csuf e316-tr william shakespeare fall 2007

Home Page for E316

2007-12-05T12:35:00.000-08:00

Welcome to E316, Shakespeare

Fall 2007 at California State University, Fullerton

This blog will offer posts on all of the plays on our syllabus. I will post scene-by-scene notes for all plays. These notes are optional reading, but I encourage you to read the entries as your time permits. While they are not exactly the same as what I may choose to say during class sessions (i.e. these are not usually exact copies of my lecture notes), they should prove helpful in your engagement with the plays and in arriving at paper topics and studying for the exam.

A dedicated menu at my wiki site contains the necessary information for students enrolled in this course; when the semester has ended, this blog will remain online, and a copy of the syllabus will remain in the Archive menu.

The required text is Evans, G. Blakemore et al., eds. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. ISBN: 0-395-75490-9.

Week 16, The Tempest

2007-12-04T12:09:00.000-08:00

Notes on Shakespeare’s The Tempest

General Notes on The Tempest

Northrop Frye says that the basis of tragic vision 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 not an incident in life or even the inevitable end of life, but the essential event that gives shape and form to life. Death is what defines the individual... (Fools of Time, 3). By contrast, if we take our cue from Frye, 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 goes in cycles of regeneration, just as the seasons do.

But I make romance sound a little too much like comedy, whereas it seems to me that romance is somewhere between tragedy and comedy. Both comedy and romance depend partly on the renovation of a corrupt social order by temporary removal into a green world of nature where magic rules and people can turn things around. The ancient seasonal myth is very much a part of both comedy and romance, though it is even more pronounced in romance. What distinguishes romance from tragedy and comedy is probably its ambivalence—for example, although The Tempest has a happy ending and Prospero is a benevolent ruler both on his island and, we presume, when he returns to Milan , it is easy to see that he is potentially a tyrant and might or could misuse his powers. Death, disorder, and tyranny are real threats in The Tempest, even though things turn out for the best. The quest motif is very strong in romance—all you have to do is think of Spenser’s The Faery Queen, with its Knight in pursuit of a Lady. Love is a prominent theme of exploration, and the sense of magic and strangeness pervades the romance genre. Exploration in itself is matter for exploration, which explains why certain critics have seen Caliban’s circumstances as similar to those of native people colonized by Europeans. Shakespeare’s romances are Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, and The Two Noble Kinsmen.

Scene-by-Scene Notes on The Tempest

Act 1, Scene 1

The first thing we see is that authority is the matter in question—the boatswain is not interested in paying reverence to King Alonzo; he has more important things to do at the moment. Gonzalo already appears to be a philosopher—he keeps his council even in a crisis. The storm, therefore, functions as a great leveling influence, at least at this point in the play. Still, Shakespeare is not about to ratify anarchy; this is a romance play, and the basis of the social order is about to be scrutinized. The civil order has broken down and the characters have been compelled by Prospero to the island where things will be sorted out.

Act 1, Scene 2

In this scene, we see that there is need for a movement from ignorance to knowledge on the part of Miranda, Prospero’s 15-year-old daughter. She does not know that her father was the Duke of Milan, and they have been on this island since she was three years old. Miranda possesses sympathetic power of her own—she feels the suffering of those who have been shipwrecked. But Prospero says that no harm has been done and that the shipwreck was arranged for her sake. The question is, how to come by one’s legitimate identity? Miranda must learn about her former place in the social order and prepare for her future role.

As for the status of Prospero as a magician, we are being set up for an important consideration: Prospero has been stripped of civil power by his exile, and he has put on a different kind of power signified by his magic robe. What kind of power is it that he now possesses? What is the source of that power? We should not think that this power will ultimately be self-sufficient—a return to the civil order looms beyond the framework of the immediate dramatic situation.

Prospero is not entirely without blame for his own exile—he devoted himself to secret studies in the liberal arts, neglecting the needs of his own kingdom. That is why he gave Antonio his brother control. Antonio learned the ropes of governing and began to scheme against him. Prospero’s brother is a Machiavellian of the bad sort, but even so he stands for political realism. One of Shakespeare’s ideals is that a good King must be both magnanimous and active. In consequence, poet-rulers such as Richard II must be deposed as surely as evildoers like Richard III. Prospero wanted to lead the life contemplative or vita contemplativa to the neglect of the life active or vita activa. The relative merits of the two was the subject of much debate during the Renaissance, and is well memorialized in Thomas More’s Utopia. Renaissance education was intended to make a person fit for public life, for a life of active virtue—it was about developing one’s capacities to the fullest extent. Prospero seems to have sought knowledge for a much more personal and private reason, one not closely enough allied with the charitable exercise of power. Antonio at least understands that a ruler cannot simply keep the name of prince or king or duke and expect the authority to remain with it—that was one of King Lear’s mistakes, and it is also Prospero’s. To keep the title, you must exercise the power and others must know you are exercising it. To fail in that regard is to encourage disorder and wickedness. Antonio apparently schemed with Alonso the King of Naples to get rid of Prospero, which was more than enough wickedness to result in Prospero’s loss of authority in Milan.

Prospero is not an independent actor in his own chance at redemption—he admits that divine providence brought him ashore and that Gonzalo charitably furnished him with rich garments and the books he still values above his dukedom. Prospero will need to learn how to wield the knowledge in these books to get himself back to his former state and do some good for the people, just as he has used it to make life tolerable on the island.

Prospero admits that an accident or fortune has brought his enemies within his power. With this fortunate accident, he begins to operate on his own under an auspicious star. As always, “there is a tide in the affairs of men,” as Brutus says in Julius Caesar, and Prospero must act now or lose his chance forever. He is satisfied that the spirit Ariel has done his bidding, appearing as St. Elmo’s Fire (a natural phenomenon) and striking the crew of the King’s ship with madness during the storm. The aerial spirit has also dispersed the crew about the island, separating them into logical camps. Ferdinand, the King’s son, is alone, for he above all is to be tested as the future successor to Prospero’s kingdom.

Prospero reminds Ariel that he had been imprisoned by the witch Sycorax, who died and left him in a pine tree. Prospero has made a sort of contract with Ariel to free him from human control at the end of a certain time. Since Ariel seems to represent imagination or the finer and more sensitive of nature’s powers, we begin to see that the play is in part about how humanity is to maintain control over the natural forces within itself and beyond itself. Prospero threatens Ariel in a way that suggests potential tyranny: around line 295, he threatens to imprison the friendly spirit for another twelve years, just as Sycorax had done. This is not a democratic island—as always, Shakespeare is a good royalist. Ariel is much better (and much better off) than Caliban (Sycorax’s son and therefore the natural heir of this island kingdom), but both feel the power of Prospero.

Next we see Caliban at his best, cursing Prospero but submitting to him because, after all, he must eat his dinner. Caliban has sometimes been seen as a native set upon by white Europeans. Shakespeare’s was a great age of exploration, and European countries were busily colonizing and exploiting the New World . There is some sense in this view of Caliban, although I don’t think it’s appropriate to turn the play into an allegory about colonialism. Caliban says that the island is his to inherit from Sycorax. Prospero associates him with the devil, or perhaps with the unregenerate natural man. It is true that Caliban is controlled by his own appetites as much as by Prospero, but he is not without ability—notice that his complaints at times approach downright eloquence. As he says, Prospero has taught him how to curse. And he was good to Prospero in time of need. His crime was to try to violate Miranda’s honor—another natural impulse he does not regret. Caliban is not appreciative of the gift of civilization Prospero has supposedly given him. I would say that Prospero is somewhat unfair to Caliban—indeed, to say that Caliban is “capable of all ill” is to say something of him that is true of humanity in general. Caliban is not simply “malice,” as Prospero calls him. The things with which Prospero threatens him are entirely natural—pain and suffering—but Caliban is afraid of Prospero because he believes that the old man’s art can control even Sycorax’s God, Setebos. (Robert Browning’s poem “Caliban upon Setebos” is a fine character study of Caliban, covering his resentments and religious sentiments.)

Meanwhile, Ferdinand is enchanted by the music of Ariel and drawn on by it. Ariel sings that Ferdinand’s father has suffered a sea change into “something rich and strange.” Of course the song is not true since Alonso is not drowned, but the song signifies the transformation wrought by death. What is the point of bringing up such change here? Is it to distance him from his father’s death? Certainly Ferdinand must undergo his own transformation here on the island.

Ferdinand’s first question to Miranda is whether she is a virgin—that is certainly a question with institutional significance. He wants to make her his queen. But Prospero knows that the prize must not be won too easily and that Ferdinand has not yet earned the right to reenter the social order and succeed him. So he will test Ferdinand. He uses the same Machiavellian terms of political intrigue that got him exiled from Milan . He claims, that is, that Ferdinand wants to usurp power on the island.

As for Miranda, she still needs to learn the difference between appearance and reality since she says that the handsome prince Ferdinand could not possibly mean anyone harm. She will need to understand this lesson to become a good queen when the time comes. That she shows promise is obvious from line 498, where she says her father’s speech gives a false impression of his true gentility.

Act 2, Scene 1

Gonzalo is an honest old counselor, a quality which shows in his trust in providence. We must weigh our sorrow with our comfort, he tells his hearers. However, Gonzalo is surrounded by people such as Sebastian and Antonio, who do not necessarily appreciate his wisdom. The problem is that wisdom is separated from rank, whereas both are required to keep firm order. Gonzalo will offer his own utopian vision, but it will not equal Prospero’s magic and foresight. So this little group of stranded citizens of Milan doesn’t have all the answers. Perhaps Gonzalo is a little too ready to live within the confines of his natural surroundings rather than transforming them into something more civil. Sebastian makes fun of Gonzalo, ironically crediting him with the power to “carry this island home in his pocket and give it to his son for an apple,” as well as being able to bring forth more islands. Note also the reference to Amphion building the walls of Thebes with his musical instrument. Shakespeare may be poking fun of himself in these conversations filled with witty exchanges—Antonio, Alonso, and Gonzalo are spending a lot of time making puns and quibbles, and not getting anywhere. But Gonzalo is observant—he has at least noticed that their garments are strangely dry, and we are thereby reminded that a certain wizardry is necessary to the founding and maintenance of the social order.

Alonso despairs over the loss of his son Ferdinand, but Francisco tells him that the boy may be alive, recounting his heroic attempt to survive. Sebastian reproaches Alonso for having married off his daughter to the king of Carthage , an adventure that he considers responsible for the shipwreck.

Gonzalo’s utopia is a silly pre-technological communist fantasy; he would undo the punishment of original sin. No one needs to work, and there would be no sovereignty. Sebastian is right to point out that Gonzalo “would be King” nonetheless. Sebastian is encouraged by Antonio to usurp the place of his brother the king. What we are seeing in this camp of stranded Mariners is first of all a false utopia and then political intrigue. Antonio is quite certain that Ferdinand has drowned. Antonio, using as an example his own usurpation of the dukedom of Milan from Prospero, wants to seize the occasion of this shipwreck since Claribel, who should inherit the kingdom, is far away in Carthage and knows nothing about the wreck. Antonio sees only the operation of random chance in a storm, and does not of course understand that Prospero has used Ariel to generate the tempest. As always, the category of nature is not to be taken simply in Shakespeare—we are not dealing with an ordinary natural tempest; it is a thing of nature brought on by human and superhuman magic. It is even associated with providence since Prospero himself was steered after his own shipwreck by divine providence. Antonio mistakenly sees his friends and potential subjects as passive men just waiting to take orders, but his scheme is foiled by Ariel, who warns Gonzalo to awaken King Alonso. Now awake, they all set off to look for Ferdinand.

Act 2, Scene 2

Trinculo and Stefano have their own ideas about paradise—they assume everyone else has perished in a storm, so this island is theirs, so far as they know. Trinculo meets Caliban and later joins with Stefano to turn him into a willing subject on the basis of drink, which seems to be the god of this nascent kingdom. Liquor provides shelter for Stefano, just as an ordinary garment serves to clothe Trinculo. This section acts as a parody of the previous scene, which was about misguided intrigue. Caliban sees the arrival of these two drunkards as a chance for freedom. The scene had opened with Caliban describing his reaction at the torments Prospero visits upon him because of his misbehavior, and we get a chance to see how Caliban perceives the island’s order. On the whole, Act 2 is about false attempts to set up a new kingdom upon the wreck of the old, with Antonio and Sebastian trying to seize the opportunity to make their own “providence,” and Stefano and Trinculo (along with Caliban) trying to set up their own crazy government. Act 3 will transition to the more legitimate attempts at self-discovery on the part of Ferdinand and Miranda; this focus will, in turn, gesture towards a regenerated dukedom in Milan, even though the play ends with everyone still on the island.

Act 3, Scene 1

In the third act, the developing affection between Ferdinand and Miranda is central. Ferdinand performs his difficult labors mindful of Miranda and in hopes of better times. For him, love makes labor redemptive—it is not something to be avoided so one can set up a fool’s paradise. By his patience, Ferdinand shows the potential for nobility. The word Miranda means “she who is to be looked upon [with wonder].” Prospero’s daughter is virtuous, and her virtue is part of the island’s special quality. Like Adam in Paradise Lost, however, Ferdinand will need some warning not to be overly fond of Miranda’s charms. They have some negotiating to do, and must move from the language of innocent courtship to a permanently enduring union—after all, they are the future of the state, and cannot remain in paradise forever, if indeed one wants to say that’s where they are at present.

Prospero blesses the union to himself since he is apparently convinced that Ferdinand and Miranda will prove compatible. Still, he must not allow premature erotic relations between them. Language will prove essential to a proper match between the two lovers, and marriage is an institution, not a simple declaration. Prospero must go back to his books and work up an appropriate spell to delay this courtship.

Act 3, Scene 2

Caliban, meanwhile, is courting Stefano as his lord and master. Caliban is too easily won over to servitude. To him, government is essentially a protection racket. We notice that he describes itself rather like Prospero—as someone exiled by a tyrant and cheated of his inheritance by evil powers. Stefano, as usual, is spinning a storyline from his own base desires—once having seized Prospero’s books and murdered the man, he thinks, he will be free to marry Miranda. They all serve their bodily desires. Ariel is looking over them even as they make their plot. The would-be ruler ends up following Caliban, whom both Stefano and Trinculo call a monster.

Act 3, Scene 3

King Alonso is ready to give up the romance quest for his lost son Ferdinand. Nature seems to have won the battle. Again, Gonzalo sees that the island is much more than simple nature—though the inhabitants are monstrous, they are more gentle than many humans back in Naples . This comment of his follows the appearance of shapes Prospero has summoned to set up a banquet. The wonder of exploration is part of romance—as Antonio says, “travelers never did lie, though fools at home condemn them.” The banquet itself, and the appearance of Ariel as a harpy, has a classical precedent in Virgil’s Aeneid. Ariel has set them a fool’s banquet—and he explains sternly to them (some of whom attending are plotting against Alonso) that they have been driven here to be punished for their sins in exiling Prospero. They are threatened with “lingering perdition.” That would mean a futile repetition of the romance pattern, one stripped of meaning and redemptive quality. At present, they still think Ferdinand is dead, and Prospero has no intention of telling them otherwise just now. He goes off to see Ferdinand and Miranda. This decision in itself has a powerful effect—Alonso feels bitter remorse at the loss of his son.

Act 4, Scene 1

Prospero insists that Ferdinand should not behave like Caliban and spoil the honor of his daughter. There is much play here about the value of language—Prospero says Miranda will outstrip all praise, and then says that Ferdinand has spoken fairly and will have his daughter. Ceremony is important for the obvious reason: it is necessary to bless this socially and politically significant union. Marriage is part of the magic of civilization. Prospero bids Ariel bring the rabble (an important word here in terms of governance) so that he may give the young couple a demonstration of his powers. Iris and Ceres—the latter a fertility goddess—will provide the lovers a gift. Ceres offers the gift of regular seasonal change; that is, she offers abundance in perpetuity and, therefore, a secure future. Together, these goddesses call upon nymphs to celebrate the marriage contract.

Breaking in to this celebration is Prospero’s remembrance that Caliban and his new friends are plotting against him. But we still have unfinished business, so the celebration is a false ending in accordance with classical comic structure. Consider lines 148 and following—Prospero sums up what his wizardry has accomplished: he has demonstrated that we are “such stuff as dreams are made on.” This remark has sometimes been taken as Shakespeare’s farewell speech as a dramatist, even though The Tempest isn’t his last play. In any case, there is clearly a parallel between art and life to be drawn here: art has much to tell us about life, and it is a kind of magic. Then Prospero professes himself vexed and weak, an enfeebled old man, to get rid of Ferdinand and Miranda so he can deal with Caliban. The island is not paradise after all, and the consequences of human fallenness impend even here.

Act V

I must expand this section, but a main point is that in contrast with King Lear, insight doesn’t come in The Tempest at the cost of power. Prospero is able to give up his magic books and powers without losing his chance to recover the dukedom he lost. His concluding wishes are of interest in that what he really seems to desire is not so much to exercise great power again but instead to practice “the art of dying well.” The main promise of things to come is the impending marriage between Ferdinand and Miranda, who will, we may presume, carry on in a regenerated social and political environment.

Week 15, The Winter's Tale

2007-11-27T17:40:00.000-08:00

Notes on The Winter’s Tale for Fall 2007, E316

Act 1, Scenes 1-2

We start off hearing about how Polixenes of Bohemia and Leontes of Sicilia grew up together, and Hermione’s interaction with Polixenes is entirely innocent, just like Desdemona’s dalliance with Michael Cassio in Othello. She is simply behaving generously towards her husband’s dear friend. This idyllic scene at the edge of “forever after” is instantly shattered by Leontes’ abrupt passion or affectio: he sees Hermione holding hands, whispering, and so forth, with his old friend, and is stricken with a bout of insane jealousy. Jealousy stems from a disturbance in one person’s object-relation to another person; this powerful passion almost certainly inhabits, even haunts, intimate relationships. We treat affection like a scarce good, almost in an economic way. Rationing underlies even noble and charitable ideals. We transfix the other as something permanent, stable, unchangeable. There is no need for plot devices or serious actions to induce jealousy; it comes from nowhere. Jealousy becomes a filter for everything Leontes sees once the madness strikes him. Leontes’ jealousy causes him to misread and reinterpret everything Hermione does; he must see everything she does as evidence of her wickedness, and everything everyone else does as corroboration of that wickedness. Camillo is a “traitor” now, Mamillius must be illegitimate, and Hermione’s innocent words and actions are pure deception, etc. Leontes’ perceptual and interpretive apparatus become warped or “diseased” (to use Camillo’s term at line 297). He is his own Iago and shares Othello’s absoluteness and incapacity to deal with uncertainty: “Is whispering nothing?” (284) As Iago says in Othello 3.3, “ Trifles light as air / Are to the jealous confirmations strong / As proofs of holy writ. ” Hermione must be either a saint or a whore; there is nothing in between, and any uncertainty about the matter is unwelcome. Perhaps jealousy is always lurking at the heart of any intimate relationship. No matter what Portia tells us about mercy in The Merchant of Venice, the quality of some charitable affections is strained, or strainable and divisible. Cordelia’s understanding of love in King Lear may be brittle-sounding and cold, but it’s probably accurate; in a sense, we do ration love: more for one person may mean less for others. (Shakespeare’s Sonnets certainly explore this darker side of love.)

The merciful thing is that Leontes’ inner corruption seems unable to corrupt others: Camillo stays true to Hermione, and therefore to Leontes. He refuses to poison Polixenes, with whom he agrees regarding the destructive effects of jealousy—it is something to be avoided at all costs, as Polixenes says at the end of the second scene. The cure for the distrustful absolutist Leontes will be, as we shall see later on, to learn to see people once again as they really are, and stop allegorizing them as emblems of sin.

Act 2, Scene 1.

Hermione is shocked to hear Leontes’ disgraceful accusations, but as so often, the good are scarcely capable of defending themselves: they don’t have the same resources available to them as do those who have no tedious scruples about morality. Leontes is set upon publicly and willfully declaring his wife unfaithful, even trying to enlist Apollo’s oracle in his cause. Hermione’s claims of innocence stand no chance against her husband’s energetic performance.

Act 2, Scenes 2-3

Paulina is active and confrontational in dealing with Leontes. The other characters at court aren’t corrupt; they’re just passive. Hermione is unable to deal with Leontes’ madness because she is the bogus “cause” and object of it, so a third party like Paulina is vital. She will keep the clock ticking so that “romance time” can help things work out for the best. There will be time and opportunity and good will enough to avert tragedy. Leontes is determined to widen the circle of delusion: he has already declared Hermione a slut publicly, and now he means to put her on trial. Paulina won’t go along with this unjust scheme because she understands that the tyrant is insane and, like the emperor in the fable, naked. She bluntly tells him so, and his resistance to her truth-telling is rather comical: “Will you not push her out? [To Antigonus.] Give her the bastard” (2.3.74). As usual in comedy and romance, the threatening father is more or less a straw man. There must be at least the potential for a tragic turn. But Shakespeare is careful, I believe, not to push such prospects too hard. In this play, the tyrant can’t even handle one feisty woman. Consider also Duke Frederick in As You Like It, who threatens death and injury all around but ends up looking ridiculous and then changing suddenly in the Forest of Arden. Frederick exiles Rosalind (the daughter of the legitimate ruler he has banished) and even threatens to have her killed. But his threats aren’t very believable, and he seems more of an ill-tempered oaf than a murderer. As a contrast, there’s always King Lear, who in spite of his feebleness ends up partly responsible for ruining the life of his dearest child, Cordelia.

Still, there are some consequences to reckon with: Hermione will be tried and “convicted” (well, almost), and she is soon placed in a seeming state of suspended animation. Leontes will have only an image, a shrine, for years to come. His depraved obliviousness to Apollo’s truth-saying ensures this result. (See 3.2.140-41.) And as Leontes had already resolved, Perdita will be committed to chance and the healing powers of time. Leontes (like Lear and Cymbeline) has thrown away his identity. He can’t snap his fingers and regain his right mind. That he recognizes his error the instant Apollo’s wrath supposedly strikes down his son makes self-recovery and redemption possible. Paulina, in spite of her sometimes harsh words and attitude, will assist Leontes in his long time of penance, replete with frequent visits to the shrine of the woman he has wronged and who, so far as he knows, is lost to him forever.

Act 3, Scenes 1-2.

Apollo’s oracle tells Leontes that he is entirely wrong and that he must recover what he’s thrown away: “Hermione is chaste, Polixenes blameless, Camilla a true subject, Leontes a jealous tyrant, his innocent babe truly begotten, and the King shall live without an heir, if that which is lost be not found” (132-35). He tries to dismiss the oracle’s words, so his ears fail him just as his eyes did. The death of his son Mamillius snaps him out of his state of error as quickly as he fell into it, but he must live with the consequences until he can work his way out of them. Leontes has thrown away his identity along with Hermione and Perdita, who are both a part of him. Romance is partly about the reintegration of the self and then a going-out into the broad world, finally to return to a better version of oneself. Leontes must get Perdita back, but long penance is required. Paulina’s severity (which is calculated and at times almost comic) aims to keep Leontes from moving on and remarrying: he must take the time he needs to recover others and redeem himself.

Act 3, Scene 3.

Antigonus dreams of Hermione, who informs him that his end is near and gives him instructions on where to leave the child and what to name her. Antigonus is now convinced that Hermione is dead. He thereupon suffers the full consequences of his own failure to resist Leontes’ culpable behavior. Act 3 ends on a note of savagery and tempest: “Exit pursued by a bear.” The gold Antigonus has left behind will become “fairy gold” for the shepherd who discovers the “blossom” (46) Perdita, and a new world will open up for this rustic character. As we move into Acts 4-5, we will witness the power of romance temporality to heal rifts, clear up delusions, and make things right.

Act 4, Scene 1.

The Chorus player speaks in the character of “Time” to tell us that he is within his rights to turn the clock forwards some sixteen years, to the time when Perdita is no longer an infant but a beautiful young woman, supposed by all to be the daughter of the shepherd who found her and secretly courted by Polixenes’ son, Prince Florizel. The Choral pronouncement may remind some of Shakespeare’s use of old John Gower, his source for Pericles, Prince of Tyre, who says at the beginning of Act 4, “I carried winged time / Post [on] the lame feet of my rhyme, / Which never could I so convey, / Unless your thoughts went on my way” (Prologue lines 47-50).

Act 4, Scenes 2-4

Autolycus, who enters at 4.3 declaring himself at present “out of service” (14), is a human woozle—he’s a trickster, an opportunist, and a parasite on the generous psychic economy of the play’s rustics, whose festivities he invades with his commercialism and bawdiness in 4.4. But Autolycus also brings in the spring with his songs, flowers, and bright scarves. Perhaps he is also an alter ego for Florizel, who has been courting Perdita in a disguised but honorable fashion.

Autolycus, the play’s resident Lord of Misrule, is unable to corrupt anyone, even if he succeeds in cozening some. Autolycus’ ethos shows in the line, “I see this is the time that the unjust man doth thrive” (4.4.673-74). His antics set up yet another confrontation in Act 4, Scene 4 with a not-so-dreadful parent (in this case Polixenes), who has a point to make about the conduct of his son. Florizel’s disguising is done essentially for charitable reasons—he met Perdita by accident, and pursues her generously, but Polixenes resents the fact that he hasn’t been consulted in so important a dynastic matter. In this play, as a professor of mine at UC Irvine points out, the old need to be convinced of the worthiness of the new. This point holds true even though romance quests are about reintegration and renewal through marriage amongst the young. After all (and here Shakespeare departs from Greene’s Pandosto), this play centers on the reunification of Leontes and Hermione, the older generation. Polixenes feels that Florizel has cast off his identity, and the fourth act involves the future of Polixenes’ dynastic concerns.

Also in Act 4, Perdita and Polixenes engage in a “literary criticism” discussion about the emblematic significance of certain flowers (“streaked gillyvors,” or pansies) and ultimately about the respective merits of artifice and nature. I suppose Perdita herself is the “graft” that mends the rustic society surrounding her—she is a work of art rooted in nature’s processes. Polixenes insists that careful gardening is an “art that nature makes.” While Perdita wants only what’s available in her own rustic garden, he sees no problem with improving what nature offers freely. Artifice, that is, may fairly be described as a “natural” aspect of human nature: we are not “poor, bare, fork’d animals” but are always at our best when we are “accommodated man.” Perdita, ever the nature goddess-tending maiden, isn’t convinced, but Polixenes’ argument comes off as wise—or at least if would if he didn’t become enraged upon finding out that his son Florizel would have him mix the aristocratic with the common stock of his kingdom.

Perdita exudes healthy animality; ; she embodies a benevolent form of nature, unlike the bear that devoured Antigonus sixteen years back when he was abandoning Perdita on the harsh seacoast of Bohemia. Her grace is demonstrated by the effect her presence has on Florizel. Her own playful words give just a hint of Ovidian sportfulness around line 116-28, where she invokes Proserpina, but modesty at once makes her take it back. Florizel, however, sees nothing wrong with what Perdita has said, and he tells her at lines 140-41, “When you do dance, I wish you / A wave o’ th’ sea.” Perdita is a graceful, immediate presence, and everything she does is art; in her person, art and nature come together without strife. This harmony contrasts starkly with Leontes’ misprision of nature as something base and demonic. His ideal woman would not, at the play’s outset, be Hermione living (“too hot, too hot,” he had said of her in Act 1, Scene 2) or Perdita in motion. It would be a statue—something cold, chaste, and dead. Later, to see her “come alive” from an assumed state of stone is part of his penance, but also his reward for his long-suffering fidelity after the initial mistake. Perdita is the statue and the living being at the same time: she is artifice in motion, and is what Leontes must accept. That may mean we are flawed, but it’s just the way we are, and we must accept it. Leontes initially could not give Hermione so much credit as a fully human being.

Act 5, Scenes 1-3.

With Perdita at last discovered to be Leontes’ lost daughter, what remains to be achieved is the full recovery of Hermione. She must be recognized as the virtuous woman she was and still is. Paulina’s device is straight out of ancient literary theory: some may recall the famous argument about “the Grapes of Zeuxis” that were painted so realistically as to fool birds. Zeuxis’ opponent on the matter of pictorial realism, Parrhasius, knew that seeing was a matter of convention: we “see” what we look for.

The statue trick Paula carries out is a matter of affective staging: it will demonstrate to him again his error, and yet constitute his greatest reward. Now Leontes, whose crazy jealousy made him “see the object as in itself it really was not” (to adapt a line from Oscar Wilde) and who thereby stereotyped, objectified, even “killed” Hermione in a sense, must be reintroduced to the real woman, now sixteen years older. Hermione is not made of stone, but a living, breathing human being. She is subject to time and may whisper and touch the hand of a dear friend, even for her husband’s sake. Paulina’s deferral of Leontes’ desire for reunion is the last stage of his penance. The plastic arts device is, I believe, typical of Shakespeare’s references to the power of art to transform perception and passion and bring about reconciliation, and it seems particularly appropriate to the romance genre. The “art work” in this case is a living woman who has been liberated and who now frees Leontes from his sorrow. As Prof. Harold Toliver of UC Irvine said in a lecture years ago, the play’s solution lies in “re-establishing the truth of what one sees.” At last (through Paulina’s device) Leontes learns to see and accept Hermione directly: as she is, here and now, with those sixteen years added on. The play’s conclusion amounts to a romance triumph over death no less wonderful for all its trickery and “staginess”; Paulina’s artful and charitable application of Autolycus’ roguish shifts redeems such deception and turns it to account.

Week 13, Antony and Cleopatra

2007-11-13T12:07:00.000-08:00

Notes on Antony and Cleopatra.

Act 1, Scenes 1-2.

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. 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 thinks women should not be so highly esteemed in proximity to great political and military matters. Antony’s response to his wife’s death is characteristically complex in that he’s riven by genuine sympathy and yet realizes that he had, after all, more or less wished this on her and that he is liberated.

Act 1, Scene 3.

Cleopatra explains how she manipulates Antony, admitting this even in part while talking to him. She calls him a dissembler and an actor when it comes to loyalty. To what extent does Cleopatra know how to speak the language of Roman honor? Around line 97, she takes on the strength to speak this language: “Your honor calls you hence,” she says to Antony, and to some extent seems actually to mean it: it’s time to “let Antony be Antony.”

Act 1, Scene 4.

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. Around line 55 and following, Caesar mentions Antony’s longstanding reputation for valor, and he feels that this reputation will shame him into returning to the field alongside Caesar. Antony’s admission of “neglect” doesn’t go over well with Caesar the Corporation Man, whose great model is Aeneas, with a twist of Machiavellian guile to produce the appearance of piety.

Act 1, Scene 5.

We see another side of Cleopatra here, the one that is truly in love with Antony. This is not simply a political alliance. Cleopatra’s motives may be complex, but her connection with Antony is one of the world’s grandest tragic loves. She muses fondly about Antony, and mentions her earlier affair with Julius Caesar. She has an extravagant sense of Antony’s worth, one that fits his sense of himself and that he repays with similar extravagance towards her. We may not see this Antony in action through most of the play, but the mutual representation is something that bonds them together.

Act 2, Scene 1.

The son of Pompey 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.

Act 2, Scene 2.

Caesar and Antony confront each other, each bringing his own grievances and assumptions to the table. Agrippa helps resolve the tension between them, at least for the present, by proposing a match between Caesar’s sister Octavia and Antony. Dynastic obligation will bring these two men of very different character together. Enobarbus, around line 174 and following, talks with Agrippa and Maecenas, offering us a new image of the famous Cleopatra. He describes her almost as a goddess, as a woman beyond description (197-98). He also mentions how savvy she is, how well she plays her charms to her advantage. 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. That capacity is a big part of her attraction—Cleopatra is charismatic and “larger than life.”

Act 2, Scene 3.

Antony speaks to a soothsayer, who tells him to stay away from Caesar because this opponent is bound to rise higher than Antony. Caesar is almost as much an “evil genius” 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—fortune seems to be on the younger man’s side, even though Antony is more of a “ladies’ man” and so ought to be on better terms with Lady Fortune. So Antony resolves to return to the East, where, he says, “my pleasure lies.”

Act 2, Scenes 4-5.

In the fifth scene, Cleopatra has fun at Antony’s expense, saying that he’s like a great fish she has caught. She seems to delight in stealing from him his masculine symbolic power (the sword with which he earned victory against the conspirators who killed his friend Julius) and donning it herself. She learns around line 55 that Antony will marry Octavia, and this causes her to strike the messenger. 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. He reconciles with Caesar and Antony. Enobarbus shrewdly observes that this fellow has thrown away his future, and he says further 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, Scenes 6-7.

In the seventh scene, the weakest member of the second triumvirate (Octavian, Antony, and Marcus Lepidus, 43-31 BCE; the first triumvirate had consisted of Julius Caesar, Gnaius Pompeius, and Marcus Crassus from 60-53 BCE) is made drunk, and Antony makes sport of him by answering his silly questions about crocodiles with ludicrous tautologies. 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? Pompeius says that the man ought to have done this without telling him about it. Menas loses faith in Pompeius because of this rigidity—such an opportunity, he knows, will not come again. Scene 7 shows the triumvirs’ attitude towards drinking. As the old saying goes, in vino veritas. We find out that Lepidus can’t hold his liquor (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. It’s obvious that he is determined to keep his wits about him, 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 drug guru Timothy Leary. At this point in the play, Antony seems the strong master of revels; he seems 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 “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (to paraphrase), “only those who have a personality know what it is to want to escape from it.”

Act 3, Scene 1.

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.

Act 3, Scene 2.

Octavia weeps, and Caesar is sad at parting. Enobarbus seems to undercut the notion put forth by Agrippa that Antony wept at the death of Julius Caesar. 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 Agrippa’s clear-eyed statements.

Act 3, Scene 3.

Cleopatra finds out that Octavia isn’t as beautiful as she, and now rewards the messenger she had earlier struck.

Act 3, Scene 4.

War is brewing between Caesar and Antony. Antony agrees that she 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.

Act 3, Scene 5.

Lepidus and Caesar have warred with Pompeius, and then Caesar has arrested Lepidus. Caesar is outraged when Antony and Cleopatra crown themselves in Asiatic splendor. The Roman people already know of this, says Caesar, who also declares himself annoyed that Octavia has come to visit him without the appropriate ceremony. Well, he had agreed to the match readily enough in spite of his reservations about Antony’s character. Now he invites her to stay on his side, suggesting that Antony has abused and betrayed her.

Act 3, Scenes 6-7.

In the seventh scene, Enobarbus tells Cleopatra to stay out of the war, and she’s insulted at the suggestion. She will take part in Antony’s wars, declaring herself “the president of my kingdom.” 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. Perhaps Antony is foolhardy, but he’s also honorable and noble; power sits lightly upon Antony’s shoulders. The hair of wise and responsible rulers turns gray quickly, but one senses that isn’t likely to happen to 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 just how briskly Caesar’s forces are moving into position. The men around Antony (Canidius in particular) feel that since he’s led by a woman, so are they.

Act 3, Scenes 8-10.

Caesar and Antony strategize; the former is all about maintaining control over events. By the tenth scene, we hear that the Egyptian fleet has cut and run; Scarus laments that Antony’s Romans have “kissed away kingdoms.” 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. Incredibly, he has followed Cleopatra’s shameful retreat at the first sign of danger. Canidius decides that he might as well go over to Caesar since Antony has lost control over his own destiny. Enobarbus knows what Canidius knows, but still can’t bring himself to abandon his commander.

Act 3, Scene 11.

Antony is horrified—”I have fled myself,” he says, and knows that he has thrown everything he worked for away. 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. Antony is the one who 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. He evidently places her above victory on the battlefield.

Act 3, Scene 12.

Antony sends his schoolmaster to treat with Caesar. Cleopatra says she will submit to Caesar, who orders that the Queen be comforted and promised all she wants, so long as she either exiles or kills Antony. 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.

Enobarbus won’t blame Cleopatra. He says Antony has made his will “lord of his reason.” Antony challenges Caesar to single combat, which is absolutely ridiculous. Enobarbus is stunned, and feels that Antony has been entirely bereft of sound judgment. Enobarbus continues to mull his relationship with Antony; he 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. 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.

Around line 55, Cleopatra seems to be going along with Caesar’s program, while her lover is still saying “I am Antony yet.” He wants to re-embrace his identity as a valorous Roman commander, and orders Caesar’s messenger soundly whipped. Around line 110, his anger again turns towards Cleopatra, 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. Cleopatra 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.” But Antony’s anger also rages at Caesar for “harping on what I am, not what he knew I was.” 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. He calls for a night of drinking and celebration on the eve of the final battle to recover his lost glory. He may yet win at Alexandria. This recovery is the last straw for Enobarbus—his captain’s “valor preys on reason,” and it’s time to desert him at the earliest opportunity.

Act 4, Scenes 1-6.

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—”Perchance tomorrow you’ll serve another master,” he tells his men, to the dismay of Enobarbus. In the third scene, a soldier takes a noise to be Hercules abandoning Antony. In the fourth scene, Antony seems resolute—he will bring the willing to the battle. In Scene 5, he learns that Enobarbus has deserted him, and realizes that his “fortunes have corrupted honest men.” In Scene 6, Caesar declares that “the time of universal peace is near,” 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. Enobarbus has now come to realize that he has destroyed his self-image in abandoning Antony, and when the latter generously sends him his treasure from camp, the desolation of Enobarbus is complete. He resolves to die in the nearest ditch.

Act 4, Scenes 7-8.

So far, Antony’s desperate gambit shows signs of success.

Act 4, Scene 9.

Enobarbus dies, with Antony’s name the last word on his lips.

Act 4, Scenes 10-12.

Caesar will fight Antony on land, knowing that the man has put too much energy and time into his fleet. For the second time, the fleet deserts Antony, even going over to Caesar’s side. Upon seeing this betrayal, Antony declares Cleopatra a “triple-turned whore.”

Act 4, Scene 13.

Charmian advises Cleopatra to shut herself up in a monument, and send word of her death. The Queen agrees.

Act 4, Scene 14.

Antony continues to lament what he considers Cleopatra’s betrayal, admitting that he “made these wars” for no one but her. When he hears that she has supposedly committed suicide, however, he is again instantly reconciled. She has shown him the way in conquering herself, he thinks, and thereupon makes a botched attempt to fall on his sword after his servant Eros commits suicide rather than assist his master in dying. Nobody will help him finish the job, and at lines 112-13, Decretas even takes his sword as a token with which to ingratiate himself with Caesar.

Act 4, Scene 15.

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 “honor” and “safety” don’t go together. 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. Cleopatra says she, too, will die “in the high Roman fashion,” as a hero should.

Act 5, Scene 1.

When Decretas informs Caesar that Antony is dead, he seems genuinely saddened. 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 “forced” him to do. 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. At line 61-62, we see how 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.

Act 5, Scene 2.

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. From line 76 onwards, she refashions and aggrandizes Antony, saying, “I dreamt there was an emperor,” etc. Dolabella plays an honorable role, forewarning Cleopatra of the fate that awaits her in only three days. Caesar enters and plays both gracious conqueror and vicious threatener of Cleopatra’s progeny, if she should follow Antony’s self-destructive course. When Seleucis betrays her over her holding back some of her treasure from Caesar, she is shocked, 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, and loathes the prospect of “some squeaking Cleopatra boy[ing] my greatness, in the posture of a whore.” 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. But in Rome, what had been world-historical drama will be reduced to an entertaining farce for the multitude.

Around line 228, Cleopatra declares there will be a final meeting with Antony in death, one she will achieve by casting off the supposed weakness of her sex. And then comes the Clown, with his prayer that she may find “joy of the worm” or serpent he has brought her. It’s worth asking why Shakespeare has chosen to present Cleopatra with her death in this semi-comic, bizarre rustic. Caesar, whom Cleopatra now considers “an unpolicied ass” 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 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. 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, show a clash of value systems, and 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. We should bear in mind the strangeness of the final two acts’ tragic arc: Antony’s sudden condemnations and reconciliations, and Cleopatra’s dissembling and final adoption (at least in part) of Roman heroism. Cleopatra’s initial “fake” suicide teaches Antony to do the right thing in earnest. Moreover, Antony’s real suicide leads Cleopatra to marry her desire to avoid public humiliation with a desire to exit the world’s stage like the hybrid Egyptian Queen / Antique Roman she has become.

Week 12, King Lear

2007-11-06T12:06:00.000-08:00

Notes on The Tragedy of King Lear.

Act 1, Scene 1.

Kent and Gloucester agree that it seemed most likely the King would favor Albany over Cornwall. But now they aren’t so certain, so the play opens with a note of uncertainty that becomes ominous later when we realize how much better a person Albany is compared to Cornwall. This is a new, strange state of affairs, in which merit must demonstrate itself by means of rhetorical skill. Gloucester says his legal son is no dearer to him than the illegitimate Edmund. Lear enters at line 39, saying that he has decided to divide his kingdom into thirds, and “shake all cares and business” for the remainder of his life. His declared intention is to “prevent future strife” and to confer royal authority on “younger strengths” (40). He means to assist the process of generational renewal, passing on matters of state to younger and more energetic kin while “preventing future strife” and leaving himself the private space necessary to practice the art of dying well. Each daughter will receive a third; the only question is how opulent that portion will be (86).

The question of authority is a main item in King Lear. Kent may be responding in part to the King’s unwise disparagement of Cordelia on the spot, but his line “Reserve thy state / . . . check / This hideous rashness” (149-51) may owe something to his shock at the very notion of an absolute king’s decision to divest himself of his unitary power, keeping only the name and perks of authority. I don’t know that there’s really a coherent political theory during Shakespeare’s time; I would only suggest that Lear is confused because he goes off on a private mission while at the same time trying to retain symbols that he confuses with power itself. This is not to say that Shakespeare is criticizing monarchy per se, but I believe he’s always aware that no human system is perfect (not even one that claims divine ordination). The questions are, what are the consequences when things go wrong with social and political systems, and what happens when they go right?

It’s true that the King’s “natural body” is wearing down, and one can feel only empathy for him on that account, but what about the King’s political body, the one that isn’t capable of death? Can he actually abandon his responsibilities the way he does, without causing a disaster? What has he given up? He has given up the “power, / Pre-eminence, and all the large effects / That troop with majesty” (130-32). Another way of stating this is that he has ceded the “sway, revenue, execution of the rest” (137) aside from what he retains, which he specifies as “The name, and all th’ addition to a king” (136), which addition is to be embodied in the person of the stipulated “hundred knights” (133). He makes a distinction between the name and pomp of kingship and the executive, effectual power of a king. So we might ask, how does he expect to give away all his power and yet hold on to the “addition” of a king? Do the symbols and privileges and “name” really mean anything, apart from the power wielded by those who claim them?

With respect to Cordelia and Regan and Goneril, what does Lear want? He wants a public declaration of their affection for him as a loving father. The public and private in Renaissance kingship were of course inextricable; royal absolutism of King James’ sort always made hay of the idea that the King was “the father of his people,” and James’ model was the scriptural patriarchs. He believed that his subjects owed him the reverence due to such a father. In practice, as I’m sure Shakespeare understood, the intertwining of public and private in powerful families makes for a great deal of coldness, sterility, and alienation, even in settings beyond the monarchy: read biographies of some of our presidents and the modern royal family of Great Britain, and you’ll hear a tale that is at times painful to read: mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters for the most part looking on at the spectacle of one another’s lives, never knowing what to consider “acting” and what to accept as “real,” and finding it difficult to sort out personal loyalties from official duties and the demands of power.

Well, Lear has no trouble demanding in the form of public spectacle what would for most families be a purely private display of affection. Perhaps this isn’t entirely unreasonable on his part. Neither are Goneril and Regan necessarily to be blamed for giving the old man what he wants; they know his nature, and this is the sort of thing they have come to expect from him. The point is that he’s the king, and he finds this public display of affection necessary. Why can’t Cordelia do something even better than did Regan and Goneril, bearing with her father and making a generous allowance for his weaknesses? Isn’t it sometimes acceptable to be a little insincere when regard for another person’s feelings requires it? But she won’t work at it, and even if there’s an austere beauty in the figure of Cordelia speaking truth to power, it’s fair to suggest that she is in her way as brittle and abrupt or absolute in her temperament as her frail old father: “Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave / My heart into my mouth” (91-92). She can’t verbally express the genuine affection she feels for Lear. Cordelia isn’t capable of flattery; she lacks (to borrow from another play, I Henry IV) Prince Hal’s ability to say to a joker like Falstaff, “If a lie may do thee grace,” then let’s carry on with the lie, at least for a while. Learning to be a good ruler may involve a certain amount of play-acting and feigning to be what one is not. Cordelia sees both monarchy and marriage as consisting of specifiable bonds or reciprocal obligations. So when Lear demands that she declare her “love,” she understands the term in something like the sense of “obligation, duty, attention.” Obviously, a woman who marries must balance her duties as a wife with her duties as a loyal daughter; she cannot “love” her father altogether and spend all her time with him.

But it may be that Lear’s demand isn’t as all-encompassing as she supposes, and it’s fair to ask how someone like Cordelia could rule a kingdom if she is incapable of getting beyond the king’s simple request for a bit of affectionate flattery. As Regan later says, “‘Tis the infirmity of his age, yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself” (293-94), and Goneril chimes in with “The best and soundest of his time hath been but rash” (295-95); both daughters see that Lear is being somewhat absurd, but they aren’t surprised and are willing to gratify him, especially given the great reward he is offering for so little. But so as not to make them seem generous, which we know they aren’t, Goneril admits to knowing the King’s casting off of Cordelia is unfair; it shows, in her words, “poor judgment” (291). Rashness is a charge commonly made against Lear, one made by Kent and two of his daughters. And those two daughters correctly recognize, I think, that the King’s unkindness towards Cordelia represents a threat to them as well: “if our father carry authority with such dis- / position as he bears, this last surrender of his will but / offend us” (304-06). The King’s surrender, they understand, is not really a surrender but a shifting of responsibility, and he will continue to play the tyrant, taking his stand upon the privilege of majesty and great age.

As for the question of whether power can be divested and divided, well, I suppose a monarch can do these things, and there are historical precedents for it from ancient Rome onwards, but it seldom seems to work. Almost nothing goes the way Lear thinks it’s going to go, once he gives away what was formerly his power to wield alone: in the first place, he had thought Albany and Cornwall would be in charge of their respective thirds, but as it turns out, neither man can stand up to those two strong-willed daughters. It is Regan and Goneril who immediately take charge of state affairs, not their men. Moreover, Lear’s conduct after giving away power is anything but responsible: he charges about with his hundred knights behaving more or less like a “lord of misrule.” His presence with either daughter, it seems, would inevitably create a public perception that they are not in charge. Lear wants to retain far more authority than he has any business keeping, now that he has stepped aside to let those “younger strengths” do the hard work of governing and maintaining order.

Lear is partly a tragedy about the terrors of growing old, of feeling slighted, neglected, weak, and useless as you make way for the young. Knowing that you must do so doesn’t necessarily make doing it any easier. In this way, it’s true that in King Lear as in other of Shakespeare’s plays that involve monarchy, “a king is but a man.” This somewhat broader frame probably accounts for the fairy-tale quality of the play. We see the disintegration of a “foolish, fond old man” (4.7.59) who evidently doesn’t understand the nature of genuine affection or the nature of the power he has been wielding for many of his eighty or so years. Cordelia, too, may appear as something like a Cinderella figure: surrounded by a pair of evil sisters, she cannot make her inner virtue known to the powerful, shallow authorities who determine her fate. Well, at least the King of France is able to discern the purity of Cordelia’s virtue, discounting her lack of Machiavellian wiles.

Banished Kent will pursue his “old course in a country new” (187). As it turns out, the “country new” is Britain. Lear’s refusal of responsibility has created a new dispensation of power, radically transforming the nation into a cauldron of anarchy and the pursuit of selfish desire for satisfaction and advancement.

Act 1, Scene 2.

This scene begins with Edmund’s soliloquy from lines 1-22, the upshot of which is that Edmund believes he has all the right qualities to rule his own house, and lacks only “legitimacy”; by contrast, the King has given all his power away and expects to hang on to his legitimacy. He stands upon rank as if it in itself constituted inner virtue or fitness to rule, whereas Edmund sees this legitimacy as a function of mere custom, of “the curiosity of nations” (4). Yet as this same soliloquy reveals, Edmund is nearly obsessed with what others think of him; he repeats the word “legitimate” several times, and can’t seem to let it go. We will see that later on, his undoing will stem from this concern for that which he seems most to despise. A most unhealthy selfishness—”I grow; I prosper” (21)—also drives him on first to victory and then to destruction. Edmund demands that the gods ally themselves not with custom but rather with natural qualities and ripeness for rule. Old Gloucester his been taken aback by the King’s strange behavior, which to him seems unnatural—this view makes him susceptible to the scheming of his illegitimate son. In a world turned upside down, what could make more sense than that a man’s legitimate son and heir should betray him without compunction, all appearances of goodness and history of virtue between the two notwithstanding? Edmund declares his father’s belief in astrology “the excellent foppery of the world” (118) and insists, “All with me’s meet that I can fashion fit” (184). He will trust in his dark vision of nature as a place that rewards the most savage and cunning predator. Tennyson (who before composing In Memoriam had become acquainted with the work of Sir Charles Lyell and other pre-Darwinian natural scientists) described this kind of nature as “red in tooth and claw.” Edmund is a human predator, and thanks to King Lear, he now has an opportunity to use his predatory skill to remake a formerly stable, human order into one that suits him best. Lear hasn’t made him what he is, but he has given him an opening to thrive. If legitimate authority doesn’t know itself, this is what happens. Perhaps, in terms of political theory, Lear early in the play assumes too easily that there is an automatic connection or concordance between the two “bodies” of a king—the perishing and erring mortal one and the immortal and immaterial political or corporate one: he follows his desires, makes unwise decisions, and then is surprised to find that his decisions as an erring human being have deranged his kingdom. Others in this play see more clearly the Machiavellian point that the exercise of power generates an authority all its own.

Act 1, Scene 3.

Goneril is alarmed at the King’s disorderly conduct. At line six, she complains that “his knights grow riotous,” and devises a stratagem whereby Oswald will make the King feel the weakness of his position by slighting him. Goneril gets to the heart of Lear’s error when she calls him an “Idle old man, / That still would manage those authorities / That he hath given away! (16-18)

Act 1, Scene 4.

Kent begins to serve the King, professing to the old man that he really is what he seems to be—a trusty middle-aged servant who knows authority when he sees it, which quality he says he “would fain call master” (27). Evidently he sees this quality in the visage of Lear, even if Lear has lost command of himself. The Fool, we are soon told, has “much pined away” since Cordelia went to France. He is Cordelia’s ally. Kent earns his keep by giving Oswald a rough education in rank, or “differences” (86). Lear’s own words begin to speak against him: he had said to Cordelia, “nothing will come of nothing,” and now the Fool responds to a similar utterance (“nothing can be made of nothing”), “so much the rent / of his land comes to” (134-35). Lear has given away not only the executive function of his office, but even the title, according to the Fool, and now retains only the title of “fool” that he was born with. At 160, the Fool says the King split his crown in two and gave it to his daughters; the implication of this remark is that power is indivisible and cannot be handled in this way. “Thou gavest them the rod and put down thine own breeches” (173-74), says the Fool, drawing a clear picture of Lear’s childishness. At 194, he applies the word “nothing” to the King, and this application may remind us of Hamlet’s similar mockery—”the king is a thing,” says Hamlet in 4.2, “of nothing.” Like Lear, too, Hamlet is confronted with the inevitable downward slide of even the greatest to what is most common: “Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay, / Might stop a hole to keep the wind away,” as the Prince says at 5.1.213-14.

Around line 218, Lear begins to ask key questions about identity. ”Are you our daughter?” he asks Goneril, and she tells him to “put away / These dispositions which of late transport you / From what you rightly are” (220-22). Finally, the exasperated Lear asks, “Who is it that can tell me who I am?” (230) and is answered by the Fool with “Lear’s shadow” (231). When Goneril tells him he ought to be surrounded by men who sort well with his age-weakened condition, he swears her off altogether, and by line 266, Lear suggests that Cordelia’s brittle response to his demand for love has deprived him of his proper judgment. His judgment of Goneril that she should, as he does now, “feel / How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is / To have a thankless child” (287-89) identifies what he believes to be the source of his troubles. But the question of proportion now comes into play because what Goneril has done far outstrips anything Cordelia may have done to offend the King.

The first mention of “plucking out eyes” occurs when Lear addresses Goneril as follows: “Old fond eyes, / Beweep this cause again, I’ll pluck ye out, / And cast you, with the waters that you loose, / To temper clay. Yea, is it come to this?” (301-04) Lear now transfers his stock to Regan, and threatens to reassume the majesty he has cast off. At 341, Goneril refers to her husband Albany’s “milky gentleness” as ill-suited to the times; his sententiae, such as “Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well” (346), don’t bode well for his ability to manage power, as far as she is concerned. They seem more like passive judgments than active principles by which a kingdom such as Lear’s could be governed.

Act 1, Scene 5.

Lear sends Kent to Gloucester with letters. He begins to see that he has done Cordelia wrong, and his anger shifts to Goneril and her “Monster ingratitude” (39). The Fool points out something Goneril had said earlier: “ Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise” (44). Lear is out of joint with the “seven ages of man”—he has never really attained to years of wise discretion and so is unprepared to practice the art of dying as he proclaimed at the play’s beginning. His kingdom is now paying the price.

Act 2, Scene 1.

Edmund practices his villainy on Edgar, and by the end of the scene, Gloucester has made Edmund his heir apparent. Regan insinuates that Edgar was associated with the “riotous knights” in Lear’s service, a claim that Edmund seconds. Cornwall takes a liking to Edmund for his “virtuous obedience” (113). The affinities of the wicked in this play are beginning to make themselves known, as if the bad characters come together by nature as well as by circumstance.

Act 2, Scene 2.

This is a counterpoint-style scene in which Kent recognizes Oswald for the knave he is, unlike Gloucester with his evil son Edmund. Kent’s putdown “Nature disclaims in thee: / a tailor made thee” (54-55) is a classic—Oswald is, after all, a man of artifice who gilds the ugly, base version of nature upheld by Edmund, Goneril, Regan, and Cornwall. But Kent as “Caius” gets himself into a bad fix in this scene when he finds it impossible to explain his hatred for Oswald to Cornwall, who takes him for an arrogant and affected inferior, a man who has learned to get praise for his “saucy roughness” (97). At line 125, Cornwall for once takes the lead, ordering that the stocks be brought. While in the stocks, Kent mentions around lines 165-70 that he has a letter from Cordelia—she is aware of the King’s distress.

Act 2, Scene 3.

Here Edgar disguises himself as Poor Tom the Bedlam Beggar, who will “ with presented nakedness outface / The winds and persecutions of the sky” (11-12). For this role, he says, “The country gives me proof and president ” (13). His model of the natural man comes from neglected humanity in the English countryside; it is hardly a mere invention on his part. Poor Tom is not a mere negation when he says, “Edgar I nothing am” (21), which means “I am no longer Edgar.” Poor Tom will be the “something” that rescues Edgar from the “nothing” forced upon him, and that serves as “president” (i.e. precedent) to King Lear in the storm.

Act 2, Scene 4.

King Lear is outraged when he sees Kent in the stocks, and becomes increasingly obsessed with this slight as the scene continues. He is sensitive to the shift in tone of his keepers—Gloucester’s ill-chosen remark that Cornwall has been “inform’d” of his demands drives him to an incredulous, “ Dost thou understand me, man?” (99) But his summons to Regan and Cornwall sounds pathetic by this point: “Bid them come forth and hear me, / Or at their chamber-door I’ll beat the drum / Till it cry sleep to death” (117-19). This intemperance earns him only the Fool’s mocking tale about the cockney woman’s attempt to quiet live eels as she made them into pie (122-26). Lear is at the mercy of his passions, which have no outlet in action. Suffering is inevitable, suggests the Fool’s wisdom.

Turning to Regan for comfort, Lear gets only the following counsel: O sir, you are old, / Nature in you stands on the very verge / Of his confine. You should be rul’d and led / By some discretion that discerns your state / Better than you yourself. Therefore I pray you / That to our sister you do make return” (146-51). It would be difficult to strip an elderly man of his dignity any more cruelly than this, and already we may begin to sense the change in attitude that marks a leap beyond “ordinary mean” to the “hard hearts” beyond anything we had thought possible in nature—the transition Lear asks about later, in Act 3, Scene 6. At 177, Lear still believes, apparently, that there is a world of difference between Regan and Goneril: “Thou better know’st / The offices of nature, bond of childhood, / Effects of courtesy, dues of gratitude: / Thy half o’ th’ kingdom hast thou not forgot, / Wherein I thee endow’d” (177-81). The phrase “offices of nature” indicates that to Lear, nature is something civil and beneficent—it is to be identified with the properly functioning family unit.

But Regan’s request is along the same lines as her previous remark: “I pray you, father, being weak, seem so” (201). Then comes the reverse bidding war between Regan and Goneril over the number of knights Lear is to be allowed, ending at 264 with Regan’s question, “What need one?” Lear offers them a remarkable comeback: “O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars / Are in the poorest thing superfluous. / Allow not nature more than nature needs, / Man’s life is cheap as beast’s” (264-67). Humanity must not, he insists, be reduced to natural necessity; we are creatures of excess, artifice, and, symbol. Nature as a concept enfolds all of these qualities. It is not to be sundered from decorum, either. Then Lear offers a contradictory prayer to the gods, asking for both patience and anger. He is soon to rage in the storm (mentioned in the stage directions as “storm and tempest” at line 284), but for the moment he denounces his two present daughters as “unnatural hags” and declares almost comically, “ I will do such things— / What they are yet I know not; but they shall be / The terrors of the earth!” (280-82) Regan’s cruel sententia to worried Gloucester is her justification for exiling Lear into the storm: “O sir, to wilful men / The injuries that they themselves procure / Must be their schoolmasters. Shut up your doors” (302-04). It’s true enough that the unwise learn, if at all, only by sad experience—perhaps that is a fundamental point in Christian-based tragedy—but mere decency should have been enough to instruct Regan that this is not the time for such sententiousness. Her cruel excess (along with that of Edmund, Goneril, and Cornwall) is the demonic inverse of the generous excess Lear had invoked in exclaiming, “O, reason not the need!” The play affords scant opportunity for finding any middle ground between these two extremes—between that which is almost infinitely above nature and that which is a great deal more savage than nature. The “patience” and acceptance that Edgar will counsel Gloucester and that loyal Kent has been practicing with Lear goes some way towards building a bridge, but the outcome of their efforts is not heartening.

In Act 2, the families are sundered, and like affines itself with like, both indoors and out of doors. Lear has brought up the issue of the heavens—which side will the gods take in this great confrontation between house and house, between one group of sinners and another, far worse, group?

Act 3, Scene 1.

Kent’s question when Lear is abandoned to the “fretful elements” (4) isn’t about grand political theory or power, it is simply about who is attending the frail old man: he should not, thinks Kent, be left alone and at the mercy of the weather. The Gentleman informs him that only the Fool is with Lear, “labour[ing] to outjest / His heart-struck injuries” (16-17). That is a generous way of describing the Fool’s job in this play—we know him to be a teller of discomfiting truths, sometimes in a bitter way. But then, it isn’t comfort that brings characters insight in this play—that would not suit its tragic mode. Albany and Cornwall have fallen out by this time, and both are following events in France. At line 38, Kent excuses the King’s fall into madness unnatural, attributing it to the “bemadding sorrow” caused by the bad conduct of Lear’s two evil daughters.

Act 3, Scenes 2, 4, 6.

In 3.2 and 3.4, the storm is clearly a metaphor for Lear’s internal discord, for the howling madness in the king himself. As the Fool has told him, he has turned his daughters into domineering mothers, and in a sense he has done the opposite of what he declared he wanted to do—recall that he said he was dividing the kingdom in part so he could go off and practice the art of dying well. His daughters were to exercise power while Lear would be free to “crawl towards death.” But instead the old man clings to life, trying desperately to maintain control and clinging to his dearest daughter Cordelia. Even after he has cast them all off, he remains obsessed with them. What we have in King Lear is in part the “tragedy” of growing old and being unable to deal with the changes and the loss that must come since, as Claudius in Hamlet says, reason’s constant law is “death of fathers” (1.2.102-06) James Calderwood of UC Irvine, applying a philosophical thesis of Ernest Becker, wrote a book called Shakespeare and the Denial of Death. Lear is a death-denier in spite of his claims of willingness to accept his demise, and his daughters represent perpetuity to him. This denial may be in part what’s behind Lear’s raging in the storm, and even at the storm in a confused way:

I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness,
I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children,
You owe me no subscription. Then let fall
Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man;
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That will with two pernicious daughters join
Your high-engender’d battles ‘gainst a head
So old and white as this. O, ho! ‘tis foul” (3.2.16-24).

As his rage rolls onward and takes aim at the “great gods, / That keep this dreadful pudder o’er our heads” (3.2.49-50), his insight is summed up in the sentence, “I am a man / More sinned against than sinning” (3.2.59-60). This broad realization seems to go beyond a specific grievance involving his treatment by Regan and Goneril; it sounds more like an indictment of the universe than anything else. With these words, Lear claims that he feels his “wits begin to turn” (67), and shows compassion enough for Poor Tom to accept the offer of shelter.

But as Lear’s angry conversation with the elements (as quoted above) suggests, the storm is also a natural phenomenon not entirely reducible to the King’s inner disharmony. In this capacity, it is beyond his control, just as the decay of his body is. He calls the storm the “physic” of pomp at 3.4, the only event and setting that allows him, as a half-naked octogenarian, to make contact with what is common to all human beings. He has learned something in this storm that exceeds his inward tempest: as is said in other Shakespeare plays, “a king is but a man,” no matter what the courtiers or the lore of kings or the theory of kingship may say. But Lear isn’t alone for long in the tempest—the Fool is with him for a time, as is Kent, and it’s the place where he meets “Poor Tom.” Such weather isn’t to be endured long. Nature is outdoing itself for ferocity.

In 3.4, Poor Tom plays a significant role with respect to Lear, who says to him, “Thou are the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, fork’d animal as thou art” (3.4.106-08), the very lowest level to which a man may sink. Poor Tom attests to the rightness of Lear’s baring himself to the effects of the storm, but it isn’t good for a human being to be “out in the storm” permanently—shelter must be sought, we must return to a more “accommodated” model of humanity where we can abide. Poor Tom has already learned this himself, and King Lear, when he calls Edgar “the thing itself,” is in fact looking at a man’s artistic construction, a willed madness that he has probably begun to cast off even by that point, as indeed we see him declare forcefully at the end of 3.6: “Tom, away!” Lear doesn’t seem to understand Tom’s situation fully, but he learns from this supposed madman nonetheless.

In 3.6. comes the great “trial scene,” with Lear, the Fool, and Poor Tom serving as judge and jury against some hapless joint stools enlisted to substitute for Regan and Goneril. The causes Lear derives for his misery, his lines are confused but also genuinely moving. He had been told he was no less than a god, and in the storm he has found that he’s just a miserable old man. He abandoned his only true identity when he cast off Cordelia. He keeps coming back to Regan and Goneril, those willful daughters who, he thinks, have done nothing but indulge their shameful lusts and follow their primal hunger for power. What sort of “justice” now prevails but a system of spiraling oppression and hypocrisy, one that he has loosed upon himself and others? Virtue at present is nothing more than a device to facilitate the evil now afoot. Lear’s horror at a degree of cruelty beyond what he had thought possible shows in the question that wells up from the bottom of his being towards the end of the mock trial: “Then let them anatomize Regan; see what breeds about her heart. Is there any cause in nature that make these hard hearts?” (3.6.76-78) When we have renounced our limits, what, if anything, can reestablish them again, aside from exhaustion unto death?

Act 3, Scenes 3, 5.

Edmund had said earlier, “Now Gods, stand up for bastards.” He’s obsessed, understandably enough, with the distinction between baseness and legitimacy, between nature and convention. Now he seizes the opportunity Gloucester has given him for further betrayal—Edmund will tell Cornwall that Gloucester is going to help the king. Lear unleashed Edmund upon the kingdom by his unwise actions and irrationality—indeed, Edmund is inevitable since, thanks to Lear, there seems to be nothing between anarchy and the generosity and tact that maintain human dignity and shore up the frailty of our nature. Shakespeare is apparently aware that “human nature” is not a given—it is actually something we must work at and maintain, and if we sink beneath it, we are “worse” than any violent predator in the animal kingdom since such predators don’t add superfluous cruelty to their bloody actions. Edmund is in full throttle evildoer mode at present, but later he will find that he can’t permanently jettison the trappings of convention: security requires order, it requires something like a social contract.

Act 3, Scene 7.

In this scene, Gloucester is interrogated and then blinded. Gloucester’s bold justification of his secret trip to Dover in aid of the king is, “Because I would not see thy cruel nails / Pluck out his poor old eyes.” To Gloucester, the phrase represents the worst thing he can imagine, and is purely metaphorical. Not so for Regan, who has been interrogating him, or for Goneril, who, in the presence of Regan, had already uttered her preference even before the current exchange: “Pluck out his eyes” (5). For them, the literal punishment seems entirely appropriate. Sophocles didn’t want his audience to see Oedipus blind himself with those pins from the dress of his wife Jocasta—it was reported to the audience, but not shown. Shakespeare, however, serves up the sickening spectacle along with the unforgettable lines, “Out, vild jelly! / Where is thy lustre now?” (83-84) This is the lowest point in the play, the nadir of cruelty into which Lear’s initial mistake made it possible for others to descend.

Act 4, Scene 1.

Blinded Gloucester has abandoned any notion of a just moral order rooted in nature (see pg. 1329); he has understandably lost patience, and declares, “As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods, / They kill us for their sport” (36-37). Edgar, who believes that the gods are just, must bring his father round to patience again, to acceptance of the predicament that his own foolishness has at least in part created.

Act 4, Scene 2.

At last Albany asserts his own virtuous will against Goneril and her evil compatriots, telling her that she isn’t worth “the dust which the rude wind / Blows in your face” (30-31). But Goneril doesn’t care what he thinks—she is too busy thinking passionate thoughts about her lover Edmund, the newly created Gloucester. Albany is not to be gainsaid, however, and calls Goneril what she is: a “tiger” and a “fiend” rather than a human being; he realizes that the anarchic violence she and her sister are participating must either be stopped or destroy the kingdom altogether: “Humanity must perforce prey on itself, / Like monsters of the deep” (48-49).

Act 4, Scenes 3-4.

Kent hears news from a Gentleman about Cordelia’s actions and frame of mind, and Kent asserts the traditional view that “The stars above us, govern our conditions” (33). Else how could such differences be between three sisters of the same king? Cordelia, meantime, is ready to take on the British whom she knows to be marching against her.

Act 4, Scene 5.

Regan shows her jealousy over Goneril’s desire for Edmund, and tries to enlist the fop Oswald on her side: “My lord is dead; Edmund and I have talk’d, / And more convenient is he for my hand / Than for your lady’s” (30-32). Oswald is also told that he should, if possible, put the old “traitor” Gloucester out of his misery, lest he incite the people to compassion against her and her allies.

Act 4, Scene 6.

Gloucester had abandoned his virtuous son Edgar at the bidding of a knave. He was too willing to suppose that the world had been turned upside down, and his fear of betrayal made him most susceptible to it. Now Gloucester’s attitude verges on unacceptable despair as he implores Edgar to lead him to a Dover cliff where he may end his life. Edgar, still disguised (though as a rustic, not a madman) does for him what Cordelia would not do for her father: he graces Gloucester’s way forwards with a lie, telling him, “You are now within a foot / Of th’ extreme verge” (25). Some may take Edgar’s long maintenance of his rustic disguise as somewhat excessive, but in this play, extreme actions are sometimes required as homeopathic remedy for states of extreme error. That’s the kind of “remedy” the king’s rash behavior has helped to make necessary, although we shouldn’t blame him too harshly for others’ downward spiral into utter depravity. Regan, Goneril, Cornwall, and their ilk are responsible for their own misdeeds. There is some comedy in this scene since, of course, Gloucester’s “fall” is only onto the bare planks of the stage. The old man’s fake descent turns out to be a “fortunate fall” since it persuades him to have patience even in his almost unbearable condition.

In this newfound patience, Gloucester is confronted with a flower-decked King Lear, who apparently hasn’t recovered his wits as well as he had thought. Edgar calls him “a side-piercing sight” (85), adding a Christ-like aura to our vision of Lear as a suffering, dying, universal man. Lear asks if Gloucester is “Goneril with a white beard” (96), and reproves his former ministers for their flattery: “they told me I was every thing. ‘Tis a lie, I am not ague-proof” (104-05). Everywhere he looks, Lear sees demonic sexuality as the base of things: “Let copulation thrive” (114), he bellows, and declares of women, “Down from the waist they are Centaurs” (125). This rant culminates in a dark vision of systemic injustice and hypocrisy:

[A] dog’s obeyed in office.
Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand!
Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thy own back,
Thou hotly lusts to use her in that kind
For which thou whip’st her. The usurer hangs the cozener.
Thorough tatter’d clothes [small] vices do appear;
Robes and furr’d gowns hide all. (159-64)

This is as strong a view as we find in William Blake’s “London”: “the chimney-sweeper's cry / Every blackening church appals, / And the hapless soldier's sigh / Runs in blood down palace-walls. He has finally accepted the Fool’s old offer of the title “fool,” and his eloquence peters out in an exhausted, enraged repetition of the word “kill”: “And when I have stol’n upon these son-in-laws, / Then kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!” (186-87)

The sixth scene ends with Edgar putting an end to the rascal Oswald, who has stumbled upon Gloucester alone and tried to kill him for the prize Regan has offered. In Oswald’s purse he discovers Goneril’s treasonous letter to Edmund, imploring him to kill her virtuous husband Albany.

Act 4, Scene 7.

Lear recovers his wits, and says to Cordelia, “Pray do not mock me. / I am a very foolish fond old man. . . . Methinks I should know you” (59-63). He fully understands the wrong he has done her—something he had begun to sense earlier, even as far back as 1.5.24. Lear expects only hatred, but Cordelia mildly tells him there is “no cause” why she should hate him. Lear had to seek into the cause of his other daughters’ “hard hearts,” but for Cordelia’s loyalty, she is suggesting, he need not trouble himself to find the reason why. As Portia says in The Merchant of Venice, “The quality of mercy is not strained”—it is a thing divine and not to be sifted or parsed.

Act 5, Scene 1.

In this scene we find Edmund, Goneril, and Regan locked in a vicious struggle for supremacy in love even as they prepare to fight Cordelia’s invading Frenchmen. Edmund plans to use Albany as a front while the fighting is on, and then dispose of him afterwards as useless baggage and a bar to his advancement.

Act 5, Scene 2.

Edgar is disappointed to find his father abjectly depressed during the confusion of battle, and tells him, “Men must endure / Their going hence even as their coming hither, / Ripeness is all” (9-11).

Act 5, Scene 3.

The worst of the worst win the day, and Lear and Cordelia are taken prisoner. Lear’s reconciliation with Cordelia is brief but supremely fine:

Come let’s away to prison:
We two alone will sing like birds I’ th’ cage;
When thou does ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness. So we’ll live,

And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too—
Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out—
And take upon ‘s the mystery of things
As if we were God’s spies; and we’ll wear out,
In a wall’d prison, packs and sects of great ones
That ebb and flow by th’ moon. (8-19)

The old king predicts that he and Cordelia will participate in God’s mysterious knowledge of all things, knowing the ins and outs of his secret dispensation of affairs and men. But all this eloquence is too much for Edmund, who ends Lear’s words with a harsh command: “Take them away.” Political and military events have outstripped the process whereby King Lear has discovered his mistakes and recovered his identity and his affiliation with Cordelia. It is simply too late for a reconciliation of more than a few minutes’ time, and in the worst of circumstances. Edmund’s blunt order completes the triumph of literalism and matter-of-fact depravity over legitimate power, virtue, and (here) prophetic rhetoric. Lear is rehumanized and endowed with new insight into what is right and wrong, what is human and what is not. But he and Cordelia are crushed because they are a threat to Edmund, and he determines that they must go.

But things aren’t so simple for Edmund. Albany has nothing but contempt for him, which bodes ill for his hopes to wield tremendous power in the new order of things. His presence in the army camp provokes a life-and-death struggle between Goneril and Regan for his hand, and Albany arrests him and Goneril for “capital treason” (83). No sooner is this declared than Edgar shows up and challenges him to single combat. Edmund, worshiper of animalistic nature and the “Regan Revolution” though he may be, is now trapped into securing his ill-gotten gains, his newfound legitimacy as bestowed upon him first by Gloucester and then by Cornwall after Gloucester’s blinding and exile. He must accept Edgar’s challenge, and ends up hearing the legitimate son’s pious declaration that “The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices / Make instruments to plague us: / The dark and vicious place where thee he got / Cost him his eyes” (171-74). Regan, meanwhile, has been poisoned by Goneril, who then takes her own life when she sees Edmund slain.

Edgar has found time to reclaim the honor of his title and to avenge Edmund’s betrayal of their father, and to some extent he has reasserted the principle of a divine moral order. But the Gloucester and Lear plots do not come together: Lear and Cordelia have run out of time, and not even Edmund’s surprising last-minute act of repentance can save Cordelia from being hanged or Lear from dying of grief over her lifeless body. Their only permanence is death.

In later-C17-18 versions such as that of Nahum Tate’s 1681 revival of the play (http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/tatelear.html ), Cordelia actually thrives as Queen, married by a beaming Lear to Edgar. Neoclassical critics and audiences found the actual Shakespearean ending an intolerable violation of representational ethics: the good must be rewarded, and the wicked must be punished. Here is Dr. Johnson’s pronouncement on the matter in Rambler #4:

“In narratives where historical veracity has no place, I cannot discover why there should not be exhibited the most perfect idea of virtue; of virtue not angelical, nor above probability, for what we cannot credit, we shall never imitate, but the highest and purest that humanity can reach, which, exercised in such trials as the various revolutions of things shall bring upon it, may, by conquering some calamities, and enduring others, teach us what we may hope, and what we can perform. Vice, for vice is necessary to be shewn, should always disgust; nor should the graces of gaiety, or the dignity of courage, be so united with it, as to reconcile it to the mind. Wherever it appears, it should raise hatred by the malignity of its practices, and contempt by the meanness of its stratagems: for while it is supported by either parts or spirit, it will be seldom heartily abhorred. ”

In Cordelia’s death, the justice of the heavens is not at all apparent. It is true that vice is thoroughly disgusting in King Lear, but virtue is by no means shown triumphant. We must endure the old king’s “going hence” in unbearable agony and near incoherence, as he bewails Cordelia’s death and laments, “my poor fool is hang’d” (306), which may refer to our old friend the Fool, who disappeared at 3.5 with the line, “And I’ll go to bed at noon” (85). Nobody really wants to rule this blighted kingdom anymore: neither Albany nor Kent will take the reigns of power, and it seems as if all is left to Edgar. His concluding lines are oddly unsatisfying:

The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say:
The oldest hath borne most; we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

If the play has been a quest for the restoration of authority, Edgar is hardly the quester who heals the Fisher King and makes the waters flow. But this play is, of course, a tragedy and not a romance. What it may have taught us, in the end, is that the deepest kind of insight into humanity does not accompany the workings of earthly power: as so often in tragedy, the cost of such insight is an untimely death. Edgar can’t do much more than repeat the stale “truism” of his father Gloucester: better days have been. There’s no easy accommodation, or magical reconciliation, no middle ground to occupy—just a pair of departed royal visionaries and a remnant of confused and disillusioned people repeating unconvincing truisms. Much of the play has been about trying different strategies of accommodation, recognizing the constrictions of nature, mortality, political power, and language, but no satisfying arrangements have emerged. No one has come to terms with what it means to be mortal and yet not identical with the workings of raw physical nature.

Finally, even though King Lear has pagan trappings, I treat it as tinged with Christian principles, and it seems that within this framework, tragedy is constituted by the enormous gap between wisdom and felicity. Much human suffering is preventable, but at the deepest level, sorrow and loss are the only true teachers. And at this level, even a great man like Lear is the “natural fool of fortune” (4.6.191). All along, the Fool had helped prevent Lear from falling into a hopeless state of self-pity, and had helped the audience from over-pitying the king. The Fool had stood for the possibility of artistic redemption, what with his playful songs and insouciance. He knew that Lear was at least willing to listen to him speak the truth in an eccentric form, unlike Regan and Goneril, whose stern authority he feared and whose disregard for his rhymes stemmed from their obscene literalism and savagery. But comfort is cold in this play—at a certain point, the Fool simply had to disappear, leaving Lear to face what he has done to Cordelia and the impossibility of setting things right.

Week 11, Othello

2007-10-30T12:05:00.000-07:00

Notes on Othello (Updated 10/18/2011 for Norton Tragedies, E316 MW Fall 2011)

Act 1, Scene 1. (435-39: Iago’s resentment, Brabanzio’s rage at loss of daughter)

Iago may not be acting from world-historical outrage, but he sets forth two reasons for his hatred of Othello: first, his sense of injured merit because Othello has given the lieutenant’s job he coveted to Cassio (435, 1.1.19ff), and the possibility (stated in Act 1.3) that his wife has slept with Othello. Iago is a self-conscious Machiavel and a consummate actor (like Shakespeare’s Richard III or Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus). As he says to Roderigo, “I follow but myself” and “I am not what I am” (436-37, 1.1.42-65): he may be Othello’s trusted underling, but that isn’t how he sees himself “five years from now,” to borrow a phrase from the corporate interview playbook. Iago may be comfortable in his own skin, but he is not at peace with himself. There’s something impish about him, too, something of the downright evildoer—he seems to enjoy stirring up trouble for the hell of it, and he shows no regard for the destruction he brings to Desdemona, whom he knows to be innocent. He maneuvers with diabolical skill in the gap between what he seems to be and what he is, turning everything that happens to his own advantage. He and Roderigo regale Brabanzio with race-baiting taunts to find his secretly married daughter. (437, 1.1.88ff)

Act 1, Scene 2. (439-442, Othello willingly arrested, off to Venice)

Othello shows no fear of Roderigo or Brabanzio when they apprehend him: “Keep up your bright swords…” (441, 1.2.60ff). On the spot, Brabanzio accuses Othello of witchcraft: “thou has enchanted her” (441, 1.2.64), he tells the Moor; otherwise, he insists, the girl would never “Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom of such a thing as thou—to fear, not to delight!” (441, 1.2.71-72) He can’t even imagine the attraction of the foreign or the exotic, even though he’s been listening to Othello’s stories with admiration, too. To Brabanzio, Venice is the world. (He’s strangely provincial given that Venice is a cosmopolitan sea empire that had long since known how to cut a deal or two with Arabs and Turks.) Brabanzio immediately accepts Iago and Roderigo’s reductive, grotesquely abstract “devil” and bestial “ram” characterization of Othello. Othello hardly lacks charm, but the father welcomes Iago’s stereotypes.

Act 1, Scene 3. (442-50, Othello vindicated, Desdemona strong, Iago enlists Roderigo)

Othello carries the day when summoned to Venice because of his military bearing and chivalric eloquence. When the Italians accuse him of witchcraft, he promises to deliver a “round, unvarnished tale” (444, 1.3.90); but then he romances them with his beautiful, moving words. Othello cuts a dashing figure, and he is aware of his effect upon others. He is proud of his conquest, like a soldier who has won the prize fairly. The tale he delivers is anything but unvarnished. It is filled with romantic extravagance. Perhaps he has been sold into slavery, fought tremendous battles, and seen many remarkable sights. But did he really see “Anthropophagi, and men whose heads / Do grow beneath their shoulders” (445, 1.3.143-44)? No, these are tales he’s picked up and remembered the better to build up an image of himself as an adventurer. He exploits Desdemona’s interest in such stories, crafting from that propensity a contract-in-hand to “beguile her of her tears” and to “dilate” his life’s journey. What sanctifies Othello’s dilatory works of art? Well, the fact that he sincerely loves Desdemona—he means her only good, so it’s acceptable to incorporate some “make-believe” elements into an already exciting account of himself: “she loved me for the dangers I had passed, / And I loved her that she did pity them” (445, 1.3.166-67). Othello is rather like Sir Philip Sidney’s good Christian poet, whose “feigning” of “notable images” shouldn’t be condemned just because the images aren’t literally true. Othello isn’t a naïve other or a silent warrior but a poetical, confident man.

Perhaps his tragedy will be that he just can’t imagine anyone wielding such poetical power for anything but the good reasons that motivate him in his courtship of Desdemona, or in his speech to the Duke and Senators that frees them to return to considerations of State rather than dwelling on private grudges and love affairs. His way of “seeming” (i.e. embroidering his life story) is so pure that it’s folded into the essential goodness of his being. In a sense, all poets are liars—Plato tells us so, right?—but some feigning and pretending is nobly done and not engaged in as a means to do evil, as it is with Iago. Othello’s naivety, then, isn’t that he’s unable to speak anything but plain truth; it’s that he can’t conceive of a man who willfully spins lies for base purposes. A good man is free to gild the lily, but a wicked man ought to show himself for what he is. In this sense, it’s fair to say that Othello proves tragically unable to deal with the difference between seeming and being. Then, too, Othello may be poetical, but he’s not John Keats’ poet of “negative capability,” the kind who can throw himself into doubts and uncertainties as if they were his own proper element. Othello’s feigning seems more tactical and less supple, more task-oriented, than that of the Keatsian “chameleon poet” who wants to escape from his own skin.

Both the absolute otherness imposed on Othello by men such as Brabanzio (who can scarcely process the Moor at all) and the charismatic appeal of the man’s bearing and language are at work early in Othello. Perhaps both, taken together with the sad events later in the play, go a long way towards demonstrating how difficult mutual understanding between cultures can be. In spite of Othello’s wondrous gifts of bearing and speech, he is easily destroyed by Iago, a man with the sort of knowledge of Venetian society Othello lacks. Generalized virtues cannot permanently trump an intimate knowledge of local cultural practices, symbolism, and assumptions, at least not if someone is determined to use these specifics against an outsider. Othello is a classic tragedy in that a good man is destroyed by the virtues that have won him admiration—his inability to comprehend how devious and selfish others can be. It’s true that Othello has so far followed his personal desires, and we might suppose that he’s putting Venice at risk if a tumult ensues. But he deals so forthrightly with the Venetian authorities that the affair blows over, and he is free to return to his work for the general welfare. How, Othello might ask, could others be so petty as to damage the public good for purely private reasons, like those of Iago?

Our first glimpse of Desdemona shows us a strong-willed young woman who is not afraid to act boldly and speak her mind, even in the presence of her powerful father and Venetian statesmen. Her strength accords well with Othello’s soldierly virtue. (446-47, 1.3.180ff, 247ff) Later, Desdemona will be put in an impossible position—her considerable aplomb doesn’t translate into an ability to charm Othello out of his suspicions, so her goodness works against her. But with the devilish Othello out to destroy her, it’s hard to see how anything she says, no matter how skillful, would help. Terse protestations of virtue and fancy talk alike would fail to overcome the “ocular proof” by which Iago will falsely damn her.

Iago’s creed is worth noting. To Roderigo’s passive, faux-suicidal blubbering about the defects of his “virtue” (in this usage, it means “nature”), Iago blurts out “Virtue? A fig! ‘tis in ourselves that we are / thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the / which our wills are gardeners…” (449, 1.3.316-18). In terms of Renaissance psychology, this means that while we are subject to the pull of our appetites (which belong to the “sensitive” part of human nature), we can control these appetites. We can let our choice-making power, our “will,” be informed by reason and thereby control the effects of appetite. (The elements of the rational part of human nature are “understanding” or reason and “will” or rational appetite, the inner power of motion that can incline towards God and reason or towards our lower appetites.) Iago is suggesting that while the body and the appetites may hold sway for a time in Desdemona, she is bound, in due time, to become sated with Othello, and then her rational element will lead her to despise this older man whose appearance and culture are so unlike hers. (449, 1.3.342ff; also 455, 2.1.228-29) Like will return to like. Well, Iago hardly puts Renaissance psychology to the noble uses of Pico della Mirandola, who implies that the grandest goal of humanity is to transcend itself for the greater glory of God, but he knows how to craft a cunning scheme from its premises: Roderigo need only “put money in his purse” and wait for Desdemona to turn again to Venice.

Here Iago’s second motive comes to light: he’s heard that Othello may have cuckolded him. And although he may be patient in devising his wicked schemes, he shares Othello’s disdain of long-continued suspicion: the mere supposition that Emilia may have cuckolded him demands payback; the matter must be resolved. (450, 1.3.367ff) He will wage a pre-emptive war against this man who has already frustrated his hopes of advancement and who may also have insulted his marriage. In some cold, calculating way, Iago himself is subject to the cat-like “green-eyed monster” jealousy, and his way of dealing with the discomfort it’s caused him is to pass it along. That there’s also something to the “baseless evil” charge often leveled against Iago, we may see from his brazen determination to “plume up” his will “in double knavery” (450, 1.3.376).

Act 2, Scenes 1-2. (450-57, Iago sets up Cassio, airs his own suspicions)

This scene turns on trifles: witty banter, smiles, and an innocently flirtatious kiss between Desdemona and Cassio: how easy it is to weave an unflattering tale, and take advantage of others’ insecurities. (454, 2.1.167ff) As Iago will say of the handkerchief in 3.3, “Trifles light as air / Are to the jealous confirmations strong / As proofs of holy writ” (473, 3.3.326-28). In the second act generally, Cassio, who much values his martial reputation and is loyal, is easily typecast by Iago first as the genial soldier, then as the quarrelsome drunkard, and finally as the importunate suitor. Iago goes to work on Roderigo against Desdemona’s character (456, 2.1.243), and prevails upon Roderigo to assault Cassio and thereby anger Cyprus and Othello against the man. Iago again mentions his second reason for hating Othello, stating “nothing can or shall content my soul / Till I am evened with him, wife for wife” (457, 2.1.285-86). He even has the same suspicion of Cassio – “For I fear Cassio with my nightcap, too” (457, 2.1.294). An ambitious man, Iago envies and opposes anyone who stands above him. Perhaps that is the ultimate reason for his villainy.

Act 2, Scene 3. (457-65, Cassio dismissed, Iago moves forwards with his scheme)

Enter Othello the honor-absolutist to render judgment. Iago plays Othello like a fiddle, and the final lyrics are, “Cassio, I love thee, / But never more be officer of mine” (462, 2.3.231-32). Now Iago advances his diabolical scheme (463, 2.3.291ff) to advance Cassio’s suit by Desdemona’s pleading. Iago delights in his own equivocations, and triumphantly remarks, “So will I turn her virtue into pitch, / And out of her own goodness make the net / That shall enmesh them all” (464, 2.3.334-36).

Act 3, Scenes 1-2. (465-66, Desdemona takes Cassio’s part)

Emilia reports that Desdemona is making headway on Cassio’s suit: “The Moor replies / That he you hurt is of great fame in Cyprus… / But he protests he loves you… (466, 3.1.42-45).

Act 3, Scene 3. (466-77, Iago sows doubt, turns Othello against Desdemona)

While Iago and Othello look on from a distance, Desdemona promises to continue with Cassio’s suit to Othello (466-67, 3.3.20-22). She converses with Othello to great effect: “I will deny thee nothing” says Othello, and when she leaves, “Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul / But I do love thee, and when I love thee not, / Chaos is come again” (468, 3.3.77, 3.3.91-93). Chaos is Iago’s decreative aim, and he immediately begins to set doubts in Othello’s mind: “Did Michael Cassio, when you wooed my lady, / Know of your love?” (468, 3.3.96-97) Cassio’s earlier usefulness as go-between in Othello’s romancing of Desdemona now plays against him.

We should hear alarm bells in Othello’s admission of his great fondness for Desdemona: once Othello begins to suspect, he will be thrown off balance until the end. Iago makes the Moor draw “the truth” from him, and reinforces the Othello-principle that we must all be what we appear to be: “Men should be what they seem, / Or those that be not, would they might seem none!” (469, 3.3.132-33) Iago knows that Othello lacks (to borrow from Keats’ letters) “negative capability”—he can’t exist for an extended time in the midst of uncertainty. If there’s a problem, it must be dealt with presently, not left to fester. Othello is the kind of military man who insists on gathering hard evidence and rendering a firm decision, court-martial style, the way he judged Cassio. His lack of knowledge about Venetian mores and subtlety (an English stereotype for the Italians generally—subtle, devious, sly) makes him anxious, easy prey to the overblown trifles in which Iago trades, and very susceptible to the honest-sounding counsel his deceiver offers: “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy? / It is the green-ey’d monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on” (470, 3.3.169-71). Othello insists his trust in Desdemona and in himself is great: “she had eyes and chose me. No, Iago / I’ll see before I doubt; when I doubt, proof; / And on the proof… / Away at once with love or jealousy” (470, 3.3.193-96).

But Othello is older than Desdemona, and he is black: facts Iago exploits brutally and masterfully (471, 3.3.233-43). Othello now seems uncertain that his charm and rhetorical skill can hold his wife’s loyalty. Iago has already told him, “In Venice they do let (God) see the pranks / They dare not show their husbands” (471, 3.3.206-09). Generalized virtues can’t trump knowledge of local culture, symbolism, and assumptions. Othello is classical tragedy: a good man is destroyed by his virtues. The play demonstrates how difficult mutual understanding between cultures can be. Othello comes round to a characteristically absolute statement: “If I do prove her haggard, / Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings / I’d whistle her off and let her down the wind / To prey at fortune” (472, 3.3.264-67). Othello can’t reconcile his honor-ideal with the messy, ethically dubious world of Venice.

Shakespeare explores this rigid idealism often in his plays, and I believe he considers it a trap. For example, Brutus in Julius Caesar, or the title character in Coriolanus (as well as Antony in Antony and Cleopatra, since his so-called eastern extravagance is the obverse of strict Roman honor, and disables him from combating Octavius’ machinations), or comic idealizers such as Orlando in As You Like It. There are many shades of gray, nuances, roles a man or woman must play, imperfections and exigencies to deal with. Idealism is noble, but it is a disabling quality in a saucy, ever-changing world.

The handkerchief device and marriage vignette (in which Othello and Iago kneel and vow revenge) mark the height of Iago’s villainy. Disturbed while talking with Desdemona, Othello drops his wife’s handkerchief (473, 3.3.290ff); from there Emilia finds it and gives it to Iago, who then resolves, “I will in Cassio’s lodging lose this napkin, / And let him find it. Trifles light as air…” (473, 3.3.325-28). At next meeting, Othello is mad with jealous rage: “Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore” (474, 3.3.364-65). He demands absolute proof, as the uncertainty has become intolerable: “I think my wife be honest, and think she is not” (475, 3.3.389ff). So the fact that Cassio has been seen to “wipe his beard” (476, 3.3.444) with Desdemona’s handkerchief drives Othello to distraction. Iago kneels and swears undying fealty to Othello (476-77), and his damnation consists in swearing by Christian symbols to do the devil’s work. His words are pious, but his intentions transform them into the markers of a black mass. Perhaps there’s irony in his swearing by “yon marble heaven” (476, 3.3.463) since the audience may see him swear by a painted image of the sky. Iago has become Othello’s lieutenant, and is engaged to murder Cassio while Othello plans Desdemona’s demise.

Act 3, Scene 4. (477-81, The Handkerchief! Emilia and Desdemona ponder cause)

Othello expects the same romantic extravagance from Desdemona as he lavishes upon her: the handkerchief, he tells her, is an emblem of the romantic magic, the charm, that underlies his erotic fidelity. Its loss is catastrophic now that it has come to symbolize her chaste loyalty. (478, 3.4.53ff) Othello is a romantic idealist as well as a military idealist. A version of the handkerchief’s history: it was given him by his mother, who got it from a female Egyptian sorcerer, and its possession guarantees loyalty in love. Its fatal consequentiality is further underscored by the claim that it was “dyed in mummy, which the skilful / Conserved of maidens’ hearts” (478, 3.4.73-74; later, he will claim his father gave it to his mother: see 5.2.224.) Desdemona is forced to dissemble (479), while Othello’s vocabulary moves towards perfect accord with his obsession: “the handkerchief!” repeated several times. (479, 3.4.90ff) Desdemona and Emilia ponder this strange behavior on Othello’s part (480, 3.4.137ff). Michael Cassio closes the scene by asking his girlfriend Bianca to make a copy of the handkerchief because he likes it and once the pattern before he returns it to the owner.

Act 4, Scene 1. (481-88, Othello rages over Cassio and Iago’s talk, strikes Desdemona)

Othello, already driven into an epileptic fit at the loss of the handkerchief (482b, 4.1.41), will now be subjected to one further supposed proof: Iago engages Cassio in a conversation that Othello takes for lewd and contemptuous talk about Desdemona when in fact Cassio is only making jests about his relationship with Bianca (483, 4.1.79ff, 484-85). Bianca brings in the handkerchief (485, 4.1.143ff), making Othello think Cassio has given it to her out of contempt for Desdemona. Othello sees this spectacle and becomes deranged with contradictory impulses: “O Iago, the pity of it, Iago!” and “I will chop her into messes. Cuckold me!” (486, 4.1.186, 190) Iago comes up with the idea of strangling her in her “contaminated” bed. (486, 4.1.197-98) When he strikes Desdemona (487, 4.1.235ff), Lodovico, who has come with a letter announcing that Cassio has been installed in Othello’s place as commander in Cyprus, is there to see it. He assumes Othello is an abusive husband.

Act 4, Scene 2. (488-93, Desdemona tries to defend herself, Othello unmovable)

Although Desdemona has shown some Venetian subtlety, piety and honesty are the hallmarks of her character. But Othello has been warped into taking signs of virtue for their opposite: evidence of whoredom and cunning. From now on, everything she says “can and will be used against her”; she is under arrest without even knowing it. Her self-defense (489-90), while moving, is rather feeble: “By heaven, you do me wrong” and “No, as I am a Christian” (490, 4.2.83, 85). Simply being accused of certain offenses (such as adultery) so strips a person of others’ good opinion that it’s tantamount to conviction: guilty until proven innocent. (One thinks of Kafka’s The Trial or the trials of 1984—to come under suspicion is already to have no identity except that constituted by one’s presumed malefactions.) It’s common in Renaissance plays for virtuous characters to prove themselves helpless when abused by the wicked and the cunning. If your name is something like “Bonario,” as is the case for a good character in Ben Jonson’s Volpone, look out!

Emilia, Iago and Desdemona hash out the sorry state of affairs – Emilia’s enraged: “The Moor’s abused by some most villainous knave…” (491, 4.2.143ff), Iago unctuously in false accord, and Desdemona prayerful, saying, “If e’er my will did trespass ‘gainst his love … / Comfort forswear me” (491, 4.2.156ff).

Then Iago goes to work the already angry Roderigo, egging him on to murder Cassio and thereby keep Othello in Cyprus, along with Desdemona. (492-493)

Act 4, Scene 3. (493-95, Emilia’s strength, Desdemona’s loyalty)

While Desdemona can only sing a sad song of frustrated love (“Willow, willow” 494, 4.3.38ff), Emilia proves more capable. A fit opponent for her husband, Emilia tries to temper Desdemona’s moral absolutism, which rivals that of Othello: advocating female adultery, Emilia argues, “I do think it is their husbands’ faults / If wives do fall” (495, 4.3.84-85). Desdemona’s reply is a declaration of loyalty to Othello (495, 4.3.76-77), an attitude she will maintain even as Othello strangles her. Emilia’s bawdy pronouncements on gender relations are the stuff of Shakespearian comedy (one thinks of Portia and Nerissa’s “ring scheme” in The Merchant of Venice), but here they only deepen the sense of impending tragedy.

Innocence can seldom defend itself as eloquently or convincingly as evil can, even when the innocent person is as intelligent as Desdemona. One remembers Yeats’ line in “The Second Coming” that “the best lack all conviction” while “the worst are full of passionate intensity.” In Shakespeare, it isn’t usually true that the best people lack conviction—what they sometimes lack (consider Cordelia in King Lear as an example to set beside Desdemona) is the right phrase, the moxy to take advantage of opportunities to advance their good cause. And even if our good folks have considerable linguistic capacity and courage, the disposition we call “goodness” seldom, if ever, gains by rhetorical sleight—the problem seems intractable. Lear’s daughter Cordelia may be a bit stiff and clumsy as a speaker, but we all feel the rightness of her lament, “What shall poor Cordelia speak? Love, and be silent.” Or consider Machiavelli’s characterization of the problem: to paraphrase what he writes in Il Principe, “those who try to be virtuous in all things must come to grief among so many who aren’t virtuous.”

Act 5, Scene 1. (495-98, Cassio wounded by Iago, who then silences Roderigo)

Iago arranges for Roderigo to kill Cassio, but the bungler only manages to wound Cassio in the leg, and Iago stabs Roderigo to death lest he blab the truth. (495-97) Othello applauds from above: “Thou teachest me. Minion, your dear lies dead, / And your unblessed fate hies” (496, 5.1.34-35). Iago insistently blames Bianca for the entire ruckus. (498)

Act 5, Scene 2. (498-507 end, Othello smothers Desdemona, dies on own terms)

Othello resolves to kill Desdemona softly: “I’ll not shed her blood, / Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow, / …Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men” (498, 5.2.3-6). Desdemona attempts to defend herself from Othello’s crazed accusations and calls to beg forgiveness of God, but there’s no chance of success, and he smothers her (499-501) in two successive bouts. When Emilia enters, Desdemona’s dying words amount to an attempt to remove all blame from Othello: “Commend me to my kind lord” (501, 5.2.134).

Othello initially wrangles with Emilia and engages in some waffling and denial: “You heard her say herself it was not I” (501, 5.2.136). But the truth comes out in short order, and Othello infuriates Emilia by accusing Desdemona of adultery, thanks to Iago’s information. (502, 5.2.148ff) Things move quickly: Iago mortally wounds Emilia for revealing the truth about that fatal handkerchief (504) and Othello wounds Iago, who will not speak further about his motives for working so much misery: “Demand me nothing. What you know, you know” (505, 5.2.309). At last, with whatever small weapon remains to him – he had been stripped of his sword a bit earlier -- Othello makes himself an example in all strictness, preempting Venetian justice (In Cinthio’s Hecatommithi, Othello escapes, only to die shamefully later.) Othello bills himself extravagantly as a man who “loved not wisely but too well” (506, 5.2.353). His eloquence and elegance reassert themselves in his final struggle. Othello’s death seems right since his words and manner, as he understands, cannot make up for the destruction of a faithful wife. His epigrammatic self-description indicates a desire to control others’ interpretations of his downfall; perhaps that’s a tragic hero’s right (see Hamlet’s plea that Horatio should tell his story), but the ending remains disturbing. Othello had twice let loose the question, “Ha, ha, false to me?” (3.3.338, 4.1.190) as if especially incredulous that he should suffer the indignity of betrayal. My sympathy goes to Desdemona, not to Othello, in spite of his sincere horror at what Iago’s treachery has led him to do.

How should we assess Othello as a tragic hero? The moral quality of Shakespeare’s protagonists varies: Richard III is an effervescent villain, Macbeth an introspective man who appreciates from the outset the full evil of the path to power he contemplates; Brutus and Cassius betray dueling motives against Julius Caesar, noble and base; Romeo and Juliet die because of pitiable misunderstandings rather than grievous faults; King Lear is brought down in part by a fundamental confusion between his public and private selves; Hamlet the revenger undergoes strange alternations of stricken dawdling and rashness, Coriolanus isolates and debases himself in his patrician rage, etc.

Othello takes his place alongside them all, a warrior who becomes the victim of his own deeply ingrained all-or-nothing attitude towards everything and everyone, an exotic other who is the victim of cultural misunderstandings that put him at the mercy of subtle Iago. As I mentioned earlier, Othello’s fall from grace seems classical in that he is laid low and commits his deadly errors because of his noblest qualities: a soldierly, unwavering commitment to right conduct, fidelity and truth. His absolute generosity of spirit towards Desdemona, once put in question by Iago, gives way to cruel resolution and a refusal even to hear “the accused’s” honest plea. It may be that what underlies Othello’s downfall is in part the basic fact that if we turn heroic absolutist values over and view their obverse, what we will find is an equally strong counter-sentiment or counter-anxiety against which the heroic code is posited. Only those who act from some level of awareness of this unsettling relationship have any real chance of success: they are not so likely as others to be trapped by the productions of their own heart and imagination. Othello, it seems to me, lacks that awareness and never – not even after the worst is known and all lies exposed before him – shows an ability to mediate between the ideal and the anxiety that both underwrites and threatens it. Ideals are necessary and noble, but they’re also potentially lethal: “handle with care,” this play seems to advise us.

Week 10, Twelfth Night

2007-10-23T12:04:00.000-07:00

NOTES ON TWELFTH NIGHT

Updated to accord with the text in Greenblatt, Stephen et al., eds. The Norton Shakespeare. 2nd edition. Four-Volume Genre Paperback Set. Norton, 2008. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93152-5.

Act 1, Scene 1 (697-98, Orsino’s idealistic love, report of Olivia’s stylized mourning; my general comments on comic spirit)

The Duke and Olivia are both creatures of idealistic excess, determined to pursue their passions: he to love her, and she to mourn for her departed brother. Olivia, says Valentine in reporting back from her to Orsino, is determined in all she does for seven years “to season / A brother’s dead love, which she would keep fresh / And lasting in her sad remembrance” (698, 1.1.29-31). Orsino seems to understand that he and Olivia are kindred spirits. He claims at the beginning that he would surfeit himself with love to be rid of it, in the same way that overindulgence in food generates disgust with eating: “If music be the food of love, play on, / Give me excess of it that, surfeiting, / The appetite may sicken and so die” (697, 1.1.1-3). But that hardly seems to be the effect of his attitude. Rather, he seems to be “in love with love,” and his desire is to live perpetually in a realm removed from time, chance, and change. This attitude entails risk in that if persisted in too long, it will become a trap. Those who stylize and extend natural human passions certainly run this risk, and there’s no shortage of warnings to heed: the advice given by Claudius and Gertrude to the brooding prince in Act 1, Scene 2 of Hamlet may come from compromised sources, but it is reasonable counsel: mourning has its temporal and emotional limits, and when those aren’t respected, sorrow goes from being duly “obsequious” to transgressive.

But then, Illyria is the rarefied realm in which the lover Orsino and the mourner Olivia aim to live, so as Anne Barton (an editor of the Riverside Shakespeare) says, there’s no need for the characters in Twelfth Night to remove themselves to a Green World or any other magical space. They are in one already, and the ordinary laws of life don’t fully apply: Illyria seems to run strangely parallel with the order of human desire. Still, the harmony isn’t complete: Feste almost continually reminds us that this order is not the only one with which we must reckon: he neither affirms that desire can run parallel with the world nor denies it altogether. Viola’s strategy rivals his in its wisdom in that she commits her cause to time, neither affirming nor denying any possibility at the outset of the play. Later, Malvolio will remind us of this problem in a much less tolerant manner, and even that lord of misrule Sir Toby will show some wisdom about the dangers of pursuing one’s pleasure without check.

Act 1, Scene 2 (698-99, Captain and Viola reflect on hopes that Sebastian survived shipwreck; Viola’s decision to serve Orsino, commit to time)

Viola and the Sea Captain converse after her shipwreck, and he gives her hope that her brother Sebastian may have made it to shore: “I saw your brother, / Most provident in peril, bind himself—/ … / To a strong mast that lived upon the sea …” (698, 1.2.10-13). Viola admires what the Captain says about Olivia’s constancy to a lost brother (699, 1.2.32-37) and would serve her, but instead she decides to disguise herself and serve Duke Orsino. Perhaps Viola takes Olivia’s grief as a model for her own, should her brother turn out not to have survived. But the more compelling reason she gives for deciding to disguise herself is that she “… might not be delivered to the world, / Till I had made mine own occasion mellow, / What my estate is” (699, 1.2.38-40). Others may be after a more permanent refuge, but Viola plans to use her musical abilities to recommend her service to the Duke as a page, and for the rest, she commits her cause to the fullness of time: “What else may hap, to time I will commit” (699, 1.2.56). That willingness to commit one’s hopes to the fullness of time and the buffetings of chance, it seems, is a key attitude for Shakespeare’s comic heroes and heroines: it requires wisdom and generosity of spirit, openness to what life brings. Selfish characters lack these qualities and spend most of their time trying to control everything and everyone around them, a strategy that seldom yields happy results, even in a comic play.

Act 1, Scene 3 (700-02, Sir Toby’s liberated views, grooming of Sir Andrew as suitor to Olivia)

Sir Toby Belch operates on a different principle, one that becomes evident when he expresses his impatience with his niece Olivia: “What a plague means my niece to take the death of / her brother thus? I am sure care’s an enemy to life” (700, 1.3.1-2). When Maria tells him, “confine yourself within the modest / limits of order” (700, 1.3.6-7) in Olivia’s household, Sir Toby scoffs: “Confine? I’ll confine myself no finer than I am. These / clothes are good enough to drink in, and so be these boots too …” (700, 1.3.8-9).

We should consider Sir Toby’s function in the play in a broad context: the “Twelfth Night” referenced in the play’s title is January 5th, the last day of Christmas celebrations that begin on December 25th. This day is followed by the Feast of Epiphany on January 6th, which commemorates the visit of the Magi or three wise men to see the infant Jesus. (See Matthew 2:1-12). During the Middle Ages, at least, one of the feasts that occurred during this twelve-day period was the Feast of Fools, which is associated with a feast in celebration of the Circumcision of the Lord, Jan. 1st. I believe both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I banned this Feast of Fools out of Protestant disdain for the licentiousness with which it had come to be associated (it drew a lot of criticism on the Continent during the medieval period, too; indeed, the title and tradition go back to pre-Christian times: a lord of misrule presided over a weeklong December Roman holiday called Saturnalia, instituted as early as the third century BCE). In any case, for the Feast of Fools, a lord of misrule would be chosen to preside over this time of merrymaking and reversal.

Sir Toby Belch functions much like a lord of misrule in Shakespeare’ play, keeping alive for contemporary Christmas festivities the memory of this ancient pagan and early Christian tradition. Critics like Mikhail Bakhtin have studied such goings-on under the heading of the carnivalesque, in which the otherwise binding social structures of everyday life are comically mocked and satirized for a limited time, and then things go back to normal. Sir Toby’s role is apparent from the earlier lines I quoted, and it becomes still clearer when we see him engaging in jesting conversation with Sir Andrew Aguecheek.

Toby wants to send the dupe Andrew in pursuit of Olivia for his own fun and profit. He doesn’t have much respect for Andrew, and he doesn’t take the other characters too seriously, either. But a further point is that as far as Toby is concerned, one love object is as good as another; he doesn’t share the exclusivity we find in Orsino or, later, in Viola. Sir Toby sets Andrew after Maria as practice for his future pursuit of Olivia, eliciting only Sir Andrew’s foolish mistake in thinking that the word “accost” is the lady’s name (701, 1.3.44). True, Sir Andrew goes out of his way to prove Toby wrong, repeatedly making a fool of himself when his benefactor would like to turn him into a rake, and make a decent profit from gulling him over his hopes for Olivia as well. Nonetheless, Toby stands for a generalized pursuit of happiness, for a rounding off and leveling of discrimination and judgment in choosing the object of one’s desires. Desire, for him, is the key component in a pleasure-yielding system: the point is simply to be part of the system. I think the Riverside editor is right to say that Sir Toby exists on his own time and that he has banished ordinary time from his life. But he’s also quite accepting of his own and others’ imperfections, and he insists that Sir Andrew ought not hide his talents as a dancer but should instead use them to the fullest extent: “Wherefore are these things hid?… / Is it a world to hide virtues in?” (702, 1.3.105-10)

Act 1, Scene 4 (702-03, Orsino commissions Viola/Cesario to woo Olivia for him: a trap for Viola)

Intimacy strikes up immediately between Duke Orsino and Viola (disguised as “Cesario”). He believes his suit will prosper if he carries it forwards with Viola/Cesario as his intermediary. The youth’s fresh appearance, he supposes, will redound to his credit: “It shall become thee well to act my woes – / She will attend it better in thy youth” (703, 1.4.25-26). Comically, Orsino adds a comment about Viola/Cesario’s feminine appearance: “Diana’s lip/Is not more smooth and rubious; thy small pipe/Is as the maiden’s organ, shrill and sound,/And all is semblative a woman’s part” (703 1.4.30-33). Viola realizes immediately what a trap her gender disguise has become: “I’ll do my best/To woo your lady – [aside] yet a barful strife –/Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife” (703, 1.4.39-41).

Act 1, Scene 5 (703-10, Feste proves Olivia a fool; Malvolio insults Feste; Olivia falls for proxy suitor Viola/Cesario)

We are introduced to the rest of the main characters: Olivia, Maria her maid, and Feste. Feste’s initial words are important because they show us yet another perspective on the sway of the passions and the imperfections to which human beings are liable: “God give them wisdom that have it; and those that / are fools, let them use their talents” (704, 1.5.13-14), he says to Maria, implying that a fool should strive to become even more foolish. But Feste’s foolery turns out be a species of wisdom, and wisdom sets a person apart, though not in hostility. We will find that other characters are more immediately subject to the vicissitudes of that biblical dynamic duo “time and chance” than is Feste, and they must shift as they can, while Feste himself remains a constant in the play. His wisdom consists partly in being able to formulate claims such as the one he offers Olivia in an attempt to prove she deserves his title: “Anything/ that’s mended is but patched. Virtue that transgresses is but/patched with sin, and sin that amends is but patched with vir-/tue. If that this simple syllogism will serve, so; if it will not, what/remedy? As there is no true cuckold but calamity, so beauty’s a/flower” (704, 1.5.40-45). Feste considers Olivia a fellow fool because of her over-grieving for the loss of her brother. In her quest for a perfectly stylized kind of mourning, this lovely absolutist risks the passage of her beauty, in itself a remarkable if transient thing of perfection. Feste seems to understand that in this saucy world there is no permanent strategy to be found; there is only mending of virtues with vices and vice versa; there is accommodation and negotiation between one person and another, and (to use a modern term from economics) always one must consider the “opportunity cost” of one’s choices, one’s actions.

Malvolio soon comes on the scene as a Puritan killjoy: “I marvel your ladyship takes delight in such a barren / rascal. I saw him put down the other day with an ordinary fool/that has no more brain than a stone” (705, 1.5.71-73), is his pronouncement to Olivia regarding Feste. Olivia shows that she understands Malvolio’s excessive reliance on rigid virtue: he is filled with self-love, she says, and his earnestness is a bore: “There is no slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail; nor no railing in a known discreet man, though he do nothing but reprove” (705, 1.5.80-82).

Olivia also seems to be leading Orsino on: she’s curious to see what his next move as an importunate, fantastical suitor will be: “We’ll once more hear Orsino’s embassy” (707, 1.5.148). His new intermediary, Viola/Cesario, wins Olivia’s interest immediately and her love almost at first sight; she is struck with the youth’s beauty and graceful ways, in the classical manner of attraction: what happens to her is sudden and she has no control over it. As Malvolio says, Viola/Cesario is “in standing water between / boy and man” (706, 1.5.141-42). This liminality is probably in part what makes Viola/Cesario attractive to Olivia, as I suggested above. The outcome of the Duke’s comic miscalculation is predictable: Olivia goes for the “eye candy” Orsino has proffered and not for him. Orsino has given Viola/Cesario license to establish a sense of intimacy with Olivia, and it is just this intimacy that bonds people together and makes them apt to fall in love. What initially appeals to Olivia, I believe, is the freshness or the newness of Viola/Cesario: the fact that “he” still seems to be all potential, a being still to be determined. The Countess is open to something new, and the bond of intimacy is made very quickly, probably when Viola/Cesario says at the beginning of their conversation, “Good beauties, let me sustain no scorn; I am very / ‘countable, even to the least sinister usage” (707, 1.5.155-56).

The passage in which Olivia unveils her face at the request of Viola/Cesario is worth notice: “we will draw / the curtain and show you the picture,” says the Countess, and she goes on to describe her face as a portrait that will “endure wind and weather” (708, 1.5.204-05, 208). This is true enough, although it makes sense to hear Feste’s song at the play’s end as a comment on the limitations of such endurance: “the wind and the rain” (750, 5.1.377) are always at work, breaking down what seemed timeless, and we are put in mind of Feste’s earlier conversation with Olivia, in which he had said beauty is a perishing flower (704, 1.5.45).

As the conversation continues, Viola/Cesario’s rhetorical boldness shows Olivia the way to give in to her own passions: “If I did love you in my master’s flame, / With such a suff’ring, such a deadly life, / In your denial I would find no sense; / I would not understand it” (708, 1.5.233-36). By the end of the scene, Olivia will be madly in love, and unable to comprehend Viola/Cesario’s reluctance, so she will have to turn to the stratagem of the ring (709, 1.5.270-76) to ensure the future presence of this new object of her desire. Her sudden change of heart shows in her final lines of the scene: “Fate, show thy force. Ourselves we do not owe, / What is decreed must be; and be this so” (710, 1.5.280-81).

What keeps Olivia from loving the Duke anyway, aside from the rather flimsy one of dedication to her brother (which lasts about three minutes once she meets Viola/Cesario)? I don’t know that the play really explains her rejection of him, except perhaps that he’s too available and too obviously “after” her. All she says is that Duke Orsino is “A gracious person; but yet I cannot love him./He might have took his answer long ago” (708, 1.5.231-32). One theme of interest in Twelfth Night is its exploration of how we choose our erotic objects, or how they choose us. Discrimination and rejection are two main ways of eventually finding one’s favored object of desire, and I think we are given to understand that Olivia considers herself and Orsino too alike in their tendencies towards idealistic extremes to make a good match.

Act 2, Scene 1 (710-10, Antonio forges bond with Sebastian, will follow him to Orsino’s court)

Antonio, who had rescued Sebastian from the ocean earlier, instantly forms an unbreakable bond with him. Antonio insists he will follow Sebastian to the Duke’s Court, no matter what the danger to himself: “But come what may, I do adore thee so / That danger shall seem sport, and I will go” (710, 2.1.41-42).

Act 2, Scene 2 (711-11, Olivia’s ring sets Viola/Cesario thinking about gender, frailty, frustration)

By this time, Viola is in a state almost as extreme as that of Olivia and Duke Orsino since she loves the latter and is loved by the former in the guise of Cesario. I don’t know that Viola has any more control over the course of events than others in this play, but some advantage, it’s reasonable to suggest, stems from her disguise and the perspective it lends. This is by no means a comedy of the humors* but it is a comedy of our inevitable frailty in the presence of strong passions. First, Viola sees that her adoption of a gender disguise is a trap that’s leading her towards frustration: “Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness / Wherein the pregnant enemy does much” (711, 2.2.25-26). Secondly, she is able to generalize from her own experience: “How easy is it for the proper false / In women’s waxen hearts to set their forms! / Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we, / For such as we are made of, such we be” (711, 2.2.27-30). The “we” here is “women,” but it isn’t hard to extend the point to capture a sense of the fragility and changeableness of general humanity.

This ability does not, however, make it possible for Viola to extricate herself from the difficult situation she is in: “O Time, thou must untangle this, not I; / It is too hard a knot for me t’ untie!” (40-41)

*Footnote: the theory of the humors traces back to the Greek physician Hippocrates (c. 460-370 BCE): the four humors or bodily fluids are black bile (associated with the element earth), yellow bile (fire), phlegm (water), and blood (air). A balanced amount of these fluids in the body maintained health and good temperament, while an excess of the first-mentioned (black bile) could make a person depressed or irritable; excess of the second (yellow bile) angry, ill-tempered; excess of the third (phlegm) taciturn, unemotional; excess of the fourth (blood) amorous or bold to the point of lechery or foolhardiness.

Act 2, Scene 3 (711-15, Malvolio interrupts Toby & Co.’s reveling, Maria hatches letter-plot)

This is another comic scene between Toby, Andrew, and Feste. Toby has been drinking and jesting as usual. First comes a delightful parody of philosophical discourse: Toby: “To be / up after midnight and to go to bed then is early; so that to go / to bed after midnight is to go to bed betimes. Does not our lives / consist of the four elements?” (712, 2.3.5-8) To which Andrew replies, “Faith, so they say, but I think it rather consists of / eating and drinking” (712, 2.3.9-10). Next comes a call for some music. Feste’s song suggests that love sees only the joy of the present, that deferral and indeed any attempt to banish time are of no account: “In delay there lies no plenty, / Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty. / Youth’s a stuff will not endure” (713, 2.3. to gain insight into the fragility of common humanity to gain insight into the fragility of common humanity 46-48). Feste sanctions neither prudence nor pastoral idylls such as Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.”

Sir Toby, Maria, and Andrew are offended at Malvolio’s killjoy demands that they stop making so much merriment in Olivia’s home: “Do ye make an alehouse of my lady’s/house, that ye squeak out your coziers’ catches without any/mitigation or remorse of voice? Is there no respect of place,/persons, nor time in you?” (713, 2.3.78-83). Toby’s put-down of Malvolio is a classic: “Art anymore/than a steward? Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous there / shall be no more cakes and ale?” (713, 2.3.102-04) Sic Semper to all prigs! Maria’s letter scheme to get revenge against Malvolio wins the admiration of Toby and Andrew. Malvolio is easy prey because he is vain about his looks and seems to think he deserves a quick promotion to a higher social rank: he is in deadly and permanent earnest about the Twelfth Night license to change one’s rank. Maria says she will succeed because this puritan hypocrite is “so crammed, as he thinks, with excellencies, that it is his/grounds of faith that all that look on him love him; and on/that device in him will my revenge find notable cause to work” (714-15 2.3.134-36). Her plan is as follows: “I will drop in his way some obscure epistles of love,/wherein by the colour of his beard, the shape of his leg, the/manner of his gait, the expressure of his eye, forehead, and/complexion, he shall find himself most feelingly personated. I/can write very like my lady your niece …” (715, 2.3.138-42).

Andrew, however, is most concerned with his suit to Olivia failing and leaving him out of funds: “If I cannot recover your niece, I am a foul way/out” (715, 2.3.163-64). This makes Andrew easy prey for Sir Toby.

Act 2, Scene 4 (715-18, Orsino and Viola/Cesario debate male/female love; Feste sings of love/death)

Viola/Cesario and the Duke discuss love matters, and he opens up to her while Feste plays some music for them: Orsino admits that men’s love is less constant than women’s love: “Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,/More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn,/Than women’s are” (716, 2.4.32-34). But the Duke is playing the importunate suitor, and his subsequent remarks are contradictory. He insists that no woman could possibly love as strongly as he loves Olivia: “There is no woman’s sides/Can bide the beating of so strong a passion” (717, 2.4.91-92). To this, Viola/Cesario alludes cryptically to her own love for Orsino, and insists that “We men may say more, swear more, but indeed/Our shows are more than will; for still we prove/Much in our vows, but little in our love” (718, 2.4.115-17).

In between this argument’s halves, Feste’s song connects love with death, the ultimate in consequences: “Come away, come away death,/And in sad cypress let me be laid./Fie away, fie away breath,/I am slain by a fair cruel maid” (716, 2.4.50-53), and he warns the Duke afterwards, “pleasure will be paid, one time or / another” (717, 2.4.69).

Act 2, Scene 5 (718-22, Malvolio finds Maria’s letter and takes the bait: his selfish delusions peak)

The conspirators turn Malvolio into a fool in a reverie. Maria is certain that the puritan will become “a contemplative idiot” once he gets wind of the letter (718, 2.5.16-17), and she isn’t disappointed. Even before he spies out the letter, Malvolio is waxing hopeful: “To be Count Malvolio!” (719, 2.5.30) and “to have the humour of state and …/telling them I know my place, as I/would they should do theirs …” (719, 2.5.47-49). Things go from absurd to more absurd once the letter comes into reading range: Malvolio muses on the inscription, “I may command where I adore,/But silence like a Lucrece knife/With bloodless stroke my heart doth gore./M.O.A.I. doth sway my life’ (720, 2.5.94-97) and goes on to ponder the significance of “Some are born great, some achieve / greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon’em” (721, 2.5.126-27). To succeed, Malvolio need only don yellow stockings and smile like a fool (721, 2.5.132-34, 152-53).

Sir Toby predicts that Malvolio, when finally disabused of his delusions of grandeur, will run mad (722, 2.5.168-69). This hyper-critical moralist has become just another foolish lover. He’s a minor comic version of Euripides’ Pentheus in The Bacchantes, to be destroyed by the Dionysian revelers whose fun he tried to tamp down. (Except that Pentheus didn’t get to wear cross-garters and yellow stockings.) Indeed, a hint of violence had entered the picture early with the mention of Lucretia: Malvolio recognized the letter as Olivia’s because the seal bore an impression of Lucrece, the famous Roman wife who killed herself after being raped by Sextus Tarquinius, the son of the last Etruscan king Tarquinius Superbus: “By your leave, / wax—soft, and the impressure her Lucrece, with which she / uses to seal—tis my lady” (720, 2.5.83-85). Malvolio is no Tarquin, but he is prideful, and he intends to move beyond his proper station in life (that of a steward) by means of a most improper and self-aggrandizing suit to his employer.

Malvolio has been convinced by Maria’s bogus letter that “greatness” has simply been “thrust upon him,” if only he will make the proper gestures and dress right. A darker impression might be that like so many deniers of life, Malvolio means to set up a rival order of perfection against the imperfect world around us all; what else is that but pride, a self-deluded desire for autonomy to cover one’s fear and emptiness?

Act 3, Scene 1 (722-26, Viola/Cesario assesses Feste’s wit, Olivia confesses her love to Viola/Cesario, who answers her with a gender-riddle)

In conversation with Viola/Cesario, Feste declares himself not the Countess Olivia’s fool but her “corrupter of words” (723, 3.1.31), and when he’s through making his jests, Viola points out that playing the role of fool requires much perceptiveness: “This fellow is wise enough to play the fool, / And to do that well craves a kind of wit. / He must observe their mood on whom he jests, / The quality of persons, and the time …” (723, 3.1.53-56). In Feste, “folly” is appropriate: it’s his way of maintaining perspective in a strange and contradictory world and it allows him to do something like what a courtier must do: engage with various people at a level and in a manner that suits them and him. But in those who are wise in the usual way, folly and word-hashing may bring them into discredit.

Olivia continues to wear her passion on her skirt-sleeve. She admits to Viola/Cesario that the ring business was a device meant to augment a sense of intimacy between herself and the youth: “I did send, / After the last enchantment you did here, / A ring in chase of you” (724, 3.1.103-05), and asks, “Have you not set mine honour at the stake / …?” (725, 3.1.110) To Olivia’s confession that “Nor wit nor reason can my passion hide” (725, 3.1.143), Viola/Cesario can only speak in riddles thanks to the bind into which her gender-disguising has put her, giving only this frustrating response to love-stricken Olivia: “I have one heart, one bosom, and one truth, / And that no woman has, nor never none / Shall mistress be of it save I alone” (726, 3.1.149-51). Riverside editor Anne Barton is right to suggest that Viola’s disguise doesn’t exactly liberate her in the same way that, say, Rosalind’s disguise does in As You Like It. It buys her some time and affords her some perspective, but it isn’t exactly freedom to experiment at will that Viola gains in her disguise as “Cesario.”

Act 3, Scene 2 (726-27, Sir Toby eggs on Sir Andrew: reflections on male valor)

Fabian stirs up Sir Andrew (726, 3.2.15-16, 22-24), and Sir Toby shows his contempt for Sir Andrew’s lack of valor here, admitting that he’s taken him for a considerable sum already: to Fabian he says, “I have been dear to him, lad, some two thousand / strong or so” (727, 3.2.46-47). Andrew is more his quarry than his protégé. The following advice Toby gives Andrew is worth quoting: “Taunt him with the license of ink. If thou ‘thou’st’ him some / thrice, it shall not be amiss, and as many lies as will lie in thy / sheet of paper … / set ’em down. Go about it” (727, 3.2.37-40). We can find genuine exemplars of male heroism in Shakespeare (Prince Hal and Hotpur in I Henry IV, for instance, or Macduff in Macbeth), but here, as elsewhere, there’s strong awareness that male posturing is an ancient profession: the semblance of valor often substitutes successfully for the thing itself. Shakespeare’s is a world amply populated with what Rosalind in As You Like It calls “mannish cowards” who stare down the world until it blinks: they “outface it with their semblances” (642 Norton Comedies, 1.3.115-16).

Act 3, Scene 3 (727-28, Antonio in town to help Sebastian, gives him purse to guard)

Antonio remains a faithful friend to Sebastian, and has followed him to town save him from danger in spite of the peril to himself since, as he explains, “Once in a sea-fight ’gainst the Count his galleys / I did some service” (728, 3.3.26-27). Antonio gives his new friend his purse to guard (728, 3.3.38): another act indicative of a strong bond between the two.

Act 3, Scene 4 (729-736, Malvolio makes his pitch to Olivia; Sir Andrew spurred to duel with Viola/Cesario; Olivia confesses her love still more intensely to Viola/Cesario, Antonio assists Viola/Cesario and is arrested, betrayed; Viola takes heart at Antonio’s confused mention of Sebastian)

Malvolio, now drawn entirely beyond himself and vulnerable, makes his unintentionally comic pitch to Countess Olivia, which consists mainly of smiling bizarrely and mentioning with pride his yellow stockings (729-30), and will be carted off to a dark cell as a madman. Olivia professes the greatest concern for the poor lunatic’s welfare: “Good Maria, let this fellow be looked to…. / …. I would not have him miscarry for the half of my dowry” (730, 3.4.57-59). Oddly, though, she will forget about him until nearly the end of the play. Malvolio has no idea how much trouble he’s in, and believes his suit has been a fantastic success, thanks to Jove’s good will: “nothing that can be can come between me / and the full prospect of my hopes (730, 3.4.74-75).

At this point, Sir Toby thinks he can play out the jest at his own pace: “Come, we’ll have him in a dark room and bound. My / niece is already in the belief that he’s mad. We may carry it / thus for our pleasure and his penance till our very pastime, / tired out of breath, / prompt us to have mercy on him …” (731, 3.4.121-24).

Sir Andrew is now spurred on to challenge Viola/Cesario as a rival suitor. As so often, Shakespeare makes fun of masculine pretensions to high honor and mastery of violence: neither Sir Andrew nor Viola/Cesario is any kind of fighter, but at least the latter knows better than to suppose otherwise. Words take the place of violence. Sir Toby advises Andrew, “draw, as thou drawest, swear horrible; for it comes to pass / oft that a terrible oath, / with a swaggering accent sharply / twanged off, gives manhood more approbation than ever / proof itself would have earned him” (732, 3.4.158-61). Part of Sir Toby’s fun will be to cure the malady described by means of a homeopathic remedy: putting two pretenders together in a ridiculous duel. Sir Toby is enjoying himself, and devises to deliver Sir Andrew’s challenge in person (ignoring the letter) and thereby “drive the gentleman [Cesario] … / into a most hideous opinion of his rage, skill, fury, and / impetuosity. This will so fright them both that they will kill one / another by the look , like cockatrices” (732, 3.4.170-73). After practically begging Fabian and Sir Toby to mollify the fearsome Sir Andrew, Viola puns to herself, “Pray God defend me. A little thing would make / me tell them how much I lack of a man” (734, 3.4.268-69). Viola recognizes that her disguise is more than ever a trap: this situation can’t go on much longer.

While all this planning is going on, Olivia admits her fear to Viola/Cesario that she has “said too much unto a heart of stone, / And laid mine honour too unchary out” (732, 3.4.178-79). She has risked her honor, but perhaps more importantly, to speak this way is to risk being confronted with the reverberation of one’s own unrestrained passion as a kind of madness.

Antonio soon arrives and takes it upon himself to maintain Viola/Cesario’s part in the quarrel: “I for him defy you” (735, 3.4.279), whereupon he is challenged by an incredulous Sir Toby and then arrested for piracy by the Duke’s officers (735, 3.4.283-84, 291-92). Drawn into the craziness that is Illyria, Antonio believes Sebastian is betraying him because Viola/Cesario won’t hand over the purse Antonio had given Sebastian a while back, now that he needs the money in it for bail (735, 3.4.312). “Thou hast, Sebastian, done good feature shame” is the only utterance Antonio can summon in his amazement (736, 3.4.330). Even so, the mention of Sebastian is useful to Viola, who now gains some hope that her lost brother has survived: “Prove true, imagination, O prove true, / That I, dear brother, be now ta’en for you!” (736, 3.4.339-40)

Act 4, Scene 1 (736-38, Sebastian is drawn into Illyrian topsy-turvy: Olivia invites him home)

Sebastian enters and Feste is surprised to hear him deny his identity as Cesario (736-37, 4.1.4-7). Sir Toby nearly comes to blows with Sebastian after Sir Andrew has struck the fellow, and is only stopped by Olivia, who dismisses Toby from the field (737, 4.1.39, 41). Olivia invites Sebastian to her house (738, 4.1.50), and with that invitation he is formally drawn into Illyria’s topsy-turvyness, just as Antonio was in the previous scene. His wonderment will only increase at the end of the third scene.

Act 4, Scene 2 (738-40, Feste sports as Sir Topas with confined Malvolio: Pythagoras and post-mortems; Sir Toby is worried about carrying the jest too far, risking Olivia’s anger)

Maria and Feste make more sport of the confine Malvolio. Feste joins the fun as an examiner of Malvolio, Sir Topas (a name probably borrowed from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales). Feste is a fool by trade, so we are treated to a dialogue between a supposed madman and a fool, with the latter easily gaining the upper hand. Feste’s use of belief in Pythagorean transmigration as a touchstone for sanity is priceless: when Malvolio refuses to believe that “the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a / bird” (739, 4.2.45-46), Feste imperiously tells him, “Remain thou still in darkness. Thou shalt / hold th’ opinion of Pythagoras ere I will allow of thy wits, and / fear to kill a woodcock lest thou dispossess the soul of thy gran- / dam” (739, 4.2.50-53). This makes sense because after all, Malvolio’s pride caused him to denigrate those below him in rank, and Pythagoras’ doctrine implies respect for all creatures great and small. We may add hypocrisy to Malvolio’s petty crimes since, as a denier of life and upholder of rigid notions about rank and propriety, he’s quick to jump at the chance to improve his own condition. Viola commits her cause to time and reaps a reward, but Malvolio’s ill-intentioned leap nets him only isolation and mockery. Finally, Feste taunts Malvolio with the view that he won’t believe anyone is or isn’t mad until he’s seen their exposed brains after death. For him, the jury is always out on a person’s sanity until that person dies (740, 4.2.107-08). It was a letter that got Malvolio in trouble in the first place, and Feste now honors an anguished call for “a candle, and pen, ink, and paper” (740, 4.2.75) that the prisoner may make his plight known to Olivia. Feste leaves Malvolio with a mocking song, “Adieu, goodman devil” (740, 4.2.122).

Sir Toby, however, is starting to worry about his niece’s good opinion. He says to Feste and Maria, “I would we were well rid of this / knavery. If he may be conveniently delivered, I would he were, / for I am now so far in offence with my niece that I cannot / pursue with any safety this sport to the upshot” (739, 4.2.60-63). Toby realizes that his term of office as lord of misrule has a limit, and he doesn’t want to lose his place with the countess. A jest too long continued becomes cruelty, not sport or sanctioned payback.

Act 4, Scene 3 (741-41, Olivia abruptly proposes and Sebastian abruptly accepts)

In the third scene, Sebastian abruptly agrees to marry Olivia after she abruptly and secretly proposes to him. He can hardly believe his good fortune, but accepts: “I am ready to distrust mine eyes / And wrangle with my reason that persuades me / To any other trust but that I am mad, / Or else the lady’s mad. Yet if ’twere so / She could not sway her house, command her followers …” (741, 4.3.13-17).

Act 5, Scene 1 (741-50, Viola/Sebastian reunite; Orsino/Viola, Sebastian/Olivia together; Toby/Maria; Malvolio rails, is upbraided, exits; Feste’s last song: wind and rain, fool’s perspective)

Antonio is trotted out before Duke Orsino as a prisoner, and this prisoner reproaches Viola/Cesario, whom of course he takes for Sebastian, over the bail money he supposedly withheld (743, 5.1.71-73). Orsino tells Antonio he must be insane since Viola/Cesario has been his page for three months (743, 5.1.94). Next, Olivia reproaches Viola/Cesario for her alleged failure to “keep promise” with the agreement she has come to with Sebastian (743, 5.1.98). The Duke is still upset with the obdurate Olivia: “Why should I not, had I the heart to do it, / Like to th’ Egyptian thief, at point of death / Kill what I love …” (744, 5.1.113-15) and even more upset with Viola/Cesario, whom he suspects has stolen Olivia from him altogether since she calls the youth “husband” (744, 5.1.138).

As if things couldn’t get any more confusing, in rushes Sir Andrew calling for a surgeon to treat Sir Toby, who has been slightly injured by Sebastian (745, 5.1.168ff). Now the play’s misrecognition dilemmas begin to resolve since Viola/Cesario is sincerely confused at the accusations Sir Andrew levels: “Why do you speak to me? I never hurt you” (745, 5.1.181). Sir Toby rails at Sir Andrew, calling him “an ass-head, and a coxcomb, and a / knave; a thin-faced knave, a gull” (746, 5.1.198-99), and then in comes Sebastian himself, solicitous of Olivia for his lateness considering their vows (746, 5.1.206-07). Orsino is astonished at the likeness between Viola/Cesario and Sebastian: “One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons, / A natural perspective, that is and is not” (746, 5.1.208-09). These two proceed to recognize each other for certain by means of recollections about their father from Messaline (746-47, 5.1.219-41). The reconciliation leaves Duke Orsino and Viola, and Olivia and Sebastian, free to marry.

But there’s one final matter to take care of: Malvolio. Feste and Fabian enter with the letter that Malvolio has penned and Feste reads it in the assembled company’s presence: “By the Lord, madam, you wrong me, and the / world shall know it…” (748, 5.1.292-99). At last, the man himself enters on a sour note, demanding to know why he has been so abused: “Why have you suffered me to be imprisoned, / Kept in a dark house, visited by the priest, / And made the most notorious geck and gull / That e’er invention played on? Tell me why?” (749, 5.1.330-33) The conspirators confess, with Feste invoking “the whirligig of time” that “brings in his revenges” (749, 5.1.364), and reminding Malvolio how he had slandered him to Olivia as “a barren rascal” (749, 5.1.363) even before the insults that sparked Maria’s letter-plot in Act 2, Scene 3. What he’s really invoking is something like what we today would generally call “bad karma,” or in a Christian context, the thriftiness of the economy of sin: ill thoughts and deeds, as Saint Augustine taught, establishes its own patterns; we end up with a bitter harvest from the bad seed we have sown. The conspirators are forgiven by everyone but Malvolio, who swears to be revenged on them all (749, 5.1.365), prompting Olivia to send after him to “entreat him to a peace” (749, 5.1.365). It’s not unusual in Shakespearian comedy to leave some character as the odd man out at play’s end. For example, the melancholy Monsieur Jacques in As You Like It can hardly be expected to transform into a carefree, upbeat character just because almost everyone else is happy at the play’s conclusion. But there’s no question of punishing Jacques. In sum, I don’t believe Twelfth Night is a problem comedy just because of Malvolio’s sour exit: the providence that seems to guide this play is hardly as rough-hewn as the one that we may see at work in Hamlet, where Polonius is killed by mishap, poor Ophelia runs mad and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern “go to it” in England. We find out that Sir Toby has married Maria (749, 5.1.350). Viola agrees to wed the Duke, and Olivia has already made her vows with Sebastian.

Feste’s song ends the play (750, 5.1.376-95), and it would be worthwhile to consider the role his songs play in advancing or reflecting upon the action and characters in Twelfth Night. For now, I’ll just consider the way the final song sums up the play. “The rain it raineth every day,” sings Feste, and his lyrics invoke the increasing consequentiality even of “trifles” as a person grows to maturity. The “knaves and thieves” will find themselves left out in the wind and the rain, when men “shut their gate.” Feste’s role, that of a fool, is perhaps the only stable one in a world turned upside down; oftentimes, the fool alone is able to maintain and offer perspective. Others in this play risk more, and gain more—especially Olivia and Viola, most likely because they have sufficient inward value to begin with, and trial by experience proves and augments that value. (The shallow Sir Andrews of the play’s world end up worse off by the same trial.) Feste, however, remains the observant, wise man he already was: he is inside the play looking around, but also inside the play looking outward at us, the audience, and he seems almost to be one of us at times. The conclusion of Feste’s song brings in a note of metadrama: “we’ll strive to please you every day” (750, 5.1.395), he says. We can always come back to the theater, where, of course, the play-realm will mediate between its own freedom and the world of time and consequence, but Feste will remind us yet again that soon we must leave. Perhaps, then, theater is among the “patches” Feste had mentioned back in the first act (704, 1.5.40-45): what it offers by way of insight and refuge may be temporary and partial rather than permanent and absolute, but that doesn’t mean it’s of no value or not worth pursuing. The foolery in Shakespeare is seldom, to borrow a line from King Lear, “altogether fool.” Feste and his kind are excellent embodiments of the suppleness and playfulness that constitute a big part of the value in dramatic exploration.

The key concern of this play set during a time of merrymaking and reversal may be how we “fools of time” may gain perspective. (The phrase is from Sonnet 124: “To this I witness call the fools of time, / Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime”) There is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance,” as the preacher tells us in Ecclesiastes 3:4. Everything has its allotted time and purpose under heaven. We have encountered a number of forms of stylized or excessive passion in Twelfth Night: Sir Toby’s irresponsible mirth, Duke Orsino’s romantic grandiosity, Countess Olivia’s projected long period of mourning, Malvolio’s narrow-souled, extreme ambition and self-regard. Perhaps most or all of these approaches are attempts to deny or even annul time and consequentiality. Feste’s music and witty observations both invoke the inevitability of time and the sway of our foolish passions, and they’re probably as close to “another way” as we are going to find in Shakespeare: I mean they offer us a way to gain something like permanent right-side-up perspective outside the realms of time and passion. Theater, as noted in Feste’s epilogue, may be another way of attaining such perspective, and just as Feste reminds us of the coming and going of nature’s vast seasonal cycles (the wind and the rain keep up their activity through the ages, though men shut their doors against it), we are told that while we must pass from the theater, we can always return so long as we live. Theater has that regenerative power, though of course whether or not the result of our many returns is wisdom is another question. The play leaves the characters in the fantasy-bubble Illyria, a political order that has largely made good on our opening suspicion that it exists to serve its citizens’ fondest desires, and there’s no talk of their leaving.

Document timestamp: 11/4/2011 7:21 PM

Week 09, Hamlet

2007-10-16T12:03:00.000-07:00

General 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 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.)

Scene-by-Scene Notes on Hamlet.

Act 1, Scene 1.

The watchmen and Horatio offer some surmises; at line 69, Horatio suspects that the ghost’s appearance “bodes some strange eruption to our state.” They’re on watch because young Fortinbras is planning to take back the territory his father had lost to Hamlet Sr. Barnardo, too, 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” (109-11). They feel foreboding, a sickness at heart; but they have only general knowledge, and Horatio’s idea at 171 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.

Hamlet’s grief seems unpolitic, 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 “an auspicious, and a dropping eye” (11), 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” (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 to some extent the new king is entitled to be annoyed with the excessive grief and surliness of Prince Hamlet. As Claudius points out at line 15, 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?” (72-73, 75)

Soon thereafter, Hamlet speaks his first soliloquy, lamenting that “the Everlasting had not fix’d / His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter” (131-32), reproaching the general run of females in the person of Gertrude—”Frailty, thy name is woman!” (145)—and profoundly disparaging Claudius in comparison with Hamlet, Sr. The latter was, says the Prince, “Hyperion” to Claudius’ “satyr” (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” (135-36), one inhabited entirely by “things rank and gross in nature” (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” (159). Privately, things are different: he already seems to suspect that “some foul play” (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” (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!” at 254) and essentially private thoughts about the suspicious loss of a dear father.

Act 1, Scene 3.

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. 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. 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.

Act 1, Scene 4.

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” (18) 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” (24) 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 . . . ?” (51-53)

Act 1, Scene 5.

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!” (40) 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 “actually exists,” 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” (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 ” (82) be redeemed from its current status as “A couch for luxury and damned incest” (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” (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” (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!” (188-89). 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” (171-72). 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.

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, 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” (99) seems reasonable, based upon what Ophelia has told him about Hamlet’s bizarre sighing and strange state of undress.

Act 2, Scene 2.

Everybody’s favorite nobodies Rosencrantz and Guildenstern make their first appearance in the play, 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. Polonius’ insistence that he has “found / The very cause of Hamlet’s lunacy” (48-49) excites Claudius, who says, “O, speak of that, that do I long to hear” (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. . .” (162-63). 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” (205-06).

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” (292), 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 (well, 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!” (303-07) He says all this only to bring the whole “majestical roof” (301) down on our heads, reminding us that we are but the most refined dust in the cosmos, a “quintessence of dust” (308). 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 .

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. 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. 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? 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” (598-603). 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” (589-92), he invests much hope in his augmentations to The Murder of Gonzago as a means of discovering certainty in the guilty visage of one King Claudius. 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.

The King tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to encourage this new business of the players’ coming to Elsinore . Perhaps it will draw out the reason for Hamlet’s eccentric behavior. He and Polonius will conceal themselves to hear Hamlet talk with Ophelia. 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. At 118, Hamlet denies that he ever established any relationship with Ophelia, that he ever made any promises. At line 129, Hamlet asks Ophelia where her father is, 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 at 148 he utters the words that frighten Claudius: “I say we shall have no moe marriages, etc.” Claudius derives from this outburst the thought that Hamlet’s disturbed state of mind is “not like madness” (164), and so he must be watched even more closely. The Prince’s “melancholy,” says Claudius (whose guilt had already been spurred by Polonius’ unwitting words at 46-48 about “sugar[ing] o’er” the most damnable deeds with piousness), “sits on brood” (165) over something still darker, and that is what he finds most troubling about the young man’s hostility towards him.

Act 3, Scene 2.

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” (21-24). 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. 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” (234-35). 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. The dumb show soon follows—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!” (222-23). 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!” (269) 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 (364), 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” (390-91). 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” (395-96).

Act 3, Scene 3.

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 cess of majesty / Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw / What’s near it with it” (15-16). 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” (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 tries to confront “the visage of offense” (47), 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 nev er to heaven go” (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” (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.

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” (28-29). She seems genuinely shocked at the suggestion. Hamlet has little time now for “wretched, rash, intruding fool[s]” (31) 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” (69-70). His efforts succeed without too much trouble since Gertrude cries, “Thou turn’st my [eyes into my very] soul” (89). 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!” (93-94) The obsession is so deep that the Ghost must step in to admonish Hamlet about his “almost blunted purpose” (111) 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” (172-75). 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” (205-09). This is an odd exclamation since Hamlet knows only that he’s being “marshal[ed] to knavery” (205) of some sort; he can’t know the precise plan, but speaks with almost military precision, promising to delve “one yard below their mines” and turn their evil back upon them.

Act 4, Scene 1.

The King is by now “full of discord and dismay” (45) at the turn of events; he knows Hamlet’s sword was meant for him.

Act 4, Scene 2.

Hamlet calls Rosencrantz a “sponge” (12) who “soaks up the King’s countenance, his rewards, his authorities” (15-16). As for Claudius, he is “a thing,” says Hamlet, “of nothing” (28, 30). His odd remark that “The body is with the King, but the King is not with the body” (27-28) most obviously refers to Polonius’ corpse, but I suppose 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.

Claudius realizes the desperate state in which he stands: “Diseases desperate grown / By desperate appliance are reliev’d, / Or not at all” (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” (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.” At line 49, Hamlet calls Claudius “dear mother,” 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” (65), Claudius says, “Do it, England , / For like the hectic in my blood he rages, / And thou must cure me” (65-67). 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]” (68-69).

Act 4, Scene 4.

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” (18-19). 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!” (65-66) 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.

Ophelia brings dismay to the Court when she shows clear signs of madness. 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” (183) 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” (78-79), 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” (124-26). Clearly, this truism afforded Hamlet, Sr. no protection from Claudius. In the sixth scene, sailors give a letter from Hamlet to Horatio, explaining how he managed to board a pirate ship that attacked the vessel bound for England . 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. Hamlet’s letter to the King is ominous: “High and mighty, You shall know I am set / naked on your kingdom” (43-44). 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” (127), and Claudius lays out the plot he has partly contrived, only to find that Polonius is able to add a master stroke with the introduction of “an unction” (141) 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.

The scene concludes with the news that Ophelia has drowned. Gertrude’s beautiful, ekphrastic description of Ophelia’s death from 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.

The Gravedigger scene works as comic relief, but it also gives us and Hamlet a broader perspective on events up to this point. 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: “Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay, / Might stop a hole to keep the wind away” (213-14). 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 from 182-95 is vital. 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” (192-94). 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. 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.

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 . . .” (6-11). It seems that this speech refers to Hamlet’s insomnia-induced impatience to know the contents of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s letter. What exactly, he wants to know, is their “grand commission” (18)? 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” (57-62). 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?

At line 65, Hamlet brings up a new motive (though in speaking to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he had already hinted at it 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” (64-65). 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 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” (219-22). 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. Well, in the end, Claudius’ plan is frustrated, and his union with Gertrude nullified without issue (i.e. children). As so often in Shakespeare, 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, 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” (384-85). 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 anyhow.

To return to the dearly departed Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, 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.

Week 08, Julius Caesar

2007-10-09T12:02:00.000-07:00

Notes on Julius Caesar

Act 1, Scene 1

At the beginning of the play, Shakespeare introduces a Roman world where all people should know their place. Why is the carpenter not wearing the sign he should be wearing? The cobbler introduces another theme—the idea that something is broken and must be mended. This is a holiday time when the ordinary laws that restrain and govern people seem to have been suspended. The strongest Romans on the scene are certain that their moral pronouncements and symbolic acts will set things right again, but in this belief, we must already begin to sense, they are gravely mistaken. The common people would just as well forget the past and live entirely in the present.

Act 1, Scene 2

In this scene we get our first view of Julius Caesar himself. He seems a grand enough figure, ordering great men about in an intimate way. Still, what Julius says to Marc Antony reminds us that his wife is unable to have children. In a way that has profound political implications, Julius is alone in the middle of this admiring crowd, and he must depend upon Marc Antony. Caesar will not listen to the soothsayer. Immediately afterwards we are treated to the first conversation between Brutus and Cassius, a conversation that turns upon the issue of representation tied together with the all-important Roman preoccupation with honor. Simply put, Cassius wants Brutus to see himself through the eyes of others who expect him to save the Republic. The honest reply that Brutus gives reminds us how difficult it is for a person to be self-contained, self-defining. It is clear that Brutus has been thinking along the same lines as Cassius—he would not find it tolerable for Julius to become king. But Brutus is circumspect about speaking what he feels. Cassius obviously resents and envies Caesar, and seems to hold him in contempt. His reference to Virgil’s Aeneid puts Cassius in place of Aeneas and Julius Caesar in the place of that hero’s father, who, readers of Virgil will remember, did not make it all the way to Italy after the Trojan remnant had set sail from their burning city. Cassius does not so much seek justice as the opportunity to take power for himself. He also sees a deep disjunction between what ordinary people think Caesar is and what he actually is to those who know him best. We like to think of the Romans as thoroughly upstanding and ancient times as somehow simpler and more noble, but the fact is that Roman political culture was at least as sophisticated as ours is today: “spin” would hardly have been a foreign concept to Roman politicians. Cassius tries to stir similar resentment in the breast of Brutus, and connects him to his illustrious ancestor Lucius Junius Brutus, who helped drive out the last Tarquin King from Rome. Brutus seems naïve concerning the motives of his friend since he labels the speech something “high.” Brutus is an idealist who can’t help but transform everyone around him into something more noble and high-minded than is really the case.

Julius Caesar speaks to Marc Antony again, and makes it clear that he does not trust Cassius, finding in him an anxiety-provoking degree of pride. It is also manifest that Caesar surrounds himself with people willing to tell him what he wants to hear. He is always on stage, a quality that Casca’s comments reinforce.

Casca is scornful of Caesar’s “act” in the presence of the common people who would make him king. The “tag-rag” crowd seems like an ordinary Elizabethan rabble. They follow their own appetites and are greedy for emotional spectacle, which is exactly what they get when Caesar swoons in an epileptic fit.

At the end of the second scene, Cassius clarifies his scheme after Brutus makes his exit—the plan is to manipulate Brutus by taking advantage of his noble honesty. In this play, there are characters who stick to their ideals (or who idealize others), and there are cynical realists like Cassius.

Act 1, Scene 3

Cicero proves unwilling when he speaks to Casca to buy into all the high talk about prodigies and omens. Cicero believes what’s happening is all a matter of interpretation. Casca fears the omens, but Cassius is contemptuous, comparing Julius Caesar to such thunder and lightning. The man is fearful, and a Roman must confront his fears if he would be free. As far as Cassius is concerned, Caesar’s greatness is a mark of the people’s degeneracy. Of course, this comment shows the weakness in the entire conspiratorial plan: if Romans are in fact sheep, how are they supposed to maintain the virtuous Republic of old, even if an assassination restores that form of government? If they are fit only to be led, why then, someone must lead them. So the argument is really over who will dominate the populace. As Thomas Carlyle will later write, “In the long run, every government is the exact symbol of its people.” Democracies and republics die when the citizenry are no longer worthy of such noble experiments or capable of sustaining them. This is not to say that Shakespeare or his audience were sympathetic to republican arguments—monarchy was generally considered the best form of government in Shakespeare’s time. Both Casca and Cassius want to borrow Brutus’s connection to heroic Roman history, thinking to render their own bloody deeds noble and acceptable by reference to violent acts that helped found the Republic.

Act 2, Scene 1

Brutus says that he acts for the general good, not because he has anything in particular against Caesar, who has always been a friend to him and a man of reason. (As the introduction points out, Shakespeare brackets out the way Julius Caesar attained the level of power he held at the time of his murder. However, his bringing destruction to northern Europe’s tribes and crossing the Rubicon aside, it remains true that Caesar was a man of considerable merit—he was a cultivated man, not a brute.) The main argument Brutus makes is the abstract one that power would surely corrupt his friend, so it is necessary to extrapolate what that friend might do if given absolute power. A man who would be king is a serpent, and must be dealt with as such. Brutus himself is very much taken with the heroic past connected to his family name, and like many good Romans he is firmly wedded to the past.

At line 63, it becomes apparent how much of a toll taking part in a conspiracy has begun to exact upon Brutus: “Between the acting of a dreadful thing / And the first motion, all the interim is / like a phantasma, or a hideous dream.” When he is introduced to the conspirators, he finds it necessary to explain just how un-Roman it is to require an oath in such matters as they are about to undertake, and he makes haste to check the bloodiness of their intent. Protecting Marc Antony turns out to be a mistake, of course, but it shows Brutus’s nobility of mind all the same. It’s possible to attribute to Brutus some degree of less than high-minded strategizing when he says that Antony “can do no more than Caesar’s arm / When Caesar’s head is off” (182-83), but perhaps that would be ungenerous. Brutus seems quite naïve throughout this scene, nowhere more so than when he says of Caesar, “Let’s carve him as a dish fit for the gods, / Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds” (173-74). As always, Brutus is most comfortable with theories and abstractions, and with ritual and ceremony rather than practical action: the conspirators are first and foremost “butchers,” whatever their intentions towards the state. Brutus recognizes that Caesar’s blood must be spilled, but it’s hard to see how his words connote recognition of the full horror in such a deed.

At line 233 and following, Portia shows herself to be perhaps the only character who understands Brutus, with the possible exception of Octavius, who treats him as a worthy opponent. She requests in strong terms that Brutus let her in on what is troubling him, and he promises to do so, although he is subsequently interrupted by Caius Ligarius. But he must tell her subsequently since later on she seems aware of what is afoot. In speaking to Caius Ligarius, Brutus again employs the metaphor of sickness and health—it seems he sees himself as a physician or a surgeon as well as a priest with respect to the body politic.

Act 2, Scene 2

When talking to his wife, Caesar seems genuinely magnificent in his disregard for death, but he also seems rather pompous in declaring himself more dangerous than danger itself. On the whole, he is a politician who has come to believe his own PR—always a dangerous thing to do because it unfits a person to exercise power in real-life, real-time situations. Because Decius Brutus understands this weakness in Caesar, he is able to use it to bring the man out to the Capitol, where he will meet his fate. I think Shakespeare follows the general line that the time had already come for Rome to turn imperial, but the fat and fond Julius Caesar he portrays is not the right man to wield such enormous power. None of this is to say that Caesar is to be portrayed as an old fool or a clown; rather, it seems likely that Shakespeare’s representation of this “great man” pays tribute to the difficulty of settling on any one image of such a colossal, polarizing figure as Julius Caesar. On display are certain physical and character weaknesses and a tendency towards exaggeration, but counter-balancing these traits, in almost any worthwhile production, will be the impressive pageantry, the sheer spectacle, surrounding Caesar’s every move.

Act 3, Scene 1

In the famous assassination scene, the conspirators crowd around Caesar, with the ostensible purpose of getting him to revoke his banishment of one Publius Cimber, brother of the conspirator Metellus Cimber. Caesar’s words make him seem grandiose and ungenerous, and he is instantly cut down. As in some ancient accounts, Caesar is most surprised to find Brutus amongst those who have betrayed him. (See http://www.livius.org/caa-can/caesar/caesar_t09.html for Suetonius’ highly regarded narrative of the murder, which has Caesar maintaining dignified silence.)

Both Cassius and Brutus make bold to consider the historic nature of what they have just done, treating it as if it were a piece of stagecraft for the ages. Brutus is particularly concerned to strike the right ceremonial note, telling his fellow conspirators to bathe their hands in the blood of the slain ruler and make their way to the marketplace, where they will proclaim “Peace, freedom, and liberty” (110) for all. But subsequent audiences, of course, know perfectly well how the whole affair turned out—the death of Julius Caesar brought not the restoration of republican ways, but rather the supremely competent imperial rule of Augustus after a period of civil strife. So when we see the conspirators on stage smearing themselves with the blood of the man they have just killed, we are likely to concentrate more on the viciousness of their deed than on the high-minded ideals that set Brutus, at least, in motion.

Act 3, Scene 2

Immediately after the assassination, Brutus makes the fatal mistake of trusting Marc Antony. Antony appears diabolically skillful throughout this scene, beginning with his earnest-seeming demand to know why Caesar deserved to die and his eerie willingness to shake hands with the blood-spattered killers before him, then proceeding to his obviously genuine and yet carefully stage-managed outbursts of feeling for the murdered Caesar and his request to pay his respects at the man’s funeral. Cassius suspects the worst, but Brutus will have none of it, and he brushes aside Cassius’s objections with the ridiculous stipulation that he himself will speak first and thereby provide sufficient explanation for what has been done. He has just agreed to serve as the warm-up act for a master rhetorician who does not mean him well, and we shall see what Antony makes of the demand that he not blame the “honorable” conspirators. Operating by the ancient code of revenge, Antony plans to “let slip the dogs of war” (273) after his stirring words have driven the conspirators out of Rome. The deed that these deluded men believed would bring order and liberty, Antony correctly understands as the harbinger of violence and chaos. For the moment, these are his elements, and with them he will set to work forging a new order with Octavius.

The speech that Brutus makes to the Roman mob, while noble, is also absurd because it issues a call to Romanness to people thoroughly incapable of any such thing. Brutus insists that he has placed love of country above love for his old friend Caesar, and he may indeed have done so. But the rogues and peasants to whom he speaks have no understanding of such idealism. They value persons over principles, favors over sacrifice. They are moved by Brutus’s words, but their instinct is to offer him the crown they had meant to offer Caesar.

Marc Antony’s speech is a masterpiece, full of power and deception, strong feeling and a call to personal loyalty. Casting himself as Caesar’s friend, Antony highlights the qualities of Julius in this capacity: friendship, or amicitia, was amongst the highest Roman virtues, and Brutus has betrayed a man who loved and honored him. (In The Divine Comedy, Dante places Brutus and Cassius in the lowest section of the inferno for that reason: they are traitors to their lord.) If a man betrays his friend, you cannot believe anything he says or trust him in any action. ( Cicero wrote a fine treatise called De Amicitia, or “On Friendship,” and Seneca’s Letters deal with the concept insightfully.) He attacks the notion that Caesar was ambitious or selfish, and employs a species of repetition to savage effect respecting the word “honorable,” which comes to signify the opposite quality after its first few uses. In the end, Antony does what he promised Brutus not to do: he calls the conspirators traitors. He convinces his audience that they have lost a generous, unique benefactor at the hands of men who do not even understand that all-important Roman concept, “honor.” Honor consists in standing by your friends, which is exactly what Marc Antony tells the irrational, inflamed crowd to do now. Fortune favors those willing to ride the waves of passion that arise from great and terrible events, not those who, like Brutus, believe troubled human affairs can be set to rights by the dispassionate operations of reason. The latter assumption hardly seems a good bet in the third scene, when the rabble decide that it isn’t even worth distinguishing Cinna the poet from Cinna the assassin.

Act 4, Scene 1

Antony the man of feeling now shows another side of himself—the side that allows him to “lay honors” on his fellow Triumvir Lepidus and yet call the man an ass when he’s out of earshot. This brazen contempt for “a tried and valiant soldier” (28) surprises the youthful Octavius, but Antony won’t change a word of his dismissive pronouncement against Lepidus. It’s time to head for the wars Brutus and Cassius are stirring up.

Act 4, Scenes 2-3

Back at the camp, Brutus and Cassius become embroiled in a bitter argument about funding for their armies—Cassius’s corrupt favoritism has made him deny Brutus necessary pay for his men. Although the fight sounds like schoolboy squabbling, it has a serious side: Cassius’ offense is a dangerous one for the cause since a mutinous army is no help, and his charge of untenderness on the part of Brutus seems genuine, so it reinforces the play’s interest in the importance of Roman honor and friendship. “A friend should bear his friend’s infirmities” (86), pleads Cassius, and in the end he brings Brutus around. Shakespeare was capable of shredding cherished notions of classical chivalry, as he does in his later play Troilus and Cressida (1601-02), but here in Julius Caesar no such thoroughgoing cynicism seems to be afoot. When Cassius’s Thersites-like “cynic” struts onstage to offer his saucy rhymes, Brutus makes Cassius dismiss the fellow as untimely and impertinent.

Brutus and Cassius disagree more civilly about military strategy around line 200. Brutus comes down in favor of marching out to meet the enemy rather than waiting: “There is a tide in the affairs of men, / Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; / Omitted, all the voyage of their life / Is bound in shallows and in miseries” (218-21). This is one of the most famous pronouncements in the play, but the “tide” metaphor is also revealing—although Brutus counsels heroic action, he still sees this action as a reaction, as a principled response to what the rhythm of life brings. Contrast this attitude with Marc Antony and Octavius. Antony in particular, at least in this play if not in Antony and Cleopatra, is closer to the view of Edmund in King Lear: “all’s meet with me that I can fashion fit.” We might argue that Brutus, for all his unrealistic idealism, is at crucial points more grounded in reality as something given that must be acknowledged than his adversaries are. Antony is a supreme opportunist, but his manner of handling the opportunity that comes to him as a gift from Brutus is masterful, active, and creative: a fine word-chef, he whips up a generous Julius bound to please the common people. By the end of Act 4, Brutus is afflicted with a second vision of Caesar as his “evil spirit” (281). Even the supernatural is arrayed against him; history is not on his side in the struggle between republican principles and monarchical rule.

Act 5, Scenes 1-3

Brutus and Cassius exchange angry words with Octavius and Marc Antony, and a bit later Brutus says to Cassius that he abhors the prospect of suicide—evidently, he assumes he will either be victorious or be killed in battle. But when the battle goes against his side, he must confront the suicide of his own friend Cassius, who requires his Parthian servant to stab him with the very sword he had used during the assassination of Caesar. Brutus sees this act as the work of Julius Caesar’s vengeful spirit.

Act 5, Scenes 4-5

In the end, Brutus decides to run upon his own sword rather than face capture. He leaves it to the people of the future and to history to judge his actions, expressing confidence in the outcome: “I shall have glory by this losing day / More than Octavius and Marc Antony” (36-37). Octavius and Antony are impressed with the end Brutus makes, and Antony declares him “the noblest Roman of them all” (5.5.68) He acted for the general good rather than for his own personal interest. On the whole, I think we find in Julius Caesar not so much a wholesale or cynical rejection of the principles enunciated by the noble Brutus as a complex, at times ambivalent exploration of those principles. Ideals seldom, if ever, match events on the ground: participation in almost any kind of politics compels even the best people to abandon or at least compromise their noblest aspirations and their customary civility. This is not to abandon politics since that really isn’t possible; it is to see things as they are without flinching or dissembling.

Week 07, The Merchant of Venice

2007-10-02T12:01:00.000-07:00

General Notes on The Merchant of Venice

The play turns on a key point of Christian theology: the opposition between the letter of God’s Law and the spirit of that Law. This opposition implies that the New Testament (the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which tell the story of Jesus, along with other texts such as the Acts of the Apostles, Revelation, and the Letters of Saint Paul), with its emphasis on forgiveness and agape or love, is the Christian fulfillment of the Hebraic Old Testament (Genesis, Exodus, the Psalms and Prophetic books, etc.), which emphasizes strict obedience to Yahweh’s commandments. In Saint Paul ’s words, “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life” (2 Corinthians 3:06 ). Paul also says that “a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law” (Romans 3:28). One final passage will turn out to be important in capturing the nuances of Shakespeare’s treatment of the Christian characters in The Merchant of Venice: In Galatians 3:23-28, Paul writes, “But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”

It is obvious from such passages that for Saint Paul , acceptance of Jesus’ divine mission and continuing faith in him is the one thing necessary—not strict observance of the formal codes of conduct set forth in Old Testament books like Deuteronomy. Jews face censure because they do not agree with the characterization of Jesus of Nazareth as the long-promised Messiah and God’s Son, which rules out their accepting the allied notion that Jesus’ crucifixion made redemption from sins available to all who believe in him. Based on statements such as those in The Gospel According to John (“…the Jews sought to kill him” 7.01, etc. In the original, περιεπάτει ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἐν τῇ Γαλιλαίᾳ , οὐ γὰρ ἤθελεν ἐν τῇ Ἰουδα ίᾳ περιπατεῖν, ὅ τι ἐ ζήτουν αὐτὸν οἰ Ἰουδαῖοι ἀποκτεῖναι. Translation: Jesus went unto Galilee , for he did not wish to go into Judea , where the citizens sought to kill him), a tradition of vilifying Jews as the “murderers of Christ” took hold in Europe and, to some extent, it persists to this day. John Chrysostom in particular (347-407 CE) has become the focus of much debate about how much anti-Semitic commentary one can find in patristic theology. (A web instance of this debate: http://www.chrysostom.org/jews.html.) To put things simply, many Christians have long criticized Jews for not being Christians, and of course Jewish people have also had to contend with a broad, culturally reinforced anti-Semitism that takes on a life of its own and goes far beyond any disputes about theological truth—as when Hitler and his Nazi Party claimed that “international Jewry,” in league with western capitalist powers such as Great Britain and France, was responsible for Germany’s social and economic woes after WWI. In order to understand Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, we must factor in the already ancient tradition of European anti-Semitism. Although I don’t believe Shakespeare himself advocated violence against Jews, it’s clear that the history between Christians and Jews is the backdrop of his dark comedy and that it is by no means a peripheral issue in the play.

We know that things do not end well for Shylock, a successful Jewish financier at the Rialto in Venice . He loses his daughter and most of his wealth, and is forced to abandon Judaism and swear to become a Christian, while the Christians in the play end happily married—excepting Antonio, of course, though he fares much better than we had thought he would. Since the play’s conclusion leaves Shylock out in the cold and does not overtly condemn what has happened to him—indeed the play’s title refers to Antonio the merchant, not to Shylock—what are we to make of such treatment? I suspect that for the most part, Shakespeare’s audience would have considered Shylock’s punishment entirely just and even hilarious. They may well have reveled in the forced conversion and the taking-away of most of his wealth at the behest of Christians. We can’t know exactly what Shakespeare himself thought of Shylock, for the simple reason that all we have are the words spoken by characters in the play. All attempts to know the author’s intention about any work of art (dramatic or not) are doomed to failure for much the same reason, so the best we can do is probably to say, “Shakespeare is a Christian author, so it’s likely that his basic sentiment would have favored the Christian characters, at least to some extent.” Certainly the play is a Christian comedy, however dark—not a Jewish tragedy. In my view, Shylock is anything but a “stock Jew” or a stage villain like Barabas in Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta . (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Texts/Marlowe.html). This doesn’t mean he is portrayed in a positive light. My sense is that there’s something deeply ambivalent about Shakespeare’s representation of Shylock—for almost every instance or utterance that makes him out to be a sympathetic figure and a wronged man, there’s another that shows him to be unsympathetic or even ridiculous. It all comes down to where you think the emphasis lies—are we to weight the sympathetic moments more, or the unflattering ones? Consider just the ending of Act 3, Scene 1:

SHYLOCK. Why there, there, there, there! A diamond gone, cost me two thousand ducats in Frankford! The curse never fell upon our nation till now; I never felt it till now. Two thousand ducats in that, and other precious, precious jewels. I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear; would she were hears’d at my foot, and the ducats in her coffin! No news of them? Why, so—and I know not what’s spent in the search. Why, thou loss upon loss! the thief gone with so much, and so much to find the thief; and no satisfaction, no revenge; nor no ill luck stirring but what lights a’ my shoulders; no sighs but a’ my breathing; no tears but a’ my shedding!

TUBAL. Yes, other men have ill luck too: Antonio, as I heard in Genoa —

SHYLOCK. What, what, what? Ill luck, ill luck?

TUBAL. Hath an argosy cast away, coming from Tripolis.

SHYLOCK. I thank God, I thank God. Is it true, is it true?

TUBAL. I spoke with some of the sailors that escap’d the wrack.

SHYLOCK. I thank thee, good Tubal. Good news, good news! Ha, ha! [Heard] in Genoa ?

TUBAL. Your daughter spent in Genoa , as I heard, one night, fourscore ducats.

SHYLOCK. Thou stick’st a dagger in me. I shall never see my gold again. Fourscore ducats at a sitting, fourscore ducats!

TUBAL. There came divers of Antonio’s creditors in my company to Venice that swear he cannot choose but break.

SHYLOCK. I am very glad of it. I’ll plague him, I’ll torture him. I am glad of it.

TUBAL. One of them show’d me a ring that he had of your daughter for a monkey.

SHYLOCK. Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal. It was my turkis, I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.

TUBAL. But Antonio is certainly undone.

SHYLOCK. Nay, that’s true, that’s very true….

This passage contains a great deal—Shylock is by turns genuinely sorrowful and frantically vengeful against both his daughter and Antonio. He seems confused here and elsewhere in the play about the relative value of his money and his family, as when we hear from Christian report that he has conflated his “daughter” with his “ducats.” There is pathos in his statement that he wouldn’t have traded his departed wife’s ring “for a wilderness of monkeys,” and yet there’s something ridiculous about such a comparison phrase, too, so we are tempted to laugh. And just as the Christians tend to be dealt with as individuals and to talk about themselves as individuals, we find Shylock often referring to himself in terms of his “tribe” and his “nation,” as if being an Israelite made him not an individual but a representative member of this collective identity: “The curse never fell upon our / nation till now; I never felt it till now.” Shakespeare isn’t working from a romantic concept of the self as unique—the Renaissance tends to treat the individual as an aggregation of virtues, vices and “faculties” or capacities—but it’s also the case that Shakespeare’s individuals are often strongly marked in a way that lends them nobility if not correctness. Shylock, to be fair, gives us an intimate sense of his inner thoughts and feelings, but a good deal of it makes him seem muddled and confused about important matters. And the references to his “tribe” tend to reduce him to the level of a stereotype, even if he is too complex a character to remain at that level.

It’s common for Shakespeare’s plays to offer parallels between one character or set of characters and another—for example, consider the many pairings in King Lear: the three daughters and their husbands, Gloucester and the King, and, above all, the Fool and the King. This is perhaps Shakespeare’s best way of enabling us to make sophisticated judgments about his characters and about the ethical and political questions the plays explore. It is seldom easy to say that a character in Shakespeare is all good or all bad. Lear, at his moments of greatest pathos, is dragged down from sublimity by the near-constant presence of the twaddling, bawdy-minded Fool, who in many productions actually resembles him in appearance. Presumably, that is because we are not to take Lear’s pronouncements about human nature or kingship at face value—he is a character offering us his perspective at points of extreme distress, isolation, and even madness. But it’s worth considering whether Shylock in The Merchant of Venice might have a twin of sorts—his “tribe,” the Jews as the popular imagination would have them. Even as he speaks some of his most sympathetic lines, this shadow of the comic “stock Jew” hangs over him, and prevents him from rising to a level of tragic dignity. To the Christian characters in the play, Shylock is either a devil or a figure of fun—there seems to be nothing in between for him, and he finds it almost impossible to get himself considered as a human being with a genuine grievance.

But what about the Christians in this play? Beyond Shylock, there are other parallels between characters and character sets in The Merchant of Venice . These parallels seem to me to cut both ways with regard to the behavior of the main Christians. Consider, for example, the love match between Lorenzo and Jessica as a lower-ranking parallel to the love match between Bassanio and Portia. On the surface, the pursuit of Jessica by Lorenzo might seem to be completely unrelated to Bassanio’s pursuit of Portia. But what about the possibility that Lorenzo’s obvious erotic interest in his lover and his willingness to abscond with her father’s ducats and jewels (conveniently in a chest not unlike Portia’s “caskets,” by the way) is meant as a way to bring the idealistic Bassanio down to earth? His Portia, after all, is “a lady richly left”—aren’t we being invited to ask ourselves how much difference there is between his desire for Portia and Lorenzo’s less exalted desire for Jessica?

Then, too, while Shylock’s frenetic concern for his ducats often makes him look foolish and confused, what about the way in which the Christians Antonio and Bassanio continually make money out to be a thing of no importance—that is, in comparison with their high ideals and spiritualized notions about love and friendship? But isn’t Bassanio a prodigal who has squandered his own wealth on high living and appearances, and now has to put his friend’s life at risk so he can go in search of the perfect woman? Neither is Shylock solely concerned with money—by the time of the trial scene in Act 4, he is no longer interested in recovering his 3,000 ducats or even in accepting several times that sum; the pound of the Jew-hater Antonio’s fair flesh will make good his “oath to heaven.” Finally, Portia’s interpretation of Shylock’s bond in Act 4 is that it doesn’t contain all the necessary qualifications—flesh may be taken, yes, but blood mustn’t be spilt.

The Christian point is that fallen humanity can never sufficiently justify itself in God‘s sight. By implication, human beings cannot sufficiently qualify strict contracts and oaths and be truly just in their demands, so there is no point in making such hard bargains. Mercy is not something that can be divided or quantified, and mercy is the only proper framework for human conduct. Jesus weighs in on this issue in The Gospel According to Saint Matthew 6.14-15: “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Shylock is aware of what others think of him and his religion (his voicings of this awareness often strike hard at Christian pretense to kindness and fair dealing), and he self-consciously tries to pay them back by conforming to their estimation of his “hard-heartedness,” insisting that every last stipulation of his bond be adhered to: he is a strict literalist in his interpretation of the bond he has made with Antonio. The point for Shakespeare’s audience, I believe, is that Shylock is unmerciful when he has the chance to show mercy, and therefore he not only deserves to lose his case against Antonio, but he even deserves the punishments he receives at Christian hands. The letter/spirit opposition is made clearest in Saint Paul’s epistle 2 Corinthians 3:3-6: “Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart. And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward: Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”

But for modern audiences—Christian or otherwise—Shylock’s punishment may well appear every bit as unjust as his own attempt on Antonio’s life: the political, economic, and religious establishments of Venice gang up on him and take away all he has, even his very faith. His sensibilities seem to us those of a deeply wronged man. For what it is worth, I incline towards the view that Shakespeare is conscious of an irony in the fourth and fifth acts that was available to him at the time: it is fallen human beings who are meting out the punishments, not God, and the “quality” of their mercy is at least open to question. The Merchant of Venice may not be a tragedy, but its status as a comedy is not entirely stable, either, and I don’t believe that the darkness of this comedy is entirely the product of apologetic modern interpretation. Shylock is no hero, but he has at least the potential—however undeveloped—to be a “second Job” in the honesty of his questionings.

Act-by-Act Notes on The Merchant of Venice

Act 1, Scene 1

Antonio sets himself up to play the willing victim—he is sad and doesn’t know the reason why, except that the melancholia he feels isn’t about commerce or, in his estimation, love (though the latter seems to us the obvious reason since, in general, modern directors tend to assert an homoerotic bond between Antonio and Bassanio). Gratiano and other Christians would prefer to play the fool and be merry, while Antonio luxuriates in his melancholia. There’s a cheerful side to Christianity, but the other side is well characterized as the religion of sorrow. There seems to be an absolute trust between Antonio and Bassanio in this first scene. They also swear excessively, a process Antonio begins. At 161, Bassanio first names Portia as “a lady richly left” and “fair” (161), but comparing her to Brutus’ Portia also alludes to moral excellence. Antonio ends the scene by hazarding all he has, as will Bassanio later on.

Act 1, Scene 2

Portia is the active agent in this play; she is constrained but not a passive sufferer with respect to her departed father’s marriage arrangements for her. Along with Nerissa, Portia trusts her father’s wisdom, but she doesn’t leave aside her own judgment—witness her snide remarks about the men who are pursuing her.

Act 1, Scene 3

The scene is partly about the different understanding of terms between Christians and Jews—to be a “good” man, in Shylock’s view, is to have sufficient funds; to “be assured” is to acquire the necessary information about a person’s finances. With the Christians, these are more abstract moral terms. We see Shylock’s resentment almost from the outset—his “ancient” grudge is both individual and collective; the personal insults are insults to his “sacred nation” as well. He considers it a duty not to forgive Antonio. Around line 76, cunning appears to be Shylock’s main attribute; he lacks the generosity of Portia’s father or most of the other Christians. Later, in 1.3, Shylock generates some sympathy—he has been treated like a stage villain, a stock Jew, and he responds in kind. Shylock offers his infamous conditions as “kindness” and “a merry sport.” A chance to injure Antonio has come his way, and he takes it up gleefully. This is a high-stakes wager, like Christian salvation. Antonio seems rather self-assured and dismissive, which may be hubristic. He has no doubts about his ability to pay his debts, so Shylock’s absurd conditions don’t much trouble him, as they do Bassanio. Around line 165, Shylock points out that a pound of flesh isn’t worth much—this is about revenge.

Act 2, Scene 2

Gobbo accepts the “fiend’s counsel” to abandon Shylock. So should we accept treatment of Shylock as comic raillery, something easy to do? Gobbo sees Shylock as the devil incarnate, but the play as a whole doesn’t reduce him to that. Consider the scene between Launcelot Gobbo and his father, which alludes to the story in Genesis about Jacob stealing Esau’s birthright and tricking father Isaac into giving him Esau’s blessing as the first-born son. The father has brought a present for Shylock, but Gobbo wants the present to go to Bassanio. The comic spirit overcomes all, accomplishing something like “grace,” which at 150-51 Gobbo attributes to Bassanio, who cheerfully accepts Gobbo’s verbal mistakes and his suit to become his servant. In general, the process of abandoning Shylock begins right after the bargain of flesh has been struck. First Gobbo, then Jessica. What binds people? Well, the binding is supposed to be effected by generosity and love, but Shylock refuses these commands. Abandoning him is the “natural” result of his refusal, in the Christian context of the play.

Act 2, Scenes 3-5

Jessica says she’s ashamed to be Shylock’s daughter; the man insists on observance in all things and is a retailer of stale proverbs like “fast bind, fast find.” Launcelot speaks of Shylock with contempt. But in the fifth scene, Shylock’s interaction with his daughter doesn’t seem cruel—he tells her to shut her doors and avoid gazing on “Christian fools.” He prefers to remain isolated and to maintain the purity of his household. Increasingly, he will be isolated and a figure inviting the other characters’ mockery; that seems to be the process whereby the play proceeds.

Act 2, Scene 6

Shylock now loses both his daughter and a portion of his ducats. Gratiano makes pleasantries about how people fail to meet their love obligations; this mention is a setup for the weightier wrangling between Portia and Nerissa later on. It’s comically grotesque that Shylock loses his daughter and money to Christian masquers, presumably during Venice ’s carnival season—a time of great liberty and temporary overturning of conventional morality. Freedom to change is the key here, and the quality to transform one’s identity is a Christian prerogative in this play. Shylock’s “change” will be forced upon him cruelly, and no doubt he will remain isolated forever after in spite of his involuntary conversion.

Act 2, Scenes 7-9

Morocco chooses between desert, desire, and hazard. He chooses what “many men desire,” on the assumption that outward appearances correspond to inward qualities. In the eighth scene, Salerio and Solanio mock Shylock’s confused babbling about his daughter and his ducats, in contrast to the generous relations between Antonio and Bassanio: “I think he only loves the world for him” (2.8.50). In the ninth scene, the prideful Aragon (a stock Spanish nobleman) assumes “desert,” and is rewarded with the portrait of “a blinking idiot.”

Act 3, Scene 1

Shylock assumes that Antonio, now bankrupt, will be easily isolated from his fellow Christians: the cash nexus is the only tie Shylock seems to recognize as binding. At lines 53-73, Shylock makes his noteworthy “Hath not a Jew eyes?” declaration: Jews are part of a common humanity, but he and his entire people have been scorned and mocked. Revenge is the law of his being—he will repay Christian injustice with “usury,” with increase. To Tubal (85ff), Shylock constantly brings up money and expense—he is comically, if painfully, confused about priorities. But I suppose this scene would be played by most actors with some sympathy—after all, Shylock’s lines are powerful (“no tears but of my shedding,” etc.), and it is (at least today) common knowledge that Jews were forced to take on the role of moneylenders thanks to Christian hypocrisy about the accumulation of interest on loans. At this point, Shylock is more than a stage villain—he is that, but Shakespeare’s genius seems to be that he can represent a stage villain as that and something more. Line 123 is revealing in this regard; Shylock says to Tubal, “I would not have given . . . [Leah’s turquoise ring] for a wilderness of monkeys.” The line is comic, but how could it be played, given the context, with anything less than deep feeling? At 127, Shylock tells us what part of Antonio’s flesh he has nominated: “I will have the heart of him if he forfeit.”

Act 3, Scene 2

Some strain shows between Portia and her departed father: “these naughty times put bars between the owners and their rights.” What does the song that follows mean? “Tell me where is fancy bred, etc.” We are told that “fancy dies in the cradle where it lies.” This is a warning to Bassanio—love begins with the eyes, so perhaps we had better not trust our eyes too much. Bassanio understands the warning, evidently—at 105, he chooses the threatening lead container rather than the attractive silver or golden one. Portia makes a fine speech about her qualities and shortcomings, and offers a condition—she’s all his, unless he gives away the ring, in which case she will have the upper hand. Around 181, Bassanio admits that her words have all blended together for him, but he seems to understand her words about the ring, and even takes things up a notch (again the excessive, exuberant rhetoric) by swearing that death will take him before he gives away the golden keepsake. Portia didn’t condemn him to death, after all. Bassanio is soon informed by Salerio of Antonio’s disastrous commercial loss; Portia will take the part of his friend. Bassanio, we note, uses the language of Roman honor in referring to Antonio’s friendship (line 294ff). The two men somewhat overvalue their bond, as becomes increasingly apparent.

Act 3, Scene 3

Here Shylock is implacable—“I will have my bond” (3.3.17). At line 22, Antonio says the Jew’s hatred stems from resentment of Christian interference in his harsh dealings with benighted creditors. But that’s obviously not the whole story—it’s hard to sustain the notion that Shylock’s revenge is simply about money. Antonio also points out that Venice must be nearly as hard-hearted as Shylock: a bargain struck is a bargain struck. Venice depends on the cash nexus, too. Antonio is a man exhausted—his commercial and other losses have wasted him almost to the bone, and he would rather suffer than fight.

Act 3, Scene 4

Portia is drawn to Antonio because friends are so much alike, and then she springs her “lawyer’s clerk” scheme: she will play the role of a male who can wield the weapon of law against Shylock and the Venetian Commercial State . To accomplish this task, she must play fast and loose with her own gender, since a woman of Shakespeare’s time (leaving aside Queen Elizabeth) was in no position to take on such authority.

Act 3, Scene 5

Jessica and Gobbo dispute comically over salvation and damnation; this is a precursor of a more serious argument during the trial about how mercy is granted, and to whom. Gobbo stands accused of egregious quibbling with words (line 43ff): “how every fool can play upon the word.” Launcelot Gobbo’s misstatements and quibbles are the light-hearted version of the play’s weightier regard for terminological and spiritual misinterpretation, equivocation, and hypocrisy. Here, “wit” takes the place of Shylock’s blind literalism and savage cunning.

Act 4, Scene 1

Antonio again appears resigned: why bother with the “stony” Shylock? That is the Duke’s term—at this point, the anti-Jewish invective is severe. But Shylock shows great harshness in this scene, to be sure—he is, as Richard III might say, “determined to prove a villain” by Christian lights. He isn’t claiming to be better than his adversaries. His attitude is that he has “bought” the flesh of a Christian hypocrite at great personal cost, and he “will have it.” Money isn’t the issue; revenge (personal and collective) is the issue. “I stand for judgment,” he insists. At 184ff, Portia advises him that “the quality of mercy is not strained,” but Shylock doesn’t understand or value this claim. The State can’t help here, and Shylock, ever the literalist, protests that he has “an oath in heaven” to stick to the bond. At 257 as elsewhere, Portia goes out of her way to demonstrate the callous attitude of the Jew—witness his refusal to keep a surgeon nearby because no such thing is mentioned in his contract with Antonio. Bassanio makes an extreme utterance at this point, wishing his wife and goods to heaven to redeem the situation. Even Shylock picks up on the outrageousness of this remark: “These be the Christian husbands.” At 305, Portia insists that the bond must be read even more literally than Shylock can conceive. The other shoe drops at line 346: Shylock has sought the death of a Venetian citizen; the penalty for this may well be death, unless the Duke decides to be merciful. Half of Shylock’s goods will go to Venice as a fine, it seems, and the rest he must will to his Christian son-in-law Lorenzo and his daughter Jessica. At 394, Shylock is forced to say that he is “content” with his lot, now that he has been commanded to convert to Christianity and give away much of his fortune. The word can hardly mean what it usually would, given the context: he has simply given up, confronted as he is with the full power of Venice and a religion alien to him. Around line 427ff, Portia (disguised as the lawyer’s clerk) demands as her fee Bassanio’s ring. The point of this episode is that she will exercise mercy with respect to the decree she had previously issued. She didn’t mean the decree of faithfulness in the deadly fashion understood by Bassanio. She interprets her own words liberally rather than literally, and is generous enough to forgive Bassanio since at least he put up a struggle, however brief, over the loss of the ring. That doesn’t amount to full merit of pardon, but such perfection isn’t necessary under Portia's dispensation.

Act 5, Scene 1

Lorenzo and Jessica discuss faith and faithlessness and about the power of music to transform the soul: redemption and transformation are the theme here. Lorenzo says that music (even earthly music as opposed to the heavenly harmonies lost to us because of the “muddy vesture of decay”) will soften Jessica if she will only listen intently enough, and open herself to the experience. The whole scene is in comic contrast to Shylock’s hard-heartedness, his inability to change. Portia appreciates the fine music, but at line 109 she makes it stop because she has another vehicle of transformation: the playfully stern lecture she’s about to deliver. The extremeness of Antonio and Bassanio’s oath-taking must be tempered. Mercy doesn’t like extremes—to swear excessively is to take one’s responsibilities lightly. Bassanio in particular has shown a willingness to break an oath to his intended wife to satisfy a male-centered demand—that of giving a gift to the “man” who helped Antonio win his case. He and Gratiano trivialize the marriage bond when, after making such a show of their fidelity, they break their excessive oaths at will. So Bassanio must be schooled by Portia about his responsibilities towards her as a faithful husband; she asserts that this marriage bond entails a kind of reciprocity and generosity, an accommodation that he has not yet fully acknowledged. Portia may be obedient to her father, but she is not a fool, a slave, or a child. In fact, her actions show her to be far more mature than most of the men in The Merchant of Venice .

Well, Antonio finds out that he isn’t a pauper after all, and (at line 292) we hear that Shylock has “gifted” part of his estate to Lorenzo and Jessica. Bassanio, with Antonio’s help, gets the chance to make a second affirmation of his constancy towards Portia at line 254ff. A generous understanding of speech and act is the essential contrast in the play between Christians and Jews. The former have the flexibility to transform and to be transformed, while Shylock remains implacable and experiences his enforced change as nothing short of torture; he remains outside the circle of happiness that concludes the play. (So does Antonio, who is not amongst those happily married in the comic ending.) Jessica, however, seems to hold out the possibility of redemption for all; she’s a Jewish woman whose free conversion for the sake of love stands in comic defiance of the spiteful Christian witticism “till the Jews be converted” as a way of saying “never.”

Week 06, I Henry IV

2007-09-25T12:00:00.000-07:00

Notes on I Henry IV

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.

Week 05, A Midsummer Night's Dream

2007-09-18T11:59:00.000-07:00

NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE’S A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

Updated to accord with the text in Greenblatt, Stephen et al., eds. The Norton Shakespeare. 2nd edition. Four-Volume Genre Paperback Set. Norton, 2008. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93152-5.

Act 1, Scene 1 (377-82, T & Hyppolyta’s courtship, Egeus’ demand, Helena’s complaint, Lysander’s plan)

The play opens with a conversation between Theseus, Duke of Athens and the Amazon Queen he has conquered and is now set to marry. The archetypal “war between the sexes” has given way to the “pomp . . . triumph . . . [and] revelling” (378, 1.1.19) of a wedding ceremony. Theseus, though himself somewhat impatient, promises Hippolyta that violence and chaos will give way to marital decorum and an orderly society. But as Lysander soon says to Hermia, “The course of true love never did run smooth” (380, 1.1.134), and soon Egeus comes onto the scene to stir up trouble (378, 1.1.21-22). His daughter Hermia has refused the suitor named Demetrius that he has chosen for her, and now the father importunes the Duke to uphold the harsh law of Shakespeare’s Athens (378, 1.1.41-42). Hermia must assent to a life with Demetrius, or she will either forfeit her life or remain a virgin for the rest of her days. Such outlandishly cruel “laws” are useful in comedies and romances since they allow the playwright to deal with primal issues of life and death, to depict universal struggles in the starkest manner. The Terrible Father is a handy device in Shakespeare’s bag of drama-tricks, and here he serves as an obstacle in the path of the lovers Hermia and Lysander. The father is perhaps jealous, and he aligns himself with the symbolic power of absolute interdiction. He envisions a rival order to the one Theseus has staked out, one that allows no room for his daughter Hermia to pursue natural desire. The result is confusion, chaos, and vexation. Lysander has a plan, which is to take refuge in the woods not far from Athens, and then to travel to his aunt’s home, where Athenian law does not apply (380, 1.1.157-67). This plan will take the main couples off to one of Shakespeare’s most beloved green worlds, the fairy kingdom of Oberon and Titania.

Helena now enters—she is Hermia’s childhood friend, and has problems of her own to deal with. She is in love with her former suitor Demetrius, who now cares only for Helena. When Lysander tells her of his plan to steal away with Hermia into the forest, Helena decides to reveal this information to Demetrius for her own selfish benefit. A strain of jealousy against Hermia is evident in Helena’s comment, “Through Athens I am thought as fair as she” (382, 1.1.227). She puts much faith in the power of love even as she says this profound feeling involves neither judgment nor clarity of vision: “Things base and vile, holding no quantity, / Love can transpose to form and dignity” (382, 1.1.232-33). Perhaps it is not quality in the lover that we love, but rather what we ourselves project onto or into the beloved. Love is a thing of fantasy, and is not amenable to reason. The main question that the play poses has to do with the extent to which we can direct desire so that it guarantees order, social harmony and decorum.

Act 1, Scene 2 (382-84, Quince hands out roles; Bottom’s desire to play all of them)

This comic scene continues the theme of transformation introduced in Scene 1. Several workingmen have determined to compete for the honor of putting on a play in the presence of the Duke and Hippolyta. Their conversations give us some of Shakespeare’s most notable commentary on his chosen profession, if we may be so bold as to make such a connection. Peter Quince is the director of Pyramus and Thisbe, a tragic play about star-crossed lovers . Bottom the Weaver is to play the hero Pyramus (383, 1.2.16), but he wants to play everything else as well: “let me play Thisbe too” (383, 1.2.43) and “Let me play the lion too” (384, 1.2.58). To the latter request, he receives the answer that he would roar too loud and frighten the ladies – we will come across this concern about excessive realism again in Act 3, Scene 1 (394-95, 3.1.8-60), but for now, it’s easy to see that Nick Bottom is a delightful narcissist who wants to project himself into everything around him and that he is excited about the prospect of using art to escape everyday reality. The mechanicals are interested in maintaining the element of surprise, which is why they decide to go to the palace woods, lest interested parties find out about their play (384, 1.2.82-85).

Act 2, Scene 1 (384-90, Oberon and Titania quarrel; enter Robin Goodfellow)

We now meet the fairy king and queen, Oberon and Titania, whose lineage, I’ve read, goes all the way back to fifth-century Frankish Merovingian times. The fairy world in this play is one of Shakespeare’s “green worlds,” but it isn’t exactly remote from the human world and its concerns. (The same would be a fair statement about As You Like It’s Forest of Arden.) Magical transformations happen in this “palace wood,” but Oberon and Titania are beset by the same jealousies as foolish mortals: Puck and his fairy conversation partner tell us that these monarchs are at present separated over the custodianship of “A lovely boy stol’n from an Indian king” (385, 2.1.22), a changeling to whom Titania is particularly attached (since the boy’s mother was a votary of hers – a changeling is either a fairy child put in place of a stolen human child or, as in this case, the human child that has been taken), but whom Oberon wants for a “Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild” (385, 2.1.25). Perhaps we are also to understand that Titania would keep the boy just as he is, while Oberon would initiate him into maturity.

The unhappy couple sling accusations of infidelity (with the mortal king and his consort, no less) at each other (386, 2.1.63-76), and their squabbling has already, Titania reveals, resulted in natural disorders that cause trouble for lowly humans just trying to till the soil and raise their crops: “The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn / Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard” (386, 2.1.94-95).

Perhaps Titania is partly concerned to maintain her own sphere of authority by withholding from Oberon something he dearly covets, so the fairy monarchs have their own invisible war of the sexes going on: she refuses to surrender the boy: “His mother was a vot’ress of my order … / And for her sake do I rear up her boy; / And for her sake I will not part with him” (387, 2.1.123, 135-37).

Oberon decides on the spot to punish Titania for her obstinacy, so he summons Puck to find the magical flower with which to cast a spell on her: the pansy, which acquired its great property of inspiring love from the bolt of Cupid 387-88, 2.1.146-48, 165-74). The flower causes love at first sight, regardless of the object, so it serves as an emblem of the power that Hermia had invested in love itself. Oberon hopes by this device to extort the Indian boy from her in exchange for releasing her from whatever love relation the flower causes her to forge.

Puck, Oberon’s helper, is mischief in its lighter aspects—not the murderous Mischief invoked by Antony in Julius Caesar (the one that accords so well with “havoc” and “the dogs of war”; see Norton Tragedies 295, 3.1.276). Still, I suppose we could understand Robin Goodfellow, as his full name runs, to be the obverse of the chaste power that overlooks the entire play – namely, Diana, virgin goddess of the moon (377, 1.1.4).

Act 2, Scene 2 (390-94, Oberon be-pansies Titania; Puck mistakenly bewitches Lysander)

The transformations enjoined by Oberon are supposed to yield predictable results, but it’s hard to control such a magical power. Puck mistakenly sprinkles Lysander instead of Demetrius (392, 2.2.76-77), Lysander falls in love with Helena and out of love with Hermia. Puck can’t process the fact that Lysander and Helena are sleeping apart simply because they’re following the human custom of chastity before marriage, not because they are angry with each other: “Nay, good Lysander; for my sake, my dear, / Lie further off yet; do not lie so near” (391, 2.2.49-50). Puck is a natural creature, and cares nothings for customs of any sort. Helena is outraged at Lysander’s strange new affection (393, 2.2.129-40), and Hermia can scarcely believe Lysander isn’t near her side when she wakes up recounting her bad dream: “Methought a serpent ate my heart away” (393, 2.2.155), and decides to go off in search of him. Lysander claims to be following his reason in choosing Helena and rejecting Hermia (393, 2.2.126-28), but reason has nothing to do with it. Neither does his “will,” which he claims is being led by reason. Well, at least Oberon carried out his part of the plan properly—he began the scene by squeezing pansy juice onto Titania’s eyelids (391, 2.2.32). Another name for the pansy is “love-in-idleness,” which reminds us that love involves a narcissistic projection of qualities into a beloved object to bind it to us.

Act 3, Scene 1 (394-98, Quince & Co.’s artistic concerns; Bottom translated, charms Titania)

Our lowly actors are hard at work for the nobility’s viewing pleasure. Bottom continues to be determined to avoid excessive realism: “There are things in this comedy of Pyramus and Thisbe that will never please” (394, 3.1.8-11), he says, and finds the solution to this problem in a cunning prologue that will reassure the audience they are only watching a play. Snout worries about the lion, so Bottom decrees that he must show his humanity through his suit (394, 3.1.32-34). The issue of the moonlight must also be worked out (395, 3.1.51-55). Aside from the moonlight, the second difficulty is how to represent a wall, but Bottom has an ingenious strategy to deal with this: one of the actors will stand on the stage and create a crack with his hands held a certain way, which will signify the crack through which Pyramus and Thisbe will speak (395, 3.1.57-60). Bottom and others’ concerns (394-95, 3.1.8-60) about excessive realism and representational detail may indicate that they have trouble distinguishing between reality and fantasy, so they think their betters have the same problem. Still, the first problem in particular is an important neoclassical concern: what is the moral impact of fictional representations? Can mere fantasies cause distress? Of course they can – and in fact, Helena had described the power of love similarly in the first act (382, 1.1.232-33). Anything that is worth something is probably also capable of causing distress when mishandled or misunderstood.

With regard to the second issue – that of representation’s basic limits (how realistic can and must our play be?), it is worth remembering that we take for granted today a host of cinematic special effects when we watch a film of Shakespeare—at least when we watch excellent Hollywood versions like Michael Radford’s The Merchant of Venice or Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V, or Julie Taymor’s remarkable film Titus. When we go to watch an actual play, however, we are much closer to the possibilities of Shakespeare’s own day. One can only do so much by way of illusion on the stage, so we find Shakespeare often asking his audience to use their own imaginations, lest the play fall flat. One of the most famous instances occurs in Henry V, in which the prologue-speaker begins, “O for a muse of fire, that would ascend / The brightest heaven of invention: / A kingdom for a stage, princes to act / And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!” (Norton Histories 770, Prologue 1-4) The advice given the audience there is, “‘tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings, / Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times, / Turning th’accomplishment of many years / Into an hourglass…” (770, Prologue 28-31). When it came to representing fairy kingdoms and the personages therein, Shakespeare must have known how similar any playwright’s efforts must be to those of Peter Quince and his actors. Still, his great clown Feste in Twelfth Night sums up the power of fiction when he sings at the end of the play, “But that’s all one, our play is done, / And we’ll strive to please you every day” (Norton Comedies 750, 5.1.394-95). You must leave the charmed circle of the theater when the performance ends, but you can return there again and again, so that in this sense, at least, art and life interweave perpetually. Perhaps Shakespeare thought the combined power of artistic representation and the audience’s fancy or imagination was impressive enough to void excessive concern over the limitations of his plays.

Puck determines that partially transforming Bottom into an ass will be his contribution to the play (395, 3.1.65-68), and all the other actors are frightened from the scene. Bottom suspects a plot on their part: “This is to make an ass of me, to / fright me, if they could; but I will not stir from this place, do / what they can” (396, 3.1.106-08). We now see another side to Bottom’s desire to transform himself into anything and everything: perhaps this desire indicates a degree of narcissism and a strong need to control his surroundings, not necessarily a healthy imagination. As mentioned earlier, some have said that Bottom’s over-concern about realism indicates a lack of imagination, not an excess of it. It may also be the case that Shakespeare is having fun at the expense of early neoclassical criticism, which insists that the audience falls prey to “dramatic illusion” and takes what it sees on the stage for the real thing. If all this is true, it seems comically appropriate that he should be “translated” (396, 3.1.105) into a stubborn, obtuse donkey. But Titania awakens to the sight of him, and the magic juice does its work: “thy fair virtue’s force perforce doth move me / On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee” (396, 3.1.124-25). She makes him an offer he can’t refuse, considering her powers and high state: “Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no” (397, 3.1.135). I would not be harsh with Bottom – if he cannot manage his fantasy projections, he isn’t alone in the play in not being able to do that. Narcissism and projection are part of love as well. How aware are most people of that fact?

Act 3, Scene 2 (398-407, Oberon bewitches Demetrius, orders Robin to fix his error; couples argue in the forest, both men pursuing Helena: chaos; Oberon’s desire for peace)

Puck relates how he transformed Bottom (398, 3.2.1-32), then in Oberon’s presence he discovers his error in having sprinkled pansy juice on Lysander rather than Demetrius: “This is the woman, but not this the man” (399, 3.2.42). Oberon is pleased that Titania has fallen in love with the transformed Bottom, but he is not pleased about Lysander’s situation, and sets about making things right. Oberon now bewitches Demetrius (400, 3.2.99) to turn his affections towards Helena, while Robin sees good sport in the coming fireworks amongst the couples (400, 3.2.111-15).

Helena continues to believe she is the butt of a cruel joke when Demetrius and Lysander vie for her attention: “You both are rivals and love Hermia, / And now both rivals to mock Helena” (401, 3.2.156-57). She laments to Hermia, “is all quite forgot? / All schooldays’ friendship, childhood innocence?” (402, 3.2.202-03). Hermia protests her innocence truthfully, but soon things turn ugly when her weak point is found: she fears being mocked for her short stature: “[Helena] … hath made compare / Between our statures; she hath urged her height …” (404, 3.2.291-92).

Demetrius and Lysander go off into the woods to fight a duel (405, 3.2.337-38), and Oberon orders Puck to follow them and keep anything untoward from happening. With the men and the women alike quarreling, we have reached the height of chaos in this play. The assumption Hermia makes is not so hard to fathom. The matter of attraction or the lack thereof strikes at the very heart of a person’s identity. Puck is ordered to fix his mistake with Lysander (405, 3.2.355-69), while Oberon himself will extort the Indian boy from Titania in exchange for releasing her from her love match with an ass. What Oberon the comic king seeks above all is harmony: “I will her charmèd eye release / From monster’s view, and all things shall be peace” (406, 3.2.375-78). The scene ends with both human couples fast asleep not far from one another.

Act 3, Scene 3 (407-08, Robin corrects his error with Lysander)

In the third scene, Robin Goodfellow finally corrects his earlier mistake: “Jack shall have Jill, / Naught shall go ill, / the man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well” (408, 3.3.45-47). Robin doesn’t sharply differentiate one human couple from another: to him, what matters is the coupling itself, the simple fact of union, and he doesn’t trouble himself with the choice of object.

Act 4, Scenes 1-2 (408-14, Robin corrects his error, Oberon unvexes Titania, they reconcile; Theseus and Hyppolita converse; Bottom recovers, waxes philosophical; play’s preferred!)

Bottom satisfies his nonhuman desires with some delicious hay, and then gives in to sleep while Titania lies next to him (409, 4.1.30-42). Oberon has succeeded in his plan to extort the Indian boy from Titania, so he tells Puck to turn Bottom back into a man (410, 4.1.80ff) while Oberon himself undoes his magic against Titania (409, 4.1.67), using now the antidote to the pansy, Dian’s bud. Then he tells us something about the nature of that word “dream” in the title of the play: the human couples will “to Athens back again repair, / And think no more of this night’s accidents / But as the fierce vexation of a dream” (409, 4.1.64-66). What we have been witnessing is a species of “vexation” in which nothing holds true about even those things in which we put most stock; everything is subject to whimsical magic and is beyond our control. But no lasting harm will come of this fitful state of agitation since all of the couples concerned will end up properly sorted by the end of the play and Bottom’s strange metamorphosis is only temporary; if, as some have said, there is an element of satire here, it is not particularly sharp-edged. The play deals with passion in a curiously dispassionate, bemused, moonstruck manner. This fairy-land perspective has already been captured when Puck says to Oberon in 3.2, “Shall we their fond pageant see? / Lord, what fools these mortals be!” (400, 3.2.114-15) We know that chaste goddess Diana is looking over the whole affair from her distant perch. The final task of the fairy king and queen will be to bless the wedding day and grounds for Theseus and the other mortals: strife and confusion will give way to courtly decorum and blessings (410, 4.1.84-89).

At the palace, Hippolyta still shows some of her old spirit, reminding Theseus that she has kept still better company than him—his hounds may be very fine, but she has heard the dogs of Hercules and Cadmus, and is dubious about Theseus’ claims of supreme tuneableness (411, 4.1.109-15). The tenor of this conversation is civil, and so a far cry from the violence that forged the union of Theseus and Hippolyta. Egeus does his best to ruin everything by remaining constant to his grinch-like principles, importuning Theseus for due severity: “I beg the law, the law upon his head” (411, 4.1.152). But Demetrius, Egeus’ favorite, robs him of the opportunity by declaring his renewed interest in Helena, which leaves Hermia free to marry Lysander. The Duke offers a triple wedding, and the happy couples decide to follow Theseus and tell about their forest dreams (412, 4.1.194-95).

Meanwhile, Bottom is waxing philosophical about his “vision”: “Man is but an ass if he go about t’expound this / dream” (412, 4.1.201-02), says he, and then supposes that even though he can’t explain the dream itself, he might get it turned into an oddly unsettled “ballad” with Peter Quince’s help, and have it sung at the end of the play (413, 4.1.207-10). The others are waiting for him to make his appearance, lest they lose their shot at courtly patronage suitable to their lowly rank, but Bottom arrives just in time (413, 4.2.25-27), keeping mum about his great adventure with Titania. Of all the characters in the play and for a reason worth pondering, he alone has been privileged to see the fairies. Bottom doesn’t change even when he is transformed into a demi-donkey: perhaps his genius is to be unfazed by such strange events. He is at home in fairyland, at home in the dream-world from whence issues waking human desire. In this sense, Bottom has bragging rights– he is not “vexed” in the same way the other characters are, even though Oberon thinks he is. The rest of us live fitfully trying to negotiate the gap between waking and sleep, reality and fantasy, what is and what might be, but not Nick Bottom.

Act 5, Scene 1 (414-21, Theseus offers constructive art criticism, the Pyramus and Thisbe proceeds)

Theseus, as we see here, is having none of this day’s talk about fairyland “antique fables” (414, 5.1.2-3) such as the now-happy couples have related to them about their time in the woods. In his view, “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet / Are of imagination all compact” (414, 5.1.7-8), and he expounds further that the poet’s “imagination bodies forth / The forms of things unknown” and then his “pen / Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name” (414, 5.1.14-17). Imagination, he continues, is bound to provide causal agents for anything it treats: “in the night, imagining some fear, / How easy is a bush supposed a bear!” (414, 5.1.21-22) Theseus sounds politely dismissive of the arts, but he finds in them entertainment “To ease the anguish of a torturing hour” (414, 5.1.37). In other words, unlike Bottom and some of the mechanic players, the noble Theseus has no trouble making distinctions between the real and the purely fanciful; he will view the play from an “aesthetic distance” unavailable to the Bottoms of the world. But isn’t the joke on him, at least to some extent? Within the play, fairyland is as real as anything else, so all those strange transpositions of love objects and, of course, the “translation” of Bottom, really happened.

But we need not consider Theseus unappreciative—he is the most indulgent of critics with the ridiculous spectacle put on by the Pyramus and Thisbe crew. Theseus is able to laugh at the players’ infelicities and accept the honesty with which they set forth their representation, in spite of his master of revels Philostrate’s (or Egeus’, in our Norton text) contempt for them. Theseus associates glib illusionism with dishonesty, similar to the fair words of a selfish counselor: “I will hear that play; / For never anything can be amiss / When simpleness and duty tender it” (415, 5.1.81-83). When Hippolyta labels the play “the silliest stuff that ever I heard” (418, 5.1.207), Theseus sums up his critical acumen this way: “The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst / are no worse if imagination amend them” (418, 5.1.208-09). The representation onstage we might describe by saying that it is a framework or skeleton that the audience members must then bring to life with imaginative sympathy. The Pyramus and Thisbe production goes pretty much as planned, a mixture of preposterous ineptness and genuinely affecting drama (418-20).

One thing I enjoy about Shakespeare’s staging of the Pyramus and Thisbe play is how the aristocratic audience seems both genuinely engaged and yet capable of conversing amongst themselves, making jokes, and passing critical judgments. I think Shakespeare must have noticed this sort of behavior at large theaters where he staged his plays (the Globe opened in 1599, and after 1609 or so, he also put some plays on at the more intimate Blackfriars). A Shakespeare play in a big theater would have been spellbinding and yet quite a “social affair,” as I imagine it.

Act 5, Scene 2 and Epilogue (422-23, Fairies bless the weddings at the palace, Robin asks audience’s indulgence)

Oberon, Titania and the fairies blass the palace of Theseus and Hippolyta: “Hand in hand with fairy grace / Will we sing and bless this place” (422, 5.2.29-30). Puck’s epilogue is effective, as he leaves matters to the audience’s imagination: it is their prerogative to judge what they have seen, and their burden to perpetuate the play in their own minds or let it pass away. To some degree like love itself, the theater (“make-believe”) is a power in the world and one to be treated with due regard. A Midsummer Night’s Dream therefore begs indulgence for its excellent mockery of romantic desire as an irrational, chaos-inducing force in human affairs that nonetheless seems conducive to individual happiness and good social order: “If we shadows have offended, / Think but this, and all is mended: / That you have but slumbered here, / While these visions did appear …” (423, Epilogue 1-4).

Edition. Greenblatt, Stephen et al., eds. The Norton Shakespeare. 2nd edition. Four-Volume Genre Paperback Set. Norton, 2008. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93152-5.

Week 04, Romeo and Juliet

2007-09-11T11:58:00.000-07:00

Notes on Romeo and Juliet

Prologue and Act 1, Scene 1

It has sometimes been said that Romeo and Juliet is not much of a tragedy because unfortunate accidents seem to be responsible for most of the bad things that happen. There is no prideful Oedipus the King in this play who brings about his own downfall, but I don’t believe Shakespeare follows any unitary model of tragedy—he constitutes his tragic intensities and ideals circumstantially, from one set of materials to the next. A notion of tragedy as broad as “a fall from good fortune to bad” probably serves him as a point of departure. What, then, is the stuff of tragedy in this play? We are dealing with a primal tragedy of youthful expectations and middle-aged fears, of existential rawness and fear of irretrievable loss. Sigmund Freud wrote that “it is monstrous to see one’s children die.” That is what happens to both houses. As for Romeo and Juliet, they are open to the intensities and extremes of passion that come with first love. Romeo in particular idealizes love and fidelity to an extent that cannot help but be perilous. He hasn’t had the experience to do otherwise. There is a medieval quality to this play so full of turnabouts and sudden emotional passages from mirth to despair.

The Prologue announces that this will be a tragedy not only of two lovers but also of two extended families, the Montagues and the Capulets. Antipathy has become habitual with them, and they have therefore embroiled the entire city of Verona in civil strife. The quibbling servants of the first scene show how trivial the feud has become, and Sampson’s obscene innuendos about Montague maidens suggests that the family feud is easily made to serve selfish purposes, base appetites. There is no nobility in such factional strife. Tybalt and Benvolio are as absurd in prosecuting the quarrel as the low-born servants. The Prince breaks up the current fighting, but it is clear from what he says that he has dealt leniently with such disorders in the past. As in Measure for Measure, the ruler has allowed his subjects’s petty desires to wreak havoc in his realm.

We first hear of Romeo when Lady Montague asks Benvolio where the young man has been hiding himself. He shuns company, and Benvolio soon learns from him that love is the cause. Romeo speaks with considerable wit, but his words are also full of Petrarchan extremes: “O heavy lightness, serious vanity,” and so forth. Benvolio, a somewhat less inexperienced young man, advises Romeo to look around him and compare as many beautiful women as possible with the one who seems to be giving him the trouble.

Act 1, Scene 2

Capulet is very pleased with the prospect of the Prince’s kinsman Paris marrying his daughter Juliet, and he invites the young man to a public feast that also presents Romeo with the opportunity Benvolio is pushing on him. Romeo is dubious, and maintains his distant Rosaline’s matchless quality.

Act 1, Scene 3

The Nurse apparently has been with Juliet from infancy onwards, and she sees the girl’s life as a whole. The bawdy joke made by her husband years ago, here repeated, implies that the Nurse has been preparing Juliet for this time from her childhood. Her words are poignant in that they remind us just how short is the time between carefree childhood and the consequential time of adulthood. Juliet is intrigued about Paris, but no more than that since he is no more than a name to her.

Act 1, Scene 4

Mercutio recounts the legend of Queen Mab to Romeo and others present. The substance of his speech is that this Queen inspires all sorts to follow their own particular desires—by implication, we don’t have a great deal of control when it comes to our emotions and desires. All of this is meant to deflate Romeo’s dream, but the deeper significance of Mercutio’s speech is to put everyone in the same condition as Romeo—a follower of idle dreams. Romeo is not in so light a mood after all—he says, “my mind misgives / Some consequence yet hanging in the stars / Shall bitterly begin his fearful date / With this night’s revels” (106-09).

Act 1, Scene 5

Benvolio’s plan doesn’t go quite as he had intended since Romeo, upon seeing Juliet, becomes just as smitten with her as he was with his former love. Old Montague and Capulet are willing enough to keep the peace, but the younger generation is always spoiling for trouble. Romeo’s forebodings are fulfilled when Tybalt conceives a hatred for him at the very moment when he falls in love with Juliet. The first meeting between Romeo and Juliet is one of the finest scenes Shakespeare ever wrote. Together they speak a sonnet; Romeo takes the lead while Juliet is both passionate and poised. Both are soon dispossessed of any notion that there is a clear path forwards for them.

Act 2, Scene 1

Ever the realist, Mercutio jokes with Benvolio about the supposed otherworldliness of Romeo’s new affection. Mercutio stands for the view that any “idealizing of eroticism” is downright silly and perhaps disingenuous, since raw sexuality is always at the bottom of any romantic pose a lover may strike up: of Juliet he can only say, “O that she were / An open[-arse], thou a pop’rin pear! / Romeo, good night, I’ll to my truckle-bed, / This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep” (37-40). He says this to Benvolio, however, and not to Romeo. Mercutio is frenetic and open-hearted in his way, but he’s not inclined to lie around in a chilly “field-bed” to keep watch over the passions of Romeo.

Act 2, Scene 2

Romeo’s romantic idealism is absolute up to this point, as is easy to see by remarks such as, “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? / It is the east, and Juliet is the sun” (1-2). Juliet’s idealism, though strong, shows more regard for the narrow dynastic concerns that hem in the two lovers. Her famous lines, “That which we call a rose / By any other word would smell as sweet” (43-44) capture the dilemma of lovers right up to Shakespeare’s time: love is a universal passion and as such it ought to generate community, but this same passion is hindered by a host of social demands and expectations that are anything but charitable, so that it often creates rifts between individuals and the larger group, which we call “society.”

Juliet reveals her passion fully since at first she doesn’t know Romeo is listening, which spares both of them the awkward task of dissembling their love. Juliet’s language is tinged with realistic (if unfounded) concerns—in particular, she fears that Romeo’s propensity to swear by the moon may indicate rashness rather than constancy. But she is steadfast in her eagerness to marry him, whatever the obstacles. The language of falconry marks Juliet’s desire for Romeo: “O, for a falc’ner’s voice,” she says, “To lure this tassel-gentle back again!” (158-59). There is recognition in such language that desire is essentially a wild thing, not something safe and tame. We can find the same insight, though in a darker vein, in the poetry of Sir Thomas Wyatt and other Tudor poets preceding Shakespeare.

Act 2, Scene 3

Friar Lawrence’s pronouncement near the beginning of this scene is instructive: “Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, / And vice sometime by action dignified” (21-22). The Friar is collecting a basket with “baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers” (6) that will turn out to be useful—and harmful—in a way he doesn’t yet imagine. Shocked by Romeo’s sudden transference of his attentions from Rosaline to Juliet, he nonetheless agrees to perform the secret marriage rite Romeo wants, in hopes of ending Verona’s unrest. The Friar seems to think that the Montagues and Capulets will be charitable and reasonable once they realize two of their own have chosen to marry.

Act 2, Scene 4

Mercutio shows his awareness of how silly the feuding amongst the two houses (especially amongst the younger generation) is: he takes on the persona of a grandsire to denounce “fashion-mongers” like Tybalt (33). Mercutio is in on the hostilities, of course, but he isn’t entirely circumscribed or defined by them. Given the opportunity, he engages with Romeo in a battle of wits, and then takes bawdy aim at Juliet’s Nurse, who has come as the girl’s emissary. Nurse Angelica is not amused. Romeo promises he will arrive in good time to spend the night with Juliet after they are married.

Act 2, Scene 5

In his lectures on Shakespeare, Coleridge implies that while the Nurse is eccentric, she is at the same time a universal type of the caring, elderly nurse.* It’s easy to see that quality in her here—beset by the impatient Juliet, the Nurse holds her ground for a while, but finally gives the girl the information she wants. Angelica’s circumstances and pace are not the same as Juliet’s: “I am the drudge, and toil in your delight; / But you shall bear the burthen soon at night” (75-76). She is fond of Juliet almost to a fault, but always aware that the young girl is surrounded by a potentially hostile world of causes and effects, of limitations and consequences. Pleasure and idealism are not free.

*The quotation: The character of the Nurse is the nearest of any thing in Shakspeare to a direct borrowing from mere observation; and the reason is, that as in infancy and childhood the individual in nature is a representative of a class,—just as in describing one larch tree, you generalize a grove of them,—so it is nearly as much so in old age. The generalization is done to the poet’s hand. Here you have the garrulity of age strengthened by the feelings of a long-trusted servant, whose sympathy with the mother’s affections gives her privileges and rank in the household; and observe the mode of connection by accidents of time and place, and the childlike fondness of repetition in a second childhood, and also that happy, humble, ducking under, yet constant resurgence against, the check of her superiors!

(http://absoluteshakespeare.com/guides/essays/romeo_and_juliet_essay.htm )

Act 2, Scene 6

Friar Lawrence leads Romeo and Juliet off to perform the marriage ceremony; his advice to Romeo, “Therefore love moderately” (14) is strangely ineffectual, given the Friar’s willingness to facilitate such a hasty, secret wedding.

Act 3, Scene 1

Romeo’s attempt to get between Tybalt and Mercutio results in the latter’s death, and then Romeo is honor-bound to avenge his kinsman. Having slain Tybalt, he laments that he is now “fortune’s fool” (136). The Prince steps in and dispenses his characteristically tempered style of justice, banishing Romeo on pain of death. This decree is mild since, after all, Paris is the Prince’s own kinsman.

Act 3, Scene 2

Juliet is indulging herself in a little romantic idealism around the time of the deadly quarrel: Give me my Romeo, and, when I shall die, / Take him and cut him out in little stars, / And he will make the face of heaven so fine / That all the world will be in love with night” (21-24). But the Nurse soon brings her the bad news about Tybalt’s death (over which Juliet is genuinely aggrieved since he was her kinsman) and Romeo’s guilty flight. The Nurse also provides hope, for she knows Romeo is hiding with Friar Lawrence.

Act 3, Scene 3

Banished Romeo is unable to imagine a “world without Verona walls” (17), and when the Friar tries to show him the sunny side of the whole affair, Romeo says with some justice, “Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel” (64). Romeo’s willingness to kill himself if it will assuage Juliet’s grief over Tybalt shows the depth of this affection that the Friar, as a holy man, supposedly lacks. Friar Lawrence’s advice is that Romeo should make his way to Mantua.

Act 3, Scenes 4-5

Romeo and Juliet spend their first night together in the Capulet stronghold, and engage in a traditional “argument with the dawn” of Troubadour lineage. Juliet is filled with dread, and tells Romeo, “Methinks I see thee now, thou art so low, / As one dead in the bottom of a tomb” (55-56). When Lady Capulet professes her desire to poison Romeo in Mantua, Juliet pretends to share the same wish, but she can’t bring herself to pretend any joy in the prospect of marrying Count Paris, to whom her father has decided she should be wed “early next Thursday” (112). Old Capulet’s rebuke of Juliet is immediate and harsh—either she will marry Paris or he will disown her. Juliet is the Capulets’ only child, and in her stubbornness the father of the household sees his hopes of dynastic immortality frustrated. The Nurse angers Juliet by professing that it would be best to give in to her father’s wishes and marry Paris.

Act 4, Scene 1

Friar Lawrence sees that Juliet’s situation is desperate, and offers an equally desperate remedy—she will take a drug that induces death-like symptoms for forty-two hours, and then Romeo will come to the tomb of the Capulets and take her away with him to Mantua. This is a common motif in literature: cheating the Grim Reaper, or at least attempting to negotiate a better deal with him. Film students may recall Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, in which a medieval man plays a game of chess with Death in hopes of gaining more earthly time. The Friar, for a holy man, has a flair for quick-thinking deception, and is able to put his earlier sententia about virtue and vice to good use.

Act 4, Scenes 2-4

Juliet shows remarkable courage and does not shrink from swallowing her potion, even when she conjures the ghost of Tybalt.

Act 4, Scene 5

This is one of the scenes that leaps from joy to despair in a heartbeat. The Capulet parents suffer (or rather think they suffer) an irretrievable loss of the sort all parents fear. As I mentioned at the beginning of this commentary, Freud’s remark that “it is monstrous to see one’s children die” is appropriate here. And there’s a strong medieval quality to the grotesque imagery here and elsewhere in the play: old Capulet says to Paris, “O son, the night before thy wedding-day / Hath Death lain with thy wife” (35-36). The scene ends with a comic exchange between some musicians who had been summoned earlier by the Capulets and the servant Peter. Together, they introduce a devil-may-care, self-interested attitude into the midst of unspeakable woe. These musicians have little to do with the goings-on of great houses—they are just “working-class stiffs,” as we would say, and they seek their own security and comfort, when the latter is to be had. The scene doesn’t reach the synthesized profundity and silliness of the gravedigger scene in Hamlet, but it’s effective all the same.

Act 5, Scene 1

Romeo hears from Balthasar that Juliet’s body lies in the tomb of the Capulets, and, to borrow a phrase from Hamlet, he determines “with wings / As swift as meditation or the thoughts of love” to purchase a dram of deadly stuff from a poor apothecary (druggist), and die next to Juliet. The apothecary becomes a base-born “victim” of this noble tragedy, protesting, “My poverty, but not my will, consents” (75).

Act 5, Scene 2

Friar Lawrence learns to his discomfiture that Friar John was detained by townsmen concerned about the plague, so he wasn’t able to deliver his friend’s letter to Romeo.

Act 5, Scene 3

Romeo boldly confronts death and all its accoutrements: “Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death, / Gorg’d with the dearest morsel of the earth, / Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open, / And in despite I’ll cram thee with more food” (45-48). The death-imagery in this play is quite ugly, and throughout it has underlain the graceful words and actions of the young hero and heroine like the grotesque underside of a fair medieval decorative panel or casket. Romeo also confronts the hapless Paris, and kills him, only to die after one last look at Juliet’s body. The “ensign” of Juliet’s beauty is still visible, but the already aggrieved Romeo isn’t able to process this fact in anything but an ultra-romantic way, so surrounded is she by the architecture and trappings of death.

When Juliet awakens, her only comfort is Friar Lawrence, and Romeo’s words in 3.3 about the Friar’s inability to enter into the deep passions of the two lovers ring true: at the critical moment, Lawrence is frightened away from the scene when he hears the watch coming, and leaves Juliet alone. The entirely conventional fate he had imagined for her—delivery to “a sisterhood of holy nuns” (157) is not for Juliet, who embraces Romeo’s dagger and dies, falling directly on his body.

Friar Lawrence (along with Balthasar) is called to give an account of what has happened, and is forgiven his less than wise or heroic interventions. As the Prologue promised, the “strife” of the Montagues and Capulets is “buried” by the death of their beloved son and daughter. This family that has dealt in hatred, says the Prince, is justly punished: “heaven finds means to kill your joys with love” (293), but neither does he exempt himself from blame since he has been guilty of “winking” (294) at the chaos the two families have long visited upon Verona. Love has indeed brought the warring houses together, but the price is the death of what they hold most dear.

Week 03, King Richard II

2007-09-04T12:13:00.000-07:00

Notes on King Richard II

Act 1, Scenes 1-2

The play begins with King Richard acting as arbiter of a feudal quarrel between Mowbray and Henry Bullingbrook, both of whom bandy words of high honor and charges of treason. Richard himself was treated rather badly as a young man by the kingdom’s great lords, and we can see from the outset that there is no love lost between him and them. In the second scene, the Duchess of Gloucester urges John of Gaunt to intervene on the side of Bullingbrook against Mowbray, but his own deep sense of complicity in the Duke of Gloucester’s death forces him to stay on the sidelines, to the great disgust of the Duchess.

Act 1, Scenes 3-4

Richard decides to banish Bullingbrook first for 10 years and then, supposedly out of pity for John of Gaunt, for six years, while Mowbray is banished perpetually. Right away, Richard is given cause for anxiety about Bullingbrook, who obviously knows how to ingratiate himself with the common people as he makes his exit from the country. But Richard has little time to worry about that because he must turn his attention to the troubles in Ireland. At the end of the fourth scene, we see our first evidence of Richard’s greediness and trenchant wit—when he hears that John of Gaunt is about to die, he jokes, “Pray God we may make haste and come too late!” (64).

Act 2, Scenes 1-2

John of Gaunt scolds King Richard for the disordered state of his kingdom; he laments the great falling off of English prowess against the French since the time of Edward III: “England, that was wont to conquer others,/Hath made a shameful conquest of itself” (65-66). Richard becomes increasingly impatient and sardonic, and cannot hide his disrespect for this dying pillar of the kingdom. The old man calls him easy prey to flatterers and no more than a landlord rather than a king. Fundamentally, Richard does not respect the feudal net of loyalties and obligations or the sacred quality of the crown—he is a feckless opportunist. The Duke of York is also appalled at Richard’s rapacious behavior right after John of Gaunt passes away, and he tries to explain to him that when Richard abrogates the time-honored law of primogeniture, he undercuts the legitimacy of his own rule (2.1.195-99). But Richard’s glib rhymes over rule such mature advice. The king even leaves York, whom he seems to consider docile enough to trust, in charge of managing the kingdom while he himself goes off to fight the rebellion in Ireland. Later in the same scene, Northumberland offers us a litany of Richard’s offenses against the Commons and nobility—the upshot is that the King has lost everyone’s loyalty and respect. Rumor already has it that Henry Bolingbrook is on his way back to England in defiance of his banishment.

Act 2, Scenes 3-4

The Duke of York is now thoroughly confused; everything is in disarray, and he does not know what to do. There is no money thanks to Richard’s spendthrift ways, and York is too far past his prime to marshal sufficient energy to deal with this disaster. Meanwhile, Harry Percy is joining up with Bullingbrook’s party—a dangerous development for the King. Bolingbrook answers Richard’s envoy Berkeley that he has come to claim his proper title as Lancaster. The Duke of York upbraids his nephew Bullingbrook as a rebel and traitor. These are harsh words, and Bullingbrook’s fair reply does not seem to convince York, but the latter declares himself “neuter” regarding the whole affair. In essence, he has thrown in his lot with the man he just called a traitor. Although Thomas Hobbes and his theory of royal absolutism in Leviathan don’t come along until the English Civil War era, the Duke of York’s reaction to Bullingbrook’s attempt against King Richard illustrates Hobbes’s paradox: rebellion is utterly inadmissible, but if it succeeds, the rebel becomes the new absolute power. York understands that things have gone beyond the point of no return and that King Richard has lost the loyalty of his subjects from low to high; Bolingbrook is already the de facto ruler.

Act 3, Scene 1

In this scene, Bolingbrook accuses Bushy and Green of corrupting the King, and we will see in the next scene that Richard himself feels he has been led astray.

Act 3, Scene 2

Richard opens this scene by weeping for joy and touching the earth. Those who surround him, however, appear to function somewhat like King Lear’s Fool in that they make it difficult for us to take his passionate words seriously. He must tell them, “Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords” (23) either because they already are mocking him or because he anticipates that they will. But there is still something genuinely moving in the claim, “Not all the water in the rough rude sea / Can wash the balm off from an anointed king” (54-55).

From lines 174-77, King Richard says something similar to what King Lear will say—his ministers have told him he was something more than human, and now he finds out to his grief that he is not. This is a traditional theme—fear or self-interest will lead counselors to delude the powerful about their true circumstances and nature. In this sense, power is an obstacle, not an advantage. Richard’s mood shifts are nothing short of astonishing throughout this scene—I suppose this is partly because Shakespeare must telescope historical events to suit the rhythm of the play, but it also gives a sense of Richard as almost manic-depressive: in a few heartbeats, he goes from high spirits to abject despair, from majestic to pathetic. His instinct when the despair strikes him is to wax poetical, as he does at line 155 and following: “For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground / And tell sad stories of the death of Kings.” His theatrical nature makes him rehearse again and again both the heights of power and the inevitability of a great fall, as if he always has seen himself as an actor in a tragedy. Like any educated medieval man, Richard seeks the consolation of philosophy by patterning his own life after moral exempla. But it seems that his temperament is too mercurial to permit him to draw the necessary sustenance for long.

I don’t know if it would be fair to say that King Richard is incapable of seeing things directly, incapable of raw perception in so far as anyone is capable of such a thing. Perhaps we are to understand that he sees things too clearly sometimes, so much so that he is driven immediately to begin telling some fine story that distances him from the painfulness of his perceptions. That is, after all, one of the uses of art. Even a sad story can serve the same purpose as a triumphant one in this regard, justifying life aesthetically when it cannot be justified otherwise.

Act 3, Scene 3

King Richard’s poetic self-pity forces Henry Bolingbrook to show his hand: it would be obvious even to a child that Henry cannot do what he claims he would be willing to do; namely, simply claim his title among the nobility and not lay hands on the crown. He has insulted the King by annulling his own banishment, and he has an overwhelming military advantage. There really is no other course but to take the crown for himself. This is not to say that sometimes Shakespeare’s Kings cannot forgive an insult or an offense, but I think the situation is too brutal and explicit here to allow of moderation.

However, it is also obvious that Richard has brought this disaster upon himself. He claims to rule with the approval of “God omnipotent” (85), but he has cut the ground from under the legitimacy of his rule by failing to respect the feudal rights of his subjects. He has not respected the principle of hereditary rank and succession, so his continued arrogation of power provokes not awe but mirth in Henry and his followers.

Richard sees everything in all or nothing terms—he is either King or less than the meanest of his subjects. The end of this scene makes everything brutally clear: Richard understands that he must go to London, and finally Bolingbrook comes right out and says so. With Bolingbrook, action is the priority.

Act 3, Scene 4

The Gardener helps us compare the workings of the aristocracy with the processes of nature. The growth of plants is compared to the pride of men, and the accusation is that Richard has failed to keep his garden, England, in good order by pruning those branches of the nobility that grow beyond what is healthful. This is an ancient metaphor that I recall encountering in the pages of Herodotus—the Persian king Cyrus, if I recall correctly, explains his theory of governance by pointing to a waving field of grain or flowers and gesturing with his arm to show that the ruler must lop off the heads of those who grow too high. But there is another side to this gardening metaphor of organic process—when the Queen curses the Gardener for giving her bad news about Richard, he says that his skill is not “subject to thy curse” (103). Natural process is regular and predictable, but human affairs are far more difficult to predict.

Act 4, Scene 1

Bolingbrook declares that he will recall Norfolk from banishment and restore to him his lands, even though he was an enemy. The new king will respect feudal rights in hopes of keeping order in his realm. It turns out that the man died at Venice, but the point has been made. Then Bolingbrook declares that he will ascend the throne with God’s permission, and the Bishop of Carlisle is arrested for treason when he protests. This scene takes place in parliament, and Bolingbrook is determined that his taking of the throne will be perceived as legitimate. That is a difficult thing to accomplish when Richard, ever the actor, is called in to play his part and abdicate. Richard proceeds both to insist upon his grief as a private man and to underscore the heavy and solemn nature of the act that is now taking place, even though Bolingbrook seems to treat the matter as a show trial. The scope of Richard’s performance is limited in that he is hardly playing to a sympathetic audience, but when he calls for a looking-glass so that he may contemplate himself and his “brittle glory” (287), the attention effectively shifts to him, if only for a few moments. How can a king un-king himself? And what is the man who remains when this act has been performed? Bolingbrook has little time for such high drama and philosophical/political speculation combined into one; he promises to grant Richard one wish, and when that which is “give me leave to go” (313), the sharp returning question is “Whither?” The only place Richard can go, of course, is to the Tower of London where he will remain as prisoner.

Act 5, Scene 1

The Queen makes known her dismay at how abject Richard has become, asking “Hath Bullingbrook deposed / Thine intellect?” (27-28) But Richard, by this time, is most concerned that his sad story become a royal winter’s tale. He also offers a parting shot to Northumberland, telling him that the new king’s associates will become greedy and destroy him. They will follow the example set by their new leader.

Act 5, Scenes 2-3

As Bolingbrook rides in procession to be crowned, Richard’s sad role is to serve as the cleanup act. He shows almost Christlike patience in this new role. The Duke of York has decided that it is time to show loyalty to Bullingbrook because he is the new king—this sudden shift in attitude illustrates the paradox of absolutism that Thomas Hobbes will later explore. In Leviathan, Hobbes insists that rebellion is always illegitimate since monarchy is absolute, but he also says that once a rebellion has succeeded, the new ruler’s power is just as absolute as that of the deposed ruler.

The Duke of York’s son Aumerle has engaged in a conspiracy against Henry Bolingbrook. To simplify his plot, Shakespeare makes Aumerle happen to be wearing a seal that contains details about the conspiracy. This is almost as silly as the “letter plot” of King Lear, but it works well enough. The scene that ensues (Scene 3 ) is semi-comic, with the old Duke showing an attitude similar to that of the severe ancient Roman nobleman who executed his own son rather than mitigate a just punishment for crimes against the state, and his wife standing up for the principle of a mother’s tender feelings towards her child. Bolingbrook sides with the mother, although he declares for the execution of “the rest of that consorted crew” (138). Apparently, now that the feckless Richard has been deposed, we will have a kinder, gentler Windsor Castle.

At the very beginning of Scene 3, even before the Duke of York and Aumerle enter the picture, Bolingbrook is also quite anxious about his own son, Prince Hal—wherever can the young rascal be? I believe we are to understand that Bolingbrook’s anxiety stems from the genuine possibility that Prince Hal will turn out to be as reckless and irresponsible as Richard II.

Act 5, Scenes 4-6

Bolingbrook, like Henry II against Thomas à Beckett a few centuries back in 1170, gives voice to his desire to be rid of the person who is troubling him, and is overheard by wicked knights willing to do the deed. The similarity of the two men’s conduct indicates rough sailing ahead for the conscience of Bolingbrook. Henry II, we may recall, felt so guilty about what he had wished on Beckett that he ended up donning sackcloth and having himself scourged through the streets of London.

Richard, meanwhile, sits in his cell in the Tower philosophizing about death, misfortune, and ambition. As always, Richard regards himself as an actor: “Nor I, nor any man that but man is, /With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased/With being nothing” (5.39-41). He has been above all a waster of time, and recognizes too late that time is bound to waste its waster in return. He failed to shepherd his power wisely, so it has dwindled to nothing. It is clear that he is unable to arrive at the patience he seeks. At the end, he becomes frustrated with the Keeper who refuses to sample his food and begins beating him. Moments later, his murderers make their entrance, and Richard dies courageously, even killing one of his assassins. One of the remaining killers, Exton, reminds us of the theological dimensions of what has just happened when he realizes he has purchased nothing better than damnation by doing the new king’s bidding.

Bolingbrook, now King Henry IV, still has much work to do in putting down a rebellion against him, and he distributes honors and compassion to establish a precedent of generosity and gratitude over against Richard’s venal administration. The Bishop of Carlisle is pardoned, and Exton is awarded only guilt. Henry IV himself is stricken with blood-guilt. He wants to make a voyage to Jerusalem to expiate this feeling, but as it turns out, he has far too much on his plate to indulge himself in the luxury of self-reproach. If there is to be renewal, it will come only with the maturing of his son Prince Hal, who, as we know, is still a tavern- goer and an actor trying on many parts. As we shall see in I Henry IV, the Prince’s acting is redeemed because it differs profoundly in its purpose from the dramatic inclinations that consumed Richard II and made him unfit to govern.

A few final thoughts: Richard is at times a villain, especially in his reckless early reign. But he is also a reflective and poetical villain, so we should consider the extent to which the moral sententiae (pronouncements) he repeats with gathering pathos redeem him as a man with tragic insight into the nature of kingship, or whether they simply amount to self-pity. The question of tragedy in relation to Christianity is a vexed one since, of course, there’s no question of positing a universe that doesn’t play fair or make sense. Richard’s fate was avoidable in that it wasn’t due to some indomitable but dangerous quality (like Oedipus’ intrepidity and strong intellect) but rather to his rapacious disregard for feudal loyalties and common decency. Well, I don’t believe Shakespeare follows any unitary model of tragedy—it seems to me that he constitutes his tragic intensities and ideals circumstantially, from one given set of materials to the next. In this way, he is able to bring out whatever makes for excellent drama in his material; a notion of tragedy as broad as “a fall from good fortune to bad” probably serves him splendidly as a point of departure.

One possibility to consider: aside from political philosophy, perhaps the play could be read as an argument between a vision centered on ceremony and the aesthetic dimension of experience (a Catholic vision, if you don’t mind the anachronism) and a mindset that tends strongly towards clarity and the practical consideration of how to get and hold power. That would be Bullingbrook’s approach, and we might call it the result of a “Protestant” sensibility. Tragedy of any sort must usually work out an uneasy truce with some competing set of rights, as when Antigone, in the Sophocles play by that name, battles Creon over the granting of proper burial rites for her slain brother: both have a kind of right on their side. In the current play, it may be that we are to dismiss neither Richard’s aesthetic and ceremonial sensibilities nor, more obviously, Henry Bullingbrook’s businesslike understanding of power’s imperatives. Bullingbrook is hardly liberated by his assumption of power from the sort of questions that nag the deposed Richard; indeed, he will return to just such questions from the moment he learns that his death-wish towards Richard has been overheard and carried out. The blood on Bullingbrook’s hands turns out to be as durable as the “anointed balm” that Richard had claimed could never be washed from a king’s sacred body, not even by all the water in “the rough rude sea.” Richard is deeply flawed and his end isn’t exactly heroic (it’s more private than heroic, really), but all the same we may find that we can’t dismiss him altogether. The Richard who suffers and dies at the play’s end isn’t easily reduced to the sum of the acts that brought him to his sorrow. The play is partly about a gruff transfer of power, but I think we are also asked to reflect upon the value of Richard’s way of seeing.

Week 02, The Taming of the Shrew

2007-08-28T11:56:00.000-07:00

Introduction to 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.

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.

New Comedy: The Greek Menander, and his much 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 would be a sophisticated example—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

Shakespearian 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.

Notes on The Taming of the Shrew

Induction Scenes 1-2

The metadramatic character Christopher Sly, as the Riverside introduction points out, is connected to the general theme of transformation. I would add that he hasn’t earned his marital happiness—his pretend-wife’s obedience is to the Lord who is playing a trick on Christopher. Neither does this common fellow belong to the aristocratic world, as he is so easily gulled into believing thanks to his drunkenness. But that’s a matter of birth, not earning one’s way.

Act 1, Scene 1

Lucentio of Pisa has come to Padua to cast himself into a “deeper” world than he has known thus far, and his declared intent is to look more discerningly into moral philosophy, or “virtue.” As he enters town, we are treated to an instance of Baptista’s concern for protocol: he insists that he must find a suitable husband for his eldest unmarried daughter first, and only then can he allow the youngest, Bianca, to find a mate. This situation is standard comic fare: eager suitors faced with an obstinate father. In this case, the obstinate parent isn’t imperious or cruel; in fact, he’s quite affectionate and protective towards his youngest daughter in particular. But in many comic plays we see the specter of the “terrible father” invoked or hinted at only to be dispelled as the play reaches its happy conclusion.

Of course, the pickings for Katherine and Bianca don’t look so fine here in Padua—there’s Hortensio, who seems rather a silly fellow, and then there’s Gremio, a stock pantaloon borrowed from Italian commedia dell’arte theater (a C16 phenomenon). Gremio and Hortensio are men of substance, and their considerable property and assets make them contenders since Renaissance marriage undeniably has to do with securing dynastic wealth and status. Still, it seems as if the field is open for any adventurous newcomer.

When Lucentio espies Bianca, his initial declarations are forgotten without further ado: in ancient and early modern lore, “the eyes have it”: vision is represented as the most powerful and transformative of the five senses, especially when it comes to love. So it’s love at first sight for Lucentio, struck with Cupid’s invisible arrow. His resolve now is to serve as one of the schoolmasters that Baptista wants to commission for his daughters. Tranio will play the role of Lucentio and will directly sue for Bianca’s hand, the better to keep attention away from the real Lucentio’s efforts.

Act 1, Scene 2

Enter the right honorable Petruchio of Verona, who has just come into his inheritance and is therefore “his own man,” as the saying goes. He is free from parental and financial hindrances, so he’s just the one to serve as the “the tamer of the shrew.” Petruchio’s liberated status distinguishes him from Lucentio, as we will find later on. This man declares to his friend Hortensio that he has come to find a wife with plenty of money in rich Padua. What’s love got to do with it? Nothing—at least at the outset. That insouciance regarding such an important consideration further distinguishes Petruchio from Lucentio. In them, at least at the outset, we see two aspects of courtship and marriage: the sway of erotic passion and true love, and the imperative of money and status.

When Hortensio hears of Petruchio’s indifference to anything but wealth, he pipes up about Katherine, who is indeed the marriageable daughter of a well-to-do Paduan. Petruchio is glad to hear of this possibility, and in return offers to present Hortensio as the schoolmaster Litio so he can woo Bianca in that guise. At this point, Tranio enters in his disguise as Lucentio, of course with the same intent of wooing Bianca.

Act 2, Scene 1

Katherine is evidently jealous of her younger sister Bianca, and is even restraining her physically in order to extract information from her. Kate’s horizons are quite limited if she is worried about the attentions of the likes of Gremio and Hortensio.

Petruchio begins his quest by feigning ignorance about Katherine’s true temperament, and he generously offers everything he has in pledge of faith. Baptista, suitably impressed and no doubt relieved that he might soon be unburdened of this difficult daughter, nonetheless insists on one point: Petruchio must win Katherine’s love. Petruchio makes light of this demand, saying that he is a “rough” man and no child when it comes to romance. He is encouraged by Katherine’s deplorable abuse of “Litio” (Hortensio): she seems like a suitable challenge for him.

Petruchio’s opening gambit is to call Katherine what he wants her to become, even though she is at present exactly the opposite. He parries wits with her, physically detains her just as she had done to her sister (though the stage directions don’t indicate that he knows about this), and boldly sets forth a timetable, with the marriage to be made on Sunday. This outrageous “Kiss me, Kate” strategy only works, of course, if there’s mutual attraction between the pair. A lot depends on the actors here, as the excellent versions starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and Sarah Bader and John Cleese, respectively, show. The play revolves around what makes a fitting couple. Petruchio is himself a bold and outspoken man, so Katherine’s fiery quality is a draw for him, at least at first—he wants an obedient wife, but likes the challenge of “earning” that obedience and “training” his choice to suit his will.

Gremio and Tranio (as Lucentio) pitch their wealth when talk with Baptista turns to dowries, and Tranio does such a good job of lying that now he must find himself a fake father to “make good” on his fake promises. The extent of patriarchal authority is a main concern in comedy, and Shakespeare here offers a fine (if temporary) overturning of that concern in that the “Child shall get a sire.” Shakespeare isn’t by any means what we would call a feminist, but he has a lot of fun at the expense of male authority—Vincentio, an eminently sensible and respectable father-figure, is pretty much at the whim of his deceiving son Lucentio and that son’s servant Tranio, as we shall find out.

Act 3, Scene 1

Lucentio’s wooing of Bianca in the pauses between Latin lines goes well enough, and Hortensio is insulted at the rapidity with which Bianca’s attentions turn towards such a young “stale” (Katherine had earlier used this word to mean “whore,” but here it means something like “good-for-nothing fellow”). Hortensio forswears any further interest in such an unwise girl.

Act 3, Scene 2

Now Katherine is ashamed that Petruchio hasn’t yet shown up for his own wedding. And when he appears in the guise of a carnivalesque fool riding a broken-down horse, she is still more ashamed. Katherine wants propriety and ceremony observed, she wants a conventional wedding that, presumably, would betoken respectability and security. We might also infer that Katherine thinks she’s done Petruchio a tremendous favor in more or less consenting to marry him. (One imagines that she would be an easy mark for today’s “wedding mania” that seems to demand ever-greater preparation and expense for the great event.) But Petruchio, clever man that he is, will have nothing to do with such regard for tradition and form, and he certainly isn’t going to allow “Kate” to get the upper hand. She’s marrying him, he says,—not his clothes. Petruchio’s behavior is outlandish, of course, but the point of his actions is probably that marriage isn’t only about status and respectability, or security: it’s about the coming together of two people who must learn to live well together. Shakespeare was enough of a “bourgeois gentleman” to appreciate Katherine’s need for respectability and security, but at the same time—as so often—he manages to see beyond these entry-level concerns and get to the deeper significance of an institutional act.

Meanwhile, Lucentio and Tranio continue their scheme—Tranio advises a secret marriage if that should prove possible.

Gremio reports on the doings at Petruchio and Kate’s mad wedding—the groom even tosses wine in the priest’s face, as if he would deny the Church’s power in the whole affair. Petruchio then proposes imperiously to make away with Kate, saying that she is “his anything” he chooses to make of her. In essence, he tactically (and only tactically, we may hope) employs the notion that a wife is a man’s “property,” more or less like a piece of furniture or a valuable parcel of land. Simply getting Kate to marry him is only the first stage of Petruchio’s plan, of course—he still has much “taming” to do before his bride will be genuinely “conformable,” as he had earlier called her.

Act 4, Scene 1

The trip back home is a madcap disaster. Kate’s horse falls, and her gallant husband can’t be bothered to help her up. He shows no regard for her, and then abuses the servants under the pretense of showing a nice regard for her tastes in food and clothing. Alone, Petruchio lets us in on his method: he will deny her basic appetites any satisfaction—no food, sleep, or sex. She will get no satisfaction until that satisfaction can safely be associated with him as its facilitator. Petruchio’s terms for this operation are borrowed from falconry—he will “curb” Kate just as a keeper would a bird of prey he wanted to train to hunt for him. The gender assumption is painfully obvious to us moderns, I suppose: a woman can’t be allowed to beat a man at his own game, at least if the man knows what he’s about, as Petruchio does. Katherine has been violent, arbitrary, and willful, and Petruchio shows her here more than ever how much more frightening it is when a strong man behaves that way towards a woman he “owns.” Hardly a feminist notion, but there it is. It should also be said that there’s quite a range in the concept of masculinity in this play and elsewhere in Shakespeare—he seems to know that “being a man” isn’t simply a biological matter; it is at least partly what we would call a symbolic construct, a position one occupies in the social and sexual order of things. Gremio, Hortensio, and Baptista are indeed “men,” but they are quite unable to deal with Katherine, while Petruchio knows exactly what to do and is willing to earn the obedience he professes to be his right as a husband. That stance may not endear him to us, but at least he does not expect obedience as a purely formal matter. At the broader level, England in Shakespeare’s time (and long afterwards, too) was a patriarchal culture in which men possessed most of the authority, learning, and wealth and mostly refused to share those things with women, but it’s also worth reminding ourselves that Shakespeare’s early work was written during the reign of Elizabeth I, one of the most brilliant and powerful monarchs in history. Given the right circumstances (however rare), a woman could exercise considerable authority. Some of Shakespeare’s female characters are vital and strong; although played by boy-actors, they are by no means mere stage props to back the stories he tells about men.

Act 4, Scene 2

Hortensio, disappointed at what he considers the loose attentions of Bianca, forswears his quest for beauty and looks instead to the kindness of a widow whom he knows will accept him. Tranio cagily agrees, leaving the real Lucentio sole suitor to Bianca, who of course is in on Lucentio’s scheme.

The servant Biondello brings in a pedant to serve as Vincentio. Poor Vincentio—any fool who just walked into town can serve his turn as the rich, accommodating father of a headstrong son.

Act 4, Scene 3

As for Kate, she sees Petruchio’s method, but not its purpose, so Petruchio’s labors continue: he finds a perfectly nice cap and gown not suitable for her, roundly abuses everyone around him, and laments that she will still be “crossing” his every word and deed.

Act 4, Scene 4

While the fake Vincentio talks money with Baptista, Biondello advises Lucentio to marry Bianca on the sly.

Act 4, Scene 5

Petruchio’s claims become still more extravagant and absurd: he insists that Kate call day night, and old Vincentio (the real one, that is) a young maiden, and then needles her when she gives in to his demands. Petruchio breaks the news to Vincentio that “Lucentio” has no doubt by now managed to win Bianca’s hand, so they’re all related! (He “knows” this, I presume, on the basis of Tranio’s efforts as “Lucentio” back in 2.1.) Vincentio doesn’t know what to think of it all.

Act 5, Scene 1

Things look very bad for Vincentio since, as Wordsworth would say, it seems that “the child is father to the man,” and the child (or rather his servant impersonating the child) has it in for him. But Lucentio soon clears up the case of mistaken identity and prevents his father from being hauled off to prison as an imposter. Vincentio obligingly promises to make a fair deal with Baptista, coming on board in spite of the bad treatment to which he has been subjected. And nothing seems to come of those protestations about being “thoroughly revenged” against Tranio.

Petruchio utters “Kiss me, Kate” for the second time, this time in the open street. Kate is shocked, but doesn’t put up much of a fight by now. (By the way, the phrase “Kiss Me, Kate” inspired a famous Broadway musical in 1949, one of the stars in which was—that’s right—my illustrious namesake of no relation, Alfred Drake.)

Act 5, Scene 2

The three happy couples get together for a feast at Lucentio’s. Hortensio’s Wife-Widow offers the provocative statement about Petruchio, “He that is giddy thinks the world turns round,” a phrase whose significance isn’t lost on the ever-sharp Katherine. And now, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the most obedient of all? Petruchio wagers that it’s none other than his own conformable Kate. He makes her fetch in the “froward” wives of Lucentio and Hortensio, and then she lectures them dutifully about their duties, to the men’s great satisfaction. What Kate sets forth is, of course, an entirely traditionalist view of gender relations in the married state: a man must hazard all he has and provide security, and the woman must be helpful and obedient; she must “stand by her man.” Kate concludes her speech with a self-characterization of her sex that sounds almost like the words Milton will later give his narrator in Paradise Lost to describe Eve: “For contemplation he and valour formed; / For softness she and sweet attractive grace; / He for God only, she for God in him…” (Book 4).

Well, at least, as mentioned above, Petruchio acknowledges a certain need to “earn” his mastery of his Kate, and so we have in The Taming of the Shrew not so much a celebration of hollow patriarchal form but rather a rollicking “battle of the sexes” in which the man and woman together give some genuine meaning to a traditional view and to the institution based upon that view: marriage, the central concern of many a comic play. Petruchio labors for his mastery, and demonstrates his mettle. He wants a conformable Kate, to be sure, but he probably wouldn’t be happy with anything other than a conformable Kate. Lucentio sees Petruchio’s act of taming a “wonder,” which suggests that he doesn’t get it. As Petruchio says to both Lucentio and Hortensio, they are “sped.” They are the ones who will have to live with headstrong wives, while he will go off to live in domestic bliss with Katherine.

From the widest angle and aside from gender issues, the play provides a light exploration of love’s power to transform people, to alter suddenly and inexplicably their chosen path and declared intentions and to immerse them in an active, not always kind world. This power is a constant in Shakespeare’s plays, but it is not necessarily described the same way from play to play. There isn’t much “idealizing of eroticism” in The Taming of the Shrew, but there’s a great deal of that valuable and yet dangerous intellectual activity in, say, Romeo and Juliet. In the romances, the power of love seems to be surrounded with mystery, just as in those same romances, Prospero enfolds the whole of life memorably with the statement, “We are such stuff / As dreams are made on; and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep” (4.1.155-58).

Week 01, Introduction and Sonnets

2007-08-21T11:54:00.000-07:00

Introduction to E316 Shakespeare

1. Slow down; a good plan might be to read one act per day over the course of the work week. You really can’t read Shakespeare fast “for information”; his plays may be action-oriented, but he’s too fond of his linguistic medium to permit us to read him like a newspaper article: too many styles, too much metaphor, too much rhetoric to allow that kind of “instrumental reading.” That statement is true of poetry in general, of course—poetry foregrounds language as a worthy object of reflection and aesthetic delight—but the archaicism factor in Shakespeare makes it “still more truer.” You say it’s 8:00 a.m.? Well, Shakespeare and his theater-goers liked to say “‘tis scarce two hours since the worship’d sun peered forth the golden window of the east.” They didn’t always put it that way, of course—but they liked how it sounded. Bardweb’s Grammar Introductionoffers a fine summary of the complexities of Shakespeare’s language. But hey, we moderns aren’t so dumb and insensitive after all—Martin Heidegger, a man of the Twentieth Century, knew enough to say that “language is the dwelling-house of Being.”

2. Watch a film version if your time permits—most filmed productions are reasonably good, and some are awesome. Netflix, Amazon.com, Blockbuster.com, or Internet Movie Database can be used as a search engine to give you a sense of what’s available, and you can always google some obvious keyphrase like “Shakespeare on film” to find lists. Film interpretations vary widely since the text is, after all, only a prompt for performance. The actors and director may see possibilities in the language that translate into action amongst the actors, or lead to a certain thematic emphasis. Atmospherics will differ—I recently saw Derek Jarman’s Gothic take on The Tempest. It took some getting used to since one doesn’t generally think of that play as being so gloomily set, but it was excellent in its way. And what about that remarkable Richard III starring Ian McKellen and set in the 1930’s-40’s fascist era, or The Merchant of Venice starring the likes of Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Joseph Fiennes, and Lynn Collins? If you want conventional but very good performances, try the BBC Shakespeare productions done in the late 1970’s, which most school libraries have. The “production values” for the BBC films aren’t on a par with Hollywood-style movies, but the actors are professional Shakespearians like Helen Mirren, Patrick Stewart, Sir John Gielgud, and many others.

3. Grammar and Rhetoric Issues (borrowed and slightly adapted from Bardweb’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: “all hands on deck.” “Lend me your ears,” etc.

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.

3. Shakespeare the Man, 1564-1616:

In politics he seems to have been royalist enough (the relevant sovereigns are of course the Tudor Elizabeth I (1553-1603) and the Scottish Stuart James I (1603-25), and for the most part conservative in the sense that he sides with the nobility over the rabble every time. 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, 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 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 people in that regard.

In religion Shakespeare may, as some biographers 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. 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, 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? 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 he must have been thinking of Shakespeare when he wrote that. What besides “negative capability” and chameleonic tendencies would allow an artist so completely to “get into” 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 efficacy 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).

The plays fall loosely into four categories: comedy, history, tragedy, and romance. 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. 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 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—yes, good old “Ludwig Van”—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 a lick 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 an “inner core” of 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. Above all, 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 utterly illiterate fools for lame-fanny 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 sensible 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 “take” on 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 of 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 where applicable) 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.

The Sonnets: I will add specific notes if time permits, but here are a few thoughts about the sonnet form. The rhyme pattern for an English sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg. Three quatrains (four-line units) and a concluding couplet that comments in some manner on the subject of the quatrains. “Sonnet 130” illustrates the possibilities of this structure well: the three quatrains make fun of Petrarchan over-praising, and the final couplet overturns the mocking tone by genuinely praising the love object. “Sonnet 73” with its succession of metaphors and neat summation-couplet, exemplifies the “sugared style” of many of the poems (i.e. the piling up and development of a series of metaphors, often one per quatrain) of sonnetry. The 154 sonnets are divided broadly between 1-126, which are supposedly addressed to “a fair young man” and 127-54, which are addressed to “a dark (-haired) lady.”