogen has taken ill sufficiently to try that wondrous potion Pisanio gave her (332, 4.2.37-38).

Cloten arrives on the scene, and Belarius is stricken with fear because he recognizes him as the queen’s son (333, 4.2.66-67). Only Guiderius is left on the scene to face Cloten, who immediately demands that Guiderius yield to him. Guiderius parries the oaf’s threats and insults expertly, and cuts off his head. Belarius is by no means pleased—he realizes the consequences of killing a Briton royal: “We are all undone” (334, 4.2.124), he tells Guiderius. But to himself, he marvels at the noble nature of both Guiderius and Arviragus: “’Tis wonder / That an invisible instinct should frame them / To royalty unlearned …” (336, 4.2.177-79). Guiderius makes what turns out to be an important decision to toss Cloten’s head into the stream nearby (336, 4.2.185-87).

Arviragus soon enters with what seems to be the lifeless body of Fidele / Innogen (336, 4.2.196). Belarius instructs the young men that they must restrain their contempt for Cloten and give him the burial a member of the royal family deserves (338, 4.2.250-52). For Fidele / Innogen, Guiderius and Arviragus sing a noteworthy refrain: “Fear no more the heat o’th’ sun, / Nor the furious winter’s rages …” (338, 4.2.259-60; see 259-82). The theme of the song is that in the end, even young lovers “must come to dust” (338, 4.2.270).

Now alone next to the headless body of Cloten, Innogen awakens: “A headless man? The garments of Posthumus?” (339, 4.2.310) She now blames Pisanio for what she believes to be the murder of Posthumus, on the evidence that the drug he gave her was by no means the cordial he claimed it to be (339, 4.2.328-31).

A Roman captain informs Lucius that troops from Gaul, or Gallia as this play terms it, and troops led by Giacomo (who is here said to be the Duke of Siena’s brother) have arrived from Italy (340, 4.2.334-43). A soothsayer portends success to the Romans: “I saw Jove’s bird, the Roman eagle, winged / From the spongy south to this part of the west, / There vanished in the sunbeams …” (340, 4.2.350-82). Lucius catches sight of the headless body before him and also spies the living Innogen / Fidele. The upshot of this discovery is that Lucius offers Innogen / Fidele a chance to join up with the Romans (341, 4.2.384), which she accepts with only the proviso that first the body of the man she supposes to be Posthumus must be buried. So Pisanio’s plan has come to fruition almost by accident, after quite an eventful detour.

Act 4, Scene 3 (341-42, the queen is gravely ill, and Cymbeline is desperately isolated; Pisanio is confused about the current state of affairs, but trusts to time and the gods)

The queen is desperately ill and in a state of madness thanks to the absence of her son Cloten, and Cymbeline is isolated in a time of great need (341, 4.3.1-9), as the Romans have now landed in force. Pisanio is in the dark regarding the whereabouts of Posthumus, Innogen and Cloten. His only plan is to fight for the Britons and leave the rest to the heavens: “All other doubts, by time let them be cleared / Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered” (342, 4.3.45-46). This is the correct attitude to take for a character in a comic or romance play: trust to time.

Act 4, Scene 4 (342-44, Guiderius, Arviragus, and Belarius agree to fight for Cymbeline against the Romans)

Belarius tries to explain to his courageous charges that it would be unwise to expose themselves by volunteering to fight for Cymbeline because Belarius himself would be recognized: “I am known / Of many in the army” (343, 4.4.21-22). But his argument falls on deaf ears since Arviragus and Guiderius insist on making their mettle appreciated in the coming fight. Belarius ends up declaring, “If in your country wars you chance to die, / That is my bed, too, lads, and there I’ll lie” (344, 4.4.51-52).

Act 5, Scene 1 (344-44, Posthumus believes Innogen is dead at Pisanio’s hands; he will fight for Cymbeline and seek death to honor Innogen)

Posthumus believes Pisanio’s claim that he carried out his order to execute Innogen, and decides that instead of fighting on the side of the Romans, he will switch over to support Cymbeline and, with any luck, die for Innogen. He describes this transformation in part as a casting off of external appearances: “I will begin / The fashion—less without and more within” (344, 5.1.32-33).

Act 5, Scenes 2-4 (345-45, Posthumus defeats Giacomo, and Cymbeline is captured but rescued by Belarius, Guiderius, Arviragus, and Posthumus; Lucius tries to protect Innogen / Fidele)

Posthumus fights with and disarms Giacomo in the second scene; the Italian immediately feels “heaviness and guilt” (345, 5.2.1). In the third scene, Cymbeline is captured but instantly rescued by Belarius, Guiderius, and Arviragus who, as they put it, “stand, and fight” (345, 5.3.4). They are joined in the rescue by Posthumus. In the fourth scene, Lucius tries to safeguard Innogen / Fidele from the Briton advance.

Act 5, Scene 5 (345-52, Posthumus, disheartened by an interlocutor’s cowardice, turns Roman again and is promptly captured and imprisoned by the Britons: at this point he wishes only for death; Posthumus’ departed relatives beg Jupiter for justice; the god gives them a prophetic tablet to lay on the sleeping man’s chest)

Posthumus describes to a lord the bravery of Belarius and company, and rebukes that same lord for treating his story like fiction: “you are made / Rather to wonder at the things you hear / Than to work any” (347, 5.5.53-54). Posthumus is so disheartened by this fellow’s cowardice that he decides to turn Roman again, the better to meet his end since Cymbeline’s troops now have the upper hand (347, 5.5.75-83). He is promptly captured by those troops and cast into prison, where he meditates on his debt to Innogen (348, 5.5.116-23).

Posthumus’ departed father, mother and brothers appear to Posthumus in a vision as he sleeps. They complain to Jupiter of the wrongs that he has suffered through the villainy of Giacomo, who labored “To taint his nobler heart and brain / With needless jealousy” (349, 5.5.159-60). Tired of their complaining, Jupiter appears and promises a happy ending after explaining “Whom best I love, I cross …” (350, 5.5.195). In the end, says Jupiter, Posthumus “shall be Lord of Lady Innogen, / And happier much by his affliction made” (350, 5.5.201-02). Awakening, Posthumus realizes that a tablet has been placed upon his breast, and reads a prophecy from it having to do with a lion’s whelp, “a piece of tender air,” a “stately cedar,” and branches therefrom (351, 5.5.232-37). When these things are put together in a meaningful relationship, Britain will thrive. Immediately thereafter, the jailer comes in to tell him he is to be hung: “O, the charity of a penny cord!” (352, 5.5.258) Posthumus will be brought before Cymbeline before his execution.

Act 5, Scene 6 (352-64, Cymbeline knights Belarius, Arviragus and Guiderius; Cornelius reports the queens’ death and her dreadful confessions; Lucius asks that Innogen / Fidele be spared death, but “he” doesn’t reciprocate; Giacomo reveals the source of the ring he’s wearing, and details his villainy; Pisanio names Innogen, amazing Cymbeline and Posthumus; Pisanio and Guiderius explain the death that befell Cloten, forcing Belarius to confess that they’re Cymbeline’s kidnapped sons; Posthumus admits that he’s the valiant soldier who helped rescue the king; Innogen has lost a kingdom but gained two royal brothers; the soothsayer explains the prophecy affixed to Posthumus; Cymbeline pardons everyone, lauds the gods, and agrees to pay tribute to the defeated Romans)

Cymbeline begins this scene by wishing that the soldier who assisted Belarius, Guiderius, and Arviragus in rescuing him could be found. This man we know to be Posthumus. But Belarius and his two charges are present, and Cymbeline makes them British knights (353, 5.6.20). Cornelius enters and reports that the queen is dead (353, 5.6.25-27). Not only that, but he runs through a litany of dreadful revelations from the dying queen: she never loved Cymbeline but only coveted his power; she pretended to feel affection for Innogen but in fact hated her and planned to poison her; and finally, she intended to poison Cymbeline himself (353-54, 5.6.37-52) in order to secure the throne for her son, Cloten. But when he went missing, the queen was driven to distraction.

Cymbeline is stunned, but does not blame himself for being taken in: “Mine eyes / Were not in fault, for she was beautiful; / … nor my heart / That thought her like her seeming” (354, 5.6.62-25).
Lucius the defeated Roman general is brought in, desiring only to spare Innogen / Fidele from the death sentence that must befall all Romans present: “Never master had / A page so kind, so duteous, diligent …” (355, 5.6.85-86). Innogen surprises Lucius by failing to reciprocate when the king offers her a chance to redeem a prisoner: “The boy disdains me …” (355, 5.6.105), says Lucius almost in disbelief.

Belarius, Guiderius and Arviragus are in turn surprised when they recognize their guest Innogen / Fidele, whom they thought to have died; but now they behold “The same dead thing alive” (355, 5.6.123). Pisanio recognizes her as well. Innogen / Fidele’s next move is to demand that Giacomo explain where he got the ring he’s wearing (356, 5.6.135-36), and Giacomo confesses that he received it from Posthumus. Cymbeline demands that he explain himself in full, which sparks a comic exchange in which Shakespeare may be making fun of his own tendency towards prolixity: the old king hears the word “daughter” and is on fire to hear the rest of Giacomo’s story, but he proves all but helpless to stop the slow-motion wreck that is Giacomo coming clean about his transgressions (356-357, 5.6.153-208). But at last, the wily Italian makes himself sufficiently clear: “my practice so prevailed / That I returned with simular proof enough / To make the noble Leonatus mad …” (357, 5.6.199-201).

When Innogen / Fidele pleads with Posthumus, who has interrupted Giacomo to declare himself the greater villain and indeed the murderer of Innogen (357-58, 5.6.214-20), Posthumus strikes the supposed page, prompting a reproach from Pisanio, who at last calls Innogen by her name (358, 5.6.231), to the amazement of Cymbeline and Posthumus alike. When Innogen blames Pisanio for her near-death experience, Cornelius interjects, remembering now to mention one of the queen’s admissions: she had given Pisanio the potion-box, but as we know from near the beginning of the play, Cornelius did not trust her with deadly poison and so gave her only a very strong sedative, one that mimics death. Innogen and Posthumus embrace, and Cymbeline greets her as his child “359, 5.6.263-64). Cymbeline informs Innogen that her stepmother the queen is dead, but not much attention is accorded to that event.

Pisanio steps in when the king mentions that Cloten is still missing, explaining his device in passing along to Cloten Posthumus’ deceptive letter addressed to Innogen, telling her to make her way to Milford Haven in Wales. Guiderius adds a simple, “I slew him there” (359, 5.6.287) Cymbeline’s response is not quite what Guiderius was expecting: “thou art condemned” (360, 5.6.299). This dread sentence, of course, forces Belarius to reveal the rest of the story: “This boy is better than the man he slew …” (360, 5.6.303), which risks enraging Cymbeline. But the matter is quickly cleared up when Belarius reveals the remarkable information that he had, in fact, with the help of the boys’ nurse Euriphile, kidnapped them after his banishment: “Beaten for loyalty / Excited me to treason” (361, 5.6.345-46). Cymbeline’s response is entirely positive since he can see these young men’s quality for himself, and the tokens Belarius is able to provide (a mantle and a mole) only increases the old man’s certainty.

Cymbeline explains to Innogen what this all means for her: “Thou hast lost by this a kingdom” (362, 5.6.373), but she does not see the matter that way, preferring instead to dwell upon what she has gained—a pair of long-lost brothers: “I have got two worlds by’t” (362, 5.6.375). Cymbeline doesn’t quite understand it all, and expresses a desire to hear further details in due time to lessen his wonder (362, 5.6.383-85).

Posthumus is now able to declare that he is the poor soldier who assisted Belarius, Arviragus and Guiderius in rescuing Cymbeline, and he calls upon Giacomo to verify his story. When this villain makes plain his sudden change of heart and asks for death once he returns the ring and bracelet he wrongly came by (363, 5.6.413-18), Posthumus decides to show mercy: “The power that I have on you is to spare you …” (363, 5.6.419). That decision, in turn, leads Cymbeline to declare a general pardon for everyone, including the Romans (363, 5.6.423).

The soothsayer rounds off the moment by explaining the prophecy that Posthumus’ ancestors had placed upon his chest: Posthumus is the “lion’s whelp,” Innogen is the “piece of tender air,” Cymbeline himself is the “lofty cedar” and of course Guiderius and Arviragus are the two branches (363-64, 5.6.443-58). Cymbeline surprises everyone by unilaterally offering to pay the Roman tribute whose refusal had led to the bloody struggle between the two nations, and his final pronouncements are, “Laud we the gods” and “let / A Roman and a British ensign wave / Friendly together” (364, 5.6.477, 479-81).

Nearly all has been set right by the end of the play, with the un-emphasized exception of the death of the queen and her wicked son Cloten. Cymbeline’s wrath was real and his error deep, but the power that had seemed to be so absolute and irrevocable turns out not to be so after all. In romance, the march of events is not inexorable, and the price of insight and the recovery of one’s identity isn’t death, at least for the characters who matter most. At the play’s outset, Cymbeline’s behavior was as irrational as that of King Lear, but time has given him the gift of coming round to a better perspective on love and life. Even the royal absolutism of the final act is pushed aside with a wave of the king’s staff since, of course, Guiderius “just happens” to be Cymbeline’s son. Iachimo is found out as a villain and seems likely to go to the block, but he simply renounces his villainy and is forgiven, so all is well there, too. (The point of romance doesn’t seem to be character development: the characters in Cymbeline transform altogether and as if by magic.) Generosity is spread all around like butter on hot bread, even to the point of silliness: how, we might ask, could any British king be in such a good mood that he feels like paying tribute to the very Romans he has just beaten in battle? This final strange twist in the plot is in part a nod to historical fact since, even though they seem to have had a great deal of trouble keeping the island fort locked down, so to speak, they had a permanent impact on English life.

In the end, Jupiter’s prophecy, which had seemed to be nonsense, turns out to be true. Generosity reigns over chaos, intelligibility reigns over incomprehensibility. Jupiter rules, and so does Shakespeare, the artist as romance magician who can bring mellow happiness from anguish and unity from a cascade of improbabilities. Like romance works of art generally, Cymbeline follows the broad spiritual path of alienation from identity and return to it in a more secure state than ever: romance is for the most part a kindly genre that promotes the magical power of art and adventure to transform the human condition to the maximum extent possible, provided we understand that the losses and sorrows induced by our mistakes cannot simply be wished away or canceled out. Romance represents to us a world that is at least largely disposed to fulfill the fundamental desires that give meaning to and ground every person’s time on earth. The only real bittersweetness in the play’s conclusion—for that is a feature of romance, too—lies in the king’s understanding of the pain he has caused Innogen and the many years he lost with his sons thanks to his own unjust treatment of Belarius, who, no doubt, must feel sorrow as well now that his revelation leads him to part somewhat with the young men whom he has come to think of as his own.

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Hamlet

2011-11-06T09:45:00.000-08:00

Alfred J. Drake's Notes on Hamlet, by William Shakespeare

NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK

Updated to accord with the text in Greenblatt, Stephen et al., eds. The Norton Shakespeare. 2nd edition. Four-Volume Genre Paperback Set. Tragedies. Norton, 2008. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93152-5. Document timestamp: 11/6/2011 2:33 PM

Preliminary Notes on Hamlet

Theology. In Christian terms, revenge amounts to usurpation of God’s providential prerogatives. But this interpretation of revenge clashes with a more ancient one that’s easily seen at work in Classical literature: in The Oresteia, for instance, Orestes would be wrong not to take vengeance on his father Agamemnon’s killer. How could Orestes not kill Clytemnestra? He and we know that such an act will bring the Furies down upon his head, but it must be done in spite of the penalty incurred. The Elizabethans love a good Senecan-style revenge tragedy, as the popularity of Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy shows, but Shakespeare, who revels in the form just as much as anyone else (Titus Andronicus, anyone?) seems to face most squarely the theological dilemma it entails.

Skepticism. There is something to the idea that Hamlet is a man out of his time, someone not quite fit to be a tragic hero. That’s true even if his problem isn’t really “delay,” although he accuses himself of it. He makes his share of false assumptions and rash mistakes. I say only half in jest that the Prince’s problem may be that he has read Montaigne’s Essays and soaked in some of their epistemological skepticism. The play’s proddings towards revenge don’t seem solid to Hamlet: there is only a ghost who tells him what he wants to hear: Claudius is stealing his mother’s attention and his kingdom, so the man must be paid back.

Recognition. At what point in the play does Hamlet attain clarity about the nature of his actions? He must have come round to the idea that he needs to let things shape up as they may. But exactly how he has come that far isn’t entirely clear. Perhaps his realization is due to a number of experiences (facing the shock of Ophelia’s death, meditating on that army going to its death “even for an eggshell,” bantering with the Gravedigger and encountering Yorick’s skull as an object of meditation, escaping from the ship that was taking him to his death in England, being ransomed by pirates at sea, his conflicted feelings about Ophelia and his mother, etc.)In The Poetics, Aristotle says that well-crafted tragedies turn upon the hero’s arriving at some fundamental insight (anagnorisis, recognition, “un-unknowing”) about the mistake he or she has made. Characterize Hamlet’s insight into his situation—what is the insight, and what has led him to it? Connect this question to the gravedigger scene.What finally makes the play’s resolution possible—is it that Hamlet has been unable to act and something now makes him able to act? (Oedipus Rex, for example, combines recognition with “reversal”—expecting good news from a messenger, Oedipus instead learns that the guilt lies squarely on his own shoulders.)

Specific Notes on Hamlet

Act 1, Scene 1. (336-40, Guesses about a ghost)

The watchmen and Horatio offer some surmises: Horatio suspects that the ghost’s appearance “bodes some strange eruption to our state” (338, 1.1.68). They’re on watch because young Fortinbras is planning to take back the territory his father had lost to Hamlet Sr. Barnardo supposes the same thing when he says, “Well may it sort that this portentous figure / Comes armed through our watch so like the King / That was and is the question of these wars” (339, 1.1.106.2-4). They feel foreboding, a sickness at heart; but they have only general knowledge, and Horatio’s idea (340, 1.1.150-52) is to seek out Hamlet and have him interact with the ghost; it seems logical to him that the young Prince will be able to attain particular, intimate knowledge of the spirit’s purpose.

Act 1, Scene 2. (340-46, Hamlet’s grief schooled, soliloquized; suspicions; ghost info!)

Hamlet’s grief seems impolitic, self-indulgent, even prideful—at least to Claudius, who must govern. But Claudius’ rhetoric betrays a “schizoid” sense of his own conduct. He sees with “one auspicious, and one dropping eye” (341, 1.2.6-14), which is of course unnatural and nearly impossible even to imagine. The new King’s grief over his brother’s death is pushed aside by his evil ambition to retain the crown he has unfairly won, and his scoffing at young Fortinbras’ supposition that Denmark is “disjoint and out of frame” (341, 1.2.20) is ironic since, as we later find out, there’s nothing but disorder in Claudius’ realm. At this point, however, if we are a first-time audience, we don’t yet know that Claudius is a murderer, i.e. that the ghost’s story is true, so the new king is entitled to be annoyed with the excessive grief and surliness of Prince Hamlet. As Claudius points out, he has the backing of the citizenry, and Gertrude’s advice to her son is not without wisdom: “Thou know’st it is common, all that lives must die, / Passing through nature to eternity. / … Why seems it so particular with thee?” (342, 1.2.72-75)

Soon thereafter, Hamlet speaks his first soliloquy, lamenting that “the Everlasting had not fix’d / His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter” (343, 1.2.131-32), reproaching the general run of females in the person of Gertrude—“Frailty, thy name is woman!” (344, 1.2.146)—and profoundly disparaging Claudius in comparison with Hamlet, Sr. The latter was, says the Prince, “Hyperion” to Claudius’ “satyr” (344, 1.2.140), which makes Gertrude’s choice to remarry all the more contemptible. Hamlet’s imagination at this point, even before he hears the ghost’s damning information, seems morbid: he sees the whole world as “an unweeded garden / That grows to seed” (344, 1.2.135-36), one inhabited entirely by “things rank and gross in nature” (344, 1.2.136). Hamlet seems to play with the amount of time that has passed between the old king’s death and Gertrude’s marriage, and that she was apparently in genuine sorrow for her first husband only makes her subsequent conduct more unacceptable. Hamlet is already obsessed with the dark intimation that people are not what they seem: Gertrude is not the loyal wife she seemed, and Claudius is not the rightful successor the court and the people apparently believe he is. But Hamlet also knows that he must repress this obsession in public: “But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue” (344, 1.2.159). Privately, things are different: he already seems to suspect that “some foul play” (346, 1.2.255) was involved in his father’s death or that “foul play” is now afoot, even though his questioning of Horatio about the ghost’s appearance indicates genuine uncertainty about its provenance and mission. The stage is set for Hamlet’s moral mission, if we call “revenge” a moral mission. Indeed, the question will trouble Hamlet as the play proceeds. But for now we hear the sententia, “[Foul] deeds will rise, / Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes” (346, 1.2.256-57). To me, this line indicates that the “deeds” to which Hamlet refers have already been committed, in his estimation. There is an ambiguity in this last passage of Act 1, Scene 2, a bit of shuffling between matters of state (“My father’s spirit—in arms!” 344, 1.2.254) and essentially private thoughts about the suspicious loss of a dear father.

Act 1, Scene 3. (346-49, Laertes and Ophelia lecture each other about virtue)

Laertes has evidently been taught well in the arts of windbaggery by his father Polonius since he lectures Ophelia sententiously about the dangers of giving in to the importunate suit of a lustful young man far above her station. (346-47, 1.3.5ff) This advice is sound enough as such things go—Hamlet is, after all, a Prince, so he is not free to love as he wishes without thought of Denmark; but as Gertrude later admits when Ophelia is dead, she had hoped the two lovers would in fact marry. But in any case, Ophelia holds her own, showing that while circumstances may constrain her, she is not lacking in understanding or the courage to speak her own mind. (347-48, 1.3.45ff) Polonius soon comes onto the scene and offers similar advice, accusing Ophelia of naivety about Hamlet’s intentions and showing that he reads the character of others as a function of stereotypes: Hamlet is a young, lusty bachelor, and is therefore not to be trusted, quite aside from his status as a prince. (348, 1.3.88ff)

Act 1, Scene 4. (349-52, Ghost beckons to Hamlet)

At the beginning of Scene 4, Hamlet discusses the Court of Denmark’s fondness for alcohol, declaring that his country is “traduc’d and tax’d of other nations” (350, 1.4.18.2) for this weakness. In his 1948 film adaptation of the play, Laurence Olivier chooses to quote directly from this passage and apply the words to the Prince himself, who by implication suffers from “a vicious mole of nature” (350, 1.4.18.8) in that he simply cannot “make up his mind” (Olivier’s voiceover). But this is an overstatement, perhaps, since there is good reason to doubt the purposes of a ghost such as the one Hamlet sees here for the first time: “What may this mean, / That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel / Revisits thus the glimpses of the moon . . . ?” (351, 1.4.32-34)

Act 1, Scene 5. (352-56, Ghost commands, Hamlet vows: resentment, strategy)

The Ghost then recounts in bloodcurdling detail exactly what happened to him and who is responsible for it, eliciting an excited “O my prophetic soul!” (353, 1.5.41) from the Prince, as if he had suspected all along that Claudius had killed his father. The terms the Ghost uses to describe both Claudius and Gertrude are strongly reminiscent of the very ones Hamlet had used shortly before. I think we may be certain that the Ghost exists in the play-world, but at the same time, it’s almost as if Prince Hamlet is talking to himself. He is utterly convinced at this point, begging the Ghost that he will, “Haste me to know’t, that I with wings as swift / As meditation, or the thoughts of love, / May sweep to my revenge” (352, 1.5.29-31).

There is a problem with the Ghost’s demand for vengeance, however: God says in Deuteronomy, “To me belongeth vengeance and recompense” (32:35). Why, then, should a soul in purgatory (a Catholic concept, by the way) be fixated on revenge? Revenge is an ancient pagan demand, and it seems petty. But Hamlet Sr. was a warrior king, so perhaps his demand that his son should punish Claudius seems reasonable in that context: the latter is a “traitor to his lord” and a dishonorable wretch who has corrupted the state. The Ghost insists that “the royal bed of Denmark” be redeemed from its current status as “A couch for luxury and damned incest” (353b, 1.5.82-83), but his call still seems mostly a private affair. It strains the “fatherly king” framework, and would require the son to set himself against the current order of the State, most likely at the cost of his own life. The Ghost has laid upon the Prince an extremely difficult set of demands—not only must he kill the new king without damning himself, but he must deal with Gertrude in such as way as not to damn her: “Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive / Against thy mother aught” (353b, 1.5.85-86). How is the young man to do these things? He was already “tainted” in his mind before he ever saw the Ghost, we might say, and what’s more, since the Ghost deals in the ancient imperative of revenge, it makes sense to remind ourselves that even the most righteous acts of revenge in ancient literature entailed pollution that had to be atoned for afterwards. One thinks of Odysseus purifying his great hall after the slaughter of those mannerless suitors who have beset Penelope, or the dreadful punishment incurred by Clytemnestra when she killed Agamemnon, or the penalty threatened against Orestes by the Erinyes after he in turn killed Clytemnestra. In either the pagan or the Christian context, to take revenge is to pollute oneself in the doing. Had Shakespeare written a mindlessly celebratory “revenge tragedy,” we wouldn’t need to think any of these things, but there seems to be a metageneric dimension in Hamlet that positively demands such consideration.

One might take the Ghost’s appearance as a general protest against Denmark’s rotten condition, but the Prince doesn’t seem certain of much yet, as we can see from his words and actions after the Ghost bids him farewell. On the one hand, we hear that Hamlet is determined to take revenge: “Yea, from the table of my memory / I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records, / . . . And thy commandement all alone shall live / Within the book and volume of my brain” (354, 1.5.98-99, 102-03). His wax-writing-tablet metaphor seems sincere, although it’s perhaps slightly comic in that Hamlet, a young man who has (accurately or otherwise) become a byword for deferral and delay, speaks of writing at the very instant when he’s most certain of his desire to act: “make a note to myself, take revenge,” so to speak. His indecisiveness or resentment at the task to which he has been called shows much more strongly, of course, in his concluding words during this scene: “The time is out of joint—O cursed spite, / That ever I was born to set it right!” (356, 1.5.189-90). That abrupt remark suggests anything but a determination to proceed “with wings as swift / As meditation” to a “sweep[ing]” revenge, the precise manner of which has been left to his own devising. One other useful thing to draw from Hamlet at this point is his remark to Horatio and the Watchmen that he may, at some points, “think meet / To put an antic disposition on” (356, 1.5.172-73). He has already hit upon the strategy of feigning something like lunacy to accomplish his great task. It may be difficult to tell at some points just how much control Hamlet has over his speech and his actions, but here, at least, we see that he puts his wildness down to strategy.

Act 2, Scene 1. (356-59, Polonius gathers intelligence from Ophelia)

Polonius is both an endearing character, full of well-intentioned, if comically delivered, advice to his children (and the royal couple) and a meddling intelligencer who deals with those same children in a sneaky, underhanded way. He sets spies on Laertes to find out if the young fellow is behaving (356-57), and, after having commanded Ophelia to stay away from Hamlet, he tethers her near him like a sacrificial goat to find out what’s eating him and inform Claudius and Gertrude of it. But at this point, Polonius’ assumption that the Prince’s distraction is “the very ecstasy of love” (358, 2.1.103) seems reasonable, based upon what Ophelia has told him about Hamlet’s bizarre sighing and strange state of undress.

Act 2, Scene 2. (359-72, C & G & Polonius ponder Hamlet’s behavior; Hamlet greets R & G, hears players rehearse; adapts Gonzago to trap Claudius)

Everybody’s favorite nobodies Rosencrantz and Guildenstern make their first appearance in the play (359-60, 2.2.1-18), and Voltemand brings what seems to be good news about that troublesome issue of young Fortinbras “sharking up” an army of ruffians to take back what his father lost to the Danes—now the young blade wants only to use Denmark’s territory as a marching ground on his way to Poland, where he has other fighting to do. (360-61, 2.2.60-79) Polonius’ insistence that he has “found / The very cause of Hamlet’s lunacy” (360-62, 2.2.48-49) excites Claudius, who says, “O, speak of that, that do I long to hear!” (360, 2.2.50) Together these remarks suggest that Hamlet has been putting on a good show, taking up his “antic disposition” early in the game since “lunacy” would not be the right term with which to describe he initial surliness and melancholia in Act 1. The Prince must, we presume, act in such a manner as to draw Claudius beyond his semi-comfortable geniality towards Hamlet, and into the active agent’s circle of consequence and blood revenge. Polonius is certainly moved to act: he declares to the King and Queen, “I’ll loose my daughter to [Hamlet]. / Be you and I behind an arras then, / Mark the encounter. . .” (362, 2.2.163-64). This determination is made stronger still when Hamlet wanders into the scene and Polonius engages him (sans Ophelia as yet) in a strange conversation that is afterwards carried on with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern after Polonius exits. Not realizing the irony of his formalistic amazement at Hamlet’s “pregnant replies,” Polonius admiringly says, “Though this be madness, yet there is / method in’t” (363, 2.2.203-04).

Hamlet kindly receives his old friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and he deftly, but rather gently, unmasks their dishonesty preparatory to his later, much harsher dealings with them. After the pair admit that they were indeed “sent for” (365, 2.2.284), Hamlet suggests that the King and Queen are worried about his mopishness, nothing more, and he immediately utters one of the most famous invocations of Renaissance humanism and aliveness to the beauty of a world people were beginning to see afresh after centuries of otherworldliness (that’s the stereotype, anyway—the Middle Ages weren’t as drab as we like to suppose). “What a piece of work is a / man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in / form and moving, how express and admirable in / action, how like an angel in apprehension, how like a / god!” (365, 2.2.293-300) He says all this only to bring the whole “majestical roof” (365, 2.2.291) down on our heads, reminding us that we are but the most refined dust in the cosmos, a “quintessence of dust” (365, 2.2.298). The letdown is deepened by Rosencrantz’s dirty-minded interpretation of Hamlet’s words, and the whole thing leads directly to the announcement that a troupe of actors (“players”) is on the way to Elsinore. (366, 2.2.304-07)

Hamlet comments briefly on the state of late Elizabethan theater, saying that the mannerisms of child actors (he refers to the current craze for plays put on by children) have become an object of mockery—there’s too much affectation, too much pandering to the crowd, too much willingness to break the dramatic illusion. (366, 2.2.331-51) Denmark is disturbed as well; things aren’t what they seem, and the stage “chronicles” the age. Hamlet listens with rapt interest to the player’s interpretation of the tragic ending of the Trojan War. (369-70, 2.2.448-98) In The Aeneid, Book 2 (lines 675ff, Fagles translation) Achilles’ son Pyrrhus (called Neoptolemus in The Iliad and The Odyssey) has the simple task of revenging his father, and he proceeds with all swiftness to his bloody deed. (Odysseus’ brief account of the young man’s career in The Odyssey at 11.575ff has Neoptolemus behaving with great forthrightness throughout the War, too.) It is the Trojan Prince Aeneas who is filled with horror at the sight of his king Priam’s corpse because it puts him in mind of his wife Creusa and his father Anchises. Aeneas’ rage flows at once to perfidious Helen, and is only cooled by a vision of his mother Venus, who tells him to look to his family in their time of need. As for Hecuba’s grief at the murder of her husband, the player makes it seem so natural that even he gets worked up imitating it. Hamlet beholds the real article—he has a murdered father to avenge—so why doesn’t he act at once? (371, 2.2.536-39) Things are so much simpler in fiction; a noble lie or mere representation may allow us to perpetuate our highest ideals, but real life is weighed down with epistemological uncertainties, Machiavellian considerations, and “vicious mole[s] of nature” such as indecisiveness. Hamlet’s revenge imperative is hindered by Christian scruples and by doubts about the Ghost’s purpose and provenance, as his soliloquy from line 550 onwards shows: “The spirit that I have seen / May be a [dev’l], and the [dev’l] hath power / T’ assume a pleasing shape, yea, and perhaps, / Out of my weakness and my melancholy, / . . . Abuses me to damn me” (372, 2.2.575-80). Basing his plan on the literary gossip that “guilty creatures sitting at a play / Have by the very cunning of the scene / . . . proclaim’d their malefactions” (371, 2.2.566-69), he invests much hope in his augmentations to The Murder of Gonzago as a means of discovering certainty in the guilty visage of Claudius. (372, 2.2.571-75) This plan does not give us license to despise fiction as the mere opposite of “real life”—in this instance, the public, political realm, the world of cold, hard reality and necessity, is exactly what allows Claudius to keep his murderous nature hidden from everyone but himself.

Act 3, Scene 1. (372-76, Players! “To be …”; Hamlet breaks Ophelia’s heart)

The King tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to encourage this new business of the players’ coming to Elsinore. (372, 3.1.27-28) Perhaps it will draw out the reason for Hamlet’s eccentric behavior. He and Polonius will conceal themselves to hear Hamlet talk with Ophelia. (373, 3.1.45) Hamlet’s famous “to be or not to be” soliloquy, the main point of which is to state that our ignorance of what comes after death keeps us from acting on our resolutions in this life. Hamlet’s wild words to Ophelia concern mainly the impossibility of virtue maintaining itself in a corrupt world: “get thee to a nunnery” probably means just that—remove yourself from this wicked world, and seek shelter from the “arrant knaves” who go about in it. Hamlet denies that he ever established any relationship with Ophelia, that he ever made any promises. (374, 3.1.119-20) He asks Ophelia where her father is (375, 3.1.130), a line usually taken to indicate that he knows he’s being overheard. At line 142, Hamlet seems to lose his composure in a way that is not entirely scripted, and he utters words that frighten Claudius: “I say we shall have no moe marriages, etc.” (375, 3.1.142-48) Claudius derives from this outburst the thought that Hamlet’s disturbed state of mind is “not like madness” (375, 3.1.163), so he must be watched even more closely. The Prince’s “melancholy,” says Claudius (whose guilt had already been spurred by Polonius’ unwitting words about “sugar[ing] o’er” (373, 3.1.50) the most damnable deeds with piousness), “sits on brood” (375, 3.1.164) over something still darker, and that is what he finds most troubling about the young man’s hostility towards him.

Act 3, Scene 2. (376-85, Hamlet lectures players; Gonzago & D-Show outs Claudius; Hamlet lashes out at R & G, anger flows against Gertrude)

Hamlet admonishes the players about their craft: his key bits of advice are that they “o’erstep not the modesty of nature” (20) and make certain “to / hold as ‘twere the mirror up to nature: to show virtue / her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure” (377, 3.1.14-40). In part, this is a moral statement akin to what we may find in Samuel Johnson much later—actors should display virtue as it is, and force vice to confront itself head on. Hamlet means to do just that by means of his spectacle: simply showing and then speaking Claudius’ sin should make that sin’s effects register on his countenance. (378-82, 3.2.123-238) No embellishment is necessary for such a hideous sin as his. Hamlet’s words strike home when he tells the offended Claudius, “No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest—no offense i’ th’ world” (381, 3.2.214-15). The King has consistently failed to take the measure of the consequences entailed by his evil conduct; his stability of mind depends on repressing consciousness of that conduct. Hamlet is cruelly merry with Ophelia in this scene—he seems to be baiting her, blaming her for the sins of his mother. (378, 3.2.101-15) The dumb show soon follows (379, 3.2.122ff)—it is an eerie scene that shows Claudius what he has done, no more, no less. But the dialogue also plays up the absolutely binding quality of the oath that Gertrude has violated, in Hamlet’s view: “Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife, / If once a widow, ever I be wife!” (381, 3.2.202-03). That sort of language equates Gertrude with a villainess such as Clytemnestra in Aeschylus’ Oresteia. Forced to watch “himself” commit the same dark sin twice, Claudius howls out, “Give me some light. Away!” (382, 3.2.247) With the King out of the scene, Hamlet’s anger turns first towards Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, whom he disabuses of any hope that they may “play upon” him like a musical instrument (384, 3.2.341), and then to Gertrude, who is perhaps the main target of the whole scene, so savage is the representation of her role in the bloody affair. The Prince’s rejection of “instrumentality” is interesting in its own right—what Hamlet seems to need most of all, at this point, is to take control of events, and we will see that he must let go of this desire to control what happens around him before his revenge can be effected. But with respect to Gertrude, Hamlet’s words are even harsher than were those in The Murder of Gonzago; he says, “Now could I drink hot blood, / And do such [bitter business as the] day / Would quake to look on” (385, 3.2.360-62). Perhaps this violent thought is directed towards Claudius only, but it’s hard to avoid supposing from what follows that it also applies to Gertrude: “Let me be cruel, not unnatural; / I will speak [daggers] to her, but use none” (385, 3.2.365-66).

Act 3, Scene 3. (385-87, Claudius decides to send Hamlet away; bootless prayer)

The King has decided in his anger that Hamlet must be off to England, and Rosencrantz speaks more truly than he knows when he says to Claudius, “The cease of majesty / Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw / What’s near it with it” (385, 3.3.15-17). These two flatter the King that what he does is necessary to protect the welfare of the state and the people: “Most holy and religious fear it is / To keep those many bodies safe / That live and feed upon your Majesty” (385, 3.3.8-10). The political realm is like an exoskeleton protecting Claudius from the ravages of introspection, and even from the guilt that comes when one knows one is putting off such inward-tending thoughts. This is the same sort of “tyrant’s plea” that accounts for the magnificent hollowness of Satan’s rhetoric in Paradise Lost. Confronting Adam and Eve in Book 4, Satan says, “. . . Melt, as I doe, yet public reason just, / Honour and Empire with revenge enlarg’d, / By conquering this new World, compels me now / To do what else though damnd I should abhorre.” At line 36 and following, Claudius kneels and tries to confront “the visage of offense” (386, 3.3.36-72), but he cannot because he won’t give up the crown, the effects of his sin. It’s doubtful if we are to understand this attempt at repentance as sincere—doesn’t it seem as if Claudius isn’t so much sorry for killing the king as determined to indulge himself in remorse? Is he just “feeling sorry for himself”? Most likely, to judge from the results of his kneeling prayer: “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below; / Words without thoughts never to heaven go” (387, 3.3.97-98).Hamlet looks almost as much the villain as the King at this point, when he reveals his earnestly un-Christian desire that Claudius’ soul at death “may be as damn’d and black / As hell, whereto it goes” (387, 3.3.94-95). But just at this point, the King relieves Hamlet of the need to contrive such an outcome by showing that he is completely unable to repent for his mortal sin, or even to take the first necessary steps that would reclaim his chance at salvation.

Act 3, Scene 4. (387-92, Polonius killed, Gertrude forced to look within)

After himself slaughtering the hidden Polonius, Hamlet goes so far as to accuse Gertrude of taking part in Claudius’ plot to murder Hamlet, Sr. when he blurts out, “A bloody deed! Almost as bad, good mother, / As kill a king, and marry with his brother” (388, 3.4.27-28). She seems genuinely shocked at the suggestion. Hamlet has little time now for a “wretched, rash, intruding fool” (388, 3.4.30) like Polonius, a man everyone else held in high regard and with whom they showed considerable patience, and he drives onward to make Gertrude confront her sinfulness as directly as he made Claudius behold his during the “Gonzago” scene. Hamlet suggests that Gertrude’s lust is not even excusable by reference to the heat of youth; at her age, he insists, “The heyday in the blood is tame, it’s humble, / And waits upon the judgment” (389, 3.4.68-69). His efforts succeed without too much trouble since Gertrude cries, “Thou turn’st my [eyes into my very] soul” (389, 3.4.79). At this point, Ernest Jones’ “Oedipal reading” of the play comes into its own, if it hadn’t already: Hamlet can scarcely stand to imagine—and yet can’t help but imagine—his mother in bed with Claudius, where they spend their time “honeying and making love / Over the nasty sty!” (389b-90, 3.4.82-84) The obsession is so deep that the Ghost must step in to admonish Hamlet about his “almost blunted purpose” (390, 3.4.101) of taking revenge against Claudius.

As for Polonius, to the thought of whom Hamlet now returns, there is some remorse, but it’s quickly smoothed over with philosophizing: “For this same lord, / I do repent; but heaven hath pleas’d it so / To punish me with this, and this with me, / That I must be their scourge and minister” (391, 3.4.156-59). Hamlet tells Gertrude not to let on that he’s not exactly insane, and he confides in her, at least to a degree, what he has in mind. Knowing he cannot trust Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he says nonetheless, “Let it work, / For ‘tis the sport to have the enginer / Hoist with his own petar, an’t shall go hard / But I will delve one yard below their mines, / And blow them at the moon” (392, 3.4.185.4-8). This is an odd exclamation since Hamlet knows only that he’s being “marshal[ed] to knavery” (392, 3.4.185.4) of some sort; he can’t know the precise plan, but speaks with almost military precision, promising to turn their evil back upon them.

Act 4, Scene 1. (393-94, Claudius is dismayed about Hamlet’s conduct)

The King is by now “full of discord and dismay” (394, 4.1.40) at the turn of events; he knows Hamlet’s sword was meant for him.

Act 4, Scene 2. (394-94, Hamlet mocks R & G as instruments of Claudius)

Hamlet calls Rosencrantz a “sponge” (394, 4.2.11, 14-16) who “soaks up the King’s countenance, his rewards, his authorities” (15-16). As for Claudius, he is “a thing,” says Hamlet, “of nothing.” His odd remark that “The body is with the King, but the King is not with the body” (394, 4.2.25-28) most obviously refers to Polonius’ corpse, but it might be interpreted along the lines of the longstanding political doctrine that the king has both a civil or corporate body (imperishable) and a natural, mortal one. In this sense, perhaps Hamlet is making an oblique threat against Claudius.

Act 4, Scene 3. (394-96, Hamlet mocks Claudius, who has commanded his death)

Claudius realizes the desperate state in which he stands: “Diseases desperate grown / By desperate appliance are reliev’d, / Or not at all” (395, 4.3.9-11). Then follows Hamlet’s quizzical “fishing” conversation with the King, which culminates with the fine demonstration that “a king may go / a progress through the guts of a beggar” (395, 4.3.30-31). The adornment and aggrandizing of this decaying body, so easily inducted into the dark processiveness of nature, is what Claudius has traded his soul for, so in this respect he truly is “a thing . . . nothing.” Hamlet calls Claudius “dear mother” (396, 4.3.51), a slip-up that seems sincere since he has had trouble keeping the two apart in his mind. Claudius is increasingly disturbed by Hamlet’s presence, and even by his very existence: requesting “The present death of Hamlet” (396, 4.3.66), Claudius says, “Do it, England, / For like the hectic in my blood he rages, / And thou must cure me” (396, 4.3.66-68). But what the King seeks most of all is security: “Till I know ‘tis done, / Howe’er my haps, my joys were ne’er [begun]” (396, 4.3.68-69).

Act 4, Scene 4. (396-98, Another resolution from Hamlet over Fortinbras’ march)

Young Fortinbras seeks conveyance through Denmark on his way to Poland, and the Captain Hamlet speaks to doesn’t think much of his assignment: “We go to gain a little patch of ground / That hath in it no profit but the name” (397, 4.4.9.8-9). Hamlet takes the point to heart, making yet another resolution that his mind will contain only thoughts of vengeance from now on: “O, from this time forth, / My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!” (398, 4.4.9.56) But this one is no more permanent than the ones he made earlier in the play—this is fundamentally not Hamlet’s nature, if we may endow a literary character with such a thing. Part of the interest in Hamlet is, of course, that not only is the time “out of joint,” but the hero himself is “out of joint,” not immediately adapted to the dreadful role he must play. In this way, I think the romantic reading of the tragedy, in which Hamlet is too aloof and philosophical to carry out such a task as revenging a murdered father briskly, is worthy of respect.

Act 4, Scenes 5-7. (398-408, Ophelia’s madness and death; Laertes’ rage; Hamlet is back in Denmark; Claudius and Laertes plot revenge)

Ophelia brings dismay to the Court when she shows clear signs of madness. (398-99, 4.5.23-70) Perhaps her condition should not be much of a surprise since she has been used as an agent against Hamlet, dangled before him like a piece of meat. A love match has been perverted by the general condition of Denmark, as embodied in the selfish behavior of Polonius and the King. As for Ophelia’s references to flowers, well, flowers are natural beauties, things we use to express a whole range of human experience and sentiment. Ophelia’s mind is disordered, and she registers the corruption all around her, trying pathetically to beautify it with floral symbolism and songs. She has lost her father, and Gertrude will wear her “rue with a difference” (401-02, 4.5.163-179) because she has lost her son to England. Ophelia is the blighted flower of the kingdom, the beauty and innocence that has been sacrificed for the sake of its ambition and lust. Her demise shows the consequences of Denmark’s degeneracy even more clearly, perhaps, than all the play’s violence. Even Claudius seems genuinely stricken at this latest step in the march of events: “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, / But in battalions” (399, 4.5.74-75), he laments to Gertrude, and no sooner has he said it than Laertes bursts in with the common folk at his back, shouting him up for the new king. His main function is, of course, to present an obvious contrast with Hamlet—Laertes will, unlike the Prince, “sweep to his revenge” without much delay; he has no scruples about the concept. Claudius speaks with amazing irony when he promises Gertrude that Laertes will not harm him: “There’s such divinity doth hedge a king / That treason can but peep to what it would, / Acts little of his will” (400-01, 4.5.120-22). Clearly, this truism afforded Hamlet, Sr. no protection from Claudius. Sailors pass a letter from Hamlet to Horatio, explaining how he managed to board a pirate ship that attacked the vessel bound for England. (403, 4.6.11-25)In Scene 7, the King explains to Laertes that so far, he has had to avoid confronting Hamlet because Gertrude and the people are fond of him. He temporizes: “I am guiltless of your father’s death” (401, 4.5.147). Hamlet’s letter to the King is ominous: “High and mighty, You shall know I am set / naked on your kingdom” (405, 4.7.42-43). This tone is no less alarming for the promise Hamlet tenders to explain how he has returned.

The King has come to see in Laertes his earthly salvation; the young hothead promises that he would do no less to Hamlet than “cut his throat ‘i th’ church” (406b, 4.7.98), and Claudius lays out the plot he has partly contrived (406, 4.7.84-88), only to find that Polonius is able to add a master stroke with the introduction of “an unction” (407, 4.7.113) he bought from some itinerant medical charlatan, which he will use to envenom the tip of his rapier. As surety, Claudius will offer Hamlet a poisoned chalice during the fencing match. (407, 4.7.130-31)

The scene concludes with the news that Ophelia has drowned. Gertrude’s beautiful, ekphrastic description of Ophelia’s death (4.7.166-83) honors her loss, but doesn’t redeem the faults that caused it. The death isn’t described as suicide, really; it seems that Ophelia simply stops resisting and is dragged down by her water-logged clothing. Another function of this episode is that it gives Hamlet space for the recognition that he must attain.

Act 5, Scene 1. (408-15, Gravedigger jests, Hamlet’s Yorick; Ophelia’s funeral)

The Gravedigger scene works as comic relief, but it also gives us and Hamlet a broader perspective on events up to this point. (408-12, 5.1.1-199) The Gravedigger calmly goes about his business in the face of death, and even makes jests about it—jests that, as the Riverside editors inform us, refer to an actual law case, that of Hale v. Petit. (The Shakespeare Law Library’s account of that case may be viewed at http://www.shakespearefellowship.org/virtualclassroom/Law/law6.htm#hale.) We will get no maudlin speeches or meditative musings over Yorick-skulls from him; he’s full of riddles about the sturdiness of the “houses” that gravediggers build. Hamlet appreciates by means of his experiences in this act (and in the fourth act) that the earthly prize of a kingdom, of reputation, of a patch of land, is a joke: “Imperial Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay, / Might stop a hole to keep the wind away” (412, 5.1.196). If the sought-for revenge is to be accomplished, it can only happen when Hamlet’s mind isn’t tainted by pride or earthly attachment, so his meditation on Yorick the Jester’s skull is vital. (412, 5.1.171-80) Why, indeed, should we cling to life? the skull seems to ask the Prince, who promptly aims this intuition at womankind: “Now get you / to my lady’s [chamber], and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come; make her laugh at that” (412, 5.1.178-79). Soon follows the funeral procession of Ophelia, the quibbling of the Churchmen over what rites to accord a possible suicide, and the preposterous one-upmanship between Laertes and Hamlet in and on Ophelia’s uncovered grave. (413-15, 5.1.200-84) This is obviously not the way Hamlet had meant to reveal himself to the King, but events have gotten the better of him for the moment, and he vents his grief. It almost goes without saying that the two men have ruined Ophelia’s funeral altogether. It’s just one final, if unintended, insult to this long-suffering character.

Act 5, Scene 2. (415-24, Hamlet’s recognition, challenge, fight, death)

Killing Polonius got Hamlet shipped off to England to face execution, but now he recounts to Horatio how on the ship he learned an important lesson: “Rashly— / And prais’d be rashness for it—let us know / Our indiscretion sometime serves us well / When our deep plots do pall, and that should learn us / There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, / Rough-hew them how we will . . .” (415, 5.2.6-11). It seems that this speech refers to Hamlet’s insomnia-induced impatience to know the contents of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s letter. (415, 5.2.13ff) What exactly, he wants to know, is their “grand commission” (415, 5.2.19)? This known, he forges a new commission purporting that his old pals R & G should be executed on the spot, once they make it to the English King’s presence. His justification of this rather harsh turnabout is simply, “[Why, man, they did make love to this employment,] / They are not near my conscience. . . . / ‘Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes / Between the pass and fell incensed points / Of mighty opposites” (416, 5.2.58). Perhaps this as an injustice on Hamlet’s part, an act of disproportionate violence against men who know nothing of the evil Claudius has done, but it’s hard to feel much sympathy for them; perhaps our minds are too thoroughly poisoned by listening to Hamlet for that to be possible. They serve the interests of the King against their friend, they are “sponges” just looking for preferment, and to Hamlet they are utterly insignificant pawns in the deadly game of chess between himself and Claudius. Well, if they’ll just be patient for about four centuries, Tom Stoppard will make it up to them by writing that witty play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, so “all’s well that ends well,” right?

Hamlet brings up a new motive (though in speaking to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he had already hinted at 384, 3.2.311 when he said, “I lack advancement”): he says that “He that hath kill’d my king and whor’d my mother” has also “Popp’d in between th’ election and my hopes” (416, 5.2.66). In other words, Claudius’ hasty marriage with the Queen has deprived him for now of the succession. The Oedipal significance of this remark is not difficult to see. (On the theme of “inheritance,” see Anthony Burton’s “Further Aspects of Inheritance Law in Hamlet.”)

When the foppish Osric enters (417) bearing the King and Laertes’ challenge, Hamlet calmly accepts it, overriding Laertes’ misgivings with the grand statement, “[W]e defy augury. There is special / providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be [now], / ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if / it be not now, yet it [will] come—the readiness is all” (419, 5.2.157-61). This match is not of his making, but whatever happens, Hamlet accepts the outcome. This may be the insight or right attitude he has needed all along; he must become an instrument of God’s vengeance, which will turn the schemes of Claudius and Laertes against them. We might recall that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, although all too willing to prostitute themselves to the designs of earthly rulers, nonetheless go to their deaths as instruments of forces larger than they can imagine, so in this sense they show Hamlet the way. Claudius’ plan is frustrated, and his union with Gertrude nullified when she drinks from the poisoned chalice: “I will, my Lord” (421, 5.2.234) There’s a Christian lesson to be drawn: the wicked will ultimately will find a way to destroy themselves; they are remarkably consistent in the patterns of their evil. Hamlet gains no earthly reward but death. Young Fortinbras enters the kingdom almost by accident (423, 5.2.305), in the wake of the old order’s self-destruction: he and other onlookers will hear from Horatio of “purposes mistook, / Fall’n on the inventors’ heads” (424, 5.2.324-29). There’s really no question of Fortinbras’ being a better ruler than his predecessors, though Hamlet’s final thoughts commend him. He is simply an opportunist in the right time at the right place. This hardly amounts to a strong purification of the State, though it’s fair to say that that was never really the play’s emphasis.

To return to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (423, 5.2.313-15), some critics see them as loose ends that Shakespeare has deliberately left hanging at the play’s conclusion—have they really deserved their harsh fate, considering that they are only minor players in a grand tragedy? Does their taking-off mean that God’s providential design is a bit “rough-hewn,” or at least that his justice is not self-evidently “just” to us? Perhaps, but in my view, this messy fact (along with Ophelia’s lamentable and unfair demise) doesn’t necessarily destroy the “providential” reading to which I have generally subscribed. At the least, Hamlet is a curious revenge play in that it ultimately denies agency to the very character who is most responsible for ensuring that the play’s villain gets what he deserves, and yet the revenge “gets itself accomplished” nonetheless, in the most hideously appropriate manner, as if Shakespeare’s God has much the same sense of “poetic justice” as Dante’s did. The play involves two levels of meaning: there’s something petty, intimate, and even sordid about the royal family, yet providence seems to guide Hamlet in carrying out his revenge. Hamlet is caught in the middle: a revenger whose nature and doctrine work against his mission.

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Henry IV, Part I

2011-11-06T09:43:00.000-08:00

Alfred J. Drake's Notes on Henry IV, Part 1, by William Shakespeare

NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE’S HENRY IV, PART I

Notes when updated will accord with the text in Greenblatt, Stephen et al., eds. The Norton Shakespeare. 2nd edition. Four-Volume Genre Paperback Set. Histories. Norton, 2008. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93152-5. Document timestamp: 11/12/2011 7:49 PM

Timeline of the English Monarchy from the Plantagenets to the Stuarts

House of Plantagenet’s “Angevin” line

The line is so named in modern times due to the following lineage: Geoffrey Plantagenet, Fifth Count of Anjou, France married Matilda, daughter of English King Henry I (this king was one of William the Conquerors’ sons). Matilda’s son by Geoffrey Plantagenet became English King Henry II.

Henry II (1154-89; his queen was Eleanor of Aquitaine; see the film The Lion in Winter)
Richard I (1189-99; Berengaria of Navarre)
John (1199-1216; Isabel of Gloucester; Isabella of Angoulême)
Henry III (1216-72; Eleanor of Provence)
Edward I (1272-1307; Eleanor of Castile; Margaret of France)
Edward II (1307-27; Isabella of France, who deposed him with the aid of Roger Mortimer)
Edward III (1327-77; Philippa of Hainault)
Richard II (1377-99; Anne of Bohemia; Isabella of Valois)

After this line comes the Plantagenet branch called Lancaster

The line was descended from John of Gaunt, Edward III’s third son; Gaunt married Blanche of Lancaster, daughter of Henry of Grosmont, First Duke of Lancaster. Their son became Henry IV (who was born in Bolingbroke Castle, Lincolnshire, thus “Bolingbroke”).

Henry IV (Bolingbroke, 1399-1413; Mary de Bohun; Joan of Navarre)
Henry V (victor over the French at Agincourt in 1415; ruled 1413-22; Catherine de Valois)
Henry VI (two interspersed reigns 1422-61, 1470-71, murdered; Margaret of Anjou)

Then follows the Plantagenet branch called York:

The line was descended paternally from Edmund of Langley, First Duke of York, who was the fourth son of Edward III; maternally descended from Edward III’s second son Lionel, Duke of Clarence—this latter descent constituted their claim to the throne.

Edward IV (1461-70 [Henry VI captive], 1471-83 after Henry VI’s murder; Elizabeth Woodeville)
Edward V (briefly in 1483, perhaps killed)
Richard III (1483-85, killed at Bosworth Field by Henry Tudor’s forces; Anne Neville, widow of Edward Prince of Wales and daughter of the Earl of Warwick) The action at Bosworth largely ended the struggle between Yorkists and Lancastrians from 1455-85 known as the Wars of the Roses because the Yorkist emblem was a white rose and the Lancastrian a red rose.

The Tudor line begun by Henry Tudor runs as follows:

Henry Tudor’s grandfather was the Welshman Owen Tudor (who fought for Henry V at Agincourt in 1415 and lived until 1461, when he was executed by Yorkists led by the future King Edward IV). Henry’s father was Edmund Tudor, First Earl of Richmond (Edmund’s mother was apparently Henry V’s widow Catherine de Valois, whom Owen Tudor is said to have secretly married). Henry Tudor’s mother was Lady Margaret Beaufort, and it is from her that he claimed his right to the throne since she was the great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt by his third wife Katherine Swynford.

Henry VII (i.e. Henry Tudor; 1485-1509; Elizabeth of York, Edward IV’s daughter)
Henry VIII (1509-47), Edward VI (1547-53; Catherine of Aragon through 1533; Anne Boleyn; Jane Seymour; Anne of Cleves; Catherine Howard; Catherine Parr)
Mary I (1553-58, co-ruler Philip of Spain)
Elizabeth I (1558-1603; never married)

Then come the Stuarts

The Stuarts’ claim to the English throne was initiated when in 1503, Scottish King James IV married English King Henry VII’s daughter Margaret Tudor, and they had a son who became Scottish King James V. His daughter Mary became Queen of Scots; Mary’s son by Lord Darnley (Henry Stuart) became English King James I.

James I (1603-25; Anne, daughter of Frederick II of Denmark and Norway)
Charles I (1625-49; Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henri IV of France), beheaded by Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan forces during the English Civil War (1642-51).

After 1660, we have the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in the person of

Charles II (1660-85, the Restoration; Catherine of Braganza).

Act 1, Scene 1

The play opens with a shaken King Henry IV, riddled with guilt over the death of King Richard II, repeating his pledge to turn the engines of war against foreign infidels in the Crusades. But there is to be no time for idealistic violence; the King’s past is upon him, and he must concern himself with matters at home. Harry Hotspur (whom Shakespeare makes out to be much younger than he really was) has saved the day for the King, who faces rebellious noblemen in the wake of his taking the throne from Richard, but now Hotspur tries to hang on to most of the prisoners he has taken. Nonetheless, the King cannot help but compare the gallant Hotspur with his own son Hal. While his soldiers face the obscene violence of Owen Glendower’s Welsh supporters, young Prince Hal shames his father with his “riot and dishonor” (85). The King could wish, he says, that this troublesome son were not a prince of the blood but rather a foundling left by a “night-tripping fairy.” Henry IV is at center stage of a violent, treacherous political theater, and his son is skipping about the kingdom seemingly without a care in the world, like another Richard II in the making.

Act 1, Scene 2

The scene shifts immediately to the Prince, but Shakespeare treats us to both sides of the young man—both the irresponsible jester and the king-to-be. John Falstaff is a lord of misrule similar to the sort of rogue you might find in medieval morality plays. Falstaff is eloquent and charismatic, but it is clear from the outset that he is not in charge even in his own quarters. Already, his friends are preparing to make a fool of him on Gadshill. He will become a robber robbed, and the reward for others will be, as Poins says, to listen to “the incomprehensible lies that this same fat rogue will tell”(186-87) when he is outed as a coward. Prince Hal will join in the fun, but he startles us with the self-possession that shines in his final speech of this scene: he “knows” his companions in a way that they do not know him. He comprehends their limited morality and lowborn status, and there can be no question of equality between such men as Poins, Falstaff, Peto, or Bardolph and the heir to the throne. Prince Hal’s father has always possessed the skills of an excellent actor, and continues to show a keen awareness for “public relations.” But Prince Hal demonstrates a clear grasp of this necessary aspect of kingship when he says, “I’ll so offend, to make offense a skill, / Redeeming time when men think least I will” ( 216-17). His virtues will shine more brightly because of his youthful flaws, like a diamond set in onyx. Hal is certain that time is his friend, and in this regard his sunny expectations make for the strongest contrast between him and his gloomy father, who has come to see time as more enemy than friend. For him, time brings not opportunity as it seemed to do in Richard II, but care and sorrow. (As “Bullingbrook,” he took brilliant advantage of his exile and returned to triumph over the feckless Richard.)

Act 1, Scene 3

The King has his hands full in trying to assert his dominance over Percy. Hotspur complains that he had intended to give up his prisoners, but his sensibilities were offended by the “popingay” (50) the King sent to inquire about them. This remark is a slap in the face to the King, who is outraged that Hotspur should make demands in favor of Mortimer, whom the King considers a traitor. After this freewheeling argument with Henry IV, Hotspur unburdens himself still more fully with Worcester and Northumberland, and we begin to see the seeds of further rebellion. Was it for this that Northumberland helped the present king to the throne? Worcester is already thinking such thoughts, and tries to turn Hotspur’s attention to a rational plan of attack. That’s no easy matter, given Hotspur’s high-spiritedness: “By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap, / To pluck bright honor from the pale-fac’d moon, / Or dive into the bottom of the deep…” (201-03), he exclaims, before Worcester is finally able to lay out a course of action that involves an alliance with the Archbishop of York and Mortimer. Worcester also explains the general logic of king/nobility relations in this difficult era: “The King will always think him in our debt, / And think we think ourselves unsatisfied” (286-87). There is no settled balance of power here; there are only uneasy, shifting alliances—apparently a typical state of affairs in feudal Europe (in spite of idealizing history books that talk about the Middle Ages as a time when everybody had a place and knew just what it was). Henry IV is a powerful king, but he came by his throne with help from others of no mean estate, and he will never feel secure in the loyalty of men who betrayed King Richard. The scene ends with Hotspur eagerly looking forward to the groans of battle—he is to factional strife as eager a suitor as Romeo to Juliet. Already, we begin to see a deep contrast between this hothead and the riotous, yet oddly self-possessed, Prince Hal, whose jesting ways we may come to see as flowing from the calm center of a hurricane of violence, betrayal, guilt, and consequentiality.

Act 2, Scenes 1-2

Falstaff is easily winded—he has become a criminal weekend warrior, if indeed he was ever in shape to begin with. Structurally, we have cut from Hotspur’s deadly, vaulting ambition to this playful escapade on Gadshill. For Sir John, robbery turns out to be hard work, and frightening work at that.

Act 2, Scene 3

Hotspur’s time is always cut short—time is not on his side, as it is for Prince Hal. It is obvious from the letter Hotspur is reading that some who do not wish the king well nevertheless find the rebels’ plot inadequate and hasty. When Kate enters, she tries to do what Portia later attempts with Brutus in Julius Caesar: she tries to get her husband to make her an equal partner in the dangerous venture at hand. But Hotspur will have none of this early modern feminism, and declines to fill Kate in on the details: “I well believe / Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know, / And so far will I trust thee, gentle Kate” (110-12). Hotspur is affectionate with Kate, which lends him some vitality as a character, but he does not trust her, which limits his appeal.

Act 2, Scene 4

This scene is full of playacting. Prince Hal teases a poor servant to warm up for his exchange with Falstaff, and then he declares that he will take on the persona of Hotspur and question Falstaff, who enters with a famous line, “A plague of all cowards, I say” (115). When Falstaff begins to recount his story, buckram men multiply. At last, the rascal claims he knew what was going on the whole time. Next we have a rehearsal for the father-son confrontation that the Prince knows must soon take place. Falstaff does a poor job of imitating King Henry, so Hal switches roles with him. This comic playacting turns serious when the Prince responds sharply to Falstaff’s plea, “banish plump Jack, and banish all the world” with “I do, I will” (480-81). When the sheriff shows up, Prince Hal promises Falstaff will make things right regarding the robbery at Gadshill. He even offers Sir John a place of honor in the coming wars, and insists that the men who were robbed will be compensated for their trouble. The heir to the throne has been trying out different styles, different perspectives and modes of conduct, but we can see that his thoughts have taken a turn for the serious now that his father’s moment of peril has come.

Act 3, Scene 1

Hotspur’s charms are on display in this scene, but so are his flaws. He angers Owen Glendower by mocking the fellow’s penchant for mystical mutterings. Hotspur also quibbles about the amount of land allotted to him if the rebellion should prove successful, and even insists that the river Trent ’s course be altered to aggrandize his holdings. When Mortimer tries to explain how much restraint Owen Glendower is showing, given his irascibility, Hotspur is suitably unimpressed. The very course of nature must be altered to suit the prideful whims of these great men. In turn, he is accused by Worcester of “Pride, haughtiness, opinion, and disdain” (183). But Hotspur is at his best in jesting with Kate as Mortimer’s Welsh wife sings an incomprehensible tune in her native tongue.

Act 3, Scene 2

King Henry now confronts his wayward son, laying bare the secrets of his success: Henry says he carefully managed his image with the common people, appearing so seldom and so impressively that, “I could not stir / But like a comet I was wond’red at” (46-47). The point King Henry makes is one that still applies today—whatever system of government a ruler may preside over, he or she cannot accomplish much without at least some regard from the public. King Richard evidently did not understand this basic fact of governance since he ruined his reputation with the nobility and cared little what the common people thought. King Henry bitterly compares his own son with Richard, and seems pleasantly surprised at the strong answer Prince Hal returns: “I will redeem all this on Percy’s head, / And in the closing of some glorious day / Be bold to tell you that I am your son” (132-34). He also assures the King that he understands something of the public relations lesson just given to him: “Percy is but my factor, good my lord, / To engross up glorious deeds on my behalf” (147-48). The march to battle begins on “Wednesday next.”

Act 3, Scene 3

While Hal is gearing up for heroic exploits, Falstaff is quarreling with Mistress Quickly at the Boar’s Head Tavern. Sir John’s accusation against Quickly is a petty attempt to hide the fact that he owes her money, and his claim leads Hal to confess that he is the one who made himself acquainted with the worthless contents of Falstaff’s wallet. Hal informs Falstaff of the good news that he has procured him “a charge of foot” (186), i.e. a company of infantrymen, but Falstaff’s response indicates that he can’t see why the doings of the upper orders should inconvenience him—the aristocratic rebels, he says, “offend none but the virtuous” (191). His place is in the Tavern, and that’s where he would prefer to stay, knightly status notwithstanding. Falstaff’s orientation towards time is not providential, as Hal’s is, but is instead a form of denial: where T. S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock measure out his life in coffee spoons, Falstaff measures them with swigs of cheap liquor.

Act 4, Scene 1

Things are going badly for the rebels since Hotspur’s father is ill and Glendower must delay his advance for two weeks. But Hotspur’s thoughts are only on his epic confrontation with “The nimble-footed madcap Prince of Wales” (95). Hotspur is spirited and noble, but he lacks the capacity for development and doesn’t possess the practical regard for facts that a successful ruler must: a man who doesn’t care whether thirty thousand or forty thousand soldiers will oppose him is unlikely to win his battles for long.

Act 4, Scene 2

Predictably, Falstaff has pulled a scam on the King’s dime, threatening to draft only those men he knows will pay good money to get out of their service, and he has filled the actual places with poor fools who have no options. But he has picked up “three hundred and odd pounds” (14), a knavish bargain. The Prince begins to show his disgust at Falstaff’s dangerous dishonesty, and calls his soldiers “pitiful rascals” (64). Falstaff is beginning to appear as the parasite he really is, and his jests will end in the death of others who have done him no harm. At least at this point, it is difficult not to question the Prince's maturity since, after all, he has freely given such an irresponsible rogue the authority to command soldiers.

Act 4, Scenes 3-4

Hotspur continues, among his confederates, to abuse King Henry roundly, castigating him for his “seeming brow of justice” (83), and pointing out that Henry owes his crown to the very people he now finds against him, for what they consider excellent reasons. Scroop, Archbishop of York, determines that he had better take precautions against King Henry, who is aware of his being in league with the rebels.

Act 5, Scene 1

King Henry confronts the rebel Worcester, and the emptiness of the latter’s claims soon become apparent: Worcester complains that Henry promised to take only the Dukedom of Lancaster of which the greedy Richard had deprived him, but then usurped the kingdom. Strictly, this is true, but it is also beside the point since the promise itself was ridiculous. It would be fair to point out that sometimes the nobility and the monarch quarreled and then patched things up (at least temporarily), but Henry’s step of invading English soil during his period of banishment seems too extreme for such patching-up to work. His endeavor was an all-or-nothing affair, I believe, and in Richard II his promise hardly seemed credible even when he made it. It’s also hard to see how someone like Worcester, supposedly a savvy political operator, could have failed to perceive the hollowness of Henry’s “promise.”

Prince Hal offers to settle the dispute by single combat with Hotspur, but this chivalric gesture goes nowhere, and Hal in turn points out that the King’s offer of reconciliation with the rebels stands no chance of being accepted. Falstaff is already sick of the whole affair, and after complaining to the Prince, “I would ‘twere bed-time, Hal, and all well” (125), he is inspired in that gallant’s absence to utter his famous definition of honor: “honor is a mere scutcheon” (140). The play in its entirety by no means sides with Falstaff in supposing that honor is a hollow emblem, but this anti-heroic view is acknowledged as a useful counter-narrative to keep the “heroics” of the history cycle in perspective. It is of course an ancient view—one has only to think of Homer’s Thersites in The Iliad to gauge its impressive pedigree.

Act 5, Scene 2

Worcester points out the obvious; namely, that the King can’t mean to keep the promise of clemency he has just made, and it’s decided to keep this part of the news from Hotspur. Hotspur is as ready as ever to fight.

Act 5, Scene 3

Blunt has bravely died in the King’s stead, as Douglas, his killer, finds when Hotspur arrives on the scene. The Prince has had enough of Falstaff’s cowardly behavior. Alone, he admits that he has got his whole company shot to pieces, and then his jest comparing a gun with a bottle of sack (wine) falls flat with the Prince, who rails at Falstaff, “What, is it a time to jest and dally now?” (55) Falstaff is nonplussed, and willingly forgoes “such grinning honor as Sir Walter hath” (59). As he says, honor sometimes comes to a man in the fog of war, even though his intentions are on anything but gaining honor. The after-narrative may speak kindly of him.

Act 5, Scene 4

Prince Hal’s redemption of time begins to show in his actions during this scene—disdaining help for his slight wound, he rescues his father from the sword of Douglas . The King’s actions had brought him to this, we might say—it had brought him to a confused battlefield where a determined enemy sought to end his usurped reign. The redemptive answer to this threat is the Prince himself. Henry’s ultimate legitimacy, it might be inferred, is none other than Hal, who, as we know, will go on to become King Henry V, whose brief reign would bring glory to England against the French at Agincourt. We learn in this scene that some had said Hal wished his father dead, and now that ugly slander is put to rest. But the Prince has still more work to do, and he soon finds himself facing his nemesis Hotspur, whom he kills and praises to the heavens.

Falstaff, in spite of his principles, is also in the thick of battle, and just before the Prince kills Hotspur, Falstaff saves his own hide by playing dead when Douglas challenges him. The fat knight is offended when Hal notices him and more or less sets him forth as he really is: “Death hath not strook so fat a deer to-day, / Though many dearer, in this bloody fray” (107-08). Well, it isn’t even so much the insult that gets to Falstaff as the certainty that he is dead—to be dead, says Falstaff, is to be “a counterfeit” (115-16), and then comes the immortal line, “The better part of valor is discretion” (119-20), which sounds like a twisted variation on Aristotle’s definition of virtue as the mean between cowardice and foolhardiness. To make matters still more absurd, Falstaff decides he might as well claim he killed the already dead Percy, and abuses his corpse with his sword. Caught in the act by Lancaster and the Prince, Falstaff can only lie through his teeth to the very man who actually did kill Hotspur. Strangely, even before he hears the horn blast that signals the enemy’s retreat, Hal agrees to go along with Falstaff’s ridiculous pretension: “if a lie may do thee grace, / I’ll gild it with the happiest terms I have” (157-58). This indulgence may seem strange when we consider how intently Hal had come to look forward to this defining moment: killing Hotspur constitutes completion of the “redemptive” project he has promised the King, and by all rights the act should be trumpeted across the kingdom, not dissembled to serve the private interests of a rogue like Falstaff. One of my professors at UC Irvine remarked that perhaps this odd moment is a nod on Shakespeare’s part to the messiness or fogginess of the chronicles themselves—how difficult it is to know “what really happened” during history’s great events! It’s also true that at least Hal knows, within himself, what he’s made of, though that’s only a partial explanation since a great Prince is not a private person but a public figure. Perhaps, too, Hal’s actions flow from the deep sense of English history with which Shakespeare endows him. He seems secure in his triumph now.

Act 5, Scene 5

Prince Hal shows magnanimity in pardoning the Douglas for the sake of his valor in battle, and there’s still more fighting to do before the rebels are entirely vanquished. Prince Hal will proceed to Wales , there to face Glendower and the Earl of March.

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Henry IV, Part II

2011-11-06T09:42:00.001-08:00

NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE’S HENRY IV, PART II