antony and cleopatra

1)Antony and Cleopatra is obviously based upon a dualistic vision of experience,

the world of Rome pitted against the world of Egypt. This central conflict also
involves the antagonism between Antony, the old lion, and Octavius, the young M
achiavellian fox, but it also includes a great deal more than the clash of these
two very different characters. In organizing an initial response to the play, t
hen, we need to attend carefully to the full implications of the visions of life
associated with Rome and Egypt.
Before launching ourselves in this direction, however, we might also acknowledge
the vast scope of this play, vast not simply in its geography but also in the s
pectrum of human responses to some very basic questions. The central force of th
e plot may derive much of its energy from a political quarrel, but the play is m
uch more than simply a contrast of two political rivals. In the conflict between
Egypt and Rome, we have to deal with relations between men and women, sexuality
and power, East and West, efficient rationality and seductive mysteries, ancien
t heroism and youthful expertise. If, at the end of the play, we are in some dou
bt about where we stand, that may well be because this play demands that we take
so much into account.
The Roman Way
Shakespeare is clearly fascinated with a particular vision of Roman culture. He
wrote several so-called Roman plays throughout his career, Titus Andronicus, Jul
ius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus, exploring in each of them feat
ures of life for which the Romans were famous, particularly their dedication to
efficient politics, the clash between republican and dictatorial visions of poli
tical life, and the tough (often very cruel) masculine ethos which, while having
room to honour women in certain limited ways, has little place for them in publ
ic life, other than as useful political tools or upholders of very masculine ide
als or as producers of soldiers.
I suspect part of the attraction of the Roman setting for the examination of suc
h charged political questions is the remote historical time period. By using Rom
ans, Shakespeare can ease the risk of potentially offensive characters and scene
s (the usurpation and execution of Richard II, for example) and side step any re
ligious issues (like the divinity of kingship or the morality of their Christian
rule) because with the Romans he is dealing with a pre-Christian era. And, of c
ourse, Roman stories were popular material for public theatre. The point about t
he pre-Christian era is particularly important in Antony and Cleopatra because i
t enables Shakespeare to juxtapose the urge for world domination and the luxury
of erotic experience without having to deal with the concept of sin.
In Antony and Cleopatra we are, in a sense, dealing with two Romes--an older one
made up of famous warrior-figures, like Julius Caesar and Pompey, world conquer
ors and legendary leaders, who extended Rome's imperial control of the world and
established a heroic reputation. Antony is the last of these figures, now a old
er man. The new Rome is the world of Octavius and Sextus Pompey (son of the elde
r Pompey), participants in a civil war, scrambling for power as the old figures
are killed off. They come across as decidedly smaller in stature (they themselve
s at times acknowledge that point).
It's important to note that the political fighting in Antony and Cleopatra is no
t based, as it is in Julius Caesar and Coriolanus and Richard II, on a conflict
of political ideologies, pitting, say, republicans against would-be dictators or
legal kings against usurpers. There is a reference to such a conflict, when Pom
pey talks of those who killed Julius Caesar ("but that they would/ Have one man
but a man" 2.6.18-19), but that's a passing irrelevance. Here Roman political li
fe is a scramble for power, unmarked by any vision of how political life ought t
o be conducted. Octavius, in particular, obviously has no particular love or res
pect for the Roman people, "This common body,/ Like to a vagabond flag upon the
stream,/ Goes to, and back, lackeying the varying tide,/ To rot itself with moti
on" (1.4.44-47), and does not offer any political vision to justify his actions
(other than a passing mention that peace will soon come). Whatever is motivating
Octavius, it does not seem to be based on any sense of serving the public good.
And Antony expresses much the same view of the people. In that sense, the new R
ome lacks the heroic grandeur of the old Rome and of the earlier play, Julius Ca
esar, which introduces a serious debate about the legitimate forms of government
.
But the Romans are by no means villains. In fact, there is no clearly evil prese
nce in this play, no one whom we could set up as a companion for Edmund or Macbe
th or Claudius or Iago. Octavius and Pompey are fighting a civil war which they
did not initiate but inherited. Pompey's father and Octavius's adoptive father (
Julius Caesar) were killed in the war, and Pompey's property was confiscated. Th
e world they live in demands that they fight and continue to do so until someone
succeeds in establishing a peace. They both realize this and accept that that i
s the way things have to be.
The strongest sense we get of the qualities the Romans most admire emerges from
the imagery, particularly the images which come in the passages where Romans exp
ress their admiration for Antony's past qualities. Notable here is the praise of
Octavius,
Antony,
Leave thy lascivious wassails. When thou once
Was beaten from Modena, where thou slew'st
Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel
Did famine follow, whom thou fought'st against-
Though daintily brought up-with patience more
Than savages could suffer. Thou didst drink
The stale of horses, and the gilded puddle
Which beasts would cough at. Thy palate then did deign
The roughest berry on the rudest hedge.
Yea, like the stag when snow the pasture sheets,
The barks of trees thou browsed. On the Alps
It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh,
Which some did die to look on, and all this-
It wounds thine honour that I speak it now-
Was borne so like a soldier that thy cheek
So much as lanked not. (1.5.55-71)
This tribute to Antony's past behaviour is, like other tributes Octavius gives,
quite genuine. He sees this past behaviour of Antony's as proof of his quality a
s a great man. What's interesting here is the combination of qualities Octavius
remembers: Antony triumphed in battle, but then, in the severe conditions which
followed, imposed his will on himself, subordinating the most basic of human emo
tions to his own resolution, so that he could drink urine and sustain himself on
berries and human flesh. But the really important feature of Antony's behaviour
here is that his appearance did not change; he maintained his military bearing
while others around him quailed.
This speech, as well as anything else in the play, helps to define the Roman vis
ion of experience: militaristic and male, marked by heroic restraint in difficul
t circumstances, a willed ability to combat one's deepest feelings, a sustained
composure when everyone else is falling apart. It is a way of living totally dev
oted to imposing a tightly controlled order upon experience, if necessary throug
h military force, and its success is manifested by displays of military power. T
he imagery commonly associated with Rome (and with Octavius) stresses weapons (e
specially swords), speed, and discipline.
Rome is a world in which men compete for power in a high stakes game without cle
ar rules. There is a notion of honour at work, but (as in Henry IV's England) ho
nour is not a controlling ethos which limits political double dealing in the nam
e of a superior morality. It's important to be able to display one's honour publ
icly; it is less important to live by it. Pompey would happily have had all his
dinner guests killed by his subordinate Menas, so long as he was not told about
it in advance. And Menas, seeing Pompey give up this opportunity to attain supre
me power, leaves his service. Pompey may claim that "'Tis not my profit that doe
s lead mine honour;/ Mine honour it." But his vision of honour appears here cons
iderably shallower than what we see of Hotspur's honour in Henry IV. Moreover, t
here is a total absence of any religious sensibilities among the Romans; they li
ve in the world as hard-headed realists, concerned with and limited by earthly p
ower.
When Octavius thinks of how his sister should enter Rome in a manner fitting her
importance, the only images he can reach for which might express his feelings a
re ones taken from the vocabulary of military triumphs:
The wife of Antony
Should have an army for an usher, and
The neighs of horse to tell of her approach
Long ere she did appear. The trees by th' way
Should have borne men, and expectation fainted,
Longing for what it had not. Nay, the dust
Should have ascended to the roof of heaven,
Raised by your populous troops. (3.6.43)
This play gives every indication that Octavius genuinely loves his sister (as mu
ch as he can love anyone), and he is really shocked that she has come into Rome
so clandestinely. It's significant that he can convey his high esteem and strong
feelings for her only in images more appropriate to a returning triumphant gene
ral.
In this Roman vision of experience, women occupy a very inferior role. If they c
an turn themselves into soldiers, like Antony's wife, Fulvia, they may be able t
o play some political role. And they may be useful, as Octavia is, as guarantors
of a new alliance. Octavia is praised by a Roman as "of a holy, cold, and still
conversation"; to which Menas replies "Who would not have his wife so?" It's no
t surprising that the Romans thus are incapable of understanding what Antony is
doing in Egypt. For them, Cleopatra is, quite simply, a slut, an unworthy distra
ction from the important business of life.
Egypt
The eastern world of Egypt is, of course, totally different. The main features o
f the difference emerge most clearly in the imagery repeatedly associated with E
gypt. Central to this is the sense of the Nile as a mysteriously fertile source
of life, a place where spontaneous generation magically takes place. Egypt is ov
erflowing with life, full of fabulous creatures, like the crocodile, and exotic
buildings, like the pyramids. A recurring image of the "serpent of old Nile" evo
kes the exotic and mysterious origins of life which are centred in Egypt.
Above all, Egypt is a place dominated by mature female sexuality, and this play
is remarkable among all Shakespeare's works for its depiction of mature female s
exuality as something open, beautiful, seductive, natural, and ultimately triump
hant. In Cleopatra's palace, women talk openly about explicit sexuality, attende
d by men who serve them (some of them as eunuchs). They express their sexual fee
lings, joke about sexual matters, and establish a close female community, which
is not marginalized but lives at the very centre of power, in the palace. Sexual
ity in Egypt is closely linked to play and to a whole range of pleasurable activ
ities like feasting, music, dancing, play acting, and often to a general mocking
of Roman values (implicit or explicit). The Romans, by contrast, have trouble h
olding their liquor at a relatively minor feast.
It might be worth pausing here for a moment to reflect upon Shakespeare's treatm
ent of women in the plays we have read so far. We have really met only one matur
e woman with a sexual life, Gertrude, and her sexuality is not something she ope
nly discusses (we do not see her and Claudius speaking about love to each other,
and we have to rely upon the staging to define the nature of their interaction)
. Moreover, a central issue in the play is her son's overwhelming disgust with h
er sexuality. In the lecture on Hamlet, I suggested that we are not invited to s
hare that disgust but to see in it an important part of Hamlet's emotional immat
urity (or displacement), and this therefore permits a sympathetic view of Gertru
de. But her feelings for Claudius are clearly not a central concern in the play.
Similarly Regan and Goneril are mature women, both of whom express sexual feelin
gs about Edmund. But these feelings are obviously not presented to us as somethi
ng healthy; they are rather symptomatic of the vulpine destructiveness of the sc
ramble for power, and the sexual attractions lead to mutual murder. Once again,
we do not have to share Lear's deranged view of his daughter's sexuality as the
source of his troubles, but the fact that their evil intentions eventually turn
into sexual adulterous rivalry fostering murder prevents our coming to any under
standing of them as sympathetic sexual beings.
In a provocative feminist reading of Shakespeare's work (Shakespeare's Division
of Experience), Marilyn French explores Shakespeare's treatment of female sexual
ity. For her, Shakespeare throughout his career worked with opposing masculine a
nd feminine gender principles (symbolized commonly by the men and women in his p
lays), the former associated with efficient power, order, control, political rul
e and the latter with the generating, nutritive, and mysteriously subversive for
ces of nature. She sees in Shakespeare's early work a deep fear of the feminine
gender principle, which Shakespeare presents in two forms: the inlaw women and t
he outlaw women. The inlaw women are those who have properly subordinated themse
lves to masculine authority (like the heroines of the comedies) and who are ther
efore acceptable because they pose no political or emotional threat to the statu
s quo (where men are in control); the outlaw women are those who threaten mascul
ine order (and who thus are depicted as evil).
French's review of Shakespeare's plays is swift and inevitably cursory. It also
suffers from a certain reductiveness which attends upon the wholesale applicatio
n of a pre-set and relatively simple ideology. But she points out a number of fa
scinating elements in the plays, particularly Shakespeare's growing sense that h
is earlier celebration of the masculine gender principle is fraught with problem
s. In fact, it is possible to see the sequence of great tragedies as hinging, in
part, on this growing awareness.
We have considered how, in Hamlet, the rottenness in Elsinore might well be caus
ed by (rather than just symbolized by) the forceful suppression of women through
the actions of the aggressive masculine warrior principle (Hamlet Senior, Forti
nbras), with Claudius and Hamlet trying unsuccessfully to fight against it. Lear
has no sense of anything other than his own hard, masculine ego and rails again
st the sexuality of his daughters as the force which persecutes him unjustly. In
Macbeth the multiple murders are made possible by Lady Macbeth's and Macbeth's
rejection of sexuality and the powers of nature in pursuit of what they see as t
heir rational self-interest. And Othello kills the woman he loves because he can
not rid his mind of the fictional images of her sexual infidelity, which strike
at his sense of himself as a proud, independent soldier and which he desperately
clings to without even giving her a chance to defend herself--it's almost as if
he wants or has to believe that the most beautiful and faithful wife is a sexua
l demon. There's a sense here that the tragic experience, together with all the
suffering which it brings (not just upon the central characters, but upon many o
thers, especially innocent women, like Ophelia, Desdemona, Cordelia, Emilia, and
Lady Macduff), stems from some fundamental unwillingness or inability to harmon
ize the conflicting demands of the masculine and feminine gender principles.
This conflict, French points out, may come about because the world is disordered
and harsh and requires the masculine principle in order to establish some form
of order (thus the cost to the feminine principle is a necessary, if unwelcome,
requirement, because the feminine principle is fundamentally opposed to civilize
d order), or it may come about because the world privileges the masculine princi
ple unnecessarily (thus the suppression or containment of the feminine principle
is oppressive). Shakespeare's various explorations of the issue weave through b
oth possibilities, a fact which helps to explain why his work has been (and stil
l is) called both conservative and patriarchal and subversive and emancipatory.
I have necessarily summarized French's argument much too simplistically, but I w
ant to refer to it in connection with Antony and Cleopatra because, if we see so
me validity in her contention, then the depiction of Egypt in this play is somet
hing remarkably new, a celebration of the beauty, creativity, and value of the e
rotic, irrational energies at the heart of life. We are not talking here about t
he romantic excitement of young love which culminates in a marriage which confir
ms the existing order (as in As You Like It) but subversive mature female sexual
ity as the most important component in mature life (that's why the age of Cleopa
tra is important; she is no longer young).
What is celebratory about Shakespeare's depiction of sexuality in Egypt? Well, f
or one thing, it is presented as entirely natural; there is no sense of sin atta
ched to it. Antony's relationship with Cleopatra may well be adulterous, and she
has had many lovers over the years, but there is no sense of opprobrium attache
d to their feelings for each other. It's true the Romans call Cleopatra all sort
s of names and criticize Antony severely for lingering in Egypt, but that's simp
ly because they are incapable of understanding such a celebration of erotic poss
ibilities. Their view of the world does not permit them to recognize Cleopatra a
s anything more than a gypsy slut, but that's more a reflection on the limitatio
ns of their world view than the play's final judgment on Cleopatra.
East and West
But the split between Rome and Egypt is more complicated than the brief outline
above suggests, because the Romans are clearly so fascinated with Egypt that the
y cannot leave it alone. What Egypt represents does not fall within their sphere
of understanding, but they always want to talk about Egypt. They ply Enobarbus
with questions about Cleopatra, crocodiles, the Nile mud, pyramids. Their past h
istory is full of military expeditions to Egypt. It's as if the very presence of
Egypt in their awareness might be a disturbing reminder of certain possibilitie
s which their commitment to the dictates of masculine imperial power preclude or
at least a temptation to indulge in some very non-Roman thinking.
It's interesting that the greatest of the Romans--Pompey, Caesar, and Antony--al
l have sexual experience with Cleopatra, and Caesar and Antony have children wit
h her in Egypt. There's a suggestion in that pattern that the very greatest of t
he imperial rulers, those with the courage to take the greatest risks, embrace t
he otherness of Egypt and cast in their lot with Cleopatra. The fact that they s
ubsequently all became victims of politics as a Roman blood sport is not without
significance, of course (more about that later).
[At this point I was tempted to launch into a considerable digression about the
various uses to which this dichotomy between east and west has been put by some
writers, especially Joseph Conrad. But I will for the sake of time forgo that ex
cursion and simply offer the suggestion that there might be more than a passing
similarity between what Shakespeare is doing here and what Conrad does in, among
other tales, Heart of Darkness]
The ambivalent nature of Romans towards Egypt comes out most noticeably in Enoba
rbus, the rough Roman soldier, who is simultaneously the most cynical of spokesm
en for Roman values and, at the same time, the most eloquent admirer of all thin
gs Egyptian, especially Cleopatra. He can casually dismiss women as hardly worth
y of consideration: "Under a compelling occasion let women die. It were pity to
cast them away for nothing, though between them and a great cause they should be
esteemed as nothing" (1.2.125), a thoroughly Roman sentiment. But his famous tr
ibutes to Cleopatra are passionately sincere; he knows in his innermost heart th
at she has an inestimable, irrational, and very non-Roman value:
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety. Other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies. For vilest things
Become themselves in her, that the holy priests
Bless her when she is riggish. (2.2.240)
Like the famous description of Cleopatra in her barge on the Nile, this tribute
attests to her infinite power to transform experience into something new, someth
ing passionately desired, something entirely at odds with the Roman emphasis on
predictable order, law, and consistency. She exists, the last line suggests, in
a realm beyond morality, for in her what other people might consider sins become
life-affirming beauty and energy. When Cleopatra rides down the river, she draw
s to her the entire richness of nature and leaves the proud imperial conqueror s
itting alone in the market place. As Enobarbus says in a speech immediately befo
re this one, Cleopatra makes "defect perfection,/ And breathless, pour breath fo
rth." She answers one's most passionate demands on life and, in the process of s
atisfying one's desires, reawakens them.
To the Romans, and perhaps to some readers, Cleopatra is far too changeable and
unpredictable, a quality which makes her totally unreliable in warfare; one famo
us audience comment in the nineteenth century observed that in Cleopatra's Alexa
ndria (and I paraphrase) "Things are so different from the goings on at our dear
queen's palace." Early in the play Antony calls her "cunning past man's thought
" (1.2.132), and that word man's is an interesting insertion: measured by mascul
ine Roman principles, Cleopatra cannot be properly defined, so she must be label
ed with some derogatory word or impugned. The point is that Cleopatra, the human
incarnation of Isis and the spirit of Egypt, simply cannot be controlled or cat
egorized. That, as Enobarbus points out, is the source of her power over people,
especially men like Antony and Caesar who are willing to respond to her attract
ion and to let her make contact with their emotional centres.
This open celebration of sexual feelings was really underscored in a production
of the play I saw many years ago in which Cleopatra, lounging around dreaming of
Antony's return, quite publicly and casually masturbated as she talked about hi
m. The action was presented as if she was doing the most natural thing in the wo
rld, for no one sitting around her on stage paid any attention to what she was d
oing. The shock I felt reminded me immediately of the extent of my Roman judgmen
t; the erotic thrill was an instant challenge to that judgment. The same effect
occurs in her suicide, of course, where as she dies she experiences an orgasm.
Octavius, of course, is quite impervious to Cleopatra's appeal, and he has no un
derstanding of why Antony or anyone else would want to associate with her. Octav
ius is not, I think, an unsympathetic character. He genuinely loves his sister,
and there's a strong sense that he truly admires Antony and would genuinely like
some way of bonding with him (as he says "Yet if I knew/ What hoop should hold
us staunch, from edge to edge/ O'th'world I would pursue it" 2.2.119). But he's
far too purely Roman to be able to comprehend Cleopatra. He thinks of her as an
important trophy, but only because she will make his triumph in Rome all the mor
e impressive (i.e., her political uses will be invaluable). For her feminine qua
lities he has no sympathy whatsoever. His final speech suggests that he senses s
omething important about what she and Antony represent, for he will permit them
to be buried together. But his most urgent thoughts here, as elsewhere, are cent
red on Rome.
Antony
Antony's response, of course, is very different. He's a great Roman, the finest
soldier they have, a man who can appeal to his honour without irony. And it's cl
ear that a large part of Antony is still in Rome, judging his Egyptian time as b
ondage, as "fetters" which he must break. When in Rome, Antony does as the Roman
s do. He seeks to cement an alliance with Octavius through marriage and to sort
out the various strategies they must undertake in that linear, rational way whic
h lies at the heart of Roman power-politics.
There is no particular reason to think that Antony is being a cynical hypocrite
in his marriage to Octavia. He may be, and, if so, that raises some questions ab
out that honour which he appeals to. But it may well be the case that he is bein
g quite true to the Roman part of him, which sees the purpose of life in convent
ional Roman terms. Similarly, when he later tells Octavia that he will now live
"by th' rule," there's no need to see him here as a crass liar. Once again, he's
living up to what that Roman part of his personality demands.
Antony's problem (and the source of his greatness) is that he is not willing to
suppress the Egyptian part of him in order to win the political success which ca
n be his if he will limit his life to the Roman way. With Cleopatra he has disco
vered something about himself, something about life, which he will not deny. Thr
oughout most of the play, Antony is struggling about his allegiance; he moves ba
ck and forth between Rome and Egypt, suffering from Roman thoughts in the midst
of his Egyptian pleasures and from Egyptian memories in the midst of his Roman d
eliberations. But he is not paralyzed by this conflict, because he can live the
life of either environment to the fullest when he is in it. In Rome he is the gr
eatest Roman of all; in Egypt he can surrender to the erotic pleasures, particip
ate fully, and urge more.
When Rome invades Egypt, the tensions in Antony escalate, because now he has to
act like a Roman in Egypt and with Cleopatra. This he cannot do, although he tri
es. Cleopatra is no soldier, and taking her into battle is disastrous. The sword
she is interested in is not much use on the battle field, just as Antony's batt
lefield sword is valuable to her only as a toy in bed. Antony repeatedly gets ex
asperated at Cleopatra because she is not Roman enough, because she cannot fight
like a Roman and, in his eyes, "betrays" him. By Roman standards, this judgment
is quite correct; but when Antony confronts her he realizes that such a judgmen
t misses the point. He's with her precisely because she's not Roman. So when he
finally has to choose, he chooses her.
It's as if he realizes, once he hears the news of her suicide, that for all her
protean changes of mood, Cleopatra has been true to him. She is totally loyal to
the erotic attachment between them. Antony has wavered, but he resolves his dou
bts finally with a commitment to the same bond. The process that leads him to th
is takes Antony through some uncharacteristically petty moments, as he loses con
trol of his Roman "virtues." He flogs Octavius's messenger and makes an obviousl
y futile gesture in challenging Octavius to single combat. These are vain attemp
ts to assert his masculine power before he recognizes the futility of such power
in the face of what he and Cleopatra have together.
Antony, in other words, is the only major mature male tragic character we have m
et in Shakespeare who successfully emerges out of his masculine shell and commit
s himself unreservedly and at the expense of his political power to a woman with
whom he has found the most passionately vital form of life (unless we see Lear'
s reconciliation with Cordelia in that light). The tragic part of this story, of
course, is that he makes the final commitment only in dying. It's as if the end
ing is affirming something of the highest value but, at the same time, denying t
he viability of such a continuing union in the real world of modern history.
Cleopatra comes to a similar awareness. If she has been something of a political
and military liability to Antony, she has always been true to her feelings abou
t him. Once he is dead, she faces some political decisions which will enable her
to continue living (and perhaps also ruling Egypt). If she will submit to playi
ng her role in Octavius's political triumph, she has every reason to believe her
life will go on. This possibility she rejects. The world without Antony will no
t be worth living in.
O see, my women,
The crown o'th'earth doth melt. My lord!
O, withered is the garland of the war.
The soldier's pole is fall'n. Young boys and girls
Are level now with men. The odds is gone,
And there is nothing left remarkable
Beneath the visiting moon. (4.16.64)
And in her suicide, she rises to some form of ecstatic union with Antony, caress
ing the snake which sucks at her breasts (simultaneously the symbol of sexuality
, fertility, and natural mystery), with a calm resolution which she has not mani
fested before in the play. No major character in Shakespeare has such a magnific
ent death:
Give me my robe. Put on my crown. I have
Immortal longings in me. Now no more
The juice of Egypt's grape shall moist this lip.
Yare, yare, good Iras, quick--methinks I hear
Antony call. I see him rouse himself
To praise my noble act. I hear him mock
The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men
To excuse their after wrath. Husband, I come.
Now to that name my courage prove my title.
I am fire and air; my other elements
I give to baser life. (5.2.271)
This wonderful speech may announce her rising above the sensuality that she has
demonstrated throughout, but it is done in a thoroughly sensual way. Cleopatra i
s never more supremely feminine and passionate than when she renounces that part
of her nature. In a sense, she is demonstrating that quality the Romans particu
larly admire, a resolved courage in the face of death, but doing so in a very Eg
yptian way, letting the heart of the Egyptian mystery, the poison of the Nile se
rpent, take her away to her husband.
Rhetorical Sensualists or Transcendent Lovers?
I have presented something of a case above that in their dying moments Antony an
d Cleopatra both establish a value for their lives and become the embodiments of
something which lifts them far above the political world of Octavius. He may re
present the forces of order on which civilization depends, but, as Marilyn Frenc
h observes,
. . . how civilized is the civilizing principle? Roman values--order and deg
ree, power-in-the-world, structure and possession--do not create harmonious orde
r and a protective pale for procreation. They create contention and rivalry, one
order superseding another, and a thin, pleasureless, stiff existence. The femin
ine principle may be doomed; it may always be defeated. But in the meantime it o
ffers the richness of emotional and erotic dimensions of life--pleasure, play, a
nd sex. At the end of Antony and Cleopatra, Caesar has the world; Antony and Cle
opatra had the living. (267)
This judgment finds much support among critics of the play, but it is also chall
enged by others, largely on the ground that, while Antony and Cleopatra rise to
a fine rhetorical level at the end of their lives, their relationship together,
as we witness it in the play, seems curiously unsatisfactory. They spend much of
their time bickering and complaining about each other's conduct. Some of their
calls for "pleasure" comes across as somewhat urgent and strained, more a desper
ate search for diversion and stimulation than a celebration of mature erotic ful
fillment.
Part of the problem, too, is that we never do see them alone together. They are
always in front of people. We hear many comments about them, but the play does n
ot bring us right into the heart of what they are experiencing (as for example i
n Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet, or King Lear). There is no moving soliloquy in this
play which we could match against any one of a number of speeches from those ear
lier tragedies. While Antony and Cleopatra has enormous breadth, it seems to lac
k the passionate depths of the other tragedies (a fact which may account for the
general estimation that Antony and Cleopatra is not quite up to their quality).
Another way of pointing to this same quality may be to indicate that we are alwa
ys being told about the larger-than-life qualities of Antony and Cleopatra, thei
r heroic dimensions, but we don't witness those in the actions that they carry o
ut (except perhaps in Cleopatra's death). The wonderful tributes given to Cleopa
tra by Enobarbus I have already referred to. We also have a number of similarly
extraordinary tributes to Antony:
The breaking of so great a thing should make
A greater crack. The rivèd world
Should have shook lions into civil streets,
And citizens to their dens. The death of Antony
Is not a single doom; in that name lay
A moiety of the world. (5.1.14)
His legs bestrid the ocean; his reared arm
Crested the world. His voice was propertied
As all the tunèd spheres, and that to friends;
But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,
He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,
There was no winter in't; an autumn 'twas,
That grew the more by reaping. His delights
Were dolphin-like; they showed his back above
The elements they lived in. In his livery
Walked crowns and crownets. Realms and islands were
As plates dropped from his pocket. . . .
Nature wants stuff
To view strange forms with fancy; yet t'imagine
An Antony were nature's piece 'gainst fancy,
Condemning shadows quite. (5.2.81-99)
These are moving tributes to the quality of an amazing human being, but we might
well ask ourselves how they match the man we see in the play. Is Shakespeare he
re trying to let the posthumous acclaim make up for something which he was not a
ble to make us see in person? Or, alternatively put, these lines (and others) se
em to invest the final moments of the famous lovers with a cosmic importance whi
ch their actions in the play have not earned for them. We are told they are figu
res of enormous significance; we do not see that for ourselves (that, at least,
is the argument).
As I say, the point is disputed. There are critics who are carried away by the e
nding of this play, who see Antony and Cleopatra rising to a magnificent heroic
greatness which matches the qualities celebrated in the tributes to them. Here i
s a well known sample:
In death man is triumphant, a 'conqueror' . . . . Eros, Iras, Charmian, Enob
arbus, Antony, and Cleopatra--all die in the full flood and blaze of loyalty or
love, so that 'death' is no more a 'nothing' . . . but rather the blue seas and
teeming earth, the winds and gleaming clouds, the languorous beauties of a tropi
c night, the silver and gold of moon and sun, all intermeshed to the bridal musi
c of the spheres, and, at the last, all indistinguishable from a human voice, a
human form. We see the protagonists, in love and war and sport, in death or life
or that mystery containing both, transfigured in a transfigured universe, thems
elves that universe and more, outspacing the wheeling orbs of earth and heaven.
. . . So Cleopatra and Antony find not death but life. This is the high metaphys
ic of love which melts life and death into a final oneness; which reality is ind
eed no pulseless abstraction, but rather blends its single design and petalled e
xcellence from all life and all death, all imperial splendour and sensuous delig
ht, all strange and ethereal forms, all elements and heavenly stars; all that is
natural, human, and divine; all brilliance and all glory. (G. Wilson Knight, "T
he Transcendental Humanism of 'Antony and Cleopatra''' in The Imperial Theme)
Against this enthusiastic metaphorical endorsement of the affirmative qualities
of the ending of Antony and Cleopatra one can set a much more reserved critical
comment like the following:
Even Antony's last labor, his attempt to ennoble death as a lover's bed, is
undercut by comic aspects. He bungles his suicide, and lives to learn that Cleop
atra has merely faked hers. His dignity is then reduced to being carried, marred
of body, to a Cleopatra who is more concerned for her own safety than for his.
Unceremoniously he must be hoisted up to her, with what Cleopatra in mock-irony
calls "sport indeed." And when at last in her arms, he finds his own efforts to
speak interrupted by hers. The whole scene has a different import from Plutarch'
s: Shakespeare's Cleopatra wipes away no blood on Antony's face, does not here g
reet him as husband, or forget her own misery for his. Instead, she upstages him
in self-dramatization. The very hyperboles in which she sings his greatness cal
l our attention chiefly to herself. And ironically, the self-discovery she procl
aims after his death is that she has "no friend" except her own resolution. The
Antony of her imagination, we infer, cannot be thought her friend. (Roy W. Batte
nhouse, "Toward Clarifying the Term 'Christian Tragedy,' in Shakespearean Traged
y)
These are only two points of view, of course, and there are others. But the cent
ral issue remains clear: Is the ending of the play the earned attainment of a hi
gher state of being, a confirmation that the famous lovers have transcended the
mundane world of Roman politics and thus moved us to some new insight about our
own divided world, or is the ending a rhetorical and sentimental attempt to glos
s over the earlier inability of these characters to convince us of their greatne
ss in their own actions, separately and together?
Much will depend upon how any particular production translates the text into dra
matic action. And there's no doubt that giving Antony and Cleopatra heroic tragi
c stature is a notoriously difficult challenge for any player (How does any actr
ess live up to the description of Cleopatra given in Enobarbus's description?).
Still, I incline to the former possibility (which is probably the majority view)
, that something of value here is affirmed. There is something about this pair t
hat convinces me that they have truly moved past the confines of ordinary experi
ence (whether in Egypt or Rome) and express, in their closing moments, the trans
cendent value of a life which moves beyond the limitations of Roman or Egyptian
ways of life. But in making this claim, I must admit that I am moved a great dea
l by what other people say about and do on behalf of Antony and Cleopatra (espec
ially the suicides of Enobarbus, Iras, Charmian, which Wilson Knight refers to),
as much as I am by what the two famous lovers do together. People who can inspi
re that kind of love and bonding must be worth more than Octavius Caesar, no mat
ter how necessary the latter may be to the establishment of a new world order.
Postscript to the Death of Cleopatra
The ending of Antony and Cleopatra is in an important sense quite different from
the endings of King Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth: Cleopatra's death enacts for us
her acceptance of what she and Antony together share. It is not, as in the other
plays, the result of a continuing rejection of (or an inability to accept) what
the world has to offer. Cleopatra's suicide is (as Stanley Cavell rightly empha
sizes in Disowning Knowledge) a staged marriage, a theatrically enacted reunion
with the physical sensual world, presented in very erotic terms, including sexua
l orgasm. Cleopatra is, as Cavell points out, offering her "performance" as a vi
able counter to the political theatre of Octavius, who wants to use Antony and C
leopatra back in Rome to further his political agenda.
If we see Cleopatra's final marriage to Antony as a movement beyond and above th
e historically contingent world of Octavius Caesar, then we might sense in the c
onclusion of this play a movement beyond tragedy towards a major concern of the
plays which follow (the Romances), that is, the importance of reconciliation and
acceptance of the given, particularly the given relationships which most closel
y bind us to the human community (especially family bonds). Perhaps, then, we se
nse here that Shakespeare is, to some extent, privileging the world of private r
elationships over the world of political action. If there is no more religion to
turn to and if politics is simply a continuing scramble for power, in the last
analysis we can define our relationship to the world in terms of the love we hav
e for particular people.
That movement is not completed in Antony and Cleopatra, of course, because the u
nion with the world acted out by Cleopatra occurs only in her suicide (and Anton
y is already dead). There's no sense here that such a total acceptance of the wo
rld can occupy a meaningful place in Octavius's world in any other way. And the
play leaves us wondering whether something important has been affirmed or whethe
r this is just one more bravura performance, another autoerotic illusion which c
annot stand up against the march of historical power.
Still, the very fact that we can raise such alternatives indicates that this pla
y offers (or seems to offer) something more uplifting than the very bleak or omi
nous conclusions to the other tragedies, where we are left with a sense that the
given conditions of life lead inevitably to tragic suffering and death without
any consoling revelation.
2)Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra shares with Troilus and Cressida the obsess
ive and self-consuming rage of the tragic figure as he confronts and attempts to
define "reality." But, more extravagantly than Troilus and Cressida, this reali
ty is layered with masquerade; forms that are often as lyric as brutal shift and
change and baffle expectation. The constant refinement of brute reality into ly
ric illusion is the work not simply of Antony, Shakespeare's hero, but the lifel
ong work of Shakespeare himself. Thus there is a curious, rather decadent air in
this play of flamboyant desires having as much import if not ultimately as much p
olitical strength as events themselves. Lionel Abel states that among the characte
rs of Hamlet there are four playwrights: Claudius, the Ghost, Polonius, and Haml
et.1 Among the characters of Antony and Cleopatra there are any number of mythol
ogizing poets and/or playwrights, but the most important is Antony. Snared withi
n the net of appearances and forced by politics (that most extreme form of fanta
sy) to break free, Antony's agony is curiously muted for someone who has achieve
d and lost so much; but this fact can be better understood if we examine the bas
is of the play and its relationship to "tragedy."
The movement of most works of literature whether the simple medieval morality play
or the ambiguous Troilus and Cressida is toward a dramatic confrontation with rea
lity, with objective truth. The hero's downfall (or, in happier works, his conve
rsion or enlightenment) is determined by the success with which reality overcome
s appearances. If there is any great theme of literature this is it: the destruc
tion of the faux-semblant and attendant illusions by the intervention, bitter or
glorious, of reality. Tragedy works with this theme and is inseparable from it,
and the problem of Antony and Cleopatra seems to be that the lovers either do n
ot have illusions or, if they do, they never learn to substitute for them other
visions of their predicament, in the classical way that Creon of Sophocles' Anti
gone does, or in the way Othello and Macbeth do. Orthodox and recognizable trage
dy necessarily involves a process of learning and exorcism, which is manipulated
by the tragic figure himself, as in Oedipus Rex, or by surrounding characters w
ho may or may not be fragmented aspects of the hero himself, as in The Revenger'
s Tragedy, or by fate or external social forces, as in Ibsen's Ghosts. In Antony
and Cleopatra all exorcism fails: just as Antony cannot rid himself of his obse
ssion with Cleopatra, so Cleopatra cannot quite rid herself of the earth-bound a
nd, in a crude sense, comic aspects of her own mortality. Exorcism works to disp
el illusion, but the poetry of Antony and Cleopatra works to create illusion. Th
e play is sustained by words alone, for its plot is certainly incidental; we are
never interested in what a character does, but only in how he expresses his con
sciousness of what he has done, and what this evokes in the mirroring rhetoric o
f his witnesses. Here reality does not defeat appearances; appearances are made th
rough a pressure that approaches magic to defeat reality or at least render it irr
elevant.
Comedy also traditionally penetrates illusions; it is the incongruity of what is
supposed and what is that produces laughter. But Antony and Cleopatra relates m
ost immediately and most helpfully to comedy, since its tragic dimensions are at
tained (in acts 4 and 5) by an excess and concentration of emotion that is not a
nticipated in the earlier acts. The first act is comic in intention: the lovers
insist upon their love's hyperbole and most specifically upon Antony's rejection
of his former life. In a pretense of negatives, he states his real concerns:
Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch
Of the rang'd empire fall! Here is my space.
Kingdoms are clay; our dungy earth alike
Feeds beast as man.
(1. 1. 33-36)
At the end of the act he leaves for Rome to strengthen his hold on the empire an
d to escape Egyptian "dotage." The banter and play acting of the first scene sho
w Antony and Cleopatra at their worst, and this self-caricaturing, since it cann
ot be so judged until much later, gives a credulity to the opening speech that w
ould not ordinarily belong to it. This is Philo's judgment of Antony, which may
be equated exactly with the judgment of the Roman world: Antony is the "triple p
illar of the world transform'd/ Into a strumpet's fool" (1. 1. 12-13). The parad
oxical nature of Antony's infatuation is vividly suggested by these lines:
His captain's heart,
Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst
The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper,
 And is become the bellows and the fan
To cool a gipsy's lust.
(1. 1. 6-10)
The surrender of the militant must constitute for the Romans an unqualified surr
ender; the problem for the spectator or reader is the extent to which Roman judg
ment may be trusted. But the central image here works for the Antony of the enti
re play: what is unforgettable in this Antony is his "heart" on any level, the o
rgan of courage, of magnanimity, of loyalty, of love, of hysterical valor possib
le only by a "diminution in [his] brain." Antony is his heart, as Caesar is his
reason, and the heart, being blind, may understand the complexities of the "tawn
y front" (Philo's description of Cleopatra) by other means. The "front" has its
obvious irony in that Antony is a military man; it has its obvious accusation in
that it is but a mask, a facade; but not so obvious is the fact that, since it
is a facade, there may be dimensions enjoyed by it that would baffle the Roman m
ind. The image works, then, in two directions, and the Roman Philo, speaking sco
rnfully, is allowed to say more than he means. Antony's heart, apparently having
met defeat on this battle front, has become a bellows, so retaining its pulsing
, contracting and expanding motions, but having undergone a metamorphosis that c
annot be admired. The paradox is that the bellows and the fan which "cool a gips
y's lust" do not cool but enflame; their purpose, as instruments, is to do so. T
he image of the cyclical cooling and enflaming, then, can suggest that fluctuati
ng course Antony will follow, and, in its apparent preoccupation with a single o
bject, the man himself: a man of complexity, a colossus and a ruffian who consum
es himself in the love that, by devouring him, transforms him into a being the m
ilitary Antony, noble as he might be, could not imagine. The image suggests, fur
ther, a shameful helplessness; it suggests entrapment, the commitment of the pas
sionate being to his passion, but never the commitment of the passive being to h
is "fate." Common judgments of Antony are perplexed, or at best mixed. He is not
a tragic figure in any recognizable sense; he may yearn for "the love of Love,
and her soft hours" in act 1, but in act 4, at death, he will not yearn for more
than this.
The bantering first scene is followed by an interlude of sophisticated joking am
ong lesser people Cleopatra's servants and the Roman friend of Antony, Enobarbus.
The cliché of the anticipation of death in the midst of life, or luxurious gaiety,
and the prophecies of the soothsayer are as close in Antony and Cleopatra as on
e comes to the conventionalities of tragedy. Does this argue for supernatural de
sign or is it introduced to strengthen, structurally, the meandering energy of t
he play? Later Antony's god, Hercules, will desert him (in Plutarch, it is Bacch
us), but Antony registers no consciousness of this symbolic act. It does not wor
k as do the garden scene of Richard II or the scene in Troilus and Cressida in whi
ch Hector slaughters the strange knight "for his hide" to relate directly to the h
ero's interpretation of his plight or to add to the audience's understanding of
its dimensions. It is eerie; it is mystical; it is a possibility just as anything
in the enchanted Egypt is a possibility but its suggestion of divine force or fate
is never taken up by anyone in the play. Antony and Cleopatra is the most godle
ss of Shakespeare's plays, because it is about human beings for whom anything le
ss than self-divinity will be failure.
It is not only Cleopatra who suggests a mysterious variety, but Antony as well.
Much as he reveals himself in his words, his half-false sincerities and his half
-truthful lies, there is mystery in him because he is in a process of change. Hi
s variety is suggested by the differing men who see him, and, most famously, by
Cleopatra after his death. To his officer, Ventidius, he is a captain generous o
nly to those who keep themselves, cautiously and wisely, inferior to him (act 3,
scene 1); to Enobarbus he is a "fool" (3. 11. 42) and yet a "mine of bounty" fo
r whom one might give his life (4. 6. 32); to Caesar, the Antony of old was a gr
eat soldier who fought "with patience more/ Than savages could suffer" (1. 4. 60
-61), but who is now "a man who is the abstract of all faults/ That all men foll
ow" (1. 4. 9-10). Caesar might have gone on to see that Antony is not flawed by
his faults but is his faults; in him, as in Cleopatra, the vilest things become
themselves. Yet to Lepidus, there are not "evils enow to darken all his goodness
;/ His faults in him seem as the spots of heaven,/ More fiery by night's blackne
ss" (1. 4. 11-13). Antony is to be considered, frequently, in terms of light and
dark imagery; what is perplexing is the ease with which the polar values of lig
ht and dark may be confused. Antony "is," in Cleopatra's famous speech, light it
self: he is the sun and the moon and the heavens. Yet his faults in him seem as
the spots (stars) of heaven again light, and perhaps the same light. This cosmic
light blinks good and evil; when one leaves the atmosphere of the human conditio
n, the two become indistinguishable.
But Caesar's point here is earthbound:
If he fill'd His vacancy with his voluptuousness,
Full surfeits and the dryness of his bones
Call on him for 't; but to confound such time
That drums him from his sport, and speaks as loud
As his own state and ours, 'tis to be chid.
(1. 4. 25-30)
The tension in Antony and Cleopatra is, clearly, not between good and evil and n
ot between appearances and reality. It is simply between two views of the world,
the Roman and the Egyptian, the cold Machiavellianism of those who deal in lieu
tenantry (3. 9. 39) and the unfixed, pulsating, undignified voluptuousness of th
ose to whom passion has become a world. I speak of tension, but really this cont
ention between opposites counts for little more than the formal plot. There is n
ever any doubt about the impending victory of reason if it is a victory; the tensi
on is not, as in Troilus and Cressida, exploited as mock tension and made to dem
onstrate the shabbiness of both love-worshiping Trojans and reason-worshiping Gr
eeks. In Antony and Cleopatra both ways of viewing the world are given generous
consideration, the final point being that they are simply different and that any
one world threatens or suffers opposing worlds. The one necessarily moves out o
f itself, bent upon conquering; the other moves in upon itself and draws the wor
ld in after, so that to the great soldier Antony, the absurdity of challenging C
aesar to a duel is never recognizable. The political must resist emotions, thoug
h they may trade upon them; the passionate recognize only emotions, though they
may recognize at the same time their serious limitations. What is interesting is
that for both species of man, faith in appearances supercedes faith in reality,
or it may be that, for both, appearances turn into reality.
Thus the sacrifice of the limpid Octavia: Caesar and Antony cannot understand ea
ch other, and do not want to, but their accustomed faith in ceremony meets in th
e proposal of the political marriage between Antony and Octavia. They are role-t
akers; therefore, we feel no distaste for Antony as he dismisses his love of Cle
opatra as "poison'd hours," since we know he does not tell the truth but speaks
only ceremonially. We take our cues in the play from Enobarbus, the plain dealer
who is out of place in this meeting:
. . . if you borrow one another's love for the instant, you may, when you he
ar no more words of Pompey, return it again: you shall have time to wrangle in w
hen you have nothing else to do.
(2.2. 107-111)
Enobarbus pretends not to understand the decorum of this world. Instead, the doo
med Lepidus interprets it: "Her love to both/ Would each to other and all loves
to both/ Draw after her" (2. 2. 141-143). History is too fraudulent to be telesc
oped into anything but comedy. So Antony, newly contracted to Caesar through the
political marriage, recognizes no change in relationships but, inspired by the
catalytic words of the soothsayer, foresees his doom in Caesar's alienness:
The very dice obey him.
And in our Sports my better cunning faints
Under his chance.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
And though I make this marriage for my peace,
I' the east my pleasure lies.
(2. 3. 33-40)
The relationship of Antony and Cleopatra is as apparently ignoble as nobility wi
ll allow. We see them as lovers in fragments: they wander through the streets an
d "note the qualities of people"; they lie brilliantly and passionately to each
other; they swear their love in impossibly exaggerated terms; they do not trust
each other. Above all, they are not youthful lovers: Cleopatra sees herself as "
with Phoebus' amorous pinches black,/ And wrinkled deep in time" ( 1. 5. 28-29 )
; Antony speaks angrily of sending to "the boy Caesar . . . this grizzled head"
(3. 11. 17). But in them surface conventions and the reality of spirit are blurr
ed, as the good and evil of Antony become one in the dazzling light he embodies.
So Cleopatra, with "wann'd" lip, is still the queen of her exotic land, and is
evoked in the famous set-piece in which Enobarbus describes her to an awe-strick
en Roman as an impression rather than a reality and it is the impression, finally,
that matters. The scene upon the barge the air love-sick with perfume, the rich i
magery of gold and purple and silver, the transformation of attendants into cupi
ds and mermaids, most of all the transformation of the perhaps desperate Cleopat
ra into Venus may just miss being absurd; delivered by a Thersites, this would com
e to us differently. But Enobarbus? whose sense of reality we are to trust, unde
rstands that she does "make defect perfection" and that, given this alchemy, the
logical Roman world and its judgments are irrelevant. The paradox Cleopatra emb
odies is suggested most succinctly in Agrippa's exclamation, "Royal wench!" Cleo
patra's majesty is such that so crude a comic scene as the one in which she assa
ults the messenger of ill news does not destroy it; she is described in terms of
food and eating, and describes herself so, but this counts, ultimately, as one
of the symptoms of her complexity and not simply of her baseness. Recurring in h
er, even at her death, is a propensity to view matters comically.
History as possible comedy (when enacted, as it must be, by mortal men) is one o
f the motifs of Antony and Cleopatra; it comes out most successfully abroad Pomp
ey's galley (act 2, scene 7), where the pillars of the world end their banquet i
n a drunken communion that means, of course, nothing. The Roman disposition is m
ore recognizably admirable than the Egyptian, because it is normally ambitious.
But in the end it is no more meaningful, and its ceremonies, though usually sobe
r, come to the same thing as the illusion of the cupids and mermaids attending t
heir scheming Venus. Antony and Cleopatra is as ceremonial a play as Richard II
and Troilus and Cressida, but though all ceremonies come to nothing finally, the
abandonment of these forms in Antony and Cleopatra does not constitute the educ
ation it does in the other plays; realizing the sham of ceremonies is quite equi
valent to realizing the sham of one's self and the world. If there is a differen
ce between what the world (at its crudest, biological) suggests and what ceremon
y demands, then it is clearly the world that must be abandoned, since it becomes
"no better than a sty." This is the curious point: suicide here is an escape fr
om the disappointing world, but not an escape from the self, whose nobility is n
ever diminished.
The people of both worlds, Roman and Egyptian, live according to ceremony. Enoba
rbus dies out of grief at the fulfillment of a ritual of friendship, when Antony
sends his treasure and more after him; indeed, his death itself is ceremonial.
Caesar, disgusted, may scorn Antony's vulgar performance when Antony at last fle
es back to Egypt:
I' the market-place, on a tribunal silver'd,
Cleopatra and himself in chairs of gold
Were publicly enthron'd; at the feet sat
Caesarion, whom they call my father's son,
And all the unlawful issue that their lust
Since then hath made between them.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I' the common show-place, where they exercise.
(3. 6. 3-12)
But he will, minutes later, attack bitterly the manner of his sister's arrival b
ecause it has not enough of show in it:
You come not
Like Caesar's sister; the wife of Antony
Should have an army for an usher, and
The neighs of horse to tell of her approach
Long ere she did appear; the trees by the way
Should have borne men; and expectation fainted,
Longing for what it had not.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
But you are come
A market-maid to Rome, and have prevented
The ostentation of our love, which, left unshown,
Is often left unlov'd.
(3. 6. 42-53)
There is no distinction on this level between the Roman and the Egyptian: realit
y loses itself in appearance.
Later Antony, preparing for his suicide, will dream of his reunion with Cleopatr
a after death in terms of this "show." It is not enough for the lovers to dwell
together in romantic bliss for eternity; their love exists, clearly enough, at l
east in part in the awe of witnesses:
Where souls do couch on flowers, we'll hand in hand,
And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze;
Dido and her Aeneas shall want troops,
And all the haunt be ours.
(4. 12. 51-54)
This does not subtract from their love, but rather qualifies it as a particular
sort of love that gives more of itself to supposed irrelevancies than romantic l
ove can afford to surrender. This love is not orthodox, and so it is suspect; it
has always been suspect in regard to Cleopatra. After the defeat at Actium, how
ever, with their world shaken and its vastness for the first time questioned, An
tony and Cleopatra become recognizably human. Ceremony is forgotten in the urgen
cy of the moment, and they are reconciled, though the loyal Enobarbus, the spoke
sman or chorus for the action, has lost his faith in the world of passion and it
s excesses: one must simply "think, and die" (3. 11. 2). Enobarbus' reason tells
him to abandon his failing master, envisioned as a dangerous, dying old lion, b
ut if we have assumed Enobarbus' wisdom, we are forced at his death to assume al
so his guilt. He dies of disloyalty, and the fact of disloyalty is in itself sin
ful, despite the important fact that "loyalty well held to fools does make . . .
 faith mere folly" (3. 11. 42).
The several climaxes of the play baffle expectation. If the processes of exorcis
m are to be completed, Antony as the deluded lover must collide with reality and
must see his folly. But the movement toward tragic enlightenment is always thwa
rted, and Antony withdraws from these encounters with his faith in his condition
untouched. So after the battle at Actium when Antony seems a defeated man "I am s
o lated in the world that I/ Have lost my way for ever" (3. 9. 3) it is not the te
mptation of suicide that masters him but the totality of his commitment to Cleop
atra. He is able to say:
Fall not a tear, I say; one of them rates
All that is won and lost.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Love, I am full of lead.
Some wine, within there, and our viands! Fortune knows,
We scorn her most when most she offers blows.
(3. 9. 69-74)
So he makes his early speech about his indifference to worldly fortune come true
.
The next climax comes when Antony sees Caesar's messenger kissing Cleopatra's ha
nd; he does not see that she is acting a part. His judgment on her turns back up
on himself in a passage that should work as a catharsis of his love and his bond
age:
. . . when we in our viciousness grow hard,
O misery on't! the wise gods seel our eyes;
In our own filth drop our clear judgments; make us
Adore our errors; laugh at's, while we strut
To our confusion.
(3. 11. 111-115)
He is maddened by Caesar's "harping on what I am,/ Not what he knew I was" as if
his life were over. But he is again reconciled to Cleopatra, whose dignity grow
s when his diminishes, and believes they will yet do well. Enobarbus sees Antony
as so furious that he is "frighted out of fear," and consequently not the old A
ntony. His bravado has a new sound of hollowness:
I will be treble-sinew'd, hearted, breath'd,
And fight maliciously; for when mine hours
Were nice and lucky, men did ransom lives
Of me for jests; but now I'll set my teeth,
And send to darkness all that stop me. Come,
Let's have one other gaudy night: call to me
All my sad captains.
(3. 11. 177-183)
The apparent change of fortune that follows (they beat back Caesar's men) makes
the final catastrophe the more complete.
After the last defeat, when Cleopatra's men desert to the enemy, Antony is broug
ht to a revelation of what reality is for him, but again this revelation is disc
arded. The apparent betrayal of Cleopatra constitutes a betrayal of all appearan
ce:
 Sometimes we see a cloud that's dragonish;
A vapour sometime like a bear or lion . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Thou hast seen these signs;
They are black vesper's pageants. . . .
That which is now a horse, even with a thought
The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct,
As water is in water.
(4. 12. 2-11)
The protean condition of man and his world, a vision presented here with deadly
vividness, is offset for Antony only by the false report that Cleopatra has kill
ed herself. His commitment to love is again realized, and he prepares for death.
It is the final restoration of faith in love that justifies the expenditure of
passion the play has permitted. Death is neither escape nor self-punishment; it
is, of course, a mistake, yet it is at the same time a willful surrender to some
thing very like love. Eros is Antony's knave and Antony's god: Antony will "make
death love me" and will "run into't/ As to a lover's bed." Brutus dies because
he has awakened from delusion; Othello dies when freed from the delusion of what
he is; Troilus, not a tragic figure, perhaps, nevertheless goes into battle to
die when confronted with the prospect of a world totally corrupted. But Antony d
ies with his faith in love renewed. This long death scene avoids a ghastly senti
mentality partially by Cleopatra's unromantic wariness (fearing capture, she wil
l not leave the monument to come to the dying Antony), partially by the confiden
ce with which the lovers affirm themselves and their love, partially by the shee
r hyperbolic force of the poetry itself.
The play is conceived in hyperbole, the controlled hysteria of Renaissance langu
age to which no world was ever equal. If the confines of this Roman-Egyptian wor
ld are not admittedly fake, then they are, by necessity, without limitation. The
known world is collapsed into Antony, Cleopatra, and Caesar; nothing is missing
from it, since they combine among them all its brilliance and its stupidity. An
tony can say of himself that with his sword he "quarter'd the world" (4. 12. 58)
; Cleopatra can say of him beginning the extended creation and re-creation of her
lover that must be unmatched in literature for its audacity and beauty that he des
troys with himself all order in the world: "Young boys and girls/ Are level now
with men; the odds is gone,/ And there is nothing left remarkable/ Beneath the v
isiting moon" (4. 13. 65-68). Even Caesar can say "the death of Antony/ Is not a
single doom; in the name lay/ A moiety of the world" ( 5. 1. 16-18). The play i
s finally Antony's, for Cleopatra is priestess to his apotheosis in the speech t
oward which all earlier poetry moves:
His legs bestrid the ocean; his rear'd arm
Crested the world; his voice was propertied
As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends;
But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,
He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,
There was no winter in't, an autumn 'twas
That grew the more by reaping; his delights
Were dolphin-like, they show'd his back above
The element they liv'd in; in his livery
Walk'd crowns and crownets, realms and islands were
As plates dropp'd from his pocket.
(5. 2. 82-92)
The wonder of these flights of poetry is that they seem to give nothing of their
certainty to the ceremony of the earlier acts of the play. If it is not possibl
e that Antony was as he is dreamed, then it is not the lapsed Antony this play i
s about. If their "strength is all gone into heaviness," this heaviness testifie
s simply for the magnitude of that former strength that has now destroyed itself
. Antony's death teaches Cleopatra the vanity of life, subject to fortune; the b
etrayal of her treasurer renders this education immediately suspect, just as the
knowledge that Caesar will lead her in triumph obscures forever Cleopatra's mot
ives for dying. Shakespeare balances hyperbole with comic suggestion: the Antony
as colossus and the Antony as ruffian, the Cleopatra equal to all visions of he
rself and the Cleopatra raging at the servant who has betrayed her. But the coun
terpoint does not work here as it does, for instance, in Dr. Faustus with its vaud
eville scenes of Wagner playing magician to qualify the grandeur of these people a
nd to cheat them of their incredible dignity. Instead, it works to suggest by co
ntrast the range of behavior this dignity allows itself, and the heights to whic
h it succeeds. Thus Cleopatra becomes unforgettable precisely because she is a w
oman, and at times a small woman; what is insisted upon is her humanity, the asc
ent of angels or demonic gods being too easy. The baseness of Cleopatra does not
preclude her greatness but assures it, since without this her presence would be
no more than a flight of words. This magic, admittedly, will not work for every
one. Though the modern temperament admires passion and individuality more than t
he older virtues of prudence, modesty, and chastity, Cleopatra may still be inte
rpreted as Shakespeare's Romans see her, and Antony's death may be seen as simpl
y the necessary result of his having surrendered his reason to immoral passion.
But the magic works for Antony and Cleopatra, and it need not do more.
The denial of prosaic reality and its metamorphosis into something rich and stra
nge are possible through the language Shakespeare uses. Thus the chilling vision
Antony has of the cloud formations that baffle the eye and that extend, in thei
r impermanence, into the lives of men is a vision that may be utilized profitabl
y by the victims of this world of appearances. Antony dies with his belief in Cl
eopatra and himself secure (and it is surely Shakespeare's Antony that William C
arlos Williams has in mind in his whimsical poem, "To Mark Anthony in Heaven," t
he sense of the poem being that Antony's experience and his commitment to love a
re "heaven," man's highest achievement). Cleopatra asks, after her envisioning o
f Antony as a colossus, whether there was such a man as that of whom she speaks;
when told there was not, she replies:
You lie, up to the hearing of the gods.
But, if there be, or ever were, one such,
It's past the size of dreaming; nature wants stuff
To vie strange forms with fancy; yet to imagine
An Antony were nature's piece 'gainst fancy,
Condemning shadows quite.
(5. 2. 94-99)
This condemnation of "shadows" is the metaphorical basis upon which the entire p
lay works. These lines propose a question they do not answer, since by the choic
e of words (nature "imagines") the meaning is made ambiguous. Clearly there has
been an Antony, and there is doubt about his being past the size of dreaming, bu
t and this is the irony if there has been this Antony, it is the highest achievement
of nature's own imagining, or creating; it falls beyond man's capacity for unde
rstanding. At her own death Cleopatra is able to transform by her imagination th
e snake to a "baby asleep at my breast,/ That sucks the nurse asleep," this fina
l alchemy no more wonderful than that which has lighted the entire play. We must
turn to a Prospero to encounter equal omnipotence.
It is reality that is defeated in this play, and its defeat goes unmourned. The
uses of poetry are nowhere in Shakespeare so well imagined as in this work about
godly creatures who delight in their humanity, and who leave their traces upon
all corners of their gigantic world. Illusion could not be sustained in Hamlet's
gloomy Denmark, or on the wild fields of Scotland; it requires the light-drench
ed world of old Egypt, a world that exists nowhere except in this play and then
only within its words, by the strenuous magic of its language. In Shakespeare's
works after Antony and Cleopatra, language will expand its uses to become both "
action" and "theme," moving toward the purely lyric.
3)In this essay I will explore the transformations of two signs that structure A
ntony and Cleopatra: performance and writing. As each circulates in the diverse
dramatic contexts of the play, they articulate its thematic elements into a seri
es of varying relations which operate at different levels of abstraction; from i
nteractions between principles of flow and constraint, through the construction
of characters honour, virtue, or reputation, to what might be the perceived meani
ng of the physical gestures, actions, and visual appearances and arrangements wh
en presented on-stage. By tracing some of those circulations, I hope to elucidat
e some of the effects that they produce in terms of a relation between subjects
and their dramatised world, and the operation of the play s dramatised world in th
e theatrical event.
In the opening scene of Antony and Cleopatra, the first sentence describes Anton
y s identity as being in a state of flux: "this dotage of our general s / O erflows th
e measure" (1.1.1-2). An image system is constructed throughout the text along c
hains of association extending from this sentence; they assign different subject
positions for the characters to speak from or to be viewed from. "Measure," fir
stly, appears to refer to a limit that describes the proper standard of Roman id
entity. It is the spectacle of Antony deviating from this standard that alarms i
ts Roman audience (Demetrius and Philo). Deviation from Roman measure is figured
as flow. The description goes on to elaborate this principle of overflowing in
physical terms; Antony s heart refuses all self-restraint. His desire is excessive
, producing a transformation of his identity from a "pillar of the world"--a fir
m bearer of the Roman state, likened to Mars, the god of war, clad in armour--"I
nto a strumpet s fool" (12-3). Even before he appears on-stage, therefore, Antony
is in some sense constituted by the ideological structure of the Roman world; "t
hat great property / Which still should go with Antony" (58-9) is a quality that
Demetrius and Philo understand to define Antony s proper appearance, in conformit
y with his proper identity as a pillar of the world, and is measured by a Roman
standard. That property is his honour--the accounting of his virtue--which circu
lates in the form of reputation. Later in the play, the pretext for Antony s break
from Caesar is the latter s denigration of his reputation:
. . . [Caesar] To the public ear:
Spoke scantly of me: when perforce he could not
But pay me terms of honour, cold and sickly
He vented them; most narrow measure lent me (3.4.5-8).
Antony insists to Octavia that the measure of his reputation defines his very id
entity; "if I lose mine honour, / I lose myself" (22-3).
The medium of reputation is language; it is principally something one hears abou
t or tells of. If the constitution of Antony s Roman identity is measured by langu
age, perhaps his deviation from it may be said to be by means of the extra-lingu
istic? In terms of the chains of associations from the first sentence, Demetrius
and Philo speak from within the Roman ideological structure, and insofar as the
y cast a censorious look towards Antony, they inhabit a subject position which i
s that of a spectator; "Take but good note . . . . Behold and see" (1.1.11; 13).
At first glance, both these imperatives appear to refer to spectating as a visu
al activity. Perhaps, however, they may serve to draw out a distinction implicit
in the activity of Demetrius and Philo: taking "note" might be said to involve
the making of a written record; transcribing reputation according to the visual
evidence beheld. Roman spectatorship measures identity by the relation between v
isual performance and verbal reputation. The interest of the visual spectacle fo
r the (dramatic and, by extension, theatrical) spectators lies in the contradict
ion with reputation it presents and the effect of transformation of identity it
implies ("The triple pillar of the world transform d / Into a strumpet s fool" [12-1
3]). The subject position that Antony inhabits, seen from which his identity app
ears to be in a state of flux to the Roman spectators, is that of a performer. I
t is performance that effects a destabilising transgression of the imperial regu
lation of language. A few lines into this scene Antony visually indicates, rathe
r than verbally describes, his new-found definition of "the nobleness of life":
it "Is to do thus" (36-7). Were such a definition to become the standard of worl
dly reputation ("the world to weet"), however, it would imply the dissolution of
Rome itself; "Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch / Of the rang d empire fa
ll" (33-4). "Here is my space" Antony insists, which serves to associate verbal
reputation with Rome and visual performance with Egypt.
The first scene, however, is framed by two conflicting accounts of reputation. P
hilo s account contrasts the two, locating the first in the past and the second in
the present, and Demetrius reference locates the second--which, for them, has be
en confirmed by the spectacle of the scene--in the realm of rumour circulating a
mong the plebeians: "I am full sorry / That he approves the common liar, who / T
hus speaks of him at Rome" (59-61). When Antony s attention has been turned toward
his Roman reputation, he commands the messenger to "mince not the general tongu
e: / Name Cleopatra as she is call d in Rome" (1.2.102-3). The threat of the spect
acle of Antony with Cleopatra comes from its ability to produce a "confluence" o
f Roman reputation and Egyptian performance that circulates in a public realm am
ong the "slippery people" (183). Performance is again associated with the princi
ple of flow which disrupts proper Roman measure. It produces a discandying effec
t on the stability of Roman reputation by leaking into the realm of its circulat
ion and producing an alternative version of identity.
The scene opening act three is significant in this respect. Although hardly nece
ssary for the development of the plot, it nonetheless provides an associative kn
ot from which we might assess the intersections between performance and writing
in terms of reputation s construction of identity. The vanquished paraded forth in
triumph is a cathectic image for the protagonists, which is anticipated here by
Ventidius with the body of Pacorus. Ventidius decides to write to Antony--to "h
umbly signify what in his name, / That magical word of war, we have effected"--s
ince he who does "more than his captain can, / Becomes his captain s captain" (3.1
.30-1; 21-2). Ventidius uses a letter to turn Antony s implicit gaze away from the
spectacle of his officer s triumph towards the construction of his Roman reputati
on; otherwise, "in his offence / Should my performance perish" (26-7). Ventidius
letter attempts to negate the possibility of a confluence of performance and the
reputation of the performer. Ventidius consequently provides an important accou
nt of the process of production of Roman reputation :
Better to leave undone, than by our deed
Acquire too high a fame, when him we serve s away.
Caesar and Antony have ever won
More in their officer than person. (14-17)
This helps to distinguish the proper measure of a Roman reputation from the impr
oper flow of the competing Egyptian one. The former is constructed without any n
ecessary relation to action performed, whereas the latter flows directly from it
. Extending this, perhaps a little too broadly, might we say that Antony s tragedy
is his failure to recognise that distinction? During his jeremiad, bewailing hi
s defeat after following Cleopatra s fleeing boat, he expresses confusion at the n
on-identity between Caesar s performance and reputation:
. . . he at Philippi kept
His sword e en like a dancer, while I struck
The lean and wrinkled Cassius, and twas I
That the mad Brutus ended: he alone
Dealt on lieutenantry, and no practice had
In the brave squares of war: yet now--No matter. (3.11.35-40)
Antony s repeated demands, following his defeats, for Caesar to "answer me declin d,
sword against sword, / Ourselves alone" (3.13.27-8) fail to distinguish between
the actual dynamics of their relation with one another and the ideological repu
tation that grounds it in physical contest based on the principle of emulation.
The move towards "universal peace" with Caesar as the "universal landlord" is a
dialectical overcoming of the emulative relation. Caesar achieves this by mediat
ing and then gradually substituting other bodies for his own, up to the point th
at he is able to "fetch him [Antony] in" (4.1.14) by planting "those that have r
evolted in the vant" such that "Antony may seem to spend his fury / Upon himself
" (4.4.9-11). If "measure" may refer to the distance between two opponents who a
re fencing, then the difference between their swords illustrates the point: whil
e Antony often invokes his sword as a guarantor of his truth and masculinity ("N
ow, by my sword" [1.3.82]), Caesar s can be merely ornamental ("like a dancer"). C
aesar s sword is a deterritorialized sign of power, while Antony s remains stubbornl
y territorial ("Here is my space")--even if subject to the discandying effect of
Cleopatra s performative influence ("You did know / How much you were my conquero
r, and that / My sword, made weak by my affection, would / Obey it on all cause"
[3.11.65-8]).
While Ventidius letter attempts to disconnect reputation from performance, the le
tter that Caesar enters reading in act one, scene four--perhaps that "noted" in
scene one--inscribes a connection, and confirms the Roman measurement of Antony s
performance:
This is the news: he fishes, drinks, and wastes
The lamps of night in revel; is not more manlike
Than Cleopatra; nor the queen of Ptolomy
More womanly than he: hardly gave audience, or
Vouchsaf d to think he had partners. You shall find there
A man who is the abstract of all faults
That all men follow. (1.4.4-10)
In reading the letter, Caesar assumes the position of a spectator to the scene o
f Antony and Cleopatra. Just as the performance of reputation structures Antony
and Philo-Demetrius in an actor-spectator relation, the reading of letters posit
ions the addressee and the inscribed character in an implied theatrical scene. T
hat Caesar objects to Antony s refusal to "give audience" to his letters entreatin
g the latter s return to Rome supports this imagery. The letters that Caesar wrote
inscribed him as a performer for Antony, speaking "as loud / As his own state,
and ours" (29-30). Unlike Antony s performances, however, Caesar confines his own
to the realm of language without actually embodying them:
Most meet
That first we come to words, and therefore have we
Our written purposes before us sent (2.6.2-4).
In act one, scene four, Caesar is in the implied position of spectator to Pompey s
scene of conquest. The letter Caesar reads has interrupted that gaze. His look
is figuratively redirected to the mediated scene of language in its relation to
Antony s reputation, as discandied by performance. The two subsequent messengers,
bringing "report [of] / How tis abroad" (35-6), divert Caesar s gaze back to Pompey
, creating the dramatic conflict; Caesar does not know what way to look. Therefo
re letters do not always serve to secure the distinction between performance and
reputation; they also act as the means of their mutual implication.
For the first half of the play, barely a scene goes by without someone sending,
receiving or proposing to write a letter of some kind. In each case, a letter tr
ansforms a relation either between or within Egypt and Rome. The dominant effect
of letters in Antony and Cleopatra is an imperative to "look elsewhere." As suc
h, letters often acquire qualities of personification for the addressees, evokin
g affective capacities which displace the relation to a level of reified physica
lity: they have "urgent touches" (1.2.178), and they "strongly speak to us" (179
); they can "satisfy" (2.2.51-2) or physically restrain ("Your letters did withh
old our breaking forth" [3.6.79]). Prior to the particular content of any one le
tter, their almost constant arrival and departure produces a more general effect
: the dramatic world of Antony and Cleopatra seems to be held together by their
circulation. Letters circumscribe the limits of the world, binding the various "
theatrical" scenes--implied-virtual and actual-present--together. They contribut
e to the sense of the world s smallness which, no matter how much "space enough be
tween you" Antony makes with Caesar (2.3.22), leads the latter to conclude "we c
ould not stall together, / In the whole world" (5.1.39-40). The first letter in
the play causes a "revolution" in Antony s desire--his "present pleasure . . . doe
s become / The opposite of itself" (1.2.119-127), such that his response to Enob
arbus inquiry "What s your pleasure, sir?" is "I must with haste from hence" (128-9
)--propelling him back to Rome. Antony s look was initially directed towards Cleop
atra ("No messenger but thine" [1.1.52]), and is redirected in the second scene
to Rome by the letters that bear the news of Fulvia s garboils and death and the p
etitions of his "contriving friends" (1.2.180). Letters have the effect of inter
rupting the theatrical scene present at that moment, in order to draw the addres
see into another--figurative, mediated by language--scene.
One possible indication of the significance of letters in Antony and Cleopatra m
ight be located in the determination of their degree of success by the identity
of their authors. Most telling in this respect is the effect that Cleopatra s lett
ers appear to have. There are two scenes in which Cleopatra is portrayed as a se
nder of letters (1.5 and 3.3). In the first, she declares:
Who s born that day
When I forget to send to Antony,
Shall die a beggar.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
He shall have every day a several greeting,
Or I ll unpeople Egypt. (1.5.63-6; 77-8)
Despite this prolific letter-writing, however, when Antony s relation to Cleopatra
is interrogated by Agrippia s suggestion that Antony should marry Octavia, it app
ears to hold no sway over him:
I am not married, Caesar: let me hear
Agrippia further speak.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
May I never
To this good purpose, that so fairly shows,
Dream of impediment! (2.2.123-4; 144-6)
At first it may seem that Cleopatra s second dramatised attempt to redirect Antony s
attention towards her is more successful; two scenes later Caesar complains of
a report that "Cleopatra and himself [Antony] in chairs of gold / Were publicly
enthron d" (3.6.4-5). Although Antony has redirected his gaze towards Cleopatra, t
he motive for doing so is made explicit in the two scenes between the issue of t
he letter and its apparent success: it is the renewal of the emulative dynamic b
etween Antony and Caesar. This is prompted first by the latter s public defamation
of the former s reputation, through which Octavia is eliminated as a credible med
iation between the two ("no midway / Twixt these extremes at all. . . . The Jove
of power make me most weak, most weak, / Your reconciler! [3.4.19-20; 29-30]); a
nd second through Caesar s elimination of Lepidus from the scene of emulation ("pr
esently denied him rivality . . . accuses him of letters he had formerly wrote t
o Pompey" [3.5.7; 9-10]), and Antony s elimination of Pompey (which, realising Cae
sar s parallel elimination, he regrets: "And threats the throat of that his office
r / That murder d Pompey" [18-19]). Antony s return to Egypt was therefore a means o
f producing the "space enough between you" that the Soothsayer recommended as a
palliative for their perpetual competition (2.3.22), rather than a response to t
he appeal of Cleopatra s penmanship. The effect that the circulation of letters pr
oduces is part of the text s construction of sexual difference; those that are suc
cessful are the ones which regulate the scene of emulation that defines Roman ma
sculine identity; feminised letters are implicitly marked "return to sender."
"It is not Caesar s natural vice to hate / Our great competitor" Caesar assures Le
pidus, and immediately launches into a description of the details of Antony s perf
ormance, as reported in a letter, which constitute his opprobrium (1.4.2-3). The
term "competitor" indicates the two main poles of the relation that mutually co
nstitutes Antony and Caesar s Roman identities: most obviously for a contemporary
reading, a relation of rivalry, but also the early modern sense of "associate" o
r "partnership." Thus, not only are they constantly trying to outdo one another,
but they also to a certain extent mirror one another: "When such a spacious mir
ror s set before him, / He needs must see himself" (5.1.34-5). The proper measure
of Antony and Caesar s relation is, as Pompey suggests, that they are "square" wit
h one another:
Twere pregnant they should square between themselves,
For they have entertained cause enough
To draw their swords (2.1.45-7).
This provides an appropriate figure for the valences of the dynamic of emulation
: by "square between themselves," we might understand (1) that they quarrel with
one another--this being the interpretation offered by Case for this passage; (2
) that they keep one another within an established rule, proportion, bound; (3)
that they adjust and shape one another s identity; or (4) that they correspond fai
thfully to one another. They are involved in a process that inculcates both riva
lry between and identification with one another, which--if it is not mediated by
third parties--comes to swords. The circulation of letters alternately function
s to interrupt a non-emulative scene in order to draw its protagonists back into
the competition, or else they function as vehicles of attempted stabilisation o
f the dynamic. The letters referred to in act two, scene two illustrate these al
ternatives: Antony insists that the letters he sent to Caesar should have satisf
ied him that Fulvia and his brother s making war on the Roman state was not at his
bidding--thus attempting to stabilise their quarrel by focusing on a (now non-e
xistent) threat; The letters that Caesar complains of having sent to Antony, whi
ch he "Did pocket up" (73), were designed to draw Antony back into competition.
"[F]or it cannot be / We shall remain in friendship," Caesar suggests; assigning
the cause to the fact that "our conditions" are "So differing in their acts" (2
.2.113-4). Although we may read "conditions" to refer to "dispositions," here, I
believe it may be more productive to avoid the naturalisation of their enmity w
hich such a reading would produce, and instead understand it as a "social or off
icial position, rank." The contradiction implied in the above definition of "com
petitor," which drives the dynamic of emulation, is a contradiction in the ideol
ogical structure of Roman identity. Antony and Caesar are supposed to be equals,
yet both are subject to a drive towards the acquisition of power that pits them
against one another. Although Antony declares that "Kingdoms are clay" (1.1.35)
, he nonetheless promises Cleopatra that he "will piece / Her opulent throne wit
h kingdoms. All the east . . . shall call her mistress" (1.5.45-7), and from the
report Caesar relates in act three, scene six, of Antony and Cleopatra s royal sp
ectacle, he keeps to his promise. The competition between Antony and Caesar is g
iven a sense of inevitability; when Antony responds to the letter urging him bac
k to Rome to renew the emulation, he explains to Cleopatra that "The strong nece
ssity of time commands / Our services awhile" (1.3.42-3), while Caesar suggests
to Octavia to:
Be you not troubled with the time, which drives
O er your content these strong necessities,
But let determin d things to destiny
Hold unbewail d their way. (3.6.82-5).
Thus, in Caesar s eulogy to Antony he laments "that our stars, / Unreconciliable,
should divide / Our equalness to this" (5.1.46-8).
This conclusion is only reached after the possibility of any real equality has b
een destroyed by Caesar s strategy. Earlier in the play, however, two main attempt
s at arriving at a stable mediation of their rivalry are explored. The first is
provided by Pompey s assault on Rome. Pompey had hoped that Caesar and Lepidus wou
ld be "in Rome together / Looking for Antony" (2.1.19-20); that is, that Caesar s
letters would be ineffectual in redirecting Antony s attention. When it becomes cl
ear that the emulative bonds held too great a sway over Antony for this to remai
n the case, Pompey realises that his opposition will serve to "cement their divi
sions, and bind up / The petty difference" (2.1.48-9). Once defeated, however, a
s Enobarbus tactlessly points out, Pompey will no longer serve this purpose, and
the competition will resume. When Caesar says, therefore:
Yet, if I knew
What hoop should hold us staunch from edge to edge
O the world, I would pursue it. (2.2.114-6)
I believe he is referring to several different imagistic series. At the almost l
iteral level, he is asking where is the marriage ring to mediate their antagonis
m ("hoop"); that is, Octavia s marriage to Antony that may mediate through "love"
what Pompey mediated through war.. Taking "staunch" as satiate or satisfy, and "
edge" as keenness of appetite or desire, he is hoping to contain Antony s pleasure
s within stable boundaries. Taking "staunch" as watertight, as in a ship, or to
restrain the flow of blood, it could refer to his desire to control the threat f
rom the principle of flow. If we read "staunch" as trustworthy, and perhaps edge
as their swords, it is to encircle the "squaring" of their masculine identity-f
ormation. As "edge to edge O the world," it is also a desire to encircle and meas
ure out in stable portions the boundaries of the Roman world.
Through his marriage to Octavia, the "cement of our love" attempts to contain th
e emulative dynamic. But, as Enobarbus predicts:
you shall find the band that
seems to tie their friendship together will be the
very strangler of their amity (2.6.117-119).
Octavia s failure to mediate the struggle is most clearly anticipated almost as so
on as it is confirmed; immediately after taking his leave of Octavia and Caesar,
Antony asks the Soothsayer "Whose fortunes shall rise higher, Caesar s or mine?"
(2.3.15). Among the illustrations Antony provides to confirm Caesar s ability to b
eat him at any game, the last is the most significant for the imagery explored a
bove: "and his quails ever / Beat mine, inhoop d, at odds" (36-7). The image of th
e hoop as the circle to contain emulation becomes, through an allusion to cock-f
ighting, an image of confinement, within which "the birds could not avoid fighti
ng."
The decisive moment for the emulative struggle comes at the first defeat by Caes
ar at sea, in act three, scene ten. Or, more precisely, it is defeat by virtue o
f a failure to engage in the struggle that determines Antony s decline. The moment
at which Antony follows Cleopatra s flight from the battle is figured as an highl
y emulative one, in its double sense of mutual identification and rivalry:
i the midst of the fight,
When vantage like a pair of twins appear d
Both as the same, or rather ours the elder (3.10.11-13).
It is the spectacle of Antony withdrawing from this struggle that provokes the m
ost immediate descriptions of his loss of Roman identity: he is described as a "
noble ruin" (19); Antony clearly was not "what he knew himself" (27); and in vio
lating "Experience, manhood, honour" (23), Antony, as he had already told Octavi
a, "loses himself." Antony s defeat comes from the public confirmation that his pe
rformance was not adequate ("measured") to his emulative reputation.
Caesar deterritorializes his reputation from his personal performance and substi
tutes lieutenants, letters, and finally Antony s own deserted troops, as performer
s in his place: Pompey is first pacified by their "seal d composition" (2.6.58-60)
, then defeated by Caesar s "having made use of" Lepidus (2.5.6); Lepidus is elimi
nated through the accusation of letters to Pompey (3.5.9-12); and finally the me
chanism of lieutenantry itself is turned against Antony, such that he appears to
"spend his fury / Upon himself" (4.6.10-11). Because of this deterritorializati
on-substitution, Caesar enables the emulative dynamic to progress without its pr
oper measure (in the sense of: the distance between the competing subjects; thei
r treatment of one another; their mutual estimation of proper positions and iden
tities) becoming subject to the vagaries of performance that upset its arrangeme
nts. Exemplary of this achievement is a remark Caesar makes at the beginning of
the rapid succession of scenes that dramatise the first battle between Antony an
d Caesar--one of Caesar s letters ensures the measure (moderation) of his substitu
tions, keeping the potential excesses of their performances under control:
Strike not by land, keep whole, provoke not battle
Till we have done at sea. Do not exceed
The prescript of this scroll: our fortune lies
Upon this jump. (3.8.3-6)
Antony, however, as evidenced from the very first scene onwards, is unable to pr
oduce these fungible signs of his measured identity. The constitution of both hi
s Roman and Egyptian identities requires his physical presence:
Ant.: The business she [Fulvia] hath broached in the state
Cannot endure my absence.
Eno.: And the business you have broach d here cannot be without you, especially th
at of Cleopatra s, which wholly depends on your abode. (1.2.169-173)
He consequently experiences a state of bifurcation:
The strong necessity of time commands
Our services awhile; but my full heart
Remains in use with you.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Our separation so abides and flies,
That thou, residing here, goes yet with me;
And I, hence fleeting, here remain with thee. (1.3.42-4; 102-5)
As a consequence--unlike Caesar who, knowing that this is not the way their dyna
mic of emulation functions, is able to "Laugh at his challenge" (4.1.6)--Antony
attempts to use letters to provoke a situation in which individual performance w
ill determine reputation:
I dare him therefore
To lay his gay comparisons apart
And answer me declin d, sword against sword,
Ourselves alone.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
If from the field I shall return once more
To kiss these lips, I will appear in blood,
I, and my sword, will earn our chronicle (3.13.25-8; 173-5).
Although, as I asserted above, identity is assessed by Roman spectatorship throu
gh the relation between visual performance and verbal reputation, Caesar is able
, by means of substituting others performance for his own, to exist in a state of
non-correspondence without that disjunction disturbing his proper Roman identit
y. Antony s identity is torn by the exclusivity of the disjunction because of his
stubborn territoriality. Caesar s substitutions enable the production of an inclus
ive disjunction, where the disjointed terms ("distractions") are not restricted
or excluded by one another:
Can.: . . . This speed of Caesar s
Carries beyond belief.
Sold.: While he was yet in Rome,
His power went out in such distractions as
Beguil d all spies. (3.7.73-7)
While letters mainly function as the medium in which the relational dynamics of
male emulation are negotiated, reorganising its measured subject-positions in re
lation to the discourse of reputation, it is through the relations that performa
nce produces that sexual difference enters as a governing principle of that homo
social world. As the combination of verbal and visual imagery on Antony s initial
entrance suggests, his overflowing the measure is a transgression of the Roman s
tate s borders of masculinity: immediately after Philo has described Antony as hav
ing "become the bellows and the fan / To cool a gipsy s lust," Antony enters with
Cleopatra, who has "Eunuchs fanning her" (9-10). The visual repetition of the fa
n serves to associate Antony with Cleopatra s eunuch. Antony s "dotage" is enfeeblin
g as well as excessive; he effectively becomes emasculated. Antony is associated
with a eunuch again, later in the play. Mardian, in describing his unfulfilled
desires, thinks on "What Venus did with Mars" (1.5.18), which immediately remind
s Cleopatra of Antony: "Where think st thou he is now?" (19). There is a double as
sociation in operation here. As Cleopatra exclaims in a moment of despair later
in the play:
Though he be painted one way like a Gorgon,
The other way s a Mars. (2.5.117-8)
Like the paintings "formerly called perspectives," his appearance is doubled; it
"seems to change shape and colours, according to the several stances from which
the aspicient views [him]" (Ridley 1954, 75). Firstly, in terms of Antony s reput
ation as constructed by Roman reputation, he is associated with Mars, the armour
-clad god of war. In terms of the implied relation between Antony s reputation and
his actual performances, however, we have been introduced to the idea that the
latter do not measure up to the former. The first visual image of evidence of th
is non-correspondence produced the association with the eunuch. As with Mardian,
Antony is Mars in thought, but not in deed. The comparison demonstrates, howeve
r, an antagonism in the construction of the relation between Antony and Cleopatr
a: since she "take[s] no pleasure / In aught an eunuch has" (9-10), it is clear
that the relation is formed only to the extent that Roman reputation grounds his
masculinity; Cleopatra pictures him as "The demi-Atlas of this earth" (23). In
the formation of that relation the firm ground of his Romanness becomes more flu
id. Although Antony affirms his relation with Cleopatra as a sufficient provider
of identity--"Here is my space" (1.1.34), disparaging the "dungy earth" of Roma
n ground (35)--it requires a "new heaven, new earth" (1.1.17) in order to define
itself. "I ll set a bourn how far to be belov d" (16) Cleopatra insists, but her fi
gure for the limit might also be read associatively as a liquid one ("bourn" as
a small stream). Although in the height of his dotage Antony can declare "Let Ro
me in Tiber melt" (33), he is condemned thereby to a loss of stable identity. To
find himself in Cleopatra s limits, is to lose himself in dotage.
"Loss" is a recurrent image in the text; Cleopatra fears she will lose Antony if
she allows him his own way in all things (1.3.8-9); Antony at one point has "lo
st my way forever" (3.11.4); and has previously declared "if I lose mine honour,
I lose myself" (3.4.22-3). Antony s loss of self-identity is primarily figured in
terms of a loss of Roman reputation and the masculinity which it confers. While
berating his absence from Rome, Caesar suggests that Antony s composition is blem
ished by the pleasures he indulges in (1.4.22-3). He goes on to allude to a loss
of virility that accompanies these activities (the "dryness" of his bones [27],
as his body become sterile, barren, substanceless). This leads to a combination
of the two that describes a body and life-style without virtue:
tis to be chid:
As we rate boys, who being mature in knowledge,
Pawn their experience to their present pleasure,
And so rebel to judgment. (1.4.30-3)
In one sense, the comparison with Antony is indirect: the relation between exper
ience, or use of time, and pleasure, are understood to be parallel. If we take "
rate" to mean calculate, or to be of equal value, and to allude to a standard of
conduct or action ("rate" as a noun), then I think the comparison becomes more
direct: Antony is equated with a boy s standard of living (a similar comparison is
made by Volumnia of Coriolanus becoming a man). Antony s excessive pleasure makes
him less than a man in another sense than that of the eunuch (though related vi
a the image of "pretty dimpled boys . . . With divers-colour d fans" on Cleopatra s
barge [2.2.202-3]).
In the sense that loss also refers to a failure to make good use of, or having b
een spent to no advantage, the term "idleness" resonates with these images of th
e ground of Antony s masculinity. The opposition between reason and sensuality whi
ch Caesar (among others) constructs for Antony, is linked to the sense of the ea
rth as the ground of his identity:
O then we bring forth weeds,
When our quick minds lie still, and our ills told us
Is as our earing. (1.2.106-8)
The image of the mind as uncultivated earth combined with that of ills hatched b
y idleness shortly after (1.2.126-7), does not immediately suggest a gendered im
age, although it is still relevant to Antony s measure being wasted or become over
grown. When Antony refers to Cleopatra as almost being "idleness itself" (1.2.93
), the sense is of trifling, not cultivation, although it does serve to associat
e the term with femininity. However, I believe that there is a connection of ima
ges if the previous passage is compared with the following, again from the same
scene:
. . . When it pleaseth their deities to take the wife of a man from him, it show
s to man the tailors of the earth; comforting therein, that when old robes are w
orn out, there are members to make new. If there were no more women but Fulvia,
then had you indeed a cut, and the case to be lamented: this grief is crown d with
consolation, your old smock brings forth a new petticoat, and indeed the tears
live in an onion, that should water this sorrow. (1.2.159-68)
The figuration of women as apparel to dress men s bodies resonates throughout the
text. One possible reading might be to take the "weeds" in "we bring forth weeds
" as "garments, or dresses," since the literal sense of Enobarbus passage above i
s of clothes emerging from the earth. Accordingly, the sense of the first passag
e might be a development of associations of masculinity slipping out of proporti
on by virtue of ill-attention. Through lack of proper cultivation of the ground
of his masculinity (Roman earth), Antony is prone to a movement towards a princi
ple of excess shaping him. As we have seen, Caesar, after detailing some of Anto
ny s pleasurable excesses, says that he:
. . . is not more manlike
Than Cleopatra; nor the queen of Ptolomy
More womanly than he. (1.4.5-7)
And in Act Two, Cleopatra reminisces of the time when she:
. . . drunk him to his bed;
Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst
I wore his sword Philippan. (2.5.21-3)
Antony is therefore presented associatively as non-masculine in several ways: as
a eunuch, as a pleasure-seeking boy, and as a woman--or at least cross-dressed
as one. Of course, this feminisation of masculine identity would have been concr
etised in the boy-actor playing Cleopatra on the early modern stage, and is pres
ent in the meta-theatrical textual device in Act Five:
Cleo: . . . Thou, an Egyptian puppet shall be shown
In Rome as well as I: mechanic slaves
With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers shall
Uplift us to the view. In their thick breaths,
Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded,
And forc d to drink their vapour.

Iras: The gods forbid!

Cleo: Nay, tis most certain Iras: saucy lictors
Will catch at us like strumpets, and scald rhymers
Ballad us out o tune. The quick comedians
Extemporally will stage us, and present
Our Alexandrian revels: Antony
Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see
Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness
I the posture of a whore. (5.2.207-219)
The thematics of performance and acting runs throughout the imagery of the text,
often with connotations of a performative construction of gendered identity; fo
r example, Cleopatra refers to Mardian as "The actor" (2.5.9). After being dress
ed in armour, first by Eros, then Cleopatra, Antony refers to himself as having
become "like a man of steel" (4.4.33). The act of suicide gains associate connec
tions with acting a role--"coming / To see perform d the dreaded act" (5.2.329-30)
--in Cleopatra s final scene. After having lost his shape, felt his sides cleave,
lost Cleopatra, and become air (4.13), that is, after his reputation can no long
er circulated by Roman means, Antony asks Cleopatra to confirm and preserve his
identity:
. . . but please your thoughts
In feeding them with those my former fortunes
Wherein I liv d: the greatest prince o the world,
The noblest; and do now not basely die,
Not cowardly put off my helmet to
My countryman: a Roman by a Roman
Valiantly vanquish d. (4.15.52-58)
After a series of scenes in which the performances of Antony and Cleopatra have
failed to live up to their reputations, Cleopatra--admitting her theatricality v
ia the meta-theatrical device above--stages a self-conscious performance that wi
ll assure their reputations are perpetuated beyond the limits of Caesar s newly-es
tablished imperial power:
Give me my robe, put on my crown, I have
Immortal longings in me. (5.2.279-280)
as you like it
1)Introduction
I noted in a previous lecture that very early in his career Shakespeare, as one
might expect from a young ambitious writer, tended to concentrate on the dramati
c styles most immediately popular with the play-going audience in London, that i
s, on History plays and Comedies, for which his predecessors and contemporaries
had already prepared a market. I don t mean by this remark to suggest that these c
ategories of drama were firmly established genres, and that Shakespeare was, in
effect, learning how to write in forms about which there were firm conventions.
For in the 1590 s English theatre was in a very experimental period, with rival co
mpanies competing for audiences with different forms of drama and some lively cr
iticism, seeking to explore all sorts of dramatic possibilities. And Shakespeare s
early work carries the mark of this experimentation, not just the work of a you
ng artist learning his craft, but also (along with the work of his many professi
onal colleagues) various attempts to find and define a style most suitable to hi
s genius and to public taste.
Nowhere is this sense of experimentation more obvious than in Shakespeare s early
comedies, in which we can sense an experimental artistic spirit trying out vario
us possibilities in a much disputed genre. We are not reading any of those early
works, but by way of an introduction to the two later comedies we are looking a
t in some detail, I d like to say a few words about dramatic comedy in general, wi
th some special reference to some of the more distinctive features of Shakespear
e s most famous comedies.
Dramatic Comedy Some Observations
Traditional classifications of drama normally started with the basic distinction
between tragedy and comedy, a separation common in Greek and Roman drama, and c
learly established by Shakespeare s time. Of these two styles, the easiest to defi
ne initially was the former. Tragedy was understood as the dramatic portrayal of
a great man s suffering and (almost invariably) his death. The hero might be a gr
eat villain or famous for virtue (a historical or Biblical character, for exampl
e), but the main purpose of the play was to focus on his career, especially the
final chapter: the events leading up to his death, his death, and moral reflecti
ons upon the story (tragedy lent itself often to fairly orthodox Christian theme
s: punishments for arrogance, pride, overreaching, and so on).
By common traditions, then, tragedies were serious, involving some ultimate ques
tions about the moral framework of a human life in the face of our common fate,
death. Hence, tragedies demanded a formal style in the language (e.g., blank ver
se), subject matter, and acting: tragedies were, by definition serious and forma
l high art, if you will. In addition, the central character had to be, to some ext
ent, larger than life a suitable focus for our attention on major questions of hum
an existence. Tragic heroes were thus almost invariably people of special social
prominence: kings, generals, extraordinarily successful achievers (or over-achi
evers).
About comedy, however, there was no such general agreement, and in Shakespeare s t
ime there was a fierce competition between rival companies seeking to win over a
udiences with different brands of comedy. As we shall see, such a competition is
still alive in our culture. By way of illustrating this competition, let me lis
t a few of the rival possibilities.
One of the oldest styles of comedy, developed by the Greeks and a staple ingredi
ent of Roman drama, was the so-called New Comedy, or comedy of manners. Here the
dramatic focus is squarely on the middle-class urban family, its trials and tri
bulations, and, in the conclusion, a happy resolution of its problems. This is t
he sort of drama we are very used to seeing on television in programs like All i
n the Family, Bill Cosby, Malcolm in the Middle, Will and Grace, and so on, the
staple fare of sit-coms.
New Comedy, in other words, presents to its overwhelmingly middle-class audience
a image of itself, focusing on their major concerns, especially money, property
, quarrels between parents and children, neighbours, husbands and wives and serv
ants, and so on. It relies heavily on certain stock characters invented by the G
reeks and Romans which have not changed all that much the conniving adulterous hus
band, the clever servant, the nagging wife, the expensive mistress, the horny so
n, the boastful soldier, and so on. In many cases, such New Comedy lends itself
easily to satire, and so it becomes a favorite vehicle for dramatists who wish t
o present in their work some lesson for the audience to learn about appropriate
conduct (New Comedy is thus a favourite vehicle for those who believe that art s
hould--or must--have a social moral purpose). Since New Comedy is also a common
classical form (especially in Latin literature), this form is particularly attra
ctive for any writer who wants to lean on classical models or display his comman
d of classical literature.
New Comedy relies heavily on naturalism that is, offering a world and characters r
ecognizably similar to the world of the audience, what we would call slice-of-li
fe (again, modern television sit-coms illustrate this quality well). It is predo
minantly urban in setting, taking place in the street, the market, or in some pu
blic space (like a hotel) where the characters can plausibly meet, interact, eng
age in conflicts, and so on. The source of the conflicts and their resolution re
ly heavily on things common to the middle-class life of the audience, which may
be unexpected but which fit the description of reality defined by the middle-cla
ss setting. Hence, there are few violations of the naturalistic basis for the st
yle (no magic, no divine interventions, and so on). There may be many coincidenc
es, but the action never moves to the entirely implausible. In fact, the heart o
f New Comedy is a tightly constructed and interesting plot. Since the characters
are more or less familiar types who don t change very much and since the style is
naturalistic, without weird special effects, the major interest in the drama is
the way in which the conflict gets increasingly complicated and then resolves i
tself quickly in a suitably convincing way. The logic of the action must be inte
resting and plausible within the principles established by the style.
At the other extreme of the spectrum of comic styles is the more anarchic world
of Popular Comedy (I use this term for want of a clear label for such a style),
a much more free-wheeling affair, closer to a children s pantomime or fairy story
than to a naturalistic middle-class life. In many cases, the action is loosely s
cripted, so as to permit a great deal of improvisation, especially by the clowns
, audience interaction, local references, singing, dancing, joke-telling, clowni
ng around of all varieties, and so on. Popular Comedy of this sort respects no p
articular dramatic rules, and it tends to be much more colloquial, physical, spo
ntaneous, and vulgar than New Comedy. Hence, it often prompts stern criticism fr
om those who believe middle-class drama should observe certain rules about a pro
per style and subject matter and carry a useful moral lesson.
For instance, an excellent modern example of this Popular Comedy and the most popu
lar form of live drama in our culture is professional wrestling. It has a stage, a
ll sorts of props (like chairs, tables), outlandish costumes, continuing audienc
e interaction, and a great deal of on-the-spot improvising as the main actors ca
rry out a loosely scripted performance. It also has no pretensions to any social
ly redeeming message or any concern for polite taste (as one of its latest wrink
les, the stink fight, where women rub their buttocks in each other s faces, would
seem to indicate): its purpose is to give the people a lot of physical entertain
ment for their money. It also features a great deal of audience participation (a
s does another very popular form of this style, The Gerry Springer Show). Such p
hysical vigour, variety, and spontaneous action are much more important than the
plot which (like a wrestling match) may be entirely predictable and thin).
Of course, such Popular Comedy attracts the stern criticism of those who believe
that entertainment should pay attention, first and foremost, to public standard
s of decency and moral purposiveness (or at least naturalistic plausibility). So
the sorts of arguments we see about wrestling and Gerry Springer on television
are not unlike the sorts of arguments going on in Shakespeare's time about an ap
propriate style for public dramatic performances (it s all fake, it s too repetitive
, crude, predictable, and so on).
In between these two is a style of comedy called pastoral drama. Like New Comedy
, pastoral drama tends to avoid the excesses of what I have been calling Popular
Comedy and it often has a clear moral purpose. But, unlike New Comedy, it makes
no attempt to be strictly naturalistic. Pastoral drama, like pastoral literatur
e generally, usually features an idealized vision of country life, with shepherd
s and shepherdesses happily united in nature talking all the time about love. Bu
t (and this is key to the pastoral convention) the life is typically seen from a
city-goer s perspective, a point of view which enables the writer to use the coun
try experience as a means of critiquing urban values in a manner more sophistica
ted than a point of view defined entirely by the country experience would permit
. Pastoral literature, in other words, features an interaction between an urban
sophistication and a simplified vision of life away from the city.
Pastoral drama typically features love as its major concern a romance between coun
try folk, or the love of an urban man for some country lass, or a romance betwee
n two urban people who, for some reason or another (frequently implausible) find
themselves temporarily in the country, having to deal with country life (i.e.,
from an unfamiliar perspective). Because pastoral drama takes place away from th
e city or the palace, it permits the characters to explore life in a totally non
-political way, in a setting where their social roles can be momentarily set asi
de and they can, to some extent, experiment with possibilities not available in
the much more restricted world of the city, where they are known, have social an
d political responsibilities, have to observe much stricter codes of behaviour (
e.g., in clothes), and (this is often quite important in the Pastoral style) hav
e to answer to the demands of the clock (i.e., organize their daily schedule mor
e rigorously than in the country).
Also, the pastoral setting often encourages a much less naturalistic style, one
in which woodland sprites, fairies, amazing coincidences, enchantment, and so on
come with the territory. So pastoral drama, like popular comedy, can routinely
violate naturalistic principles in a way which would not be acceptable in the mo
re naturalistic world of New Comedy. Since the action is taking place outside th
e city, the normal rules of the city do not apply. Thus, anything can happen.
Pastoral comedy, however, is much more sophisticated than Popular Comedy, since
it has a potentially important theme (the nature of love) and tries to establish
a more or less consistent fictional world (the country setting). While it can o
ften feature the colloquial language of country folk, it also requires a certain
sophistication in the exploration of love through poetry and (a very important
element in much pastoral drama) music and song.
Shakespeare began his writing career at a time when all these forms of comedy we
re available, and when companies and playwrights were fighting each other about
what the proper form of comedy should be. The fight itself is an interesting manif
estation of the growing phenomenon of the urban middle-class and the arguments a
bout standards appropriate to its entertainment (things we are still arguing abo
ut in our debates over television content).
Leading the charge for a standard of polite comedy were those with a classical e
ducation and a preference for New Comedy (e.g., Ben Jonson, Shakespeare s great ri
val) particularly because it carried a moral intention of educating the public thr
ough satire and because it celebrated the continuing vitality of classical model
s of drama. These writers often had little use for what they perceived as the cr
udity and crass appeals to the audience s lowest common denominator of Popular Com
edy. In addition, New Comedy was a standard ingredient in the classical educatio
n of many young boys, who formed their own companies and generated a popular fol
lowing for a time.
Early in his career Shakespeare, in response to popular taste, began with New Co
medy. His earliest work, especially The Comedy of Errors, patterned itself close
ly on classical models and stuck to the conventions of the style. But he soon be
gan to move towards the pastoral style, taking the urban characters out of their
customary setting and putting them into the countryside, shifting the emphasis
from the complexities of a plot (quite bewildering at times in The Comedy of Err
ors, with its two sets of identical twins) to the exploration of human relations
hips in love (the central concern of the pastoral tradition), and relaxing the d
emands of naturalism appropriate to New Comedy so as to include magical elements
. The most famous relatively early example of this shift is Midsummer Night s Drea
m, featuring gods, fairies, magic transformations, and all sorts of implausible
occurrences which come about when a few urban characters, including pairs of lov
ers, wander off into the woods.
One way of appreciating the shift is to attend to the nature of the story. North
rup Frye once observed an important distinction between what he called Hence stori
es and And then" stories. In the first type, as the label Hence suggests, the inter
est in the story is the logic of cause and effect, how a series of circumstances
presents a logical sequence, each stage flowing logically and naturalistically
out of the previous situation, as a result of decisions, motives, and so on quit
e similar to the logic of real life. In And then stories, by contrast, events simp
ly follow one after the other, often without any clearly logical link between th
em (as in many children s stories: This happened, and then this happened, and then
this happened, and so on. . . .
In New Comedies, like The Comedy of Errors (and situation comedies generally), t
he effect of the play depends upon a tight Hence structure, and the audience has t
o keep close track of the distribution of information so as to understand the va
rious confusions, misunderstandings, quarrels, and so on, each of which makes lo
gical sense once we understand who knows what. But in the pastoral comedies, lik
e Midsummer Night s Dream (or a children s fairy story), events tend to follow one a
nother apparently much more casually with no tight logical connection between ev
ents (as we shall see in more detail in a few moments).
As You Like It and Twelfth Night: Some Initial Observations
The two comedies we are discussing, both from the late 1590 s and early 1600 s, illu
strate these differing tendencies in comedy. As You Like It is clearly a pastora
l comedy with a country setting, much talk of love of all sorts, a story which con
sists, for the most part, of a series of accidental meetings one after the other
, and a resolution involving implausible transformations of character and divine
intervention. Although (as we shall see) the Forest of Ardenne is not a complet
ely idealized pastoral setting, we have here all the standard ingredients of pas
toral drama.
Twelfth Night is somewhat different. The pastoral element in the play is obvious
ly present in the treatment of love and the leisurely world of Illyria, not quit
e as pastoral as the Forest of Ardenne, but miles away from the political world
of the city. And a good deal of the play follows a loose And then plot structure,
once again featuring a series of accidental meetings.
However, Twelfth Night contains a sub-plot, the tricking of Malvolio, which is c
learly drawn from the style of New Comedy, the comedy of manners, the satiric ex
posure of folly. The characters of the sub-plot, like the foolish knight Agueche
ek, the clever servant Maria, the boisterous lay-about Toby Belch, and the self-
deceiving Malvolio, are all urban types common in New Comedy, and their plot to
trick Malvolio depends, as in almost all New Comedy, on a sequence of events whi
ch is plausibly crafted (in Hence story tradition). In a sense, Twelfth Night is o
ne more experiment, this time combining two distinct styles in a very interestin
g and dramatically convincing manner.
Preliminary Observations on As You Like It
As You Like It will be for many of you a rather difficult play to appreciate and
interpret simply on the basis of a reading. The reasons for this are not diffic
ult to ascertain. The play is, as I have observed, a pastoral comedy, that is, a
comedy which involves a traditional literary style of moving sophisticated urba
n courtiers out into the countryside, where they have to deal with life in a ver
y different manner from that of the aristocratic court. This play, like others i
n the Pastoral tradition, freely departs from naturalism, and in As You Like It
(certainly by comparison with the History plays) there is little attempt to mai
ntain any consistently naturalistic style.
This can create problems for readers unfamiliar with the conventions of pastoral
, especially those who find it just too artificial and incredible to grasp imagi
natively. After all, how are we to understand the unmotivated family hatreds whi
ch launch the action? We are simply not given any sufficiently detailed look at
why Oliver hates Orlando (he himself does not understand the reason) or why Duke
Frederick hates Duke Senior and turns on Rosalind so suddenly or, what is most
surprising of all, why the nasty people whose animosities have given rise to the
plot so suddenly and so conveniently convert and become nice people just in tim
e to wind the plot up happily under the supervision of the goddess Hymen, the Gr
eek deity of marriage, who arrives as an unexpected but welcome guest.
But these features of the plot which we might find unconvincing if we demand nat
uralism (that is, if we insist on treating the play as a Hence story) are little m
ore than standard plot devices in And then stories, common in a genre like pastora
l, which makes no claims to naturalistic motivation. Such plotting serves to lau
nch and to conclude the comic confusion. The main point of the play here, after
all, is not the working out of a carefully constructed plot, but rather the vari
ous encounters which take place in the Forest of Ardenne. In fact, the structure
of the play is less a carefully complex and unfolding plot than a series of con
versations between characters who happen to run into each other amid the trees.
You will notice, for example, that most of the central part of As You Like It co
nsists of often random encounters between different characters in the forest. In
many cases, they have no particular reason to talk to each other. What these se
rve to bring out is a series of conversations about life (and particularly about
love) in which we witness different attitudes clashing. The effect is to take u
s through a variety of responses to shared concerns and to get us responding to
our own sense of the appropriate ways to deal with experience.
To put this another way. The pastoral style of As You Like It does not encourage
a deep psychological approach to any of the characters, to the logic of their m
otivation. If that s what we demand from a story to make it interesting, then this
play is not going to satisfy us. We are not in that sort of a world. There is f
ar more direct pressure on us to see in the interactions between characters the
exploration of some themes, especially issues concerning love. That is not to sa
y that the characters are not theatrically interesting and worth talking about;
it is rather to insist that the characters here are serving thematic purposes mo
re obviously than they are in more psychologically plausible plays. So there's l
ittle point in seeking to penetrate deeply into the plausibility of the psycholo
gical motivation or of the coincidences.
To take one obvious example of a thematic concern, very common in pastoral, we n
otice in the play a repeated contrast between court and country life. The purpos
e here is not to provide some naturalistic contrast, for the picture of life in
the country is obviously idealized a good deal (although not totally, for there
are references to the harsher aspects of life away from the comforts of the cour
t and to the realities of working for an absentee landlord). Nor is the purpose
any romantic celebration of the values of country living as somehow more authent
ic than city life. The pastoral is primarily a vehicle for a (usually) gentle sa
tire on urban values, on some of the corrupting manners of the court (like flatt
ery and excessive attention to clothes or fine language). And we can see this cl
early enough in this play. But there is no sense in As You Like It that, given a
free choice, any of the principal characters (except Jaques) would actually pre
fer to live in the country rather than the court.
The other great difficulty with As You Like It for inexperienced readers is much
of the humour. Here again, what makes little sense on the page (and doesn't com
e across as very funny) generally works much better in a production. This point
is generally true of all comedy, where the physicality of the human interaction
(something not always readily apparent from the text of the play alone) is an es
sential key to understanding and responding to what is going on. That aspect of
comedy, especially Shakespearean comedy, is one reason why, in the curriculum of
this course, the comedies are underrepresented. The only quick way to overcome
this problem is to focus on seeing the play in production (and there's a useful
BBC video version available in the college library).
The Pastoral Setting: The Forest of Ardenne
Central to the pastoral vision of As You Like It is the setting in the Forest of
Ardenne, especially the contrast between it and the ducal court. In the former,
there is a powerful political presence which creates dangers. Deception lurks b
ehind many actions, brothers have secret agendas against their brothers, and peo
ple have to answer to the arbitrary demands of power.
In the Forest of Ardenne, however, life is very different. For one thing, there
is no urgency to the agenda. There are no clocks in the forest, and for the exil
ed courtiers there is no regular work. They are free to roam around the forest,
prompted by their own desires. There is plenty of food to eat, so the communal h
unt takes care of their physical needs. That and the absence of a complex politi
cal hierarchy creates a much stronger sense of communal equality hearkening back
the the mythical good old days. The exiled Duke himself attests to the advantag
es of living far from the court, free of the deceits of flattery and double deal
ing and welcomes Orlando to the feast without suspicion.
And, most important here, especially in comparison with the history plays, is th
e importance of singing. As You Like It is full of songs not performances by profe
ssional court musicians, but impromptu group singing which expresses better than
anything else the spontaneous joy these people derive from life in the Forest a
nd the joy they give back to others. The songs indicate clearly the way in which
in the Forest people can shape their actions to their moods a situation totally u
nlike the court where one has to consider one s actions much more carefully.
Hence, the Forest of Ardenne provides for the exiled courtiers an important free
dom to experiment with their lives, to discover things about themselves. In the
Forest people can talk openly with whoever they might happen to meet on a stroll
through the trees, and that might be anyone, given that in the Forest no one ow
ns any particular territory (there are no rooms, palaces, roads unlike the court w
here there is a preoccupation with property) and thus one might well meet and ha
ve to deal with a person whom one would never get close to in the court (that ca
n have comic results, of course, as Touchstone s conversations with Audrey and Wil
liam demonstrate). In the Forest life is, as I have observed, lived more immedia
tely in the moment with whatever life presents at the moment. Such an approach t
o life is impossible in the politically charged world of the court.
That freedom makes possible Rosalind s transformation and her taking charge of the
courtship and makes an interesting contrast between Rosalind and Viola (in Twel
fth Night) the latter is not nearly so free to take charge, because she is still o
perating in a social environment with a clear structure of authority, which she
has to respect. Hence, the fortunate outcome of that play relies upon her patien
ce and luck far more in the case of Rosalind, who is the driving force in her co
urtship (Viola s desires very nearly are unfulfilled).
We should note, however, that the Forest of Ardenne is not an entirely idyllic s
etting. The Duke pays tribute to the often brutal weather, and there are some da
ngerous animals lurking in the underbrush. Corin, the shepherd, informs us that
he works for another man a slight but significant reminder that even in this pasto
ral setting the realities of power are not entirely absent.
And, of course, there is never any sense here (as there might be if this were a
Romantic vision of life) that the Forest is a suitable place to live on a contin
uing basis. Given the opportunity to return to the court, all the exiles (except
, significantly, Jaques) seize the chance. The Forest has done its work it has edu
cated some, repaired fraternal relationships, brought the lovers to a fuller awa
reness of their own feelings. Now, they can return to what will be, we sense, a
much better and fuller life in the court.
The Language of Love
The most obvious concern of As You Like It is love, and particularly the attitud
es and the language appropriate to young romantic love. This, I take it, is obvi
ous enough from the relationships between Orlando and Rosalind, Silvius and Phoe
be, Touchstone and Audrey, and (very briefly) Celia and Oliver. The action of th
e play moves back and forth among these couples, inviting us to compare the diff
erent styles and to recognize from those comparisons some important facts about
young love.
Here the role of Rosalind is decisive, and much of one's response to this play (
especially in performance) will depend upon our reaction to her. Rosalind is Sha
kespeare's greatest and most vibrant comic female role, and there's a old saying
to the effect that in any successful production of As You Like It, the audience
members will all leave the theatre in love with her.
She is clearly the only character in the play who has throughout an intelligent,
erotic, and fully anchored sense of love, and it becomes her task in the play t
o try to educate others out of their false notions of love, especially those not
ions which suggest that the real business of love is adopting an inflated Petrar
chan language and the appropriate attitude that goes with it.
Rosalind falls in love with Orlando at first sight (as is standard in Shakespear
e), becomes erotically energized, and remains so throughout the play. She's deli
ghted and excited by the experience and is determined to live it to the full mom
ent by moment. One of the great pleasures of watching Rosalind is that she is al
ways celebrating her passionate feelings for Orlando. She does not deny them or
try to play games with her emotions. She's aware that falling in love has made h
er subject to Celia's gentle mockery, but she's not going to pretend that she is
n't totally thrilled by the experience just to spare herself being laughed at (s
he even laughs at herself, while taking enormous delight in the behaviour which
prompts the mockery).
At the same time, Rosalind has not an ounce of sentimentality. Her passionate lo
ve for Orlando does not turn her into a mooning, swooning recluse. It activates
her. She takes charge of her life. She knows what she wants, and she organizes h
erself to seek it out. If she has to wait to pursue her marriage, then she is go
ing actively to enjoy the interim in an improvised courtship and not wrap hersel
f in a mantle of romantic attitudinizing. She initiates the game of courtship wi
th Orlando and keeps it going. She has two purposes here. This gives her a chanc
e to see and court Orlando (in her own name) and thus to celebrate her feelings
of love, but it also enables her to educate Orlando out of the sentimental pose
he has adopted.
Orlando, too, is in love with Rosalind. But his view of love requires him to wri
te drippy poems and walk through the forest hanging them on trees. He sentimenta
lizes the experience (that is, falsifies it), so that he can luxuriate in his fe
elings of love rather than focusing sharply on the reality of the experience. In
their conversations, Rosalind/Ganymede pointedly and repeatedly deflates his co
nventional rhetoric. This comes out most clearly in her famous reply to his clai
m that, if Rosalind rejects him, then he will die.
No, faith; die by attorney. The poor world is almost six thousand years old,
and in all this time there was not any man died in his own person, videlicet, i
n a love-cause. Troilus had his brains dashed out with a Grecian club, yet he di
d what he could to die before, and he is one of the patterns of love. Leander, h
e would have lived many a fair year though Hero had turned nun if it had not bee
n for a hot midsummer night, for, good youth, he went but forth to wash him in t
he Hellespont and, being taken with the cramp, was drowned; and the foolish chro
niclers of that age found it was Hero of Sestos. But these are all lies. Men hav
e died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love. (4.1.81-9
2)
It needs to be stressed that Rosalind's view of love is highly intelligent (that
is, emotionally intelligent) and sensitive. This is not the statement of a cyni
c, because we know that Rosalind is very much in love, passionately eager to be
with Orlando or to talk about him as much as she can. But the experience is not
corrupting her response to life. She will not permit herself or Orlando to be de
ceived into thinking love is something other than the excitingly real experience
she is going through love is the most wonderfully transforming experience for her
but it is not the sum total of everything life has to offer (as Orlando s poems m
ake out). This fusion of passion and intelligence, shot through with a humour wh
ich enables her to laugh at herself as much as at other people, makes Rosalind a
wonderfully attractive character.
This complex attitude first emerges when she discovers Orlando's poetry. Of cour
se, she knows the poetry is really poor, and she can laugh heartily at Touchston
e's damning parody of all the words which rhyme with "Rosalind." But at the same
time she is erotically thrilled that Orlando is around and that he is in love w
ith her. Rather than being embarrassed by the wretched sentimentality of her lov
er, she simultaneously loves the fact that her feelings are returned and can lau
gh at his attempt to express them. This is not laughter at Orlando, but at the i
ncongruity of the situation and joy at the mutuality of their feelings.
Consider also her sense that the youthful love she is now enjoying will not last
. She knows that and is not going to shield herself from that awareness in conve
ntionally romantic platitudes: "No, no, Orlando; men are April when they woo, De
cember when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes whe
n they are wives" (4.1.124-127). Of course, time will change the passionate exci
tement she now feels. But she's not going to act like Marlowe's Nymph who denies
the passionate shepherd his love because she's afraid of the destructive powers
of time. No, she will not let any future fear interrupt or qualify the enormous
joy she derives out of being in love right at this moment. What the future will
bring will happen. That is no reason not to appreciate the immediate joys of th
e love she feels for Orlando.
No, that same wicked bastard of Venus, that was begot of thought, conceived
of spleen, and born of madness, that blind rascally boy that abuses everyone's e
yes because his own are out, let him be judge how deep I am in love. I'll tell t
hee, Aliena, I cannot be out of the sight of Orlando. I'll go find a shadow and
sigh till he come.
Here she is, in part, laughing at herself as a victim, one more person hit by na
ughty Cupid. But she's obviously thrilled by the experience and is not going to
deny herself one bit of the joy she is feeling.
Rosalind becomes the pivot around whom the other lovers move, because she is the
only one with a maturely intelligent sense of the difference between love and s
entiment. Thus, she can deliver stern lectures to Silvius and Phoebe about how t
hey are denying themselves the joys that are possible because they have a false
sense of love. Silvius's excessively conventional Petrarchan attitudes simply en
courage Phoebe to close him out of her feelings and to develop a false sense of
her own importance, as Rosalind points out very bluntly: "Sell when you can. You
are not for all markets" (3.5.61). She is telling Phoebe, in effect, to wake up
to the realities of the world in which she lives and to abandon the sentimental
dream in which she has locked herself, thanks to the language in which she and
Silvius understand their feelings.
It's significant that throughout much of the play, when Rosalind talks to others
about love, she talks in prose, rejecting the formal potential of a more imagin
ative language, in order to keep the discussions anchored in the reality of ever
yday life. Rosalind wants love, but she will have it only in the language of eve
ryday speech, without the seductive embellishments of poetical conventions, whic
h corrupt because they take one away from the immediately reality of the experie
nce.
Orlando profits from Rosalind's instructions because he is basically an emotiona
lly intelligent person as well. His commitment to playing the role of the conven
tional lover is only luke warm; as Rosalind observes, he doesn't have the appear
ance of such a literary poseur. Significantly, his poetry is very bad, and he's
not going to mind acknowledging the fact. He does not love his own words more th
an his own true feelings and hence does not strive to develop his abilities as a
poet and quickly moves into the prose conversations with Rosalind/Ganymede. It'
s an interesting question whether or not he might recognize or have his suspicio
ns about Rosalind/Ganymede well before the ending. There's an intriguing possibi
lity that he knows her all along, but recognizing that she is in charge of the g
ame, he is only going to drop the pretense when she gives him the cue. I've neve
r seen this interpretation attempted, but if I were producing the play, I would
like to try it.
The Role Of Jaques
The essentially healthy emotional intelligence of Rosalind and Orlando and their
suitability for each other emerge from their separate encounters with Jaques (i
n some editions Jacques), the melancholy ex-courtier who is part of Duke Senior'
s troupe in the forest. Both Rosalind and Orlando take an instant dislike to Jaq
ues (which is mutual). And in that dislike we are invited to see something vital
ly right about the two of them.
For Jaques is, in effect, the opposite of everything Rosalind stands for. He is
a moody cynic, who likes to look at life and draw from it poetical contemplation
s at the generally unsatisfactory nature of the world. He is, in a sense, an ini
tial Hamlet-like figure (the comparison is frequently made), someone without any
motivating erotic joy, who compensates for his inadequacy by trying to drag eve
rything down to the level of his empty emotions and by verbalizing at length in
poetical images. He takes some pride in what he calls his very own brand of mela
ncholy which can suck the joy out of life as a weasel sucks the protein out of a
n egg (an interesting image of the destruction of new living potential), and he
spends his time wallowing in it. His own social desire seems to be to find someo
ne else to wallow in the same emotional mud as he does. But the spirits of the o
ther characters, especially of Rosalind and Orlando, are too vital and creative
to respond favourably to Jaques's attempts to cut life down to fit his limited m
oods.
That judgment no doubt sounds quite harsh. And perhaps it is, for Jaques is a re
latively harmless person, who deceives no one (nor does he try to), and his poet
ical reflections, like Hamlet's, are often seductive. But we should not let the
fame of some of his utterances (particularly the famous "Seven Ages of Man" spee
ch in 2.7, a frequently anthologized piece of so-called Shakespearean "wisdom")
conceal the fact that his approach to life is thoroughly negative. He sees no va
lue in anything other than calling attention to the world's deficiencies. He doe
s not recognize in the fellowship, music, and love all around him any countervai
ling virtues.
This point is made really explicit at the very end of the "Seven Ages of Man" sp
eech (2.7.138-165). As Jaques concludes his cynical evaluation of the emptiness
of human life by talking about how in old age men become useless lumps of flesh
("Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything"), Orlando enters carrying
Adam. The latter is the living denial of everything Jaques has just said, for Ad
am is very old, but has actively striven to help Orlando with generosity, love,
and a sense of duty, qualities which confer upon him an emphatic and obvious val
ue. The dramatic irony in that entrance points us to the severely limited and li
miting understanding of the world which Jaques has just uttered.
[As an aside, it might be worth remarking that this habit of excerpting speeches
of Shakespeare and setting them up as "gems" outside of their immediate dramati
c context has the unfortunate tendency to immortalize a passage as some special
insight into the nature of life when it is, in fact, quite the reverse. The spee
ch of Jaques is, along with the advice of the Polonius to his son, the most famo
us example of this problem. Far from being a particularly mature earned insight
into anything important, Jaques's speech is an indication of his limited and unw
elcome sense of the unsatisfactory nature of life. The entrance of Orlando and A
dam underscores this point.]
Oscar Wilde, in one of his most famous apophthegems, once defined a cynic as one
 who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. That definition app
lies very well to Jaques, and it helps us at once understand why Rosalind and Or
lando will have nothing to do with him. Rosalind understands that love comes at
a price. Time will change things, and a commitment in love brings with it the ri
sk of infidelity (and there is much talk of that in the play). But she will not
therefore deny its value or refuse to take the risk. On the contrary, she determ
ines to extract the full value from her excited feelings for Orlando, not by fre
ezing those feelings in some sour poetical reflections but by experiencing them
moment by moment, no matter what the future may bring. Orlando also is too full
of the spirit of life to find anything in Jaques's gentle but persistent pessimi
sm at all worth bothering about.
I don't mean to over-emphasize the kill-joy quality of Jaques. He is generally h
armless enough, particularly in this play where everyone recognizes him for what
he is and where he has no particular interest in pulling others down to his lev
el against their will. If they don't want to sit down with him and rail against
the first born of Egypt, he's content to move away on his own. But it's signific
ant that he's not a fully participating member of the final celebrations and tha
t he is going to remain in the forest. He has learned nothing and, indeed, is in
capable of learning anything, simply because he is not open to experience (in te
rms of the earlier analysis I offered of Richard II and Hamlet, Jaques is a "cha
tterer"). He's made up his mind what life is all about, and he is seeking confir
mation of a pre-set attitude.
Traversi's summary comment on Jaques hits the mark precisely:
. . . Jacques' motive is, in the last analysis "observation," the gratifying
of a self regarding curiosity based on a kind of personal impotence, an inabili
ty to participate fully and naturally in the processes of life; and, since his a
ttitude is one which implies throughout an incapacity for genuine giving, for th
e positive acceptance of an order, at once natural and distinctively human, beyo
nd the isolated self--the acceptance by which, in love or otherwise, the self is
at last justified--he remains a mere marginal presence in the process by which
that order is finally . . . consummated. (An Approach to Shakespeare, Vol. 1, p.
328)
Perhaps another way of summing up Jacques' is to observe that he's more interest
ed in language than he is in life. His interaction with the world is governed l
argely by his desire to find occasions to verbalize, to construct poetical refle
ctions on the melancholy state of things. He seems happy enough with this condi
tion not to feel any desire to break out of it, to open himself up to new experi
ence, to listen carefully to others, and thus risk having to adjust his understa
nding (that is, to learn). In a play that is so centrally concerned with the re
lationship between language and feelings he may thus stand as an eloquent and ch
arming but ultimately frozen being who has imprisoned himself inside a love of l
anguage, perhaps as a protection against the world, perhaps out of a sense of th
e misplaced importance he gives to a particular form of verbalizing. So his dec
ision to remain in the forest is apt: there he will find plenty of opportunity f
or gloomy reflections and conversations, without learning from them enough to ac
quire the civilized intelligence of the newly energized ducal court.
The Question of Gender
One of the most intriguing aspects of the treatment of love in As You Like It co
ncerns the issue of gender. And this issue, for obvious reasons, has generated a
special interest in recent times. The principal reason for such a thematic conc
ern in the play is the cross dressing and role playing. The central love interes
t between Rosalind and Orlando calls into question the conventional wisdom about
men's and women's gender roles and challenges our preconceptions about these ro
les in courtship, erotic love, and beyond.
At the heart of this courtship is a very complex ambiguity which it is difficult
fully to appreciate without a production to refer to. But here we have a man (t
he actor) playing a woman (Rosalind), who has dressed herself up as a man (Ganym
ede), and who is pretending to be a woman (Rosalind) in the courtship game with
Orlando. Even if, in modern times, Rosalind is not played by a young male actor,
the theatrical irony is complex enough.
The most obvious issue raised by the cross dressing is the relationship between
gender roles and clothes (or outer appearance). For Rosalind passes herself off
easily enough as a man and, in the process, acquires a certain freedom to move a
round, give advice, and associate as an equal among other men (this freedom give
s her the power to initiate the courtship). Her disguise is, in that sense, much
more significant than Celia's, for Celia remains female in her role as Aliena a
nd is thus largely passive (her pseudonym meaning "Stranger" or "outsider" is an
interesting one). The fact that Celia is largely passive in the Forest of Arden
ne (especially in contrast to Rosalind) and has to wait for life to deliver a ma
n to her rather than seeking one out, as Rosalind does, is an interesting and im
portant difference between the two friends.
These points raise some interesting issues. If becoming accepted as a man and ge
tting the freedom to act that comes with that acceptance is simply a matter of p
resenting oneself as a man, then what do we say about all the enshrined natural
differences we claim as the basis for our different treatment of men and women?
Given that Rosalind is clearly the most intelligent, active, and interesting cha
racter in the play and that these qualities would not be likely to manifest them
selves so fully if she were not passing herself off as a man, the play raises so
me interesting questions about just what we mean by any insistence on gender dif
ferences as more than mere conventions.
But the issue is much more complicated than that. For Rosalind's assumed name, G
anymede, is a very deliberate reference to the young male lover Zeus carried up
to Olympus, and it points us to what might be a very strong element in the court
ship game between Orlando and Rosalind and in the feelings Phoebe has for Rosali
nd, namely homoerotic desire. There's little in the play to suggest this explici
tly, but a production which showed, say, that Orlando's feelings were becoming i
nvolved with Ganymede, so that the pretend courtship has a strongly erotic under
current, would not be violating the text. Perhaps it's hard to distinguish total
ly between Orlando's feelings for Rosalind and Orlando's feelings for Ganymede.
And that challenges all sorts of conventional expectations about erotic love, in
order to "probe the surprisingly complex issue of what is natural in matters of
love and sexual desire" (Jean Howard, Introduction to As You Like It in The Nor
ton Shakespeare).
That's why the play wedding ceremony that Rosalind and Orlando go through with C
elia playing role of officiating minister (in 4.1) is, for all the acting going
on, quite powerfully charged. Celia, who loves Rosalind, supervises the wedding
of the two people presenting themselves as men, and under the obvious fun of the
make believe there's a powerful sense of the sexual attraction the two have for
each other. It's worth asking at this point just how much Orlando might know or
suspect or what feelings are keeping him in this game. There seems little doubt
that underneath his play acting he is experiencing a strong bond with Rosalind/
Ganymede, something which emerges as even more ironic if we sense (from the styl
e of the production) that part of him either recognizes Rosalind or is respondin
g to the same characteristics in Ganymede that make him so in love with Rosalind
. The BBC production is worth attending to for its presentation of this complex
moment in the play.
This point is underscored by the very strong instant desire that Phoebe finds fo
r Rosalind/Ganymede, which seems at first not unlike the feelings Orlando has fo
r Rosalind. Phoebe, of course, abandons her love as soon as she learns that Rosa
lind is a woman, but the play confronts us with the question about the validity
of those feelings. If a set of men's clothes is the only thing distinguishing co
nventional sexual arrangements from alternatives, we are invited (at least) to w
onder somewhat about the extent to which conventional arrangements do not exhaus
t the erotic possibilities.
The play, of course, in its closing scene celebrates conventional heterosexual m
arriages. But by that time it has offered us, at least by powerful suggestions,
some erotic alternatives, without condemning such possibilities as inherently un
natural. And, depending upon how some of these key scenes are played, a producti
on of As You Like It can evoke in the audience some very interesting and (perhap
s) ambivalent feelings about mature sexuality.
This point seems to be emphasized in the epilogue spoken by the newly married Ro
salind, where the boy actor playing the role calls attention to the fact that he
is not a woman, as if to remind us (maybe) that the happy union of Orlando and
Rosalind in which we take such delight has explored other possibilities than het
erosexuality. This point can be underscored strongly if Orlando is present with
Rosalind during this epilogue (say, holding her in his arms) and the actor playi
ng Rosalind is removing his make up (e.g., wig). And, of course, if the actor p
laying Rosalind has made some erotic connections with the audience, then his fin
al revelation in the Epilogue will force the audience member to confront some of
his own feelings about gender attachments.
As I say, it's rare to see Rosalind nowadays played by a boy, although there hav
e been all-male productions in modern times. And so the epilogue is often omitte
d or edited. As it stands, the boy actor's offer to kiss the desirable grown men
in the audience ("If I were a woman") gives the last words of the play an ironi
c and erotic resonance that challenges gently the heterosexual weddings we have
just celebrated.
A Comment on Touchstone
As You Like It features, like so many of Shakespeare's plays, a professional clo
wn, Touchstone, and it's worth paying some attention to his role for what it con
tributes towards establishing and maintaining the upbeat comic spirit of the pla
y. For the jester is the constant commentator on what is going on. His humour, p
ointed or otherwise, thus inevitably contributes to the audience's awareness of
what is happening, and the way in which other characters treat him is often a ke
y indicator of their sensibilities.
Touchstone is one of the gentlest and happiest clowns in all of Shakespeare. He
comments on the action, makes jokes at other people's expense, and offers ironic
insights about their situation. But throughout As You Like It, such traditional
roles of the fool are offered and taken with a generosity of spirit so that his
remarks never shake the firm comic energies of the play. When he ridicules Orla
ndo's verses, Rosalind laughs along with him. When he points out to Corin (in 3.
2) that the shepherd must be damned for never having lived at court, Corin takes
it as good natured jesting (which it is). When Touchstone takes Audrey away fro
m her rural swain, William, there are apparently no hard feelings (although much
here depends on the staging). In this play, the professional jester participate
s in and contributes to a style of social interaction which is unqualified by an
y more sober and serious reflections. This makes Touchstone very different from
the bitter fool of King Lear or from the most complex fool of all, the sad Feste
of Twelfth Night , both of whom offer comments that cast either a shrewd, melan
choly, or bitter irony on the proceedings.
Touchstone himself becomes the target of much humour by his immediate attraction
to Audrey, the "foul" country lass. There is something richly comic here, seein
g the staunch apologist for the sophisticated life of the court fall so quickly
to his animal lust. But the satire here is very good humoured. Touchstone himsel
f acknowledges the frailty of his vows and does not attempt to deceive anyone ab
out his intentions. He knows he is serving his lusts and that that is no good ba
sis for a lasting and significant marriage. But the play builds up no severe ind
ictment against what he is doing, and Audrey herself makes no protest. So this m
ost unlikely of unions becomes part of the celebration of love at the end of the
play, an expression of the comic variety of the experience, rather than offerin
g any ironic commentary.

comedy of errors
1)In her classic study, M. M. Mahood concentrated on wordplay in Shakespeare. My
interest here is in non-verbal double meanings and their interplay with the ver
bal text. Structurally The Winter's Tale is obviously a double action divided by
Time the Chorus. Part 1's narrative, the movement from court to country and fro
m kings to shepherds, is reversed in Part 2's movement from country to court and
from shepherds to kings, as if in a diptych or pair of hinged mirrors: and this
double pattern is repeated in other terms: Part 1's suspected disguises are rep
eated in Part 2's real disguises, and in each part accusation is followed by fli
ght, then by confrontation. At the hinge between the two Parts death meets birth
; the end of Part 2 reunites the figures from the beginning of Part 1.
This pattern of doubling, the repetition in the two Parts of events and even ind
ividual words, composes patterns of likeness-with-difference--conceits which are
far-fetched over a gap between tragedy and comedy, Sicily and Bohemia, winter a
nd spring. Shakespeare makes his double design of the play emphatic but at the s
ame time it is riddling, something that is most obviously emphasised by the two
coups de théâtre--the bear and the statue--where the stage images embody deep concei
ts; but also by the mischievous spirit of travesty in which the whole pastoral e
pisode of 4.4. is presented. The double design in fact extends to the smallest v
erbal links between the two halves of the play, as with the single word "hook,"
used by Leontes gloating at the prospect of seizing Hermione: "she / I can hook
to me" (2.3.7) and by Polixenes rebuking Florizel: "Thou a sceptre's heir, / Tha
t thus affectst a sheep-hook" (4.4.420): or the single word "slip," used by Perd
ita in 4.4.100 in the sense "a twig, sprig or small shoot taken from a plant or
tree for purposes of grafting [page 20] or planting" (OED sb.2 1.) but earlier u
sed in another sense, "sin," by her mother playfully ("slipp'd," 1.2.85) and her
father savagely ("slippery," 1.2.273). There is something residually difficult
in this whole pervasive system of likenesses-with-difference.1
Early in his career, Shakespeare deliberately explores varied comic styles. He i
s fascinated by extremes, concentrating intensely in Love's Labour's Lost on wor
ds and the idea of double meaning, while in The Comedy of Errors it is action an
d the meaning of the double which is thoroughly explored. It is presumably becau
se The Comedy of Errors is chiefly concerned with the play of meanings in double
d persons and situations, rather than in words, that it did not earn itself a pl
ace in Shakespeare's Wordplay; nevertheless I have been struck when re-reading T
he Winter's Tale by the way it has kept reminding me of The Comedy of Errors, an
d looking again at this early comedy from the unusual perspective of The Winter'
s Tale seems to me to illuminate interesting features in both plays--there is th
e conscious pointing to the absurdity resulting from the extreme pressure placed
on narrative conventions, there is the way a whole plot can have a double meani
ng apparent to an audience but not to the characters--although it is not so much
in technique as in substance that the later Shakespeare is still able to draw i
nspiration from this early piece.
In The Comedy of Errors the changes Shakespeare makes to his main source, Plautu
s, emphasise the pathos of human capacity for error and man's subjection to the
power of Fortune. The doubling of masters and servants results in situations in
which innocent actions appear guilty; the fact of identical twins puts in questi
on the very idea of Nature, as well as the human quest for self-knowledge. Shake
speare ensures that the audience know more of the situation than the characters
do (except for the very last revelation), which increases the impression that th
e characters are victims, thereby producing effects both ridiculous and pathetic
. The wife Adriana declares (2.2.110-46) her belief in the sanctity of marriage
as a spiritual union, she and her husband being "undividable, incorporate." The
audience is aware--though she is not--that her husband has an identical twin, an
d that it is to this man, a complete stranger, that she is declaring herself ind
issolubly knit. The metaphysical paradox that man and wife are one flesh is thus
confronted by the [page 21] physical paradox that man and brother are identical
ly the same. The longing for reunion that one twin feels for the other is contra
sted with the frustration both husband and wife feel within the bonds of marriag
e.
It is in this central concern with twins as a challenge to the exclusive union o
f man and wife that I find the strongest connection between The Comedy of Errors
and The Winter's Tale; and with this common theme goes a similarity of dramatic
technique (allowing for the general development in Shakespeare's art) in the di
viding of an audience's attention so that an episode can be understood from two
opposite points of view simultaneously--so that the narrative itself, in short,
has a double meaning, and generates whole orders of subsidiary double meanings.
A clear instance is the already-mentioned episode where the wife, Adriana, feari
ng her husband is being unfaithful, suddenly comes upon him. She passionately ap
peals to him to uphold the ideal of marriage as spiritual union:
For know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall
A drop of water in the breaking gulf,
And take unmingled thence that drop again,
Without addition or diminishing,
As take from me thyself and not me too. (2.2.125-29)
The audience, knowing that this is not her husband but his twin, will not respon
d with full sympathy to her speech--they will be more interested in its effect o
n the bewildered Antipholus of Syracuse. He does his best to respond clearly and
formally (2.2.147):
Plead you to me, fair dame? I know you not:
but the situation gives this simple utterance two opposite meanings: the audienc
e can see that it is perfectly reasonable--since he is a stranger--but it is equ
ally clear that to Adriana it must appear to be frightening evidence of a sudden
change in her husband--it is either calculated malice or madness. Moreover, Adr
iana's speech with its simile of the drop of water will have another quite unint
ended significance to this Antipholus, since in his first scene he had likened h
imself, seeking his lost twin, to [page 22]
a drop of water,
That in the ocean seeks another drop,
Who, falling there to find his fellow forth
(Unseen, inquisitive), confounds himself. (1.2.35-38)
--a speech all the more poignant in retrospect since it marks his last moment of
sanity before the entry of the wrong Dromio plunges him deeper and deeper into
an ocean of confusion, until he fears he is among
Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind,
Soul-killing witches that deform the body (1.2.99-100)
Although the image of the drop of water, transparent and volatile, can be unders
tood in Christian terms as the soul, in The Comedy of Errors these same qualitie
s of transparency and volatility are also associated, ironically, with instabili
ty and loss of identity. In the play the image of the drop of water is used as a
paradoxical simile both for the relationship between twin and twin and for husb
and and wife. As the play unfolds, Adriana's assertion of indivisible union with
her husband is belied by her suspicion that he is unfaithful, by the audience's
observation of his temper and of his relations with the courtesan, and by the r
emarks of the Abbess about jealous wives; so that the ultimate issue is the cris
is in the marriage, something not caused, but only precipitated, by the arrival
of the twin: thus a resonant double-meaning is focused in Adriana's passionate q
uestion:
How comes it now, my husband, O, how comes it,
That thou art then estranged from thyself? (2.2.119-120)
Here are several hints for the stagecraft as well as the subtext of Act 1 Scene
2 of The Winter's Tale, which likewise concerns a married couple, the husband ha
ving a (spiritual) twin brother, then being struck suddenly by mistaken jealousy
, the wife virtuous but, victim of an apparently compromising situation, exposed
to his madness and vindictive rage, amid accusations of witchcraft and conspira
cy. Shakespeare in The Winter's Tale manipulates the audience's perception so th
at they see events in a double sense: the husband is a tyrant but at the same ti
me [page 23] a victim, he is a tragic figure and at the same time as ridiculous
as Antipholus of Ephesus in pursuit of Dr Pinch.
* * *
In 3.2. of The Comedy of Errors Luciana appeals to her brother-in-law Antipholus
to be kinder to his wife: even if he does not love her, she says, at least he c
ould conceal it: if he must commit adultery, then "do it by stealth," "Be secret
-false,"
Look sweet, speak fair, become disloyalty;
Apparel vice like virtue's harbinger; (3.2.11-12)
Unfortunately she does not realise this is the wrong twin brother, who while bei
ng confused by much of what she says, reacts eagerly to what he thinks might be
a sexual invitation:
Lay open to my earthy, gross conceit
Smothered in errors, feeble, shallow, weak,
The folded meaning of your words deceit (3.2.34-36)
It is, characteristically for this play, the situation which gives this language
its ambiguity. The word "folded" can be glossed (OED "folded" ppl.a.) as concea
led, doubled, twisted, and is equivalent to "implied." Folding a letter before t
he ink is dry produces a double image; but of course the usual reason for foldin
g is to conceal the contents. Still, in a play about undiscovered doubles, two s
ets of identical twins, "folding" seems a suggestive word for Antipholus to use
here: doubled, concealed meanings are of the essence.
If, psychologically, a certain threat is inherent in self-mirroring, it may be b
ecause the self is naturally prone to division. In The Comedy of Errors there is
no mistaking the fearful implications of the loss of self-possession, the idea
of confounding, the suggestion of drowning implicit in the simile used by the tw
in to explain that he is "like a drop of water"
That in the ocean seeks another drop,
Who, falling there to find his fellow forth
 (Unseen, inquisitive), confounds himself. (1.2.36-38)
[page 24] From his early plays forward Shakespeare shows a fascination with like
nesses-without-difference, in twins and doubles. When Viola in Twelfth Night thi
nks of her lost twin brother she says, to reassure herself, "I my brother know /
Yet living in my glass" (3.4.379-80); but when she and her brother, at last reu
nited, stand side by side, the sight unnerves the hitherto robust Antonio:
How have you made division of yourself?
An apple, cleft in twain, is not more twin. (5.1.222-23)
Her twin is identical except for his opposite sex--Shakespeare developing furthe
r from The Comedy of Errors his concern with same-sex identical twins, and hence
producing in Twelfth Night a more complex treatment of issues of sexual identit
y as well as jealousy.
In A Midsummer Night's Dream 3.2. the idea is of spiritual twinning, of the grow
ing together of the two girls Helena and Hermia:
So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition,
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem;
So with two seeming bodies, but one heart, (3.2.208-12)
Their childhood unity is stressed at the point when sexual rivalry divides them.
Helena appeals to Hermia to remember how in childhood they were like identical
twins, but whatever she might pretend in these lines, the play makes it clear th
at the girls are physically quite unlike (e.g. 3.2.290-91). It was not physical
but spiritual identity they shared so intensely, but Helena lets her rhetoric ru
n away with her: the unintended confusion of the simile (does this double cherry
have two stones or one?) reveals a certain emotional falseness in the speaker,
especially as the cherry's propriety as an image of girlhood is undermined minut
es earlier by the use Demetrius has made of it, addressing Helena: "Thy lips, th
ose kissing cherries, tempting grow."
Helena's lines are too neatly divided, the similes whimsically pretty but too li
ke one another, making an effect more repetitious than incremental: [page 25]
We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,
Have with our needles created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key,
As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds
Had been incorporate: (3.2.203-8)
This is the rhetorical equivalent of a child's sampler, where time stands still;
but for Helena and Hermia sexual love now involves growing apart. The episode c
oncerns love's inducement to betrayal as much as self-betrayal--Helena is at lea
st right to feel that it is intolerable to be treated as if she were a mere sexu
al token exchangeable for her erstwhile spiritual twin.
At the very beginning of The Winter's Tale a conversation between two courtiers
stresses, as something extraordinary, the boyhood intimacy of the two kings Leon
tes and Polixenes--an intimacy which now must inevitably change:
They were train'd together in their childhoods, and there rooted betwixt the
m then such an affection, which cannot choose but branch now. (1.1.22-24)
Polixenes asserts of himself and Leontes that they were
 Two lads that thought there was no more behind
But such a day to-morrow as to-day,
And to be boy eternal. (1.2.63-5)
The play's intense concern with double-meanings in language and stage-imagery--w
ith true ambiguity in interpretation--springs from and returns to this original
concern with twinning. In The Comedy of Errors the wrong Antipholus twin is unfo
rtunately admitted by the other's wife to "dine above"--to an intimate reconcili
ation with the unwitting risk of adultery, and in A Midsummer Night's Dream the
distress of Helena hinges on her erotic exchangeability with Hermia. In this pla
y Leontes and Polixenes, as boys, feel themselves to be twin brothers, and there
is the implication that their boyhood parting and their subsequent marriages in
volve a latent (however suppressed) sense of infidelity, since marriage constitu
tes a rival kind of union, expressed in the metaphysical [page 26] conceit that
man and wife are one flesh. The stage action of 1.2. involves an audience in ass
essing the manner, the signals of voice, face and body, of three figures who at
first seem undivided in affection--and the two kings may, in stage performance,
be very similar in appearance. Yet the kings' continuing sense of being twins (b
oth are prone to childhood reminiscences) means that Hermione is aware of being
subtly excluded, while she is no less aware that, in sharing things with one, sh
e is in a way also sharing with the other: she must find it difficult to disting
uish between them in her manner. Her relation to Polixenes will naturally be a c
lose one yet it must not break--and must not be believed to break--the taboos; a
lthough among people of royal rank, manner may permit itself some privileged lar
gesse.
Shakespeare complicates the interpretation of body-language by drawing attention
to Hermione's state of advanced pregnancy. This might be supposed to guarantee
her a degree of sexual immunity: but while it may allow her a more relaxed close
ness to Polixenes, it may involve a slight sexual distancing from her husband Le
ontes, which could naturally produce tension. Furthermore Polixenes' wife, altho
ugh briefly referred to in 1.2., is absent, and this gives visual emphasis to an
exclusive triangular relationship. As the action unfolds attention is concentra
ted on the way each of the three adults is divided in turn from the remaining pa
ir; and then for Leontes there is a further stage of alienation triggered by the
presence of his two offspring, the unborn child as significant as the boy Mamil
lius. Thus Hermione finds herself in this scene dividing her attention between t
he two kings, showing affection in different ways to both, and provoking equivoc
al responses from each. Polixenes is divided between an obligation to go home an
d requests that he stay. To Leontes the sense of sharing affection with these tw
o is suddenly supplanted by the sense of division as decisive as that in a theat
re between spectator and actors. He turns from Hermione, carrying the unborn chi
ld, to his boy Mamillius, as if they constituted another choice, rather than mir
roring his self-division: the unborn child's survival as a branch of a family, t
hough Leontes tries to kill it, will lead to the growth of a whole new narrative
from Act 3 forwards.
Consulting the OED under "implicate" I find a quotation of 1610 describing how "
the boughes and armes of trees twisted one within [page 27] another so implicate
d the woods together." Here the readiness of the writer (Holland) to exchange th
e word "armes" for "boughes" strikes a chord if one thinks of Shakespeare's stag
ecraft in 1.2. of The Winter's Tale. In 1.1. Camillo remarks of the two kings "T
hey were trained together in their childhood" (22-23), and he will not let go of
the image of the boys' intertwined arms: they "shook hands, as over a vast, and
embraced, as it were, from the ends of opposed winds" (30-31). Here courtly hyp
erbole, as it seems, too abruptly magnifies, with the effect of distortion and p
ainful strain--and "vast" can refer to a great stretch of time as well as space.
The stress on vastness of scale seems apparently to be a function of courtly rh
etorical style, to accentuate the positive, (as is the negative construction), b
ut it will soon enough take on an opposite meaning, as untimely storms both emot
ional and actual cause destruction. And the onset of this storm will be in Leont
es' sudden obsessive attention to simple on-stage actions of Hermione and Polixe
nes--joining hands, putting an arm round a waist, embracing. Several scenes late
r the image of arms is still obsessing him, in his Macbeth-like rumination: "the
harlot king / Is quite beyond mine arm . . . but she / I can hook to me" (2.3.4
-7).
In 1.2. Leontes disgustedly describes the two figures of Hermione and Polixenes:
Polixenes "wears" Hermione
like her medal hanging
About his neck (1.2.307-8)
Not until the very last moment of the play is the "great gap of time" closed (5.
3.154), its closing emphatically marked by the simple action as Hermione and Leo
ntes enclose one another in embrace; at this Camillo exclaims "She hangs about h
is neck" (5.3.112). It seems evident from this remark that the major impact here
is to be visual, in their embrace, and that the powerful verbal image of 1.2.30
7 is now triumphantly redeemed in being visually imprinted in action on stage.
In the first scene Camillo's courtly paradox "embraced, as it were, from the end
s of opposed winds" (1.1.30-31) is so absurd one might almost suspect Shakespear
e of a sly pun on Puttenham's term for hyperbole, which is "the over-reacher"--a
nd yet embracing "from the ends of [page 28] opposed winds" will be seen retrosp
ectively to be a surprisingly cogent, even epigrammatic comment on this weird st
ory, where the defiant interplay between contrary emotions, surface and depth, m
icrocosmic and macrocosmic scales, easily outdoes anything in Donne.
In the theatre a decision must be made as to how far, if at all, the behaviour o
f Hermione and Polixenes makes Leontes' interpretation plausible. In the importa
nt production of 1910 at New York the two kings were made to look extraordinaril
y similar, with identical neat, black Italianate beards and similar crowns and f
urred gowns. In 1.2. Hermione took the hand of Leontes as she spoke the line
The one for ever earn'd a royal husband; (1.2.107)
and she turned to Polixenes with the next line
Th'other for some while a friend.
and took his hand. Moving away, she sat by Polixenes and--as a photograph shows,
2 read his hand, their heads very close together. When Leontes spoke the lines
To your own bents dispose you; you'll be found,
Be you beneath the sky. (1.2.179-80)
Polixenes placed a shawl on Hermione's shoulders as they moved towards the garde
n. Such a staging, in placing central emphasis on the actors and reading the dia
logue closely for explicit and implicit stage directions, maintains a lifeline t
o the non-scenic theatre of the Elizabethans; it shows the potential in the non-
verbal codes of theatre for a play on meanings which is equivalent to that in th
e dialogue, and it maintains a tension between dialogue and action. Nevertheless
The Winter's Tale was the subject of massive adaptation for the Victorian spect
acular theatre, and productions continue to efface important features of Shakesp
eare's style by imposing cuts, changes and anachronistic ideas on the opening sc
enes. Anthony Quayle in 1948 at Stratford cut all but fifteen lines of 1.1., sub
stituting a "Kean-like Bacchanalia of barbaric intensity: leaping, screaming, kn
ife-throwing Russian dancers".3 In this [page 29] production the court for 1.2.
was macabre in red, black and gold, dominated by a Tartar Leontes, "the tyrant o
f the fairytale."4 Such a context gave Shakespeare's sophisticated, witty, suppl
e dialogue no chance, and summarily disposed of the question of Leontes' motivat
ion. Trevor Nunn in 1969 disposed of the question with no less clarity, and impo
sed an alien set of ideas--this time Freudian--with no less force, if with more
intellectual self-consciousness. He presented Leontes' soliloquies as part of a
dream sequence, Polixenes and Hermione in the dim light, with alternately stylis
ed and naturalistic gestures, enacting the sexual fantasies of Leontes: on the w
ords "How she holds up the neb, the bill to him" Hermione raised her nose and li
ps to Polixenes in the half-dark.5 Given the subtlety of the text, the frequent
modern recourse to heavy-handed stage symbolism seems particularly obtuse.
A contrasting tradition is illustrated by Peter Wood's 1960 production which (li
ke the 1910 New York production) showed how stage action and gesture can be deri
ved in detail from the dialogue; this gave Leontes' outbreak of jealousy conside
rable plausibility. Leontes and Polixenes locked arms as Polixenes said "Farewel
l, our brother" (1.2.27) and Hermione took the hand of Polixenes and kissed it.
At "Tongue-tied our queen" Leontes and Hermione held out their hands to Polixene
s, then Leontes moved up-stage watching the other two unobserved, came downstage
in time to hear "If you first sinned with us," Hermione embraced Leontes at "Th
e one for ever earned a royal husband" and she embraced Polixenes on the next li
ne, "Th'other for some while a friend," then drew him downstage, holding hands.
Leontes was clasped round the waist by Mamillius after his soliloquy "O that is
entertainment / My bosom likes not." Later, playing with Mamillius, he fell forw
ard on his knees and Mamillius put his arm round him. A reviewer wrote of this i
nterpretation of Leontes that its details "build a personality open to the storm
like tissue paper to a fire."6
Even in stage productions closely attentive to the text there is still, after al
l, a considerable range of choice: Hermione and Polixenes may be shown to displa
y nothing beyond conventional good manners, and in that case Leontes' comments w
ill seem glaringly misplaced, implying him to be either already covertly a priso
ner of obsession before the scene begins, or suddenly, inexplicably seized by it
in mid-scene. Such an [page 30] interpretation, while legitimate, accords less
well with the detailed texture of the dialogue, and seems less interesting drama
tically, than one where Hermione and Polixenes do show affection which could pla
usibly be misinterpreted--as in the production of 1910 in New York, or in 1960 b
y Wood, or more recently, Peter Hall.7
* * *
Happiness is identified with the negation of time, an idea Polixenes touches on
again when he says his small son "makes a July's day short as December," prevent
ing thoughts that "would thick my blood" (1.2.171). He stresses the idea of yout
h as freedom from choice: that is how it was with himself and Leontes,
We were as twinn'd lambs that did frisk i' th' sun,
And bleat the one at th'other. What we chang'd
Was innocence for innocence, we knew not
The doctrine of ill-doing, nor dream'd
That any did. (1.2.67-71)
The two lambs replicated each other, their discourse was identical (well, it was
out of the mouths of babes and sucklings), sheer repetition of innocence and in
nocence: though they were two there was no individuation nor self-division; but
when change came (in dream as well as waking) it was because their "weak spirits
" were "reared with stronger blood" and this had the direct consequence of guilt
.
Had we pursu'd that life,
And our weak spirits ne'er been higher rear'd
 With stronger blood, we should have answer'd heaven
Boldly, 'Not guilty'; (1.2.71-4)
This usage of "blood" is complicated: taken with "reared" it can literally apply
to the human child's progression from being milk-fed (like lambs) to a red-meat
diet; and while "blood" is, positively, the full vigour of life, its negative c
onnotation (according to "the doctrine of ill-doing") is as the seat of animal o
r sensual appetite, lust and anger. Given the royal status of the boys, the sens
e of "blood" meaning family and lineage [page 31] is present; and in the Bible "
blood" often refers to blood shed in sacrifice, and this strengthens the typolog
ical association of the lamb with Christ, the redemptive power of innocence sacr
ificed. If there is a more pervasive Biblical influence in the play than the ide
a of the Garden of Eden it is (as in The Comedy of Errors) that of St Paul, in t
he Epistles. The idea that in childhood one is filled with the milk of innocence
and this is only changed by one's being given a new diet, recalls Paul in Hebre
ws: "For every one that useth milke, is unexpert of the word of righteousness, f
or he is a babe. But strong meate belongeth to them that are perfect, even those
which by reason of use, have their wits exercised to discerne both good and evi
l" (Heb. 5:13-14). Polixenes implies that with adulthood inevitably comes sin, s
pecifically sexual sin, something from which they would have been protected by r
emaining boys and sharing boyhood affection. It should be noticed how firmly thi
s identifies the adult world of the court with sexual guilt and contrasts it to
the child's world of natural innocence, though at the same time implying that it
is according to Nature that a child develops from a state of innocence to guilt
; and this leaves the door ajar, so to speak, for the Freudian interpretation of
childhood.
"Sicilia cannot show himself over-kind to Bohemia" (1.1.21-22) says Camillo, and
he is, as M. M. Mahood says, ambiguous. He means "however strong the expression
, it cannot exceed Leontes' feelings of love," but can also mean "Leontes tries
but fails to keep up the appearance of love" and also "Leontes must not show tha
t his love for Polixenes goes too far." The negative construction casts its shad
ow, touching as it seems unintentionally on just those areas which give maximum
possible embarrassment. Yet this embarrassing issue is very important: it is the
implicit concern with forbidden love which contributes greatly to the feeling o
f release at the end, in the lawful union of the two kings' children. The extent
to which the love of the two kings involves anxiety is nevertheless left implic
it, and this accounts for much of its power, and is a sign of Shakespeare's matu
re art. Comparison with The Comedy of Errors shows how explicitly, but therefore
less deeply, that play explores the experience of delusion, sexual jealousy, cr
uelty, in relation to Christian ideas of demonic possession and redemption.
[page 32]The Winter's Tale presents a fascinating exploration of the interplay o
f the categories of the civilised and the natural, as in the remark:
They were train'd together in their childhoods; and there rooted betwixt the
m then such an affection, which cannot choose but branch now. (1.1.22-4)
"Training" in Shakespeare usually signifies educating, bringing-up, rearing, but
in the horticultural sense training means artifically imposing a shape on a tre
e as it grows, often by use of a frame or espalier; whereas "branch," to put out
a new growth, can also mean to divide into two lines, to deviate, and to turn s
ingle into double; and in genealogy--by extension from the metaphor of the famil
y tree--"branch" is used to mean a child. This last sense is at the back of Leon
tes' mind when he takes his son Mamillius aside to examine his face, anxiously b
rooding on fatherhood and its shameful issue, cuckold's horns, in his words "o'e
r head and ears a fork'd one" (1.2.186). It is no accident that "fork'd" suggest
s not only the branching of horns above but also of the loins below: the image o
f man as "a poor bare forked animal." Nothing is more tricky than the faux-naif
mode of Pastoral. We may think of branching as the natural doubling of a single
line. Is it then less natural for identity, having once branched out from the ma
in stem to single separateness, to divide again, become double? If double may me
an twice the value of single, in Shakespeare single can also mean weak, and doub
le can mean false.8
Implicit in the play's idea of nurture is the intermingling of human cultural pr
actice with natural law, but also of the divine with both these: in the case of
the two boys raised together, Nature apparently was made to go against her own i
dea of individuation as their roots intermingle: they become twins though they a
re not born twins, and they feel their later separation as damage. The two young
princes grew into a loving intimacy like that of naturally-born twins, although
they were not: and then this exclusive intimacy persisted beyond the normal tim
e-span, which certainly diverges from cultural norms if not natural law: indeed,
the courtier says, it was their royal rank that forced them apart ("royal neces
sities made separation of their society" 1.1.25-6) but despite that they continu
ed to interchange "loving embassies." If one is aware that [page 33] "affection"
could have the meaning "lust," however (as in Lucrece 271) then an alternative
sense, almost the opposite, is implied: that there seeded itself between them th
is plant and now is its time to grow (branch), widening a division between them.
The image of branching recurs in the second part of the play when used by Leonte
s' disowned daughter, Perdita, who wishes she had flowers of the Spring for thos
e shepherdesses
That wear upon your virgin branches yet
Your maidenheads growing . . . . (4.4.115-6)
In 1.1. Camillo says that the two young boys/trees were planted very close so th
at they could be trained together: and furthermore, as the gardener pruned and i
nterwove their young branches by art, below ground their roots grew together by
nature. Nature and culture impose their double authority, and this is interestin
g in relation to the phrase "cannot choose": the negative construction has the f
unction of emphasis, stressing sheer irresistibility, but it does not quite effa
ce associations of "branch" with "choice": so Christianity teaches that in due t
ime comes man's adulthood, marked by acquisition of a capacity to exercise free
will, not be enslaved to blind instinct.
Associated with this is the idea of natural law as expressed in the time taken b
y its proceedings, and the trouble caused by disruption of Nature's timing by de
lay or haste: so pruning aids growth, but must be done at the right time, and in
nature too-forward young buds may be killed by late wintry storms. The first wo
rds of Polixenes assert that he has delayed his return to his duty and his famil
y during nine months, the natural period for pregnancy but here a delay made by
choice and associated with guilt. At a public level Polixenes shows good manners
, but taken to an extreme; at a personal level his nine months stay involves ove
r-favouring of his friend as well as neglect of his own wife.
Men and women, though subject to instinct, do also exercise choice in the case o
f marriage-partners. Leontes stresses that he chose Hermione for love (he makes
no reference to dynastic considerations); and Hermione exercised her right of ch
oice too--but Leontes recalls that "three crabbed months soured themselves to de
ath" (another tree-image, [page 34] though this crab-apple seems not just charac
teristically sour but dying of a disease) as she delayed her choice. To Leontes
in his jealousy, memory of Hermione's three months delay suddenly suggests a sus
picious link to Polixenes, whose first words are of nine months. For Leontes--hi
mself rashly jumping to conclusions and burning with impatience for revenge--has
te, just as much as delay, can be a sign in others of guilt: in 1.2. Leontes obs
essively supposes lustful Hermione and Polixenes driven to frantic impatience,
wishing clocks more swift?
 Hours, minutes? noon, midnight? (1.2.289-90)
whereas Hermione good-humouredly teases Polixenes about when the due time came f
or him to experience temptation (1.2.75-86).
Shakespeare goes on to play obliquely with the idea of delay or haste in relatio
n to Nature's measure of time, when Hermione's son Mamillius, surprisingly, show
s a marked forwardness, a precociousness, in banter of a sexual kind with the co
urt ladies in 2.1. In 2.3. the audience learns that Perdita's own birth was brou
ght on by Leontes' rage: Hermione consequently was delivered "something before h
er time" (2.2.23). The second half of the play will open in 3.3. with the Old Sh
epherd's remark that youth is a prolonged wait for adulthood, a kind of delay in
the life-cycle, producing nothing but impulsive disruption, "getting wenches wi
th child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting" (3.3.61-63). In 4.4. stres
s falls on the forwardness--the precociousness--of youthful Florizel as well as
of young Perdita, and how this exposes them to a father's wrath. Perdita, unawar
e of her own past history, or her dead brother's, or of the present threat posed
by Polixenes, dwells on the vulnerability of the very young to premature death,
of young maids like flowers that risk a too-hasty appearance in early Spring "b
efore the swallow dares," or like pale primroses
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength (a malady
Most incident to maids) (4.4.123-25)
Perdita, in unaccustomed robes, with the rashness of extreme youth, disputes the
theme of art and nature with Polixenes disguised as an old [page 35] man (4.4.8
3-103). She makes a point of insisting she will never touch slips from "bastard"
plant varieties, wants nothing to do with "art" because it also can mean artifi
ce. Shakespeare trips Perdita up; a shepherd's daughter, willing subject to clan
destine royal courtship, costumed and garlanded as queen of a Spring festival, l
ikened to Flora and alluding to Persephone: and does she claim herself free of a
rtifice? For his part, Polixenes may very wisely declare that to marry a "gentle
scion" to the "wildest stock" (4.4.93) is both natural and bettering nature, bu
t this does not prevent him violently contradicting himself in practice only min
utes later.
There is a clear element of travesty in this repetition of themes and episodes f
rom the first half of the play--it goes beyond establishing the contrasting comi
c mode. When Polixenes does unmask in rage to disrupt the proceedings, Florizel,
undismayed, declares himself "delay'd"
But nothing alter'd; What I was, I am;
More straining on for plucking back. (4.4.464-65)
Here this by now well-worn motif of delay/haste takes an unexpected form: and it
is ingeniously echoed in the case of the Old Shepherd who, having successfully
delayed death well beyond the traditional life-span of the Bible, three score an
d ten years, fears he is now to be all too hastily cut off:
a man of fourscore three,
That thought to fill his grave in quiet; yea,
To die upon the bed my father died, . . . . (4.4.453-55)
Another example of the strain involved in uncovering patterns of likeness-with-d
ifference in this play is the throw-away jocular remark of Autolycus about the O
ld Shepherd's fate: "Some say he shall be ston'd; but that fate is too soft for
him, say I" (4.4.778-79): this collocation stoned/soft bizarrely anticipates the
description of the Old Shepherd weeping "like a weather-bitten conduit of many
kings' reigns" (5.2.55-56), a statue-image that reverses Autolycus' stoned/soft
opposition, and which, though in travesty-form, anticipates the words of the "ma
rble-breasted" Leontes before the statue of Hermione--"does not the stone rebuke
me / For being more stone than it?" (5.3.37-38) and the reverse [page 36] trans
formation of Perdita, rapt in admiration, "Standing like stone" beside the statu
e of Hermione (5.3.42). Obliquely this is also a transformation of the haste/del
ay motif into that of eternity/time, art/nature.
The play ends with a final wry twist to this motif of time stretched by delay or
compressed by haste, of time suspended in dream or illusion contrasted to time
measured by the beat of the pulse. In the play's last moment Leontes looks back
on its events and concludes that everybody present has "perform'd" a "part" in "
this wide gap of time." His word "gap" signifies a measurable extent of time, be
tween then and now, but also a sheer blank, a nothing. To Leontes it is almost a
s if time had been suspended while they performed a dream-like comedy of errors,
and now they are awake again.
* * *
In The Winter's Tale successive local dramatic situations carry surface convicti
on, and drive forward a positively resolvable plot (since this is a Romance, and
we know Perdita's true origins, it is ultimately a matter of time), whereas the
system of patterning is fraught with discrepancies, with double-meanings. What
is striking about the beginning of 1.2. is the stress on subtle divisions betwee
n the three figures even before Leontes begins to lose control. Act 5 scene 1 of
fers an intricate reflection of 1.2. since instead of Hermione and Polixenes it
is Perdita and Florizel who confront Leontes, and in this instance comprise a co
mplex of doubled images. The baby present though not yet born in 1.2., and disow
ned by Leontes, is here in 5.1. grown up: that is to say Perdita, first freed an
d enfranchised from her father's rage, then again subject to rage from Florizel'
s father, is now again with her own father and once again unintentionally provok
ing Leontes, this time erotically. Thanks to Paulina's strong presence, the scen
e is framed by memories of Hermione: as it begins, Leontes laments his rage that
caused his son's death and Hermione's:
I might have look'd upon my queen's full eyes,
Have taken treasure from her lips . . . . (5.1.53-54)
[page 37] As the scene ends Paulina reminds an emotionally reviving Leontes of h
ow beautiful Hermione was, and he responds, in a tone of wonder, that while he h
as been gazing at Perdita it is Hermione he has been thinking of.
The first sight of Florizel is also a source of wonder to Leontes: he exclaims t
hat Florizel looks like the young Polixenes:
Your mother was most true to wedlock, Prince,
For she did print your royal father off,
Conceiving you. (5.1.124-6)
This recalls the moment in 1.2.122 when Leontes found comfort in Mamillius, saw
they were alike, that in fact the boy's nose was "a copy out o'mine." There is a
lso another echo, more interesting because more teasing, of 2.3., when Paulina i
nsisted that Hermione's new-born baby reprinted Leontes' features:
Behold, my lords,
Although the print be little, the whole matter
And copy of the father--eye, nose, lip;
The trick of's frown, his forehead . . . . (2.3.98-101)
Perhaps no-one in real life is on oath when first showing a father his new-born
child, certainly not Paulina. Nevertheless, this insistence on minute details of
 facial likeness is striking. Now in 5.1. this child, which Paulina had so stron
gly urged to be a copy of Leontes, is said to be very like Hermione. Perdita is
the child of Hermione and Florizel the child of Polixenes, but also, they are do
ubles for Leontes' two lost children, the baby and Mamillius.
That is to say, this pair, as they stand before Leontes, therefore represent thr
ee remembered figures from the past: his wife, his best friend, and himself. The
se are the very figures which tortured his alienated mind at the beginning of th
e play. Now the mood is altered, strange but auspicious. Paulina's concern, in r
eminding Leontes that Florizel was born in the very same hour as Mamillius, is t
o awaken loving associations in Leontes' mind, but to the play's spectators the
information certainly is news, seeming to invite the suggestion that, in the for
m of a son-in-law, Leontes' lost son is redeemed--but also, more [page 38] obscu
rely, that the twinning of the fathers could have been replicated in the sons. A
nd yet of course he cannot be redeemed, the deeds of 1.2. are irreversible, the
fantasy of wish-fulfilment is impossible, loss is permanent, including loss of i
nnocence and twinship.
The emphasis on the likeness of Mamillius and Perdita may be supported, in stage
performance, by the same actor doubling the roles; what cannot be done plausibl
y (though it has been tried), and should not be done thematically, is for one ac
tor to double the roles of Perdita and Hermione. There must be likeness-with-dif
ference between them. Florizel and Perdita are like their parents, but they must
not be exchangably identical to them: that would mean they are destined to repe
at the cycle of events that constitute their Winter's Tale. Here contrast with T
he Comedy of Errors seems illuminating.
The question of the meaning of the double in The Comedy of Errors is distilled f
inally in stage images which are visually, conclusively, identically double. At
the climax the entrance of the Abbess unwittingly brings the two long-separated
pairs of twins together. A sense of incredulity combines with deep satisfaction
and light-headedness all round: Antipholus wonders "If this be not a dream I see
and hear" (5.1.377), but for his brother the preceding action, which the audien
ce know to be entirely explicable as error, has been rather one of nightmare, in
which the people he knows best have acted like strangers or treated him insolen
tly or declared him a victim of witchcraft and satanic possession and insanity,
and the simplest sensory experience has proved untrustworthy.
Astonishment, therefore, but also a powerful undertow of awe and fear, are palpa
ble as the Duke sees the twins together: "which is the natural man, / And which
the spirit?" (5.1.334-35) Their reunion results in the restoration to the Abbess
of her sons, and then of her husband, rescued from the gallows in the nick of t
ime. The Abbess, in a conceitful "over-reacher" remarkably anticipating the mann
er of The Winter's Tale, describes this separation as a pregnancy of thirty-thre
e years now astonishingly delivered: "After so long grief, such nativity" (407),
and Dromio jests to his twin: "Methinks you are my glass and not my brother" (4
18). The question of the double is resolved in the figure of the Abbess-mother,
long-lost yet always present (though hidden), [page 39] combining the opposites
of holiness and naturalness, priestess and wife, in a manner to be characterised
by Edgar Wind's term of serio ludere;9 it is Shakespeare playing with serious t
hings and being serious in a playful style.
In the final scene of The Winter's Tale Florizel is not identical to, but only l
ike, Polixenes, a likeness-with-difference. This crucially releases him, and his
symbolic role, into the future: this is not to be the world of Beckett's Play.
Perdita is emphatically identified with Hermione but then decisively separated f
rom her, precisely at the point where the statue is seen to have (like old Aegeo
n in The Comedy of Errors) marks of "time's deformed hand" upon it. Hermione ret
urns so much altered, unlike what she was (and Perdita shows what she was like)
but truly like her present self, that is, alive to a revived Leontes.
The statue transformation is Hermione's play of incarnation, which distinguishes
between the ideal, figurative meanings of Hermione--what she is like for her hu
sband and for her child and for her husband's twin Polixenes--and the actual mea
ning to herself of being a woman with a husband and daughter, who exists in time
, where truth is not to be divided from change.
In this play Shakespeare uses stagecraft, the composition of stage images and ac
tion, in the same spirit as he uses words: in the spirit of serio ludere. The pl
ay is a unique kind of tragicomedy in that it deliberately heightens one's sense
of discrepancy and incommensurability, the impossibility of complete resolution
, so that when a conclusion is achieved the surprise and pleasure are increased
without suppressing the unassimilable elements--indeed it is clear how much must
remain unredeemable, and this is the difference from The Comedy of Errors. The
final stage image, then, can mean what it says, although it is by no means plain
and unvarnished.
Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität
Münster
[page 40]
NOTES
1. In her study Shakespeare's Wordplay, M. M. Mahood pointed to the ambiguity of
the word "branch" in The Winter's Tale, and used it and other examples to sugge
st the complex verbal patterning of the text. In her wake, Richard Proudfoot, "V
erbal reminiscence and the two-part structure of The Winter's Tale," Shakespeare
Survey 29 (1976): 67-78, went on to add instances of verbal patterning between
the two halves of the play, but noted "What the verbal links seem to invite is r
ather a toying with such associations than any attempt to use them as the basis
for a systematic exegesis" (69). Proudfoot also suggested some possible doubling
of parts which, in stage performance, might extend audience awareness of this t
wo-part structure.
My own approach assumes that Shakespeare writes in the spirit of serio ludere (a
s described by Edgar Wind, see n9 below) and that the double patterns are the ba
sis for a consciously paradoxical exegesis; on this see also Andrew Gurr, "The b
ear, the statue, and hysteria in The Winter's Tale," SQ 34 (1983): 420-25, or Br
ian Gibbons, Shakespeare and Multiplicity (Cambridge: CUP, 1993) 73-74 and chapt
er 8 generally.
All references to Shakespeare are to G. Blakemore Evans, ed., The Riverside Shak
espeare (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974).
2. Reproduced in Dennis Bartholomeusz, The Winter's Tale in Performance in Engla
nd and America 1611-1976 (Cambridge: CUP, 1982) 139.
3. Bartholomeusz 203.
4. The Times, 7 June 1948, cit. Bartholomeusz 203.
5. Bartholomeusz 217.
6. The Times 31 August 1960, cit. Bartholomeusz 209.
7. On Peter Hall see Irving Wardle's review of Hall in The Times 20 May 1988, an
d Roger Warren, Staging Shakespeare's Late Plays (Oxford: OUP, 1990) chapter 3.
8. For "single" meaning weak see 2 Henry 4 1.2.183, Coriolanus 2.1.37; for "doub
le" meaning "false" see Much Ado About Nothing 5.1.169, Coriolanus 4.4.13. Macbe
th offers a well-known instance at 1.6.15-16 of quibbles on "double" and "single
": "All our service / In every point twice done, and then done double, / Were po
or and single business."
9. Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (1958; rev. ed. London: Faber
and Faber, 1968) 222-35 cites Cusanus, Pico and especially Bruno as important in
fluences on Elizabethan writers in "naturalising" serio ludere: "experiments in
metaphor, semi-magical exercises which would solemnly entertain and astonish the
beholder. These serious games (serio ludere) consisted in finding within common
experience an unusual object endowed with the kind of contradictory attributes
which are difficult to imagine united in the deity" (222). Wind makes the point
that the Renaissance thought a baffling account, patently incomplete, should be
given, "so that the reader may be induced to figure out the concealed part for h
imself" (234).
hamlet
1)A. Introduction
Shakespeare's Hamlet, written around 1600, is one of the most problematic texts
in all of literature. With the exception of certain Biblical texts, no other wor
k has produced such a continuing, lively, and contentious debate about how we ar
e supposed to understand it. In fact, one could very easily construct a thorough
and intriguing history of modern literary criticism based upon nothing other th
an various interpretative takes on Hamlet (a task which has already been carried
out by at least one historian of ideas).
Given this critical confusion, we might as well admit up front that we are not g
oing to arrive at anything like a firm consensus on what the play is about and h
ow we should understand it. However, wrestling with this play is a very importan
t and stimulating exercise, because it puts a lot of pressure on us to reach som
e final interpretation (that is, it generates in us a desire to make sense of al
l the elements in it, to find some closure), and, even if that goal eludes us, w
e can learn a great deal about reading poetic drama and interpreting literature
from a serious attempt to grasp this most elusive work. If one of the really imp
ortant functions of great literature is to stimulate thought-provoking conversat
ions which force us to come to grips with many things about the text and about o
urselves, then Hamlet is a particularly valuable work.
I should also add that many of the difficulties we wrestle with (like the age of
the characters, for example) can only be temporarily resolved by witnessing and
responding to a production of the play. Because there is so much ambiguity and
uncertainly about many key elements, Hamlet offers a director a great deal of c
reative scope, and hence the variety in productions of this play is unmatched in
all of Shakespeare, perhaps in all tragic drama.
In this introductory lecture (and I stress the word introductory) I would like t
o discuss three things: (a) first, I would like to outline what the "problem" wi
th this play is, the source key of the disagreement, (b) second, I would like to
review some of the attempts to resolve this initial problem, and (c) third, I w
ould like to outline three of the main issues raised by the play, matters which
any coherent and reasonably complete interpretation has to deal with. If there i
s time, I might offer a few suggestions along the way about the approach which I
personally find particularly persuasive.
B. Hamlet: What's the Problem?
So what is the source of the difficulties with this play? Well, we can begin by
acknowledging that Hamlet is a revenge play. That is, the story is based upon th
e need to revenge a murder in the family. In a typical revenge plot, there are n
o authorities to appeal to, either because the original criminal is too powerful
(e.g., has become king) or those in a position to act do not know about or beli
eve in the criminality of the original villain. Thus, the central character has
to act on his own, if any justice is to occur.
Hamlet clearly falls into this conventional genre. There is a victim (Hamlet Sen
ior), a villain (Claudius), and an avenger (Hamlet). Early in the play the detai
ls of the murder become known to Hamlet, he vows to carry out his revenge, and e
ventually he does so, bringing the action to a close. The major question which a
rises, and the main focus for much of the critical interpretation of Hamlet is t
his: Why does Hamlet delay so long? Why doesn't he just carry out the act?
Now, revenge dramas, from the Oresteia to the latest Charles Bronson Death Wish
film, are eternally popular, because, as playwrights from Aeschylus on have alwa
ys known, revenge is something we all, deep down, understand and respond to imag
inatively (even if we ourselves would never carry out such a personal vendetta).
The issue engages some of our deepest and most powerful feelings, even if the b
asic outline of the story is already very familiar to us from seeing lots of rev
enge plots (for the basic story line doesn't change much from one story to anoth
er).
Typically, the avenger assumes the responsibility early on, spends much of the t
ime overcoming various obstacles (like having to find the identity of the killer
or dealing with the barriers between the avenger and the killer, a process whic
h can involve a great deal of excitement and violence of all sorts), and conclud
es the drama by carrying out the mission, a culmination which requires a persona
l action (usually face to face). The revenge, that is, must be carried out in an
appropriate manner (just getting rid of the villain any old way or reporting th
e villain to the authorities is not satisfying). This formula, which is very old
, popular, and, if done well, a smash at the box office, was a staple of Greek t
heatre (not just in Aeschylus), common in Elizabethan drama before Shakespeare,
and characterizes an enormous number of Western movies and detective fictions, a
mong other genres. So there's nothing new about that in this play.
The puzzle here is why Hamlet just does not go ahead a carry out the revenge. He
vows to do so as soon as he hears the news of the his father's murder in Act I
and repeatedly urges himself on to the deed. But it takes him many weeks (perhap
s months) before the revenge is carried out. What's the problem? The attempts to
deal with this question have sparked a huge volume of criticism.
C. Why the Delay? A Survey of Answers
Some critics attempt to resolve the difficulty by magically waving it away. They
maintain, for example, that there is no delay, that Hamlet carries out the murd
er as soon as he can conveniently do so (e.g., Dover Wilson). Others (e.g., E. E
. Stoll) argue that the delay is simply a convention, something we are not suppo
sed to get hung up on, because if there's no delay, there's no play (obviously t
he carrying out of the revenge is going to be the final action of the story, so
if that occurs very quickly, the play will last only a few minutes).
Whatever plausibility one might find in such interpretations is seriously underc
ut by many parts of the play. Hamlet himself is constantly calling attention to
the delay; he worries about it all the time. The ghost has to remind him of it.
In other words, the delay is not a concept of our imagination, something we impo
se on the play; it is, by contrast, an issue repeatedly raised by the play itsel
f. So it cannot so simply be conjured out of existence.
In addition, although we do not know the exact time frame of the play, it does s
eem that a long time goes by between the opening act and the conclusion. There i
s always a lot happening; that's one of the most theatrically appealing aspects
of the play (Dr Johnson call it Shakespeare's most "amusing" play, by which he m
eant, not that it was funny, but that it always held our attention with its spee
d and variety). At the same time we get unequivocal signals that time is passing
: the envoys have gone to Norway and come back, Hamlet has sailed away and retur
ned, we are told at the start that it is two months since the funeral of Hamlet
Senior and in the play within the play that it is now twice two months since the
funeral, and so on.
Given these details (and there are others), I would conclude that these first tw
o approaches to the problem are unacceptable.
In this connection, we should note that the play has two other revengers: Fortin
bras and Laertes, both of whom have to avenge insults to or murder done on their
fathers. They act immediately, with effective resolution and courage. Given tha
t they are about the same age as Hamlet, it would seem that we are invited to se
e in Hamlet's response to his father's murder something quite different from wha
t a normal prince with a sense of honour might do. Hence the play itself puts a
lot of pressure on us to recognize in Hamlet's conduct an unusual problem.
Others maintain that, as in many conventional revenge dramas, Hamlet has externa
l obstacles to overcome in order to carry out the revenge. There is a delay, but
only because Hamlet is not in a situation where he can easily carry it out. He
has to wait for an opportune moment.
This position, too, is hard to sustain, given the facts of the play. Hamlet has
ready access to Claudius, he even meets him in an unguarded moment (at prayer),
and there is no suggestion from Hamlet himself that there are any such external
difficulties. In his fretting about his delay, Hamlet never mentions the existen
ce of such external obstacles. And, as if to underscore the point, when Laertes
returns to avenge his father, he has no trouble in confronting Claudius instantl
y in a situation where he might easily have killed him. If Laertes can so quickl
y put Claudius's life in jeopardy, why cannot Hamlet do the same? So this line o
f inquiry does not seem all that helpful.
The vast majority of critics on this play have agreed with the analysis on this
point, and have thus argued that, in the absence of any serious external obstacl
es, Hamlet's troubles must be internal, and the major debates about the play thu
s turn into a character analysis of the young prince. What is going on inside of
him to make the carrying out of this revenge so difficult?
There are many suggestions concerning what this internal condition might be. And
the possibilities range from the silly to the intriguing. I would like to revie
w some of these, beginning with some fairly implausible suggestions and moving a
t the end to some serious possibilities.
Some have maintained that Hamlet is a coward and that his delay is a manifestati
on of his fear of getting hurt. This seems inherently unlikely. He's capable of
very decisive action when necessary (as in the killing of Polonius, the confront
ation with the ghost, or the duel scene). So I think we can safely lay that sugg
estion to rest. There are too many occasions when Hamlet reveals a spontaneous a
nd active courage, even, in the eyes of his companions, a foolhardy valour.
Certain medically minded interpreters have suggested that Hamlet's problem is ph
ysical, perhaps an excess of adipose tissue around the heart (hence his referenc
e to having trouble breathing) or that he is just mad. Such suggestions do nothi
ng to resolve our desire to understand this character. If he is clinically abnor
mal, then so far as I am concerned he is of little interest to me, except as a c
linical specimen. To paste a convenient abnormal label over Hamlet is to explain
nothing, it is to beg the question which we are seeking to answer. If one of th
e chief attractions of the this play is the quality of Hamlet's intelligence, wh
ich comes through in many of his soliloquies and in his verbal dexterity and so
on, then simply writing him off as a bit of a mental freak is inherently unsatis
factory. If we are tempted to see, as many are, that there is something strange
or significant about Hamlet's emotional state, then we need to explore that furt
her, rather than just writing him off as crazy. The task is to find some emotion
al coherence in his thoughts and actions, some illuminating insight into his beh
aviour. Casual medical terms which close off such an explorations are of no ana
lytical use.
If we stray into the realm of off-the-wall suggestions about Hamlet, we might wa
nt to consider the idea that Hamlet is really a woman raised as a man. Her troub
les stem from the fact that she is in love with Horatio. We probably wouldn't pa
y any attention to this interpretation if there was not a film based upon it, an
early silent movie. In the concluding scene, as Horatio grasps the dying Hamlet
in his arms, he inadvertently clutches her secondary sexual characteristics. At
that point the written script reads something to the effect "Ah, Hamlet, I have
discovered your tragic secret."
If you find that suggestion interesting you might want to investigate the sugges
tions that the key people in the play are Horatio's wife or girl friend Felicity
("If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,/ Absent thee from felicity a while"
the dying Hamlet urges Horatio) or Hamlet's invisible Irish companion, Pat (to w
hom Hamlet is clearly speaking when he sees Claudius at prayer, "Now might I do
it pat. . . ."). And so on.
In my view the realm of serious possibilities begins with the claim that Hamlet
has great trouble in carrying out this revenge because he is too good for this w
orld, he is too sensitive, too poetical, too finely attuned to a difficulties of
life, too philosophically speculative or too finely poetical. This line of crit
icism has often been offered by people who feel themselves rather too finely gif
ted to fit the rough and tumble of the modern world (like Coleridge, for example
). A particularly famous example of this line of interpretation comes from Goeth
e:
Shakespeare meant . . . to represent the effects of great action laid upon a
soul unfit for the performance of it. . . . A lovely, pure, noble and most mora
l nature, without the strength of nerve which forms a hero, sinks beneath a burd
en which it cannot bear and must not cast away. All duties are too holy for him;
the present is too hard. Impossibilities have been required of him; not in them
selves impossibilities, but such for him. He winds and turns, and torments himse
lf; he advances and recoils; is ever put in mind, ever puts himself in mind; at
last does all but lose his purpose from his thoughts; yet still without recoveri
ng his peace of mind.
This view has a good deal to commend it. After all, Hamlet is much given to mood
y poetical reflections on the meaning of life, he is a student (and therefore by
definition too good for this world), and he seems to spend a great deal of time
alone wandering about Elsinore talking to himself or reading books. He has a te
ndency to want to explore large universal generalizations about life, love, poli
tics, and the nature of human beings. From his first appearance on stage, it is
quite clear that he doesn't much like the political world of Elsinore; he is dis
placed from it. Again and again he talks about how he dislikes the dishonesty of
the world, the hypocrisy of politics and sexuality and so on. So there is a cas
e to be made that Hamlet is just too sensitive and idealistic for the corrupt do
uble dealing of the court and that his delay stems from his distaste at descendi
ng to their level.
Against this view, of course, is the very clear evidence that Hamlet is quite ca
pable of swift decisive action should the need arise. He kills Polonius without
a qualm and proceeds to lecture his mother very roughly over the dead body. He c
an dispatch Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths, without a scruple. He
is very gifted at dissembling, at playing the Machiavelli-like figure. And he ha
s no hesitation in taking Laertes on in a duel. In addition, there is a violent
streak in Hamlet (especially where women are concerned). So on the basis of the
evidence there is a good deal to suggest that the vision of Hamlet as a soul too
good for this world might be problematic. However, that is one you might like t
o consider.
Allied to this view of Hamlet as too poetical is the idea that he is just too we
ak willed to make the decision to undertake the revenge. Again the evidence does
not seem to bear out the contention that Hamlet is, by his very nature, incapab
le of making decisions. Once he sets his mind to the play within the play or tri
cking Rosencrantz and Guildenstern or undertaking the duel or facing the ghost h
e can act quickly and decisively.
Then, too, there is the ever popular notion that Hamlet has to delay because he'
s not sure whether or not the ghost is from heaven or hell. That is, he must con
firm the validity of the ghost's information and his mission, and his delay is t
herefore a necessary part of the revenge plan. In assessing this idea you have t
o be prepared to sort out the complex issue of whether what Hamlet says on the p
oint is sincere or whether it is just one more excuse for delay. For the fact is
that Hamlet entertains absolutely no doubts about the ghost's honesty when he f
irst encounters it, and the idea of testing it more or less pops into his head w
hen he is wrestling with his own failure to carry out the deed. Moreover, even a
fter he has confirmed the truth of the ghost with the play within the play he do
es not carry out the murder, although immediately after the play and the confirm
ation of the ghost's story he has a supreme opportunity to do so. In addition, o
f course, if the motive of checking out the ghost's credentials is the major mot
ive for the delay, then how do we account for the anguish that Hamlet seems to g
o through in thinking about the delay? Why isn't that reason more in evidence?
This, in fact, is a crucial point and one that makes Hamlet so very interesting.
Why is he himself so insistently guilty about not being able to go through with
it? Any interpretation of the play which suggests either that there is no delay
or that there is a perfectly justified reason for it comes crashing on one over
whelming fact of this play, which we have to confront again and again, especiall
y in the soliloquies: Hamlet himself agonizes over his inability to carry out th
e deed and is constantly searching for reasons why he is behaving the way he is.
He doesn't himself understand why he cannot carry out the revenge. That point,
I would suggest, is one of the main reasons we are interested in the prince--he
is in the grip of something that he cannot fully understand, no matter how much
he rationalizes the matter.
And in this connection I really want to repeat a critical question that you are
going to have to wrestle with in order to sort out where you stand with the prin
ce. When Hamlet says something, does he really mean it or is he deliberately inv
enting another reason for the delay? Is, for example, his concern about the vali
dity of the ghost a real concern or just a convenient rationalization for his st
rong emotional reluctance to carry out the deed? Similarly, is his excuse for no
t killing Claudius at prayer a convincing reason or just one more excuse? Such q
uestions are crucial to an understanding of Hamlet's character, yet they are not
easy to answer on the basis of the text itself. I mention this point here in or
der to stress that one has to be very careful before accepting whatever Hamlet s
ays as an up front truth--it may be an evasion or evidence that he very poorly u
nderstands himself and the world around him.
All of these suggestions (and I'm cutting a long story short) drive one to a tem
pting conclusion put forward most famously by Ernest Jones, the famous disciple
of Freud. Jones argues that Hamlet has no doubts about the ghost, is perfectly c
apable of acting decisively, and yet delays and delays and agonizes over the del
ay. Why? If he has motive, opportunity, the ability to act decisively, and a str
ong desire to carry out the action, then why doesn't he? Jones's conclusion is t
hat there's something about this particular task which makes it impossible for H
amlet to carry out. It's not that he is by nature irresolute, too poetical or ph
ilosophical, or suffers from medical problems or a weakness of will. It is, by c
ontrast, that this particular assignment is impossible for him.
That leads Jones to posit the very famous and very persuasive suggestion that Ha
mlet cannot kill Claudius because of his relationship with his mother. He has (n
ow wait for it) a classical Oedipus Complex: he is incapable of killing the man
who sleeps with his mother because that would mean that he would have to admit t
o himself his own feelings about her, something which overwhelms him and disgust
s him. Jones's argument in the book Hamlet and Oedipus (especially in the first
half) is a very skillful piece of criticism, always in very close contact with t
he text, and it is justly hailed as the great masterpiece of Freudian criticism.
Just to point out one salient fact: Jones indicates, quite correctly, that Haml
et can kill Claudius only after he knows that his mother is dead and that he is
going to die. Hence, his deep sexual confusion is resolved; only then can he act
. Up to that point, he constantly finds ways to evade facing up to the task he c
annot perform, because to do so would be to confront feelings within himself tha
t he cannot acknowledge (by killing Claudius he would make his mother available
and be attacking the ideal nobility of his real father).
I'm not going to put forward a defense of the Jones's thesis, except to suggest
that the initial logic of his argument seems quite persuasive: Hamlet does have
a very particular inability to carry out this action and that this inability is
not a constitutional incapacity for action but stems from some very particular f
eelings within Hamlet, feelings which he himself has trouble figuring out and wh
ich he often thinks about in explicitly sexual terms (whether we follow Jones in
identifying these feelings with an Oedipus Complex is another matter), terms wh
ich insist upon a pattern of disgust with female sexuality.
So for me the question of Hamlet's delay boils itself down to trying to answer t
he following question: What is it about this situation that turns an intelligent
, active, and often decisive person into some emotional paralytic? Where are we
to locate the source of the difficulties Hamlet is constantly acknowledging?
In order to answer this question, we have to take into account some important fa
cts of the play, that is, first of all, we have to acknowledge the particular ev
idence we have to work with. In this play, that is not always easy. But the test
of any interpretation of the key question is going to depend upon its ability t
o coordinate in a plausible way what we are given. So at this point, let me revi
ew three of the more salient facts. However you interpret this play, you are goi
ng to have to take into account these issues.
Please note that I am not suggesting that these are the only important facts one
has to account for. However, they are of central importance and, it seems to me
, present the major challenges to any interpretation.
D. The Facts of the Case
Hamlet's Language
One of the most obvious features of Hamlet is that the hero is a compulsive talk
er, who processes experience and wrestles with his feelings and copes with other
people primarily through language. In the context of that earlier lecture about
Richard II, Hamlet has many of the characteristics of a chatterer, a person who
uses words to protect himself from coming to grips with the reality of his situ
ation and the need for action. Hamlet, among some critics, has acquired a reputa
tion as something of a philosopher, a profound thinker. But how profound are Ham
let's inner speculations? He tackles big issues, to be sure, but where do his th
oughts take him? Does the philosophical content of his speculations ever move ve
ry far beyond the platitudinous? Might it be the case that he is merely talking
in order not to have to act (rather like Richard II)? I raise this as a question
because one's response to Hamlet's soliloquies (and he has more than any other
Shakespearean character) will shape our understanding of him more than any other
factor in the play.
Hamlet's use of language, in fact, is obviously a crucial key to his character.
Having introduced a comparison with Richard II (and one could include Jaques fr
om As You Like It in any list of Shakespearean chatterers), one needs to remain
alert to the distinctions as well as the similarities. For Hamlet's language re
veals that he is constantly wrestling with something inside, something which tor
ments him, something at times he clearly would not like to think about but which
he cannot dispel from his thoughts. This quality sets him apart from Richard a
nd Jaques, both of whom use language very complacently to close themselves off f
rom external complexities, to impose upon the world their own given sense of wha
t it all means or of what really matters and what does not (and to drown out any
competing understanding which might come to them from outside). Hamlet's langu
age, in that sense, does not reassure him or calm him down: it is an expression
of and a contribution to his suffering. That's the reason the emotional quality
of his language commands so much more attention than does the emotional quality
of anything Richard or Jaques say.
For Hamlet is not quite like these two in how his language registers. If, like
them, Hamlet shows little inclination to listen to other people sensitively and
to learn from their conversations with him and if there is a sense that he frequ
ently uses language as a shield to protect himself from interacting with the wor
ld (as he clearly does with his often nonsensical patter), Hamlet is also at tim
es trying to find some way of expressing what he feels and is constantly frustra
ted by his inability to formulate exactly what it is that is troubling him. In
that sense, his habit, for example, of summing up issues with sweeping reductive
generalizations about the world (and women in particular) is linked to serious
inner turmoil and registers as, in some sense, a desperate way to hold in check
the pressures of his inner contradictions (rather than as some fixed and firmly
held opinion).
That point helps to explain the curious and significant pattern of Hamlet's soli
loquies, which are marked by sudden changes of subject, self-urging to put somet
hing out of his mind accompanied by an inability to do so, attacks on himself fo
r all his verbalizing, and a sense of despair that all this talk is getting him
no closer to any sort of answer which will clarify the world sufficiently to ena
ble him to act. It may also account for his habit of lashing out verbally (and
sometimes physically) when the world presses against him too closely (and for th
e fact that such lashing out characteristically occurs in the face of those who
love him most or who are most concerned about him, e.g., Gertrude and Ophelia).
In addition to these characteristic rhythms in Hamlet's language (especially in
his soliloquies) there is the matter of the images he fixes upon to express his
inner turmoil. From his very first soliloquy in 1.2, these images typically ins
ist upon the wholesale corruption of the world. As often as not, they carry wit
h them a sense of powerful disgust with sexuality, especially women's sexuality
(a view which clearly issues from his feelings about his mother), a revulsion so
powerful that it fills him with a desire for suicide in the face of the worthle
ssness a life which reduces all of us to an empty skull, dust, and a foul smell.
Allied to this feature, of course, is Hamlet's vocabulary, which characteristica
lly features short colloquial words evocative of a mood of exhaustion, contempt,
disgust--a range of feelings of extreme unpleasantness: "fardels," "grunt," "sw
eat," "nasty sty," "vicious mole," "rank and gross," "slave's offal," and so on.
How we determine what such a language has to reveal to us about Hamlet's matur
ity, intelligence, emotional sensitivity (especially in relation to his situatio
n) will play a major role in how we resolve some of the interpretative difficult
ies of the play.
However we explore the details of Hamlet's character and seek to find some ways
of describing it, we need to account for these prominent features of his languag
e, which are hard to reconcile with the idea of a settled, noble, philosophical
frame of mind. And a central issue in our evaluation will almost certainly be t
rying to determine if the language indicates a morbid over-reaction to a set of
harsh circumstances or is in some ways a worthy response which can be justified
without an appeal to serious deficiencies in the prince's emotional make up.
The Politics of Machiavellianism
Any assessment of the prince's character, however, has to take into account his
setting, the royal court of Elsinore, simply because Hamlet thinks of himself ve
ry much in relation to the political life around him. We can easily acknowledg
e that Elsinore is a very political place, in a very Machiavellian sense. In thi
s court, we are in a political realm based on duplicity, power, and fear, and th
e outcome of the political actions is serious: the security of the kingdom. Ever
yone is constantly eavesdropping on everyone else (behind the arras, outside a d
oor, on a battlement above). This spirit is best exemplified in the person of Po
lonius, the most important and successful courtier, who is a master spy, subordi
nating all the concerns of life to a quest for knowledge and the power which kno
wledge brings.
Polonius's instinctive response to any problem is to spy out the solution. If th
at means running the risk of dishonoring his son or using his daughter as bait,
that doesn't bother him. If one has to spread lies abroad in order to gain the k
nowledge necessary for power, then that is quite acceptable, as he tells Reynald
o:
See you now--
Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth;
And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
With windlasses and with assays of bias,
By indirection find directions out. (2.1)
Polonius's operating principle is fear. If one doesn't attend to finding out wha
t is going on, if one is not very careful, then trouble will come quickly. One n
eeds to be constantly on guard, vigilant, and careful of any serious consequence
s of any action:
This must be known; which, being kept close, might move
More grief to hide than hate to utter love. (2.1)
This ethic of Polonius is prepared to ride roughshod over any emotional problems
. When Ophelia confesses her love for Hamlet and his for her, Polonius dismisses
the matter as rubbish: all Hamlet's romantic declarations she must treat as sim
ply tricks to get her into bed to satisfy his lust. Love, for Polonius, like eve
rything else, can be understood in the lowest common denominator of human activi
ty as a power struggle. Hence, Ophelia's relationship with Hamlet is potentially
dangerous politically and must be stopped. He tells Ophelia she's to stay away
from Hamlet, because he's not telling the truth. The implication is clear: in th
e power political world of Polonius, love has no place. That's why he can simply
manipulate her into trying to engage Hamlet in conversation while he and Claudi
us listen in while concealed. The fact that at the end of that conversation Ophe
lia is crying in great distress he hardly notices--his daughter's emotional dism
ay is inconsequential; what really matters is the political implication of what
he and Claudius have witnessed: "How now, Ophelia?/ You need not tell us what Lo
rd Hamlet said./ We heard it all" (3.1.178).
It's significant, I think, that in sorting out what must be done about Ophelia's
confessions about Hamlet's relationship to her, his immediate response is a mil
itary metaphor:
Set your entreatments at a higher rate
Than a command to parley. (1.2)
For Polonius all of life, including love, is a power struggle, and the operative
principle is fear. Human beings are motivated only by self-interest; thus, Ophe
lia's notion that Hamlet may be in love with her is simply the immature response
of a foolish adolescent, unaware of the brutal competitiveness of a world in wh
ich the basic rules of human interaction are what's in it for me and fear of wha
t someone with power might do to you.
Similarly in his famous speech to his son, there is a remarkable absence of a ce
rtain kind of advice. Polonius's words have acquired for some reason the reputat
ion of being good moral advice, but the most remarkable thing about the speech i
s the absence of any moral exhortation. What he says is good hard-headed practic
al advice for success in a rough and dangerous public world: avoid trouble, conc
eal feelings and intentions, and control one's environment through one's appear
ance. The most frequently quoted part of the speech one needs to consider very c
arefully:
This above all--to thine own self be true,
And it must follow as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man. (1.3.78)
Think about this for a while. It is not a sound piece of moral advice--and Polon
ius's conduct makes that clear throughout the play: in serving his own interests
, in following his vision of being true to himself he is prepared to hurt anyone
, even members of his own family. Polonius, I think, cares deeply about his fami
ly. That is not the issue here. It is the quality of the care, the characteristi
c manner in which he shapes his understanding of what are the problems in life a
nd what must be done about them. That is what seems curiously narrow. The fact t
hat he does not believe that dealing with people in this way is not being false
to them tells us a great deal about Polonius and about the world in which he fun
ctions with such apparent success.
In exploring this issue, we need to acknowledge that Polonius does not appear to
be interested in his own personal power. He sees himself as a loyal servant of
the royal family and as a loving parent. And he is both of those. But in serv
ing both his royal masters and his family, Polonius interprets the world as a da
ngerous place where one needs to have one's wits about one and walk carefully, w
ithout taking any unnecessary chances of giving anything away.
Many people are deceived by Polonius's external pose as something of a doddering
old fool. After all, in many scenes, he plays the role of someone who is a bit
silly. But we have to keep asking ourselves what's going on underneath. And ther
e we can sense a shrewd and hard-headed political imagination for whom the all i
mportant issue of life is political survival in a complex and deceptive world. A
n essential part of that is a deceptively innocent external mask.
Polonius, we should note, is an important political figure, the executive arm of
the king. And his position (and Claudius's endorsement of Polonius in words of
high praise) tell us clearly that Polonius's tactics work in Elsinore; they brin
g success. Moreover, as I have mentioned, he is not an evil man. He has the best
interests of his family and his monarch at heart and puts his talents to work o
n their behalf. He has no agenda to capture or wield more power than he has alre
ady. In a sense, he is a recognizably normal person, quite at home in the adult
 world of business and politics.
Claudius, too, is a very shrewd and successful political operator, who understan
ds, like Polonius, that the political world requires deception and betrayal. He
employs Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on Hamlet, agrees readily enough to
Polonius's various spying suggestions, and finally is prepared to deceive Hamlet
into going to his own death.
This Machiavellian quality in Polonius and Claudius makes them very effective po
litical operators. When Polonius challenges Claudius to name one occasion on whi
ch he has been wrong, Claudius concedes that Polonius is unmatched in his abilit
y to find out the truth of a situation. Claudius, we know (especially from his s
uperb performance in 1.2, when we first meet him), is no fool, and this firm end
orsement of Polonius should alert us to recognize that the frequently foolish po
se is just that, a pose. We should note, too, that Claudius has the full support
of the court. That is a mark that he is recognized as an effective, perhaps eve
n a popular leader. No one in the play, except Hamlet, ever makes the suggestion
that Claudius is not an effective monarch (and Shakespeare in other plays typic
ally allows us to see growing discontent in quiet conversations between malconte
nts). In fact, during the course of the play we see his policies about the polit
ical problems with Norway work to the evident approval of those around him.
In this connection, it's important to pick up on the fact that the monarch in El
sinore has been elected by the council. So Claudius is king because he was chose
n by the senior politicians in Elsinore. And, equally important, as he makes cle
ar very early on, there has been no political opposition to the marriage with Ge
rtrude. If he had wanted to, Shakespeare could obviously have provided clear evi
dence that people in general think that this remarriage was immoral. The fact th
at there is no such suggestion, that by and large everyone has approved of the r
emarriage is an important fact when we consider the extreme language with which
the ghost and Hamlet describe it. For example, if the remarriage is truly incest
uous, then there would have been hostility to it (we see that the clergy here ar
e not above challenging the court). So the general harmony of the court, which w
e witness in the first scenes tells us that Claudius is perceived as an effectiv
e and perhaps even a popular ruler and that, so far we can tell, the people in E
lsinore see nothing wrong with the marriage.
One final point about the political world of Elsinore. It does not seem to be a
place where women matter very much, where they have much of a say in anything. T
he movers and shakers in this world are all men, and where necessary they are pr
epared to use women, even their own family, in the power political game. The chi
ef example of this, of course, is Ophelia, who spends much of the play bewildere
d about what is happening around her, as she tries to follow what her father, br
other, and Hamlet tell her to do. Gertrude, too, initiates very little from any
political power base. In Elsinore, Claudius and Polonius call the shots.
But Claudius does love Gertrude and respects her opinion. He clearly has all the
power, but he often involves her in the conversations, asks her advice, and def
ers to her. Early in the play, the stand together as equals. Gertrude appears
to have very little political imagination (she is not a power player and at tim
es is clearly out of the loop), and we don't get any suggestion that she knows a
nything about the murder of her first husband. The fact that Claudius makes so m
uch of her is one of those qualities that makes Claudius, in some ways, a more s
ympathetic character (much here obviously depends upon how they behave together,
so that we have to witness a production to make an informed judgment).
And both women die. Ophelia's death is particularly significant, because she is
clearly driven to it by events over which she, as a young woman, has no control
. In this connection it might be worth asking some pointed questions about Ophe
lia as a victim of life in Elsinore and, in particular, of Hamlet himself. If we
 see her, as I think most people do, as an innocent young girl trying to sort ou
t her feelings about people in a complex and difficult world where she is consta
ntly told what to do and how to think by various men (Hamlet, Polonius, and Laer
tes), and if there is some substance to the love between her and Hamlet, there m
ay very well be an explicit sexual edge to the frustration which drives her into
madness. That seems certainly possible in the light of the sexual bullying (not
too strong a term) which seems to be such a constant feature of the advice men
around constantly direct at her, and the sexual innuendo in her lunatic songs le
nds support to the idea.. Such a view gives some weight to Robert Speaight's rem
ark that no part in Shakespeare has suffered more than Ophelia from the sentimen
tal evasion of sexuality (a comment recorded in Peter Brook: A Biography by J. C
. Trewin, London, Macdonald, 1971, p. 92).
We don't have to see Ophelia this way, of course, but if we give her behaviour t
hat edge (something entirely consistent with the evidence of the text) her destr
uction acts as a powerful indictment of the corrupting effects of the male-domin
ated political realm of Elsinore, which simply has no room in it for love.
Appearance and Reality
Given this nature of Elsinore, which is impossible to ignore, we come to a secon
d important fact of the play, namely, that people in this world have to live two
lives, the one they present to the world and the inner world of their own thoug
hts and feelings. For Elsinore is a world where the appearance of things does no
t always or often mesh with the inner reality. Claudius, for example, is on the
outside a smooth, popular, and effective political operator; inside he is tormen
ted by his own guilt and carries, as he puts it, the most serious sin of all, a
brother's murder. Polonius appears to be something of a bumbling fool; inside he
is a capable Machiavel always unerringly on the trail of new information. Rosen
crantz and Guildenstern are apparently Hamlet's university friends; but in reali
ty they are spies in the service of Claudius, especially commissioned to ferret
out the truth about Hamlet. And so forth.
This is a deceptive world. One can never be sure whether someone is spying or ea
vesdropping. Elsinore is full of nooks, arrases, upper galleries where someone m
ay be lurking in secret. It's a place where you have to keep your wits about you
if you want to survive. When someone approaches you with a smile on his face, y
ou can never be sure whether he is a friend or a foe, whether what he is saying
to you is what he really means or whether it is all just a temporary role he is
playing in this dangerous and duplicitous game.
In this connection, I think one of the most important moments is the very first
line of the play. In the first scene we see someone whom we don't know alone, wa
ndering about in the dark, cold and lonely and scared in a foggy night, where on
e has difficulty seeing clearly. Suddenly a figure emerges out of the mist. The
first response is defensive: "Who's there?" And figure hailed is equally suspici
ous: "Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself." And if you read the scene alou
d, you notice in the short, choppy lines a nervous intensity, a jitteriness, whi
ch sets the mood for the world of Elsinore. In one way or another that question
"Who's there?" shouted out into a fog which makes clear perception impossible ha
unts the play.
Who in this play is not acting a role? Well, those that do not seem to be, that
is, Ophelia and Gertrude and perhaps Horatio, stand rather on the sidelines or g
et pushed around by the action. Ophelia, in particular, is a really pathetic vic
tim of so many people in the play, because she is so innocent, so naive, so ill
equipped to understand, let alone deal with, the world around her. In this world
, as in so much of Shakespeare, innocence is never enough, and those who have on
ly that to guide them in a complex political world, who are not able to develop
a survival strategy of some kind, are going to suffer. Gertrude, too, appears mu
ch of the time painfully bewildered. Those two ladies are poorly equipped to dea
l with Elsinore, in part because they cannot hide their feelings in an effective
public role.
One key element in the roles people play is the language they use to interact wi
th others. In public, Claudius is smooth, polished, confident; in private or wit
h Gertrude he is a troubled spirit; in public Polonius is frequently something o
f a verbal buffoon; in private he is matter of fact and shrewd. Hamlet plays all
sorts of roles, shifting gears from one scene to the next, using language as a
survival tool to keep the people he interacts with off guard, puzzled, on the de
fensive. His famous "antic disposition" is part of a world where you have to pla
y a public role in order to guard your innermost thoughts and plans. He clearly
uses his famous "wit" to erect a defensive barrier between himself and others an
d at times to lash out cruelly at them. That is the reason why, in reading Hamle
t, we have to be very careful about immediately believing what people say to eac
h other: they may not be telling the truth.
That may also be the reason why everyone enjoys the arrival of the actors so muc
h. Hamlet is never happier in this play than when he is with the actors. He gets
excited and, for the first time, displays a passionate and joyful interest in s
omething going on around him. With the actors we do get our only strong sense of
what a giving and amusing character Hamlet might be. And this has nothing to do
with his plans for the play within the play (that comes later). No, the suggest
ion is clearly that he can in some ways deal with the actors differently from an
yone else. With them, and this is very noticeable in the scene, Hamlet can relax
and let his imagination, wit, and intelligence play without worrying about the
consequences. And I would suggest that in a world like Elsinore, where almost ev
eryone is playing various roles in a dangerous game, the professional actors are
a huge relief because you know exactly where you stand with them. They do not c
onceal the fact that they are taking on roles; there is thus nothing duplicitous
about them. Those who professionally pretend to be other people are, in a sense
, the only ones in this play whose actions one can clearly sort out, because the
y are what they appear to be, with no inner agenda working against the role they
play.
Hamlet's Relationship to Elsinore
The third fact about this play which I would like to consider is particularly ob
vious: that in some fundamental way Hamlet feels alienated in the court of Elsin
ore. He physically and emotionally refuses to take part in the proceedings, and
generally acknowledges to others that he is profoundly dissatisfied with the cou
rt, with Denmark, and even with life itself. This is made very clear to us befor
e he learns anything about the ghost, the murder, and the need for revenge. The
first soliloquy (in 1.2) makes the initial stance of Hamlet clear enough (while
raising some important questions about the cause of this behaviour, given that h
e's much more upset about the remarriage of his mother than the murder of his fa
ther). The behaviour of Hamlet towards the normal business going on at Elsinore
is a source of great puzzlement to his mother and to Claudius.
Now, a great deal of the interpretation we favour about this play is going to tu
rn on how we deal with this displacement of Hamlet from the normal world around
him. Prima facie, it strikes me that there are three immediately obvious possibi
lities. My description of these is going to be oversimple, but I think it will b
e enough to make the point and perhaps get your interpretative imaginations work
ing.
E. Some Interpretative Possibilities
Given these facts, there are a number of routes we might explore (and which have
been explored) to seek to find some interpretative unity in this frequently amb
iguous work. The following list is not meant to be exhaustive, but it does chart
some of the main paths interpreters have followed:
Hamlet as a Noble Prince in a Corrupt and Evil World
First, we can see Elsinore as an essentially corrupt place, an environment in wh
ich the nobler aspects of human life have been hopelessly compromised by the exc
essive attention to duplicity, double dealing, and Machiavellian politics, that,
in a sense, Claudius and Polonius are clearly the villains of the place and who
lly responsible for the unsatisfactory moral and emotional climate there; they a
re the source of the something rotten in the state of Denmark. If that is so, if
, that is, we see Elsinore and the prevailing powers in it, Claudius and Poloniu
s, as in some sense degenerate specimens of humanity, then Hamlet's rejection of
that world becomes something with which we can sympathize. He is right to feel
about that world the way he does; his inability to adjust to an evil environment
is a sign of his noble nature. He is being emotionally hammered by a cruel and
corrupt world, and he is trying to hang onto his integrity.
Such an approach would make much of Hamlet's apparently "philosophical" nature,
his intellectual superiority which enables him to place the actions of Elsinore
in a much wider and fairer context. And it would emphasize the degenerate nature
of Claudius and Polonius. Given this quality, we readily enough understand why
Hamlet cannot accept a world of deceit, compromise, and short-term power grabs.
He has to displace himself from this world in order to survive, in order to prot
ect himself from the general rottenness, while he tries to sort out how he is to
act in a world which he finds so morally unacceptable.
Such an initial displacement would of course be powerfully reinforced by the new
s about the murder, since it would simply confirm for Hamlet the nature of the w
orld he does not want to enter. So his anguish comes from the inner conflict of
a spirit who wants to understand the ultimate significance of human actions, esp
ecially his own, before acting in a world empty, so far as he can see, of signif
icant value. He has looked at life in Elsinore and has become disgusted by what
he sees, and we can sympathize with that because Elsinore is, thanks to the acti
ons of particular people, an evil place.
This stance, one might maintain, is the source of Hamlet's cruelty (and he can b
e very cruel, especially to Ophelia). Once he suspects that she is complicit in
the corruption around her, he lashes out. Whatever hopes he might have entertain
ed about there being an alternative to the world he sees around him have been di
sappointed; she is part of the problem and must be pushed away. Similarly Rosenc
rantz and Guildenstern, in his view, betray his friendship and thus deserve to b
e dealt with harshly. His rough treatment of his mother, too, may well stem from
a sense that she has collaborated in the murder of his father (he virtually acc
uses her of the deed, although it seems clear to us from her reply that that is
the first she has heard of that matter), and her remarriage is a constant remind
er of the emptiness of promises and honest relationships in the world of the cou
rt.
In this connection, it's worth remarking that Hamlet never finally decides to ki
ll Claudius, formulating a plan and carrying it out. Whatever it is that his ho
lding him back from acting decisively in the political world retains its hold ov
er him until the very end when he learns that his mother is dead and that he has
only a few minutes to live. Then he kills, just as he killed Polonius, with a
spontaneous speed that does not pause to ground itself in reason. What this est
ablishes about the moral quality of the Prince's character, I'm not sure, but it
is a significant fact of the play.
Hamlet as a Death-Infected Source of the Rottenness in Elsinore
A second possibility concerning Hamlet's estrangement from the goings on in Elsi
nore is that the source of the problem is not the corruption in Elsinore but som
e deep inadequacy in Hamlet himself. The world of Elsinore is indeed full of com
promises and evasions and political intrigue. But it is a recognizably normal ad
ult world, and it does possess some important worth in the love of Gertrude and
Claudius, in the respect and popularity of Claudius, in his political effectiven
ess, and perhaps in the loyalty of Polonius to the King and in his concern for h
is own family (even if we find that concern often overly pragmatic and emotional
ly limiting). Hamlet's displacement from that world is thus, not so much an indi
cation of his noble, sympathetic character, as a sign of his emotional or intell
ectual inadequacy. He is, more than anyone else, the source of something rotten
in the state of Denmark.
In exploring this possibility we might like to consider, for example, that Hamle
t is a multiple killer, who takes seven lives for one. He kills without any comp
unction, a response that surprises even Horatio. He has what one critic (Wilson
Knight) has called a "death infected" imagination, always dwelling on the futili
ty, aridity, and pointlessness of life. Far from having an uplifting philosophic
al or poetical nature, he is morbidly obsessed with the fact that he can find no
adequate reason for living in the he world. He is also, in a very real sense, t
he biggest liar in the play. For all his talk of the deceptive world of Elsinore
and the tactics of Polonius, Hamlet himself is always acting, deceiving, lying,
shielding himself from people and using people to promote his own ends. And mos
t significant of all, he has a very warped sense of female sexuality, talking of
it always in gross terms which indicate an enormous disgust. Hamlet's actions a
re destructive of others and ultimately self-destructive. For example, in any co
mparison between Claudius and Hamlet as moral creatures, it would not be hard to
make the case that Claudius is clearly the superior of the two, with a much mor
e intelligent sense of personal responsibility and a searing sense of his own si
nfulness.
This line of interpretation would encourage us to see in Hamlet's cruelty to Oph
elia, to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and to Gertrude the expression of a sensi
bility corrupted by its own inadequate feelings. His disgust for female sexualit
y, for example, would stem from a basic immaturity rather than from a sense of b
etrayal. Hamlet cannot accept that his mother is a creature with an active sexua
l life. And he cannot accept that because he has come to see sexuality as someth
ing depraved, animal like, and disgusting. The response to such feelings is to l
ash out at her verbally and perhaps even physically.
It's particularly interesting that the only other person to talk with such disgu
st about sexuality is the ghost. And if we are interested in the origins of Haml
et's emotionally insecure nature, that scene with his father is of pivotal impor
tance. We know that Hamlet idealizes his father excessively (constantly comparin
g him to a god), and in the similarity of their sentiments on some things and ev
en in their manner of frequently speaking in triplets ("Words, words, words," "R
emember me, remember me, remember me," and so on), there seems to be a strong li
nk between the two, as if to underscore the idea that for the deficiencies of Ha
mlet's character, his father bears a major responsibility.
Those who favour this sense of a significantly corrupting quality in Hamlet's ch
aracter and who wish to link it to his parentage often cite as the "theme" of th
e play a particularly interesting passage which comes just before the appearance
of the ghost:
So oft it canes in particular men
That, for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As in their birth,-- they are not guilty,
Since nature wherein cannot choose his origin.--
By the o'er growth of some complexion,
 Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason,
Or by some habit that too much o'er leavens
The form of plausive manners, that these men
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
Being nature's livery, or fortune's star,
His virtues else--be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo--
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault. The dram of e'il
Doth all the noble substance often dout
To his own scandal.
Enter Ghost (1.4)
Hamlet is here, as usual, making a generalization about human nature or about on
e particular character type. The fact that he makes this speech just before the
encounter with his father would seem to underline the fact that there might be a
vicious mole of nature in the character of Hamlet Senior or Hamlet junior or bo
th (this device of making the speech immediately before the entry of a character
carry a strong ironic implication about that character is very common in Shakes
peare)..
I should mention here that one very important decision one has to make in one's
imaginative interpretation of these two possibilities is Hamlet's age. For that
is going to determine to a large extent whether we see his reaction to Elsinore
as something with which we can readily sympathize or as something fundamentally
immature or emotionally inappropriate. Now, we are told Hamlet's precise age by
the gravedigger, of course, but that piece of specific information is often ove
rlooked in the interests of a particular interpretation. After all, if Hamlet is
, say, eighteen years old, then his disgust with the political world, with its h
ypocrisy and double dealing, with his mother's sexuality and apparent betrayal o
f his father, is much easier to accept as a natural reaction by an intelligent a
nd sensitive personality. If, on the other hand, he is in his mid- thirties then
this response might seem an overreaction, something about which we would expect
someone at that stage of life to have reached a more mature understanding. He m
ight still find it very distasteful, but it would not paralyze his emotional fac
ulties in quite the same way as in an adolescent, unless there were something wr
ong.
The Real Villain: The Condition of the World
A third possibility to account for Hamlet's odd relationship with the court at E
lsinore (there are others), and the one I tend to favour, is that this is a part
icularly bleak play in which all the characters, in one way or another, fail, be
cause in the world of Elsinore there is no possibility for a happy fulfilled lif
e; the conditions of life are loaded against the participants and, in a sense, t
hey are all victims of a world which will just not admit of the possibilities fo
r the good life in any creative and meaningful sense.
I find, for example, that in the world of Elsinore my sympathies are constantly
aroused and then canceled out in various ways. I admire and respect Claudius at
first, I respond with admiration to his evident love and affectionate and courte
ous treatment of Gertrude, but I recognize that he is an evil man, guilty of a h
orrible crime, and then I see him wrestling with an enormous guilt, which is a f
actor only because he is a deeply religious person who believes in his own damna
tion and will not take an easy way out. This is not a simple villain, but a comp
lex human being locked into a situation where there is simply nothing he can do.
Hamlet, similarly, constantly arouses conflicting responses. One of the great at
tractions of this play is the protean quality of the Prince's character. His min
d is always interesting, and his suffering is very genuine. Like Claudius he is
wrestling with the world, and he is not being very successful. He does not see a
ny way out of his distress, and when he reflects on the final meaning of everyth
ing, he can reach no joyful conclusion. All of this makes Hamlet an immensely in
teresting and sympathetic character. On the other hand, he is so often brutal, i
n language and deed, especially to those who love him, he is so deceitful and va
cillating, that again and again I find myself questioning his moral sensitivity.
Gertrude also is in a similar situation. She genuinely loves Hamlet and Claudius
. But the two men in her life are on a downward spiral and so is she. Life is to
o much for her. What she seems to want is something very basic: a happy family.
But life is denying her that, no matter how she tries.
In this play, it doesn't matter how people try to deal with life: they all fail.
Life is too much for them. Whether they embrace the conditions of Elsinore, lik
e Polonius, and seek to operate by the Machiavellian principles of the political
world, or seek for love, like Ophelia or Gertrude, or try to find some intellec
tual understanding of things, like Hamlet, life defeats all of them. They all di
e in the mass killing at the end. The two main survivors, Horatio and Fortinbras
, are interesting exceptions. The first is essentially a spectator of life, a st
udent, perhaps even a Montaigne like figure, a friend of Hamlet but unable to of
fer any useful insights into what might be done and someone who initiates nothin
g. The other is a mindless romantic militarist, who defines his life in terms of
pointless conquests in the name of glory. Life does not seem to trouble him bec
ause he comes across as an unreflecting man who asks nothing of life except that
it provides him with some barren ground which he and his troops can fight over
in the name of military glory.
Who is happy in this play? Who has life figured out? I can see only one characte
r leading a fully realized happy life, and that is the gravedigger. He spends hi
s life surrounded by death, by the disintegrating remains of his friends and com
panions. And what does he do? He sings, he jokes, he turns what he has into a jo
yous acceptance of the world. He is the only person in the play with a creative
sense of humour, using language and wit, not to protect himself from encounters
with life but to transform the horror of his surrounding into an affirming human
experience. It's important to note that his humour is quite different from Haml
et's. The latter is essentially a rhetorical defense, often bitter and caustic,
an expression of an unwillingness to engage the world. The gravedigger's humour,
by contrast, is affirming and transforming, something playful, healthy, and cre
ative. I don't think it's an accident that the gravedigger is the only person wh
ose humour is clearly superior to Hamlet's. But he is only a gravedigger, and hi
s spirit is entirely absent from the court.
When Fortinbras takes over Elsinore at the end of the play, what has been resolv
ed? What sense of moral order does he bring with him? None whatsoever. This is a
world which does not admit complex, peaceful, and satisfying visions of the goo
d life. It answers only to the realities of military power. And those who try to
demand more from life, as Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, Opheila, and Polonius do,
end up destroying each other and becoming victims in their turn.
I sense that Fortinbras's triumphant entry at the end is a reassertion of the wo
rld of Hamlet Senior, who was, we know, also a warrior who devoted his life to m
ilitary glories. My own sense of the ghost is that Hamlet Senior was something o
f a nasty piece of work--an egocentric, hard, and unforgiving misogynist--succes
sful in the very narrow terms of this armour-plated world, which has little room
in it for love, understanding, forgiveness, or anything but those pointless pow
er exercises which increased his own glory. Once I have seen Hamlet Senior and h
eard him talk, I have immense sympathy for Gertrude and no difficulty at all in
understanding how she could really love a man like Claudius. It also makes very
suspect the extraordinarily idealized vision of the dead king which Hamlet carri
es around. The fact that Hamlet Senior is consistently motivated more by a desir
e to hurt Gertrude for loving another man than to avenge his own murder simply c
onfirms in my mind the overwhelmingly hard egocentricity and misogyny of the fam
ous king.
It may well be that Hamlet's distress stems, in large part, from a desire to see
his father in an idealized light when part of him knows well enough that that's
a fiction. As an obedient son, he wants to carry out the old warrior's commands
; he is desperate to follow his father's wishes. But that requires him to see hi
s mother as the guilty party, and part of him surely knows that the moral balanc
e of his parents' marriage was not that simple. That's why he just will not list
en to his mother. He will lecture her, but he doesn't give her much of a chance
to reply. If he starts to listen to her, he is going to have to rethink entirel
y his relationship with his father.
The one moment, in my view a decisively significant one, when Gertrude almost ge
ts a chance to answer Hamlet's suspicions comes in 3.4, her bedroom, when his ag
gressive verbal attack on her drives her to shout "No more." I sense here that t
here's only one place for this conversation to go, that is, Gertrude will reply
to Hamlet's charges with some important confessions about her past life, some tr
uths about herself and Hamlet's father. This does not happen, of course, because
the ghost enters at ends that part of the conversation.
There are two things about this entry of the ghost of Hamlet Senior I find intri
guing (apart from the timing of his entrance). The first is that Gertrude cannot
see him. How are we to interpret this point? My assumption is that the Ghost ha
s some control over who sees him and who doesn't, and for some reason he does no
t want to confront his wife in their old bedroom. The second point is the stage
direction, "in his nightgown." The authority of this stage direction is disputab
le, but I find it a fertile suggestion. He has abandoned his armour, the symbol
of his warrior status, and is now dressed for bed. But he is not going to face h
is wife, let her see him and exchange words with her. Perhaps this is a place wh
ere he knows his authority is suspect, where he has failed. And he certainly do
es not want some revelation of his relationship with Gertrude to be given to his
son Hamlet, the agent (let us remember) of his revenge. It's important, at thi
s point, to recall that the Ghost also wants revenge against Gertrude. He may t
ell Hamlet not to harm his mother, but he also makes it clear that, as a result
of the revenge against Claudius, Gertrude will have to sleep alone or, to use th
e Ghost's own language, that the only "prick in her bed" will be her conscience.
Why then has he come? The reason is clear. He wants to stop the conversation bet
ween Hamlet and Gertrude and get Hamlet back on the focused track of revenge. An
d his intervention is effective. Gertrude loses her growing emotional intensity
(a quality which might well have led her, as I say, to answer Hamlet with some t
elling indication of her past life), and for most of the rest of the scene lets
Hamlet do the talking.
I often wonder what might have happened (a fruitless but intriguing exercise) if
Hamlet and Gertrude had been allowed to have a real conversation where Gertrude
really confronted her son with the truth of her feelings about Hamlet Senior an
d Claudius, where she had at least once tried to make him see her side of the st
ory and where Hamlet actually listened carefully. The fact that the Ghost makes
sure that doesn't happen suggests to me that the results would not have been par
ticularly flattering to him and might have acquainted Hamlet with some facts of
life which would have made the revenge impossible.
My own view is that the ghost of Hamlet Senior and what that symbolizes are, mor
e than anything else, responsible for the conditions in Elsinore and for the cli
mate which makes everyone in this play a victim. Claudius and Gertrude tried to
create a different form of life, Hamlet tries to sort out just where one might f
ind a different form of life, but the ghost is ultimately too much for them. Ham
let Senior, together with his reincarnation in Fortinbras, is the spirit of the
world, and Hamlet's suspicions were right: the Ghost comes from the Devil, who i
s responsible for the world of Elsinore against which no one can struggle succes
sfully.
I'm not suggesting that this particular reading of the play is especially privil
eged over any other. As I have said repeatedly, this is a very complex and ambig
uous work which admits of many possibilities. But I like this third main possibi
lity because it answers to my immediate response to the play, that combination o
f sympathy and distaste which every main character in it elicits from me, the se
nse that they are all in the grip of something which they cannot fully understan
d or fight successfully against. That interpretation makes this play a particula
rly bitter and despairing vision of life, without the potential affirmations of
traditional comedy or tragedy. But for me it makes the best sense of the puzzlin
g ambiguities at the heart of our most elusive literary work.
One Postscript: A Caveat
The view sketched out above sees the Ghost as a (perhaps the) key to understandi
ng a great deal of what matters in this play. In dealing with this character, o
ne has to be careful about appeals to context, explaining away the complexities
by references to James I's interest in the supernatural or to what people in Sha
kespeare's time believed, and so on. Such appeals can be used to prove almost a
nything about the Ghost, as William Empson reminds us:
The official Protestant position was that all apparent Ghosts are devils try
ing to instigate sin; also that Purgatory does not exist, so that this Ghost in
saying it has come from Purgatory must be lying. . . . From the point of view of
James I, as I understand, any usurper once legally crowned had the Divine Right
, and only a devil could supernaturally encourage murder of him. ("Hamlet" in Es
says on Shakespeare, Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 111)]
This may be true enough, but we have no idea whether Shakespeare subscribed to s
uch a view or whether his audience were all orthodox. Nowadays, of course, we h
ave a different "official" view of witches, ghosts, and devils, but that doesn't
stop artists from using them very successfully in fiction or the audience from
entering fully into the world of that fiction. The challenge in Hamlet (as in a
ll of the plays) is to let one's understanding of the character arise from the d
etails of the text, not to make up one's mind and then impose that view upon the
text with some contextual reinforcement. What matters is not the Jacobean view
of the supernatural but our response to this Ghost as a dramatic character.
2)by coleridge
["Hamlet" was the play, or rather Hamlet himself was the character, in the intui
tion and exposition of which I first made my turn for philosophical criticism, a
nd especially for insight into the genius of Shakspere, noticed. This happened f
irst amongst my acquaintances, as Sir George Beaumont will bear witness; and sub
sequently, long before 1 Schlegel had delivered at Vienna the lectures on Shak
spere, which he afterwards published, I had given on the same subject eighteen l
ectures substantially the same, proceeding from the very same point of view, and
deducing the same conclusions, so far as I either then agreed, or now agree, wi
th him. I gave these lectures at the Royal Institution before six or seven hundr
ed auditors of rank and eminence, in the spring of the same year, in which Sir H
umphry Davy, a fellow-lecturer, made his great revolutionary discoveries in chem
istry. Even in detail the coincidence of Schlegel with my lectures was so extrao
rdinary, that all who at a later period2 heard the same words, taken by me fro
m my notes [343] of the lectures at the Royal Institution, concluded a borrowing
on my part form Schlegel. Mr. Hazlitt, whose hatred of me is in such an inverse
ratio to my zealous kindness towards him, as to be defended by his warmest admi
rer, Charles Lamb - (who, God bless him! besides his characteristic obstinacy of
adherence to old friends, as long at least as they are at all down in the world
, is linked as by a charm to Hazlitt's conversation) - only as "frantic;" - Mr.
Hazlitt, I say, himself replied to an assertion of my plagiarism from Schlegel i
n these words; - "That is a lie; for I myself heard the very same character of H
amlet from Coleridge before he went to Germany, and when he had neither read nor
could read a page of German!" Now Hazlitt was on a visit to me at my cottage at
Nether Stowey, Somerset, in the summer of the year 1798, in the September of wh
ich year I first was out of sight of the shores of Great Britain. Recorded by me
, S.T. Coleridge, 7th January, 1819.]
The seeming inconsistencies in the conduct and character of Hamlet have long exe
rcised the conjectural ingenuity of critics; and, as we are always loth to suppo
se that the cause of defective apprehension is in ourselves, the mystery has bee
n too commonly explained by the very easy process of setting it down as in fact
inexplicable, and by resolving the phenomenon into a misgrowth or lusus of the c
apricious and irregular genius of Shakspere. The shallow and stupid arrogance of
these vulgar and indolent decisions I would fain do my best to expose. I believ
e the character of Hamlet may be traced to Shakspere's deep and accurate science
in mental philosophy. Indeed, that this character must have some connection wit
h the common fundamental laws of our nature may be assumed from the fact, that H
amlet has been the darling of every country in which the literature of England h
as been fostered. In order to understand him, it is essential that we should ref
lect on the constitution of our own minds. Man is distinguished from the brute a
nimals in proportion as thought prevails over sense : but in the healthy process
es of the mind, a balance is constantly maintained between the impressions from
outward [344] objects and the inward operations of the intellect; - for if there
be an overbalance in the contemplative faculty, man thereby becomes the creatur
e of mere meditation, and loses his natural power of action. Now one of Shaksper
e's modes of creating characters is, to conceive any one intellectual or moral f
aculty in morbid excess, and then to place himself, Shakspere, thus mutilated or
diseased, under given circumstances. In Hamlet he seems to have wished to exemp
lify the moral necessity of a due balance between our attention to the objects o
f our senses, and our meditation on the workings of our minds, - an equilibrium
between the real and the imaginary worlds. In Hamlet this balance is disturbed :
his thoughts, and the images of his fancy, are far more vivid than his actual p
erceptions, and his very perceptions, instantly passing through the medium of hi
s contemplations, acquire, as they pass, a form and a colour not naturally their
own. Hence we see a great, an almost enormous, intellectual activity, and a pro
portionate aversion to real action consequent upon it, with all its symptoms and
accompanying qualities. This character Shakspere places in circumstances, under
which it is obliged to act on the spur of the moment :- Hamlet is brave and car
eless of death; but he vacillates from sensibility, and procrastinates from thou
ght, and loses the power of action in the energy of resolve. Thus it is that thi
s tragedy presents a direct contrast to that of "Macbeth;" the one proceeds with
the utmost slowness, the other with a crowded and breathless rapidity.
The effect of this overbalance of the imaginative power is beautifully illustrat
ed in the everlasting broodings and superfluous activities of Hamlet's mind, whi
ch, unseated from its healthy relation, is constantly occupied with the world wi
thin, and abstracted from the world without, - giving substance to shadows, and
throwing a mist over all common-place actualities. It is the nature of thought t
o [345] be indefinite; - definiteness belongs to external imagery alone. Hence i
t is that the sense of sublimity arises, not from the sight of an outward object
, but from the beholder's reflection upon it; - not from the sensuous impression
, but from the imaginative reflex. Few have seen a celebrated waterfall without
feeling something akin to disappointment : it is only subsequently that the imag
e comes back full into the mind, and brings with it a train of grand or beautifu
l associations. Hamlet feels this; his senses are in a state of trance, and he l
ooks upon external things as hieroglyphics. His soliloquy -
 "O! that this too too solid flesh would melt," &c.
springs from that craving after the indefinite - for that which is not - which m
ost easily besets men of genius; and the self-delusion common to this temper of
mind is finely exemplified in the character which Hamlet gives of himself :-
"It cannot be
But I am chicken liver'd, and lack gall
To make oppression bitter."
He mistakes the seeing his chains for the breaking them, delays action till acti
on is of no use, and dies the victim of mere circumstance and accident.
There is a great significancy in the names of Shakspere's plays. In the "Twelfth
Night," "Midsummer Night's Dream," "As You Like It," and "Winter's Tale," the t
otal effect is produced by a co-ordination of the characters as in a wreath of f
lowers. But in "Coriolanus," "Lear," "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet," "Othello," &c
., the effect arises from the subordination of all to one, either as the promine
nt person, or the principal object. "Cymbeline" is the only exception; and even
that has its advantages in preparing the audience for the chaos of time, place,
and [346] costume, by throwing the date back into a fabulous king's reign.
But as of more importance, so more striking, is the judgment displayed by our tr
uly dramatic poet, as well as the poet of the drama, in the management of his fi
rst scenes. With the single exception of "Cymbeline," they either place before u
s at one glance both the past and the future in some effect, which implies the c
ontinuance and full agency of its cause, as in the feuds and party-spirit of the
servants of the two houses in the first scene of "Romeo and Juliet;" or in the
degrading passion for shows and public spectacles, and the overwhelming attachme
nt for the newest successful war-chief in the Roman people, already become a pop
ulace, contrasted with the jealousy of the nobles in "Julius Cæsar;" - or they at
once commence the action so as to excite a curiosity for the explanation in the
following scenes, as in the storm of wind and waves, and the boatswain in the "T
empest," instead of anticipating our curiosity, as in most other first scenes, a
nd in too many other first acts; - or they act, by contrast of diction suited to
the characters, at once to heighten the effect, and yet to give a naturalness t
o the language and rhythm of the principal personages, either as that of Prosper
o and Miranda by the appropriate lowness of the style, - or as in "King John," b
y the equally appropriate stateliness of official harangues or narratives, so th
at the after blank verse seems to belong to the rank and quality of the speakers
, and not to the poet; - or they strike at once the key-note, and give the predo
minant spirit of the play, as in the "Twelfth Night," and in "Macbeth;" - or fin
ally, the first scene comprises all these advantages at once, as in "Hamlet."
Compare the easy language of common life, in which this drama commences, with th
e direful music and wild wayward rhythm and abrupt lyrics of the opening of [347
] "Macbeth." The tone is quite familiar; - there is no poetic description of nig
ht, no elaborate information conveyed by one speaker to another of what both had
immediately before their senses - (such as the first distich in Addison's "Cato
,"3 which is a translation into poetry of "Past four o'clock and a dark morning!
"); - and yet nothing bordering on the comic on the one hand, nor any striving o
f the intellect on the other. It is precisely the language of sensation among me
n who feared no charge of effeminacy, for feeling what they had no want of resol
ution to bear. Yet the armour, the dead silence, the watchfulness that first int
errupts it, the welcome relief of the guard, the cold, the broken expressions of
compelled attention to bodily feelings still under control - all excellently ac
cord with, and prepare for, the after gradual rise into tragedy; - but, above al
l, into a tragedy, the interest of which is as eminently ad et apud intra, as th
at of "Macbeth" is directly ad extra.
In all the best attested stories of ghosts and visions, as in that of Brutus, of
Archbishop Cranmer, that of Benvenuto Cellini recorded by himself, and the visi
on of Galileo communicated by him to his favourite pupil Torricelli, the ghost-s
eers were in a state of cold or chilling damp from without, and of anxiety inwar
dly. It has been with all of them as with Francisco on his guard, - alone, in th
e depth and silence of the night; - "'twas bitter cold, and they were sick at he
art, and not a mouse stirring." The attention to minute sounds, - naturally asso
ciated with the recollection of minute objects, and the more familiar and trifli
ng, the more impressive from the unusualness of their producing any impression a
t all - gives a philosophic pertinency [348] to this last image; but it has like
wise its dramatic use and purpose. For its commonness in ordinary conversation t
ends to produce the sense of reality, and at once hides the poet, and yet approx
imates the reader or spectator to that state in which the highest poetry will ap
pear, and in its component parts, though not in the whole composition, really is
, the language of nature. If I should not speak it, I feel that I should be thin
king it; - the voice only is the poet's, - the words are my own. That Shakspere
meant to put an effect in the actor's power in the very first words - "Who's the
re?" - is evident from the impatience expressed by the startled Francisco in the
words that follow - "Nay, answer me : stand and unfold yourself." A brave man i
s never so peremptory, as when he fears that he is afraid. Observe the gradual t
ransition from the silence and the still recent habit of listening in Francisco'
s - "I think I hear them" - to the more cheerful call out, which a good actor wo
uld observe, in the - "Stand ho! Who is there?" Bernardo's inquiry after Horatio
, and the repetition of his name and in his own presence, indicate a respect or
an eagerness that implies him as one of the persons who are in the foreground; a
nd the scepticism attributed to him, -
"Horatio says, 'tis but our fantasy;
And will not let belief take hold of him -"
prepares us for Hamlet's after eulogy on him as one whose blood and judgment wer
e happily commingled. The actor should also be careful to distinguish the expect
ation and gladness of Bernardo's "Welcome, Horatio!" form the mere courtesy of h
is "Welcome, good Marcellus!"
Now observe the admirable indefiniteness of the first opening out of the occasio
n of all this anxiety. The preparation informative of the audience is just as mu
ch as was precisely necessary, and no more; - it begins with the uncertainty app
ertaining to a question : -
[349] "Mar. What, has this thing appear'd again to-night? -"
Even the word "again" has its credibilizing effect. Then Horatio, the representa
tive of the ignorance of the audience, not himself, but by Marcellus to Bernardo
, anticipates the common solution - "'tis but our fantasy!" upon which Marcellus
rises into
"This dreaded sight, twice seen of us -"
which immediately afterwards becomes "this apparition," and that, too, an intell
igent spirit, that is, to be spoken to! Then comes the confirmation of Horatio's
disbelief; -
"Tush! tush! 'twill not appear! -"
and the silence, with which the scene opened, is again restored in the shivering
feeling of Horatio sitting down, at such a time, and with the two eye-witnesses
, to hear a story of a ghost, and that, too, of a ghost which had appeared twice
before at the very same hour. In the deep feeling which Bernardo has of the sol
emn nature of what he is about to relate, he makes an effort to master his own i
maginative terrors by an elevation of style, - itself a continuation of the effo
rt, - and by turning off from the apparition, as from something which would forc
e him too deeply into himself, to the outward objects, the realities of nature,
which had accompanied it : -
"Ber. Last night of all,
When yon same star, that's westward from the pole,
Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
The bell then beating one -"
This passage seems to contradict the critical law that what is told, makes a fai
nt impression compared with what is beholden; for it does indeed convey to the m
ind more than the eye can see; whilst the interruption of the narrative at the v
ery moment, when we are most intensely [350] listening for the sequel, and have
our thoughts diverted from the dreaded sight in expectation of the desired, yet
almost dreaded, tale - this gives all the suddenness and surprise of the origina
l appearance; -
"Mar. Peace, break thee off; look where it comes again! -"
Note the judgment displayed in having the two persons present, who, as having se
en the Ghost before, are naturally eager in confirming their former opinions, -
whilst the sceptic is silent, and after having been twice addressed by his frien
ds, answers with two hasty syllables - "Most like," - and a confession of horror
:
"- It harrows me with fear and wonder."
O heaven! words are wasted on those who feel, and to those who do not feel the e
xquisite judgment of Shakspere in this scene, what can be said? - Hume himself c
ould not but have had faith in this Ghost dramatically, let his anti-ghostism ha
ve been as strong as Samson against other ghosts less powerfully raised.
Act i. sc. 1.
"Mar. Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
Why this same strict and most observant watch," &c.
How delightfully natural is the transition to the retrospective narrative! And o
bserve, upon the Ghost's reappearance, how much Horatio's courage is increased b
y having translated the late individual spectator into general thought and past
experience, - and the sympathy of Marcellus and Bernardo with his patriotic surm
ises in daring to strike at the Ghost; whilst in a moment, upon its vanishing, t
he former solemn awe-stricken feeling returns upon them :-
"We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence. -"
Ib. Horatio's speech :-
[351] "I have heard,
The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day," &c.
No Addison could be more careful to be poetical in diction than Shakspere in pro
viding the grounds and sources of its propriety. But how to elevate a thing almo
st mean by its familiarity, young poets may learn in this treatment of the cock-
crow.
Ib. Horatio's speech : -
"And, by my advice,
Let us impart what we have seen to-night
Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life,
The4 spirit , dumb to us, will speak to him."
Note the inobtrusive and yet fully adequate mode of introducing the main charact
er, "young Hamlet," upon whom is transferred all the interest excited for the ac
ts and concerns of the king his father.
Ib. sc. 2. The audience are now relieved by a change of scene to the royal court
, in order that "Hamlet" may not have to take up the leavings of exhaustion. In
the king's speech, observe the set and pedantically antithetic form of the sente
nces when touching that which galled the heels of conscience, - the strain of un
dignified rhetoric, - and yet in what follows concerning the public weal, a cert
ain appropriate majesty. Indeed was he not a royal brother? -
Ib. King's speech :-
"And now, Laertes, what's the news with you?" &c.
Thus with great art Shakspere introduces a most important, but still subordinate
character first, Laertes, who is yet thus graciously treated in consequence of
the assistance [352] given to the election of the late king's brother instead of
his son by Polonius.
Ib.
"Ham. A little more than kin, and less than kind.
King. How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
Ham. Not so, my lord, I am too much i' the sun."
Hamlet opens his mouth with a playing on words, the complete absence of which th
roughout characterizes "Macbeth." This playing on words may be attributed to man
y causes or motives, as either an exuberant activity of mind, as in the higher c
omedy of Shakspere generally; - or to an imitation of it as a mere fashion, as i
f it were said - "Is not this better than groaning?" - or to a contemptuous exul
tation in minds vulgarized and overset by their success, as in the poetic instan
ce of Milton's Devils in the battle; - or it is the language of resentment, as i
s familiar to every one who has witnessed the quarrels of the lower orders, wher
e there is invariably a profusion of punning invective, whence, perhaps, nicknam
es have in a considerable degree sprung up; - or it is the language of suppresse
d passion, and especially of a hardly smothered personal dislike. The first, and
last of these combine in Hamlet's case; and I have little doubt that Farmer is
right in supposing the equivocation carried on in the expression "too much i' th
e sun," or son.
Ib.
"Ham. Ay, madam, it is common."
Here observe Hamlet's delicacy to his mother, and how the suppression prepares h
im for the overflow in the next speech, in which his character is more developed
by bringing forward his aversion to externals, and which betrays his habit of b
rooding over the world within him, coupled with a prodigality of beautiful words
, which are the half embodyings of thought, and are more than thought, and [353]
have an outness, a reality sui generis, and yet retain their correspondence and
 shadowy affinity to the images and movements within. Note also Hamlet's silence
to the long speech of the king which follows, and his respectful, but general,
answer to his mother.
Ib. Hamlet's first soliloquy :-
"O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!" &c.
This tædium vitæ is a common oppression on minds cast in the Hamlet mould, and is ca
used by disproportionate mental exertion, which necessitates exhaustion of bodil
y feeling. Where there is a just coincidence of external and internal action, pl
easure is always the result; but where the former is deficient, and the mind's a
ppetency of the ideal is unchecked, realities will seem cold and unmoving. In su
ch cases, passion combines itself with the indefinite alone. In this mood of his
mind the relation of the appearance of his father's spirit in arms is made all
at once to Hamlet : - it is - Horatio's speech, in particular - a perfect model
of the true style of dramatic narrative; - the purest poetry, and yet in the mos
t natural language, equally remote from the ink-horn and the plough.
Ib. sc. 3. This scene must be regarded as one of Shakspere's lyric movements in
the play, and the skill with which it is interwoven with the dramatic parts is p
eculiarly an excellence of our poet. You experience the sensation of a pause wit
hout the sense of a stop. You will observe in Ophelia's short and general answer
to the long speech of Laertes the natural carelessness of innocence, which cann
ot think such a code of cautions and prudences necessary to its own preservation
.
Ib. Speech of Polonius :- (in Stockdale's edition.)
[354] "Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,)
Wronging it thus, you'll tender me a fool."
I suspect this "wronging" is here used much in the same sense as "wringing" or "
wrenching;" and that the parenthesis should be extended to "thus". 5
Ib. Speech of Polonius:-
"- How prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows :- these blazes, daughter," &c.
A spondee has, I doubt not, dropped out of the text. Either insert "Go to" after
"vows;" -
"Lends the tongue vows:- Go to, these blazes, daughter -"
or read
"Lends the tongue vows:- These blazes, daughter, mark you -"
Shakspere never introduces a catalectic line without intending an equivalent to
the foot omitted in the pauses, or the dwelling emphasis, or the diffused retard
ation. I do not, however, deny that a good actor might, by employing the last me
ntioned means, namely, the retardation, or solemn knowing drawl, supply the miss
ing spondee with good effect. But I do not believe that in this or any other of
the foregoing speeches of Polonius, Shakspere meant to bring out the senility or
weakness of that personage's mind. In the great ever-recurring dangers and duti
es of life, where to distinguish the fit objects for the application of the maxi
ms collected by the experience of a long life, requires no fineness of tact, as
in the admonitions to his son and daughter, Polonius is uniformly made respectab
le. But if an actor were even capable of catching these shades in the character,
the pit and the gallery would be malcontent at their exhibition. It is to Hamle
t that Polonius is, and is meant to be, contemptible, because in inwardness and
uncontrollable activity of movement, Hamlet's [355] mind is the logical contrary
to that of Polonius, and besides, as I have observed before, Hamlet dislikes th
e man, as false to his true allegiance in the matter of the succession to the cr
own.
Ib. sc. 4. The unimportant conversation with which this scene opens is a proof o
f Shakspere's minute knowledge of human nature. It is a well established fact, t
hat on the brink of any serious enterprise, or event of moment, men almost invar
iably endeavour to elude the pressure of their own thoughts by turning aside to
trivial objects and familiar circumstances: thus this dialogue on the platform b
egins with remarks on the coldness of the air, and inquiries, obliquely connecte
d, indeed, with the expected hour of the visitation, but thrown out in a seeming
vacuity of topics, as to the striking of the clock and so forth. The same desir
e to escape from the impending thought is carried on in Hamlet's account of, and
moralizing on, the Danish custom of wassailing: he runs off from the particular
to the universal, and, in his repugnance to personal and individual concerns, e
scapes, as it were, from himself in generalizations, and smothers the impatience
and uneasy feelings of the moment in abstract reasoning. Besides this, another
purpose is answered; - for by thus entangling the attention of the audience in t
he nice distinctions and parenthetical sentences of this speech of Hamlet's, Sha
kspere takes them completely by surprise on the appearance of the Ghost, which c
omes upon them in all the suddenness of its visionary character. Indeed, no mode
rn writer would have dared, like Shakspere, to have preceded this last visitatio
n by two distinct appearances, - or could have contrived that the third should r
ise upon the former two in impressiveness and solemnity of interest.
But in addition to all the other excellencies of Hamlet's speech concerning the
wassail-music - so finely revealing the predominant idealism, the ratiocinative
meditativeness, [356] of his character - it has the advantage of giving nature a
nd probability to the impassioned continuity of the speech instantly directed to
the Ghost. The momentum had been given to his mental activity; the full current
of the thoughts and words had set in, and the very forgetfulness, in the fervou
r of his argumentation, of the purpose for which he was there, aided in preventi
ng the appearance from benumbing the mind. Consequently, it acted as a new impul
se, - a sudden stroke which increased the velocity of the body already in motion
, whilst it altered the direction. The co-presence of Horatio, Marcellus and Ber
nardo is most judiciously contrived; for it renders the courage of Hamlet and hi
s impetuous eloquence perfectly intelligible. The knowledge, - the unthought of
consciousness, - the sensation, - of human auditors, - of flesh and blood sympat
hists - acts as a support and a stimulation a tergo, while the front of the mind
, the whole consciousness of the speaker, is filled, yea, absorbed, by the appar
ition. Add too, that the apparition itself has by its previous appearances been
brought nearer to a thing of this world. This accrescence of objectivity in a Gh
ost that yet retains all its ghostly attributes and fearful subjectivity, is tru
ly wonderful.
Ib. sc. 5. Hamlet's speech:-
"O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?
And shall I couple hell? -"
I remember nothing equal to this burst unless it be the first speech of Promethe
us in the Greek drama, after the exit of Vulcan and the two Afrites. But Shakspe
re alone could have produced the vow of Hamlet to make his memory a blank of all
maxims and generalized truths, that "observation had copied there," - followed
immediately by the speaker noting down the generalized fact,
 "That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain!"
[357] Ib.
"Mar. Hillo, ho, ho, my lord!
Ham. Hillo, ho, ho, boy! come bird, come," &c.
This part of the scene after Hamlet's interview with the Ghost has been charged
with an improbable eccentricity. But the truth is, that after the mind has been
stretched beyond its usual pitch and tone, it must either sink into exhaustion a
nd inanity, or seek relief by change. It is thus well known that persons convers
ant in deeds of cruelty, contrive to escape from conscience, by connecting somet
hing of the ludicrous with them, and by inventing grotesque terms and a certain
technical phraseology to disguise the horror of their practices. Indeed, paradox
ical as it may appear, the terrible by a law of the human mind always touches on
the verge of the ludicrous. Both arise from the perception of something out of
the common order of things - something, in fact, out of its place; and if from t
his we can abstract danger, the uncommonness will alone remain, and the sense of
the ridiculous be excited. The close alliance of these opposites - they are not
contraries - appears from the circumstance, that laughter is equally the expres
sion of extreme anguish and horror as of joy: as there are tears of sorrow and t
ears of joy, so is there a laugh of terror and a laugh of merriment. These compl
ex causes will naturally have produced in Hamlet the disposition to escape from
his own feelings of the overwhelming and supernatural by a wild transition to th
e ludicrous, 6 - a sort of cunning bravado, bordering on the flights of delirium
. For you may, perhaps, observe that Hamlet's [358] wildness is but half false;
he plays that subtle trick of pretending to act only when he is very near really
being what he acts.
The subterraneous speeches of the Ghost are hardly defensible:- but I would call
your attention to the characteristic difference between this Ghost, as a supers
tition connected with the most mysterious truths of revealed religion, - and Sha
kspere's constant reverence in his treatment of it, - and the foul earthly witch
eries and wild language in "Macbeth".
Act ii. sc. 1. Polonius and Reynaldo.
In all things dependent on, or rather made up of, fine address, the manner is no
more or otherwise rememberable than the light motions, steps, and gestures of y
outh and health. But this is almost everything: - no wonder, therefore, if that
which can be put down by rule in the memory should appear to us as mere poring,
maudlin, cunning, - slyness blinking through the watery eye of superannuation. S
o in this admirable scene, Polonius, who is throughout the skeleton of his own f
ormer skill and statecraft, hunts the trail of policy at a dead scent, supplied
by the weak fever-smell in his own nostrils.
Ib. sc. 2. Speech of Polonius: -
"My liege, and madam, to expostulate," &c.
Warburton's note:
"Then as to the jingles, and play on words, let us but look into the sermons
of Dr. Donne (the wittiest man of that age),
and we shall find them full of this vein."
I have, and that most carefully, read Dr. Donne's sermons, and find none of thes
e jingles. The great art of an orator - to make whatever he talks of appear of i
mportance - this, indeed, Donne has effected with consummate skill.
[359] Ib.
"Ham. Excellent well;
You are a fishmonger."
That is, you are sent to fish out this secret. This is Hamlet's own meaning.
Ib.
"Ham. For if the sun breeds maggots in a dead dog,
Being a god, kissing carrion -"
These purposely obscure lines, I rather think, refer to some thought in Hamlet's
mind, contrasting the lovely daughter with such a tedious old fool, her father,
as he, Hamlet, represents Polonius to himself: - "Why, fool as he is, he is som
e degrees in rank above a dead dog's carcase; and if the sun, being a god that k
isses carrion, can raise life out of a dead dog, - why may not good fortune, tha
t favours fools, have raised a lovely girl out of this dead-alive old fool?" War
burton is often led astray, in his interpretations, by his attention to general
positions without the due Shakespearian reference to what is probably passing in
the mind of his speaker, characteristic, and expository of his particular chara
cter and present mood. The subsequent passage, -
"O Jephtha, judge of Israel! what a treasure hadst thou!"
is confirmatory of my view of these lines.
Ib.
"Ham. You cannot, Sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part
withal;
except my life, except my life, except my life."
This repetition strikes me as most admirable.
Ib.
"Ham. Then are our beggars, bodies; and our monarchs, and outstretched heroe
s, the beggars' shadows."
I do not understand this; and Shakspere seems to have [360] intended the meaning
not to be more than snatched at : "By my fay, I cannot reason!"
Ib.
"The rugged Pyrrhus - he whose sable arms," &c.
This admirable substitution of the epic for the dramatic, giving such a reality
to the impassioned dramatic diction of Shakspere's own dialogue, and authorized,
too, by the actual style of the tragedies before his time ("Porrex and Ferrex",
7 "Titus Andronicus," &c.) - is well worthy of notice. The fancy, that a burles
que was intended, sinks below criticism: the lines, as epic narrative, are super
b.
In the thoughts, and even in the separate parts of the diction, this description
is highly poetical: in truth, taken by itself, this is its fault that it is too
poetical! - the language of the lyric vehemence and epic pomp, and not of the d
rama. But if Shakspere had made the diction truly dramatic, where would have bee
n the contrast between "Hamlet" and the play in "Hamlet?"
Ib.
"- had seen the mobled queen," &c.
A mob-cap is still a word in common use for a morning cap, which conceals the wh
ole head of hair, and passes under the chin. It is nearly the same as the night-
cap, that is, it is an imitation of it, so as to answer the purpose ("I am not d
rest for company"), and yet reconciling it with neatness and perfect purity.
Ib. Hamlet's soliloquy:
"O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!" &c.
[361] This is Shakspere's own attestation to the truth of the idea of Hamlet whi
ch I have before put forth.
Ib.
"The spirit that I have seen,
May be a8 devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps
Out of my weakness, and my melancholy,
(As he is very potent with such spirits)
Abuses me to damn me."
See Sir Thomas Brown:
"I believe - that those apparitions and ghosts of departed persons are not t
he wandering souls of men, but the unquiet walks of devils, prompting and sugges
ting us unto mischief, blood and villainy, instilling and stealing into our hear
ts, that the blessed spirits are not at rest in their graves, but wander solicit
ous of the affairs of the world." - Relig. Med. Pt. I. Sect. 37.
Act iii. sc. 1.
"To be, or not to be, that is the question," &c.
This speech is of absolutely universal interest, - and yet to which of all Shaks
pere's characters could it have been appropriately given but to Hamlet? For Jaqu
es it would have been too deep, and for Iago too habitual a communication with t
he heart; which in every man belongs, or ought to belong, to all mankind.
Ib.
"That undiscover'd country, from whose bourne
No traveller returns -"
Theobald's note in defence of the supposed contradiction of this in the appariti
on of the Ghost.
O miserable defender! If it be necessary to remove the apparent contradiction, -
if it be not rather a great beauty, [362] - surely, it were easy to say, that n
o traveller returns to this world, as to his home, or abiding-place.
Ib.
"Ham. Ha, ha! are you honest?
Oph. My lord?
Ham. Are you fair?"
Here it is evident that the penetrating Hamlet perceives, from the strange and f
orced manner of Ophelia, that the sweet girl was not acting a part of her own, b
ut was a decoy; and his after speeches are not so much directed to her as to the
listeners and spies. Such a discovery in a mood so anxious and irritable accoun
ts for a certain harshness in him; - and yet a wild up-working of love, sporting
with opposites in a wilful self-tormenting strain of irony, is perceptible thro
ughout. "I did love you once:" - "I loved you not:" - and particularly in his en
umeration of the faults of the sex from which Ophelia is so free, that the mere
freedom therefrom constitutes her character. Note Shakspere's charm of composing
the female character by the absence of characters, that is, marks and outjuttin
gs.
Ib. Hamlet's speech:-
"I say, we will have no more marriages: those that are married already,
all but one, shall live: the rest shall keep as they are."
Observe this dallying with the inward purpose, characteristic of one who had not
brought his mind to the steady acting point. He would fain sting the uncle's mi
nd;- but to stab his body! - The soliloquy of Ophelia, which follows, is the per
fection of love - so exquisitely unselfish!
Ib. sc. 2. This dialogue of Hamlet with the players is one of the happiest insta
nces of Shakspere's power of diversifying the scene while he is carrying on the
plot.
Ib.
"Ham. My lord, you play'd once i' the university, you say?" ( To Polonius.)
[363] To have kept Hamlet's love for Ophelia before the audience in any direct f
orm, would have made a breach in the unity of the interest;- but yet to the thou
ghtful reader it is suggested by his spite to poor Polonius, whom he cannot let
rest.
Ib. The style of the interlude here is distinguished from the real dialogue by r
hyme, as in the first interview with the players by epic verse.
Ib.
"Ros. My lord, you once did love me.
Ham. So I do still, by these pickers and stealers."
I never heard an actor give this word "so" its proper emphasis. Shakspere's mean
ing is - "loved you? Hum! - so I do still, &c." There has been no change in my o
pinion:- I think as ill of you as I did. Else Hamlet tells an ignoble falsehood,
and a useless one, as the last speech to Guildernstern - "Why, look you now," &
c. - proves.
Ib. Hamlet's soliloquy:-
"Now could I drink hot blood,
And do such business as the bitter day 9
Would quake to look on."
The utmost at which Hamlet arrives, is a disposition, a mood, to do something:-
but what to do, is still left undecided, while every word he utters tends to bet
ray his disguise. Yet observe how perfectly equal to any call of the moment is H
amlet, let it only not be for the future.
Ib. sc. 4. Speech of Polonius. Polonius's volunteer obtrusion of himself into th
is business, while it is appropriate to his character, still itching after forme
r importance, removes all likelihood that Hamlet should suspect his [364] presen
ce, and prevents us from making his death injure Hamlet in our opinion.
Ib. The king's speech:-
"O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven," &c.
This speech well marks the difference between crime and guilt of habit. The cons
cience here is still admitted to audience. Nay, even as an audible soliloquy, it
is far less improbable than is supposed by such as have watched men only in the
beaten road of their feelings. But the final - "all may be well!" is remarkable
;- the degree of merit attributed by the self-flattering soul to its own struggl
e, though baffled, and to the indefinite half-promise, half-command, to persever
e in religious duties. The solution is in the divine medium of the Christian doc
trine of expiation:- not what you have done, but what you must determine.
Ib. Hamlet's speech:-
"Now might I do it, pat, now he is praying:
And now I'll do it:- And so he goes to heaven:
And so am I revenged? That would be scann'd," &c.
Dr. Johnson's mistaking of the marks of reluctance and procrastination for impet
uous, horror-striking fiendishness! - Of such importance is it to understand the
germ of the character. But the interval taken by Hamlet's speech is truly awful
! And then -
"My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts, never to heaven go," -
O what a lesson concerning the essential difference between wishing and willing,
and the folly of all motive-mongering, while the individual self remains!
Ib. sc. 4.
"Ham. A bloody deed;- almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king, and marry with his brother.
Queen. As kill a king?"
[365] I confess that Shakspere has left the character of the Queen in an unpleas
ant perplexity. Was she, or was she not, conscious of the fratricide?
Act iv. sc. 2.
"Ros. Take you me for a spunge, my lord?
Ham. Ay, Sir; that soaks up the King's countenance, his rewards, his authori
ties," &c.
Hamlet's madness is made to consist in the free utterance of all the thoughts th
at had passed through his mind before;- in fact, in telling home-truths.
Act iv. sc. 5. Ophelia's singing. O, note the conjunction here of these two thou
ghts that had never subsisted in disjunction, the love for Hamlet, and her filia
l love, with the guileless floating on the surface of her pure imagination of th
e cautions so lately expressed, and the fears not too delicately avowed, by her
father and brother concerning the dangers to which her honour lay exposed. Thoug
ht, affliction, passion, murder itself - she turns to favour and prettiness. Thi
s play of association is instanced in the close:-
 "My brother shall know of it, and I thank you for your good counsel."
Ib. Gentleman's speech:-
"And as the world were now but to begin,
Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
The ratifiers and props of every ward10 -
They cry," &c.
Fearful and self-suspicious as I always feel, when I seem to see an error of jud
gement in Shakspere, yet I cannot reconcile the cool, and, as Warburton calls it
, "rational and consequential," reflection in these lines with the anonymousness
or the alarm, of this Gentleman or Messenger, as he is called in other editions
.
[366] Ib. King's speech:-
"There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will."
Proof, as indeed all else is, that Shakspere never intended us to see the King w
ith Hamlet's eyes; though, I suspect, the managers have long done so.
Ib. Speech of Laertes:-
"To hell, allegiance! vows to the blackest devil!"
"Laertes is a good character, but," &c. WARBURTON.
Mercy on Warburton's notion of goodness! Please to refer to the seventh scene of
this act;-
"I will do it;
And for this purpose I'll anoint my sword," &c.
uttered by Laertes after the King's description of Hamlet;-
"He being remiss,
Most generous, and free from all contriving,
Will not peruse the foils."
Yet I acknowledge that Shakspere evidently wishes, as much as possible, to spare
the character of Laertes, - to break the extreme turpitude of his consent to be
come an agent and accomplice of the King's treachery;- and to this end he re-int
roduces Ophelia at the close of this scene to afford a probable stimulus of pass
ion in her brother.
Ib. sc. 6. Hamlet's capture by the pirates. This is almost the only play of Shak
spere, in which mere accidents, independent of all will, form an essential part
of the plot, - but here how judiciously in keeping with the character of the ove
r-meditative Hamlet, ever at last determined by accident or by a fit of passion!
Ib. sc. 7. Note how the King first awakens Laertes's vanity by praising the repo
rter, and then gratifies it by the report itself, and finally points it by -
[367] "Sir, this report of his
Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy!" -
Ib. King's speech:
"For goodness, growing to a pleurisy,
Dies in his own too much."
Theobald's note from Warburton, who conjectures "plethory."
I rather think that Shakspere meant "pleurisy," but involved in it the thought o
f plethora, as supposing pleurisy to arise from too much blood; otherwise I cann
ot explain the following line -
"And then this should is like a spendthrift sigh,
That hurts by easing."
In a stitch in the side every one must have heaved a sigh that "hurt by easing."
Since writing the above I feel confirmed that "pleurisy" is the right word; for
I find that in the old medical dictionaries the pleurisy is often called the "pl
ethory."
Ib.
"Queen. Your sister's drown'd, Laertes.
Laer. Drown'd! O, where?"
That Laertes might be excused in some degree for not cooling, the Act concludes
with the affecting death of Ophelia, - who in the beginning lay like a little pr
ojection of land into a lake or stream, covered with spray-flowers quietly refle
cted in the quiet waters, but at length is undermined or loosened, and becomes a
faery isle, and after a brief vagrancy sinks almost without an eddy!
Act v. sc. 1. O, the rich contrast between the Clowns and Hamlet, as two extreme
s! You see in the former the mockery of logic, and a traditional wit valued, lik
e truth, for its antiquity, and treasured up, like a tune, for use.
Ib. sc. 1 and 2. Shakspere seems to mean all Hamlet's [368] character to be brou
ght together before his final disappearance from the scene;- his meditative exce
ss in the grave-digging, his yielding to passion with Laertes, his love for Ophe
lia blazing out, his tendency to generalize on all occasions in the dialogue wit
h Horatio, his fine gentlemanly manners with Osrick, and his and Shakspere's own
fondness for presentiment:
"But thou would'st not think, how ill all's here about my heart: but it is n
o matter."
1 This "long before" must be set down to a little excitement (for more of which,
see succeeding sentence, commencing "Mr. Hazlitt"), if we were right, and there
can be no doubt, in considering Coleridge's first lectures at the Royal Institu
tion, to have been those of 1806-8. See Lectures of 1811-12, Introductory Matter
, § 5. Coleridge's statements vary only in seeming. In the letter of Feb. 1818 (se
e Lecture IX., of 1811-12) he says Schlegel's lectures "were not given orally ti
ll two years after mine." This gives 1806. In the note in the text, "in the spri
ng of the same year," &c. Refers to 1807. But it clearly was "before." Schlegel'
s lectures were delivered at Vienna during the year 1808, and published the year
following. (Volesungen über dramatische Kunst und Literatur, 1809, 3 vols.)
Schlegel was, by five years, Coleridge's senior, having been born in 1767. He wa
s professor at Jena, when Coleridge was in Germany.
2 Coleridge lectured at the Royal Institution in 1810.
3
"The dawn is overcast, the morning lowers,
And heavily in clouds brings on the day,
The great, the important day, big with the fate
Of Cato and of Rome."
4 Read "this."
5 It is so pointed in the modern editions. - H.N.C. As also in the 2nd Quarto, 1
604, which has "wrong," and in the 1st Fol. 1623, which has "roaming." The Globe
Ed. Prints "running."
6 A similar recourse to an antic ludicrousness in Hamlet, as an outlet for over-
excitement, occurs when the king turns sick at the poisoning in the play. This i
nvoluntary evidence of guilt causes Hamlet to exclaim (or to sing, - and we can
almost figure him dancing about),
"For thou must know, O Damon dear," &c.
Act iii. sc. 2.
7 The earliest known English tragedy, "The tragedie of Ferrex and Porrex," acted
"before the Queen's Maiestie" on "the xviij day of Januarie, 1561, by the gentl
emen of the Inner Temple," and first published in 1570.
8 Quarto of 1604, "a deale;" 1st Fol. "the Divell;" Globe Ed. "the devil."
9 So, Quarto of 1604. The 1st Fol and Globe Ed. read
"And do such bitter business as the day."

3)by russell brown

Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedies have had an even more durable life than comed
ies. Especially at the Globe Playhouse, a varied audience crowded to see the ris
e and fall of kings, or the working out of revenge and passion. They watched hor
rific stories concluding with an ultimate test in which the hero, and sometimes
the heroine, faced violence and disaster. Death came in many forms, but always b
rought with it a revaluation of the hero's life as means of support were taken a
way: the individual was separated from his or her fellows, endured loss and esca
lation of pain, and was exposed to intense scrutiny. The audience was invited to
judge the hero's response and ultimate resource. Perhaps these tragedies were s
o popular because they offered audiences an opportunity to assume the role of Go
d, the all-knowing assessor who had long been the exclusive possession of remote
and authoritative clerics: they could watch as man suffers, and so judge his ul
timate worth. In the words of John Webster, writing his first tragedy in 1612 (p
artly in imitation of Shakespeare):
. . . affliction
Expresseth virtue, fully, whether true,
Or else adulterate. (The White Devil I.i.49-51)1
Death brought a final truth-telling. In his second tragedy, a couple of years la
ter, Webster's heroine is told in the very first scene:
. . . believe't
Your darkest actions--nay, your privat'st thoughts--
Will come to light. (The Duchess of Malfi I.i.314-16)2
The coming to light of a man's "privat'st thoughts" is what Shakespeare implied
as he explored the possibilities of tragedy in Julius Caesar, [page 17] a chroni
cle play concluding in numerous deaths, and gave his most thoughtful character w
ords which liken the protagonists to horses who are judged for resources of spir
it in painful trial:
There are no tricks in plain and simple faith;
But hollow men, like horses hot at hand,
Make gallant show and promise of their mettle;
But when they should endure the bloody spur,
They fall their crests, and like deceitful jades
Sink in the trial. (IV.ii.22-27)3
So, later Hamlet moves through the tragedy with a secret within him, and defies
his audience to guess at it. Yet he never seems able to name it, and very rarely
lets "fall his crest." Towards the end of Hamlet, the hero tries to share his o
wn sense that a bloody spur is about to probe to his very "heart":
Thou wouldst not think how ill all's here about my heart; but it is no matte
r. . . . It is but foolery . . . . (V.ii.208-11)4
Earlier he had rounded on Guildenstern who had tried to "sound" him and "pluck o
ut the heart of [his] mystery": "'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played
on than a pipe?" (III.ii.356-57, 360-61). In his first encounter with his mother
, he had warned that nothing external, neither words, nor clothes, nor breath, t
ears, facial expression, "Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief," were
able to "denote" him truly:
These indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play;
But I have that within which passes show--
These but the trappings and the suits of woe. (I.ii.77-86)
Perhaps the probing of a mystery as the hero confronts affliction and death--wit
h a last rush towards understanding and judgment--accounts for the success of al
l these tragedies which have endured into our own days. We are interested in the
hero's inner consciousness at least as keenly as we await the fulfilling of bar
barous revenge, or the overthrow of a monarchical government grown tyrannical, o
r the disappointment [page 18] or satisfaction of love and lust. Hamlet, Lear, O
thello, and Macbeth remain the most performed and studied plays in the history o
f theatre despite the out-dated themes and narratives which are their ostensible
subjects. Should we see them as offering an entrance to the midnight hour when
all men must unmask? At any rate, let us pretend that this is so, and pay partic
ular attention to the final moments of Hamlet. Has Shakespeare provided the mean
s, in words or action, whereby this hero comes, at last, to be "denoted truly"?
* * *
One of the first things which an audience learns about Hamlet--the single figure
dressed in solemn black at a Court festivity--is that he uses words with startl
ing agility. He plays on words that sound alike, or nearly alike:
King. But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son--
Ham. A little more than kin, and less than kind.
King. How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
Ham. Not so, my lord; I am too much in the sun. (I.ii.64-67)
The king withdraws from this exchange, and his mother begins more lovingly, on a
different tack. But still Hamlet takes words that others have used and returns
them changed or challenged:
 Ay, madam, it is common.
. . .
Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not 'seems'. (I.ii.74-76)
Although the prince is speaking in public, he uses verbal rhetorical devices mos
t critics in Shakespeare's day would consider unseemly. Cicero in De oratore (II
.lx ff.) had insisted that wordplay tactlessly handled belonged to buffoons or p
edantic scholars. George Puttenham's The Arte of English Poesie (1589) considere
d:
. . . sentences that hold too much of the mery & light, or infamous & vnsham
efast . . . become not Princes, nor great estates, nor them that write of their
doings . . . .5
[page 19] Ben Jonson, in his Discoveries warned that "we must not play, or riot
too much with [words], as in Paranomasies," but added that there is no sound "bu
t shall find some Lovers, as the bitter'st confections are gratefull to some pal
ats."6
Hamlet's first words are rhetorically complicated, and also challenging and puzz
ling. Does he pretend to be flippant or boorish in order to keep his thoughts to
himself, or to contain his pain? Or does he express rational criticism in savag
ely sarcastic comments spoken only to himself? Or is the energy of his mind such
that he thinks and speaks with instinctive ambiguity? Words are restless within
his mind, changing meaning, shifting form, extending reference, awaking others
close in sound but different in meaning.
This part of Hamlet's character--for ambiguous and complicated speech is a disti
nctive element of the "mind" with which Shakespeare has endowed his hero--this c
haracteristic operates on various levels. We soon see that in private he continu
es to use wordplay as a disguise in which to taunt and trick both adversaries an
d friends, so that he is not fully understood and they are encouraged to disclos
e hidden thoughts:
Pol. Do you know me, my lord?
Ham. Excellent well. You are a fishmonger.
Pol. Not I, my lord.
Ham. Then I would you were so honest a man.
Pol. Honest, my lord?
Ham. Ay sir. To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out o
f ten thousand. . . . (II.ii.173-79)
Fishmongers smell, when among other men; a fishmonger was a name for "fleshmonge
r" or bawd; a fishmonger's wife and daughter were said to breed, fish-like, in g
reat quantity . . . .7 And so, Hamlet's mind runs on to "so honest a man," a wor
d meaning "honourable," or "chaste," or "truthful, genuine."8 "Modesties . . . c
raft . . . colour"; "I know a hawk from a handsaw" (II.ii. 280-79, 375): wordpla
y gallops easily, or abruptly it makes a bold and mocking challenge. Hamlet can
deliver one message and at the same time another contrary one; "if you be honest
and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty (III.i.107-08);
or again, ". . . he may play the fool nowhere but in's own house [page 20] . .
." (III.i.133-34); or again, "The body is with the King, but the King is not wit
h the body. The King is a thing . . . of nothing" (IV.ii.26-29).
Words are wanton in Hamlet's mind, feeding his aggressions and his fears. Someti
mes we get the impression that he is revealing more than he knows, as if his unc
onscious, rather than conscious, mind controls his speech. Why should he punish
Ophelia openly before the actors perform The Mousetrap? Is he looking at his mot
her and step-father all this time, or wanting to do so? Does he want them to hea
r? Or is he forcing himself to be pleasant in public to a girl he distrusts, and
failing so thoroughly to do this that he concludes with talk of churches, hobby
-horses and an epitaph which is puzzling even to himself? His play upon cunt, no
-thing, jig, do, die, hobby-horse (III.ii.115-32) is doubly vulgar: not only a r
un of obtrusive and brutal sexual innuendo, but also an unprincely assumption th
at his predicament is a rite or carnival of common validity. In effect Hamlet is
creating a paronomasia of performance, moving from politeness to brutality; and
it seems to come out almost unbidden.
Even when Hamlet's wordplay is intentional and nicely judged, it is not always c
lear to what purpose he uses it. To confuse or to clarify? Or to control his own
uncensored thoughts? The energy and turmoil of his mind brings words thronging
into speech, stretching, over-turning and amalgamating their implications. Somet
imes Hamlet has to struggle to use the simplest words repeatedly, as he tries to
force meaning to flow in a single channel. To Ophelia, after he has encountered
her in her loneliness, "reading on a book," he repeats five times "Get you to a
nunnery," varying the phrase only by word-order and by changing "get" to "go."
And after he has visited his mother "all alone" in her closet and killed Poloniu
s, after she has begged him to "speak no more" (III.iv.88), and after his father
's ghost has reappeared, Hamlet repeats "Good night" five times, with still fewe
r changes and those among accompanying words only. But, of course, in performanc
e, in the heat of passionate encounter, the effect and meaning of these simple w
ords can change with each repetition. It is an actor's instinct to vary them, us
ing them as rungs of a ladder to grow towards a climactic emotional effect, rath
er than as firm stepping-stones on which to cross an unruly [page 21] river. So
Hamlet seems to be struggling to contain his thoughts even by use of these simpl
e words, rather than enforcing a single and simple message as a first reading of
the text might suggest; and the words come to bear deeper, more ironic or more
blatant meanings.
In soliloquy, Hamlet gives wordplay such scope that we receive an impression of
a mind working simultaneously at different levels of meaning and consciousness.
As soon as he is alone, we hear that he wishes "this too too sullied" (or sallie
d, or solid) "flesh would melt" (I.ii.129?).9 From melt, particularly appropriat
e if linked to solid, Hamlet's mind springs onwards to two other verbs: thaw, br
inging further physical associations of cold and change, and dissolution; then o
n to resolve, with a range of old and new associations--dissolve, melt, inform,
answer, dispel doubt . . . "resolve itself into a dew"--that is something almost
intangible, now; and mysterious; and also, in association with some senses of r
esolve, there is a suggestion of due, with a hint of necessary "payment" or "jud
gment."10 And so Hamlet's mind reaches "the Everlasting" (with a look backward,
perhaps, marking a contrast with that which melts, thaws, and does not last)--th
e powerful, non-fleshly presence who fixes (no melting or resolving now) his can
on (both law and instrument of destruction) against self-slaughter . . . . Hamle
t's mind breeds one meaning out of another, using words in several senses, activ
ating new words so that they interact with each other. The energy of this wordpl
ay is amazing: unsettled, serious, self-lacerating, mocking, self-critical, reck
less; and bringing a sense of victorious and heady achievement as words bend, bu
ckle, extend their meanings, and sharpen their attack.
Even in soliloquy, Hamlet is not always in control. Sometimes he halts momentari
ly, as if alarmed by what he has said:
. . . 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream--ay, there's the rub:
. . . . (III.i.63-65)
Here the thought-process is abrupt and oscillating, so that scarcely any two mod
ern editors punctuate this passage in the same way; many resort [page 22] to das
hes and numerous dots. At other times Hamlet makes a conscious withdrawal, as if
the management of words has tired or perplexed him too painfully:
Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretched heroes the beggar
s' shadows. Shall we to th'court? For by my fay, I cannot reason. (II.ii.263-65)
Farewell, dear mother. . . . Father and mother is man and wife, man and wife
is one flesh; so my mother. Come, for England. Exit. (IV.iii.52, 54-56)
In this second example, Hamlet has rendered the king speechless, but he pursues
him no further, preferring to go off-stage, silent and under guard, to journey t
o England.
Hamlet may be still less in control in the grave-yard, when both he and Laertes
have had to be restrained physically. He tries to use simple words, but then ass
erts "it is no matter" and leaves abruptly with a taunting riddle:
Hear you, sir,
What is the reason that you use me thus?
I lov'd you ever. But it is no matter.
Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew, and dog will have his day. (V.i.283-87)
Much of the dramatic action of this tragedy is within the head of Hamlet, and wo
rdplay represents the amazing, contradictory, unsettled, mocking, fecund nature
of that mind, as it is torn by disappointment and positive love, as Hamlet seeks
both acceptance and punishment, action and stillness, and wishes for consummati
on and annihilation. He can be abruptly silent or vicious; he is capable of wild
laughter and tears, and also polite badinage. The narrative is a kind of myster
y and chase, so that, underneath the various guises of his wordplay, we are made
keenly aware of his inner dissatisfaction, and come to expect some resolution a
t the end of the tragedy, some unambiguous "giving out" which will report Hamlet
and his cause aright to the unsatisfied among [page 23] the audience. Hamlet hi
mself is aware of this expectation as the end approaches, and this still further
whets our anticipation.
* * *
Towards the close, Hamlet has a short exchange alone with Horatio, which seems i
ntended to "set up" the final encounter with Laertes, the Queen, Claudius, and t
he whole Court, and to make absolutely clear the nature of his own involvement.
The passage exists in two good versions; the second Quarto of 1604, and the Foli
o of 1623, which is now thought to represent Shakespeare's revision of the earli
er version.11 This second text adds fourteen lines in which Hamlet seeks to just
ify, as "perfect conscience," his determination to kill Claudius with his own "a
rm"--or rather to "quit" him, which implies repaying as well.12 He then asks whe
ther he would not be "damned" if he did nothing to eradicate "this canker of our
nature" (V.ii.68-70). But even this later addition to the play does not establi
sh a "plain and simple faith."13 We notice that Hamlet expresses himself in rhet
orical questions which seem to qualify his momentary certainty. And only minutes
later, as the last encounter approaches, his reluctance to tell all ("Thou woul
dst not think how ill all's here about my heart; but it is no matter," ll. 208-0
9) and a further intrusion of vigorous and baffling wordplay cloud over these ul
timate issues once more.
Immediately before the King and Queen enter on stage, Hamlet's words, spoken as
he again finds himself alone with Horatio, are so tricky--or perhaps tricksy--th
at they baffled the original compositors of the text and have set modern editors
at variance.14 Neither the Quarto nor Folio makes sense and various emendations
have been proposed. No/knows; has/owes; leave/leaves; ought/all; of what/of oug
ht, all collide and change places with each other in the different versions. Tod
ay a text might read, "Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows aught, what is't
to leave betimes?" or "Since no man of ought he leaves, knows, what is't to leav
e . . .," or ". . . no man owes aught of what he leaves, what is't . . .," or ".
. . no man knows of aught he leaves, what is't . . . ." (Was the speech ever ab
solutely clear in Shakespeare's autograph manuscript, or in his head?) With Haml
et's next words, as trumpet and drums [page 24] announce the King's arrival, the
play's hero contrives yet another avoidance-tactic, refusing to talk further wi
th a surprisingly curt "Let be."
Encountering Laertes in front of the whole court, Hamlet speaks again very simpl
y: "Give me your pardon, sir. I have done you wrong" (l. 222). But then he refer
s to his own supposed "madness" as if it had been entirely real, and as if that
absolved him of all responsibility for his actions:
Who does it, then? His madness. If't be so,
Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong'd;
His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy. (ll. 233-35)
That sounds straightforward enough, but what is his madness? Is it a "sore distr
action" by which he has been punished, or is it his own invention and a somewhat
theatrical disguise? To what extent is Hamlet creating a cunning smokescreen of
words and questions, under which to hide his intent to kill the King? Soon all
the action is over, the Queen, Laertes, Claudius and Hamlet all dead; and yet no
more mention is made of "madness."
However, the action is held up artificially at the very last minute: the playwri
ght delays his hero's death at the midnight hour for concluding speeches and the
audience is encouraged to expect that the hero will unmask and everything will
be clarified. But then, even now, this does not happen. Hamlet's final words are
so famous that for us they carry an air of assurance with them, but if we try t
o imagine them as they were heard for the first time, we may appreciate that muc
h is still concealed, and much is just as ambiguous as it was in his characteris
tically vigorous and volatile use of words throughout the play. We may wonder wh
ether Hamlet is playing consciously with words at the very moment of his trial b
y death; and, if so, for what purpose.
In his last words to Claudius, Hamlet has already insisted on a final sexual pun
: "Drink off this potion. Is thy union here?" (l. 331; italics mine).15 But when
he knows that he is himself dead, almost at once he is concerned about how much
is "unknown," and insists that Horatio should live to tell his story "aright."
But that is his friend's duty: he [page 25] himself uses his last moments very d
ifferently, and speaks almost at once in an earlier manner:
I am dead, Horatio. Wretched Queen, adieu!
You that look pale and tremble at this chance,
That are but mutes or audience to this act,
Had I but time--as this fell sergeant, Death,
Is strict in his arrest--O, I could tell you--
But let it be. . . . (ll. 338-43)
Wordplay has come back, as if unbidden: "This fell sergeant, Death, / Is strict
in his arrest" plays on strict as "cruel," "inescapably binding," and, perhaps,
as "morally severe"16 (this last sense is common in Shakespeare's plays). And ar
rest can refer equally to the stopping life and to stopping the "act" which the
audience is watching and Hamlet performing. Then, once more, the wordplay is sto
pped with "But let it be . . . ." And yet, when he tells Horatio, a second time,
that he is as good as dead, the "potion" becomes "The potent poison"; and in a
strange phrase (Shakespeare using o'ercrows for the only time), the poison is sa
id to shout in triumph over his spirit, rather than taking possession of his bod
y:
O, I die, Horatio.
The potent poison quite o'ercrows my spirit. (ll. 357-58)
For Shakespeare, this may also have been a reminiscence of the father's spirit w
ho had "faded on the crowing of the cock" (I.i.162).
Hamlet has already heard the "warlike noise" of Fortinbras' approach, and now he
gives his "dying voice" to this young soldier for the next King of Denmark:
He has my dying voice.
So tell him, with th'occurents more and less
Which have solicited--the rest is silence. (ll. 361-63)
The last line here is Hamlet's last line, and it is as multiple in meaning as an
y in the play. Solicited takes attention first. Is this a gentle solicitation or
an urgent call? The word had been used in both senses by Shake-[page 26] speare
. Perhaps the second is the most likely here, since solicited and silence are li
nked a little in sound and may therefore be held in opposition. But the main pro
blem is "the rest is silence." What can this mean?
First perhaps, it means "All that remains for me to say must be unspoken." This
reading seems to make Hamlet withdraw intentionally from saying more, as he has
done frequently in the course of the play: "Let it be." Wordplay allows him to e
scape without revealing his secret. Alternatively, he may feel overmastered in h
is mind, as he is in his body, and here acknowledges that this is so and that he
can manage no more words, except this last mocking pun, for rest could also mea
n the taking of ease, or a pause in action (or music).
A second reading would have Hamlet assert that the remainder of his life can hav
e nothing to say or will make no noise, perhaps no "warlike noise"--the volleys
may still be ringing in his ears, or the first sound of drums for Fortinbras' ap
proach. So he might speak of his failure to tell all, and die making an excuse f
or his rashness or ineffectuality.
But, then, rest may equally well refer to a time after life, a release from the
"unrest" of life. In the same vein, Hamlet has told Horatio to:
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain
To tell my story. (ll. 352-54)
In association with silence, rest need not imply any existence after life; what
follows life is unknown, possibly without life of any sort; in any case it makes
no noise here and now.
However, yet another interpretation is not so agnostic or irreligious. Hamlet co
uld mean that "the rest" of an after-life has nothing to say about matters of th
e world, such as the succession of Fortinbras; so death is a "quietus" devoutly
to be wished (III.i.75). Horatio's conventional and specifically religious conso
lation which follows immediately may seem to substantiate this reading:
Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest! (ll. 364-65)
But has Hamlet lost his fear of those "dreams" which may follow when "we have sh
uffled off this mortal coil" (III.i.67)? Having killed the King [page 27] and vo
ted for his successor is he ready to go into the dark, and accept his own "rest"
without blenching? This would be a huge revaluation of earlier attitudes for wh
ich the discourse on the fall of a sparrow (V.ii.215-18) is the sole (but not ne
cessarily unequivocal) textual authority. If this is the "correct" reading, howe
ver, we may wonder why Shakespeare should follow the earlier account of Hamlet's
attitudes with such an "ambiguous giving out," in glancing, unreliable wordplay
, at this crucial last moment?
A defence of sorts can be made for each of these four different meanings of Haml
et's four last words, but they tend to cancel each other out if they are all all
owed into the reckoning. Instead of choosing between them, I find myself ready t
o suggest yet a fifth reading which does not attempt to express the "virtue" wit
hin Hamlet, that mystery which passes ordinary show; this fifth interpretation c
ould indeed co-habit with any of my earlier suggestions. Perhaps when the playwr
ight directed Hamlet to say "the rest is silence," he was allowing himself to sp
eak through his character, telling the audience and the actor that he, the drama
tist, would not, or could not, go a word further in the presentation of this, hi
s most verbally brilliant and baffling hero. The author is going to hide like a
fox, leaving all of us standing at a cold scent.
In several earlier passages, we may have heard something of Shakespeare's own vo
ice in what Hamlet says. "Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to yo
u . . ." (III.ii.1-2) and the several other old saws and modern instances delive
red to the Players on their arrival at Elsinore, in their rehearsals, and during
their performance, are all possible authorial statements. Hamlet's quick retort
to Polonius' dramatic criticism, his managing of several scenes as they are dev
eloping--"I must be idle," "For England?" "This is I, Hamlet the Dane," "But it
is no matter," "Let be,"17 and so forth--could also be partly Shakespeare's word
s as they propel the plot forward. At the close, Hamlet is aware of his deeds as
an "act" that is closely watched by "mutes or audience" (V.ii.330) who need to
be told what has happened so that his name shall not be "wounded": something of
Shakespeare may be in all this as well, and perhaps in the rather dismissive:
So tell him, with th'occurents more or less
Which have solicited . . . .
[page 28] This might suggest the impatience of an author dealing with issues ("m
ore or less") that only censorious (politically committed or politically correct
) audience-members would wish to pick on.
There is example for a final authorial voice in other plays. Of course, Prospero
's "I'll drown my book" and "Now what strength I have's mine own" come much late
r in Shakespeare's career. But about this time, we have in Troilus and Cressida,
"Hector is dead: there is no more to say" (V.x.22);18 in Twelfth Night, "But th
at's all one, our play is done" (V.i.393);19 in The Merchant of Venice, "Portia.
You shall not know by what strange accident / I chanced on this letter. Antonio
. I am dumb" (V.i.278-79);20 and in Love's Labour's Lost:
The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo. Exeunt. (V.ii.922-
23)21
This last example is doubly strange. The line is printed in larger type than tha
t used for the rest of the Quarto version of the play, and is without a speech-p
refix. The Folio text regularizes the type-face, but is responsible for adding t
he concluding line, "You that way; we this way". Keeping in mind these other spe
eches in which Shakespeare may take over from his characters, we might think tha
t here, through Hamlet, he is announcing that he has "no more to say," still les
s any further mystery to disclose.
I do not know which of these five meanings to prefer, but the actors of Shakespe
are's company seem to have been unsatisfied with them all. The Folio text contai
ns numerous small additions to the Quarto which are thought to have been drawn f
rom what actually happened on stage in performance.22 Among these is an addition
to Hamlet's part, following "The rest is silence." What Burbage the actor added
is represented by four letters: "O, o, o, o." Then follows the stage-direction.
"Dies." What can this mean? Did Burbage believe that he needed extra time to ex
press pain or disbelief, or to struggle or panic? We have no idea what the four
O's were intended to mean and still less notion of what Shakespeare thought abou
t them (the Folio was, of course, published after his death),23 but this additio
n became well enough established to get into print, and it serves to remind us t
hat, however serious Hamlet's last words were intended to be, they had to be spo
ken [page 29] while he faced the physical reality of death itself. The actor's w
ay of accepting or resisting the "strict arrest" will become part of the meaning
of the last moments of the play, casting further complications on the task of d
ealing with what Hamlet says and with the wordplay.
Exactly how Hamlet dies--how he dies physically--will continue to contribute to
our view of him after the "silence" which follows the moment of death. Fortinbra
s enters asking "Where is this sight?" and Horatio directs attention to all four
bodies on the stage. After all is said and done, the way in which Hamlet dies,
whether in pain or with mockery, or with some sense of fortunate release, will s
till be manifest in his facial expression and in the manner in which his body li
es on the stage--in contrast to how the others had died and are also mercilessly
displayed.
* * *
Why should Shakespeare choose to conclude this tragedy with words that give the
final presentation of its hero a multiplicity of possible meanings?
The most difficult answer would be to say that all meanings are meant to be pres
ent, co-existing. This might please critics and scholars who puzzle over the tex
t in their own time and are able to build up complex impressions, but how could
an actor attempt to suggest them all? How could an audience-member grasp them al
l in the exciting moment of performance, in an "upshot" in which purposes are ea
sily mistook (V.ii.389)? A more acceptable answer might be that the audience, an
d each individual member of that audience, is left to interpret as they wish, ac
cording to their own "business and desire, / Such as it is" (I.v.136-37). In thi
s case, the actor's task might be to avoid making any very clear statement of Ha
mlet's final thoughts or inner mystery. Yet that is easier to say than do, and w
e might rather argue that the multiple meanings are there so that the actor of H
amlet can choose which one he wishes to emphasise, according to the way in which
he has responded to the varied challenges in his journey through the text, and
according to what he feels himself best able to embody. Such a choice is likely
to be intuitive, rather than intellectual; but it could also be governed by the
[page 30] actor's (and his director's) view of how the play can speak most excit
ingly to the audience which comes to see their work.
However we choose to explain his decision, we must accept the fact that Shakespe
are chose, very positively, to provide a multiplicity of meanings at this crucia
l moment. His hero was, above all and in the final test, alive in his mind, draw
n restlessly into engagement with his imagination, perhaps a little in the same
way as his creator had been as he worked. Death, for such a person, could not be
held in a single grip, in the fix of words used in a single sense, without "tri
cks, in plain and simple faith." Such dramaturgy involved a choice which went ag
ainst most of Shakespeare's earlier practice. At the moment of his death, Titus
Andronicus could hardly have made himself more plain to our understanding:
Why, there they are, both baked in this pie;
. . .
'Tis true, 'tis true; witness my knife's sharp point. (V.iii.60-63)24
Romeo dies drinking poison; there is wordplay here, but wholly controlled and li
mited:
Here's to my love! O true apothecary,
Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die. (V.iii.119-20)25
Juliet also plays on words without confusing her simplest meaning:
Yea, noise? Then I'll be brief. O happy dagger.
This is thy sheath. There rust, and let me die. (V.iii.168-69)
Richard III and Richard II both die with single-minded speech, although in earli
er scenes they had both used wordplay to express their turbulent and cunning tho
ughts.
Marlowe, Shakespeare's most imaginative and inventive contemporary, ended his tr
agedies as their heroes narrowed the target for their thoughts; and he gave them
words in which to express themselves unmistakably. [page 31] After Shakespeare'
s time, John Webster, for all the punning and allusive subtlety of his dialogue,
took definition still further in the last moments of his leading characters. Sh
akespeare's Hamlet, however, dies mysteriously, and he is aware that he never ma
kes a full statement of his thoughts:
Had I but time . . .
O, I could tell you--
But let it be. (ll. 341-43)
The most unequivocal impression given by the hero at the close of this tragedy i
s that his mind is unvanquished: his imagination is still exploring strange shap
es and future eventualities--what is still unknown, and even silence itself.
Of course there are many ways of accounting for the tragedy as a whole. It is a
Revenge Tragedy, and a Tragedy of Blood (or of lust and love); it is a Metaphysi
cal Tragedy in which the nature of death, certainty, and life are all weighed an
d variously judged. It is also a Tragedy of State, the story of a kingdom ruled
by an ambitious, treacherous, and smiling king, in which the "rabble" can rise u
p to follow the insurrection of a young man who has a private vendetta to pursue
, but no clear political programme. The plot and characters, the drive and livel
iness of the dialogue, the clashing rhetoric, all support these various strands
of the play; and they are supported by on-stage action which is often exciting,
sensational, and visually opulent. But the heart of the tragedy is Hamlet himsel
f, a person whose mind is unconfined by any single issue. As he moves towards th
e last encounters, we can sense a self-aware superiority: ". . . Laertes. You do
but dally. I pray you pass with your best violence" (301-02). He is attracted,
still, to light-minded wordplay and assonance: "strict . . . arrest," "o'ercrows
. . . occurents," the pun of "dying voice" (the sound he makes is growing faint
). There is mockery in "potent poison," the ring and relish of a mountebank. Imp
atience and a constantly frustrated desire to have matters under control can be
heard in repeated comes and in many short replies, commands and messages. Tender
ness mixes with bitterness--"Absent thee from felicity awhile . . ."--and with a
mbiguity. "The rest is silence" [page 32] could be a joke, a profound searching
of the unknown, a resignation to the fate of a sparrow, the voice of bitter desp
air, or a matter of fact.
At the risk of sounding too unambiguous for such a play, I would say that, throu
gh Hamlet, this tragedy affirms the world of the mind over against the world of
matter, the unresolved and independent conscience over against the answers that
can be provided by others or demanded by society in its political, religious or
familial manifestations. In so far as Hamlet commands our attention while the tr
agedy unfolds and is completed, we prefer his ambiguous, spirited, free affirmat
ion that the "rest is silence" to the attempted suicide and sentimental consolat
ion of Horatio, or to the political homage of Fortinbras, and his call to arms a
nd to a fresh start.26
University of Michigan
4)by T S Eliot
FEW critics have even admitted that Hamlet the play is the primary problem, and
Hamlet the character only secondary. And Hamlet the character has had an especia
l temptation for that most dangerous type of critic: the critic with a mind whic
h is naturally of the creative order, but which through some weakness in creativ
e power exercises itself in criticism instead. These minds often find in Hamlet
a vicarious existence for their own artistic realization. Such a mind had Goethe
, who made of Hamlet a Werther; and such had Coleridge, who made of Hamlet a Col
eridge; and probably neither of these men in writing about Hamlet remembered tha
t his first business was to study a work of art. The kind of criticism that Goet
he and Coleridge produced, in writing of Hamlet, is the most misleading kind pos
sible. For they both possessed unquestionable critical insight, and both make th
eir critical aberrations the more plausible by the substitution of their own Hamle
t for Shakespeare's which their creative gift effects. We should be thankful that
Walter Pater did not fix his attention on this play. 1
Two recent writers, Mr. J. M. Robertson and Professor Stoll of the University
of Minnesota, have issued small books which can be praised for moving in the oth
er direction. Mr. Stoll performs a service in recalling to our attention the lab
ours of the critics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 1 observing tha
t
they knew less about psychology than more recent Hamlet critics, but they we
re nearer in spirit to Shakespeare's art; and as they insisted on the importance
of the effect of the whole rather than on the importance of the leading charact
er, they were nearer, in their old-fashioned way, to the secret of dramatic art
in general.
2
Qua work of art, the work of art cannot be interpreted; there is nothing to in
terpret; we can only criticize it according to standards, in comparison to other
works of art; and for "interpretation" the chief task is the presentation of re
levant historical facts which the reader is not assumed to know. Mr. Robertson p
oints out, very pertinently, how critics have failed in their "interpretation" o
f Hamlet by ignoring what ought to be very obvious: that Hamlet is a stratificat
ion, that it represents the efforts of a series of men, each making what he coul
d out of the work of his predecessors. The Hamlet of Shakespeare will appear to
us very differently if, instead of treating the whole action of the play as due
to Shakespeare's design, we perceive his Hamlet to be superposed upon much crude
r material which persists even in the final form. 3
We know that there was an older play by Thomas Kyd, that extraordinary dramati
c (if not poetic) genius who was in all probability the author of two plays so d
issimilar as the Spanish Tragedy and Arden of Feversham; and what this play was
like we can guess from three clues: from the Spanish Tragedy itself, from the ta
le of Belleforest upon which Kyd's Hamlet must have been based, and from a versi
on acted in Germany in Shakespeare's lifetime which bears strong evidence of hav
ing been adapted from the earlier, not from the later, play. From these three so
urces it is clear that in the earlier play the motive was a revenge-motive simpl
y; that the action or delay is caused, as in the Spanish Tragedy, solely by the
difficulty of assassinating a monarch surrounded by guards; and that the "madnes
s" of Hamlet was feigned in order to escape suspicion, and successfully. In the
final play of Shakespeare, on the other hand, there is a motive which is more im
portant than that of revenge, and which explicitly "blunts" the latter; the dela
y in revenge is unexplained on grounds of necessity or expediency; and the effec
t of the "madness" is not to lull but to arouse the king's suspicion. The altera
tion is not complete enough, however, to be convincing. Furthermore, there are v
erbal parallels so close to the Spanish Tragedy as to leave no doubt that in pla
ces Shakespeare was merely revising the text of Kyd. And finally there are unexp
lained scenes the Polonius-Laertes and the Polonius-Reynaldo scenes for which there
is little excuse; these scenes are not in the verse style of Kyd, and not beyond
doubt in the style of Shakespeare. These Mr. Robertson believes to be scenes in
the original play of Kyd reworked by a third hand, perhaps Chapman, before Shak
espeare touched the play. And he concludes, with very strong show of reason, tha
t the original play of Kyd was, like certain other revenge plays, in two parts o
f five acts each. The upshot of Mr. Robertson's examination is, we believe, irre
fragable: that Shakespeare's Hamlet, so far as it is Shakespeare's, is a play de
aling with the effect of a mother's guilt upon her son, and that Shakespeare was
unable to impose this motive successfully upon the "intractable" material of th
e old play. 4
Of the intractability there can be no doubt. So far from being Shakespeare's m
asterpiece, the play is most certainly an artistic failure. In several ways the
play is puzzling, and disquieting as is none of the others. Of all the plays it
is the longest and is possibly the one on which Shakespeare spent most pains; an
d yet he has left in it superfluous and inconsistent scenes which even hasty rev
ision should have noticed. The versification is variable. Lines like
Look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill,

are of the Shakespeare of Romeo and Juliet. The lines in Act v. sc. ii.,
Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting
That would not let me sleep...
Up from my cabin,
My sea-gown scarf'd about me, in the dark
Grop'd I to find out them: had my desire;
Finger'd their packet;

are of his quite mature. Both workmanship and thought are in an unstable conditi
on. We are surely justified in attributing the play, with that other profoundly
interesting play of "intractable" material and astonishing versification, Measur
e for Measure, to a period of crisis, after which follow the tragic successes wh
ich culminate in Coriolanus. Coriolanus may be not as "interesting" as Hamlet, b
ut it is, with Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare's most assured artistic success
. And probably more people have thought Hamlet a work of art because they found
it interesting, than have found it interesting because it is a work of art. It i
s the "Mona Lisa" of literature. 5
The grounds of Hamlet's failure are not immediately obvious. Mr. Robertson is
undoubtedly correct in concluding that the essential emotion of the play is the
feeling of a son towards a guilty mother:
[Hamlet's] tone is that of one who has suffered tortures on the score of h
is mother's degradation.... The guilt of a mother is an almost intolerable motiv
e for drama, but it had to be maintained and emphasized to supply a psychologica
l solution, or rather a hint of one.

This, however, is by no means the whole story. It is not merely the "guilt of a
mother" that cannot be handled as Shakespeare handled the suspicion of Othello,
the infatuation of Antony, or the pride of Coriolanus. The subject might conceiv
ably have expanded into a tragedy like these, intelligible, self-complete, in th
e sunlight. Hamlet, like the sonnets, is full of some stuff that the writer coul
d not drag to light, contemplate, or manipulate into art. And when we search for
 this feeling, we find it, as in the sonnets, very difficult to localize. You ca
nnot point to it in the speeches; indeed, if you examine the two famous soliloqu
ies you see the versification of Shakespeare, but a content which might be claim
ed by another, perhaps by the author of the Revenge of Bussy d' Ambois, Act v. s
c. i. We find Shakespeare's Hamlet not in the action, not in any quotations that
we might select, so much as in an unmistakable tone which is unmistakably not i
n the earlier play. 6
The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "object
ive correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of even
ts which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the ext
ernal facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion
is immediately evoked. If you examine any of Shakespeare's more successful trage
dies, you will find this exact equivalence; you will find that the state of mind
of Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep has been communicated to you by a skilful
accumulation of imagined sensory impressions; the words of Macbeth on hearing of
his wife's death strike us as if, given the sequence of events, these words wer
e automatically released by the last event in the series. The artistic "inevitab
ility" lies in this complete adequacy of the external to the emotion; and this i
s precisely what is deficient in Hamlet. Hamlet (the man) is dominated by an emo
tion which is inexpressible, because it is in excess of the facts as they appear
. And the supposed identity of Hamlet with his author is genuine to this point:
that Hamlet's bafflement at the absence of objective equivalent to his feelings
is a prolongation of the bafflement of his creator in the face of his artistic p
roblem. Hamlet is up against the difficulty that his disgust is occasioned by hi
s mother, but that his mother is not an adequate equivalent for it; his disgust
envelops and exceeds her. It is thus a feeling which he cannot understand; he ca
nnot objectify it, and it therefore remains to poison life and obstruct action.
None of the possible actions can satisfy it; and nothing that Shakespeare can do
with the plot can express Hamlet for him. And it must be noticed that the very
nature of the données of the problem precludes objective equivalence. To have heig
htened the criminality of Gertrude would have been to provide the formula for a
totally different emotion in Hamlet; it is just because her character is so nega
tive and insignificant that she arouses in Hamlet the feeling which she is incap
able of representing. 7
The "madness" of Hamlet lay to Shakespeare's hand; in the earlier play a simpl
e ruse, and to the end, we may presume, understood as a ruse by the audience. Fo
r Shakespeare it is less than madness and more than feigned. The levity of Hamle
t, his repetition of phrase, his puns, are not part of a deliberate plan of diss
imulation, but a form of emotional relief. In the character Hamlet it is the buf
foonery of an emotion which can find no outlet in action; in the dramatist it is
the buffoonery of an emotion which he cannot express in art. The intense feelin
g, ecstatic or terrible, without an object or exceeding its object, is something
which every person of sensibility has known; it is doubtless a study to patholo
gists. It often occurs in adolescence: the ordinary person puts these feelings t
o sleep, or trims down his feeling to fit the business world; the artist keeps i
t alive by his ability to intensify the world to his emotions. The Hamlet of Laf
orgue is an adolescent; the Hamlet of Shakespeare is not, he has not that explan
ation and excuse. We must simply admit that here Shakespeare tackled a problem w
hich proved too much for him. Why he attempted it at all is an insoluble puzzle;
under compulsion of what experience he attempted to express the inexpressibly h
orrible, we cannot ever know. We need a great many facts in his biography; and w
e should like to know whether, and when, and after or at the same time as what p
ersonal experience, he read Montaigne, II. xii., Apologie de Raimond Sebond. We
should have, finally, to know something which is by hypothesis unknowable, for w
e assume it to be an experience which, in the manner indicated, exceeded the fac
ts. We should have to understand things which Shakespeare did not understand him
self.
henry iv
1)Introductory Comments
We start our study of Shakespeare with Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry V, two plays f
rom the four-play Second History Cycle, which, as I have already explained elsew
here, deals with the first part of the family conflict and civil war known as th
e Wars of the Roses (those who would like a more detailed account of the narrati
ve of this conflict in Shakespeare's two History Cycles should click here).
In this lecture I shall be exploring some of the more important issues in Henry
IV, Part 1. These issues arise out of the dramatic action of the first play in
the four-part sequence, Richard II, are explored further in Henry IV, Parts 1 an
d 2, and apparently resolved in Henry V. In dealing with our first two plays, I
particularly want to call our attention to Shakespeare's use of irony to challe
nge, complicate, and qualify our understanding of particular characters and issu
es. In other words, I would like our study of these first two plays to help us
learn some important things about how to read Shakespeare. I shall be clarifyin
g what I mean by that all important term irony in a few moments.
Preliminary Observation on the Term History Play
Shakespeare's works are, as is well known, commonly divided up into three major
groups: Histories, Comedies, and Tragedies (sometimes a fourth group is added, L
ast Plays or Romances; technically these are comedies, but they are significantl
y different from Shakespeare's earlier comedies).
As I have observed in a previous lecture, the differences between Tragedies and
Comedies include important structural differences in the plot (especially the en
ding) and in the vision of life which the play celebrates. There's no need to r
epeat those observations here. But a word or two on the term History Play may b
e in order.
Shakespeare himself does not appear to have distinguished very clearly between t
hese different genres, especially between History Plays and Tragedies. The dist
inction was created at the time of the publication of the First Folio (1623), th
e first Collected Works, after Shakespeare's death. The division may have been
designed to celebrate Shakespeare's versatility as a dramatist, something his fr
iends wished to celebrate, especially in comparison with his great rival Ben Jon
son.
In any case, the term History Play is commonly used to designate those plays (wh
ether tragedies of comedies) in which the action and the major themes of the pla
y are predominantly, even exclusively, political, rather than anything much wide
r and more profound. Some History Plays are very close to tragedies (e.g., Rich
ard III and Richard II) and some are clearly comedies (e.g., Henry V), but what
separates them from the regular comedies and tragedies is that the History Plays
confine their attention largely to the political realm, without straying into o
ther social or metaphysical matters.
We can see the difference clearly by comparing, say, the Henry IV plays, with Ma
cbeth or King Lear. The latter two plays are clearly based on historical events
and they have a political dimension. But the major focus of the play is someth
ing much more complex than simply political questions: they involve an explorat
ion of the soul of the major figures in the context of a full human life. In ot
her words, they transcend the limits set by political concerns. In the Henry IV
plays, by contrast, we never stray from the political dimensions of the actions
and the relationships. For example, we never see what is going on with Bolingb
roke's soul--the issue is hinted at but kept at a safe distance. If the plays b
rought us as close to Bolingbroke as, say, Macbeth does to Macbeth, then the con
cerns of Henry IV would quickly move well beyond the limits of political conside
rations.
This distinction is, no doubt, somewhat arbitrary, but it is commonly observed a
nd relatively easy to grasp from the nature of the discussions we have of the pl
ays. In our conversations about Henry IV, we are almost always talking about po
litical-social issues; in our discussions of Lear or Macbeth, we spend most of o
ur time talking about other matters (e.g., the nature of evil).
One of the best examples of what I have just mentioned occurs in 1Herny4.3.2 whe
n Prince Hal and his father have their private meeting. This is potentially a v
ery revealing scene, where Henry IV at last might gives some glimpse into his mo
tives for murdering Richard and his awareness of the moral consequences. But al
l he really talks about in the scene is the politics of royal behaviour. There
are allusions to deeper matters ("I know not whether God will have it so/For som
e displeasing service I have done"), but these are not explored, and the entire
scene sticks firmly to the political issues of the Prince's behaviour. And once
Prince Hal has reassured his father that he has a political agenda working, his
father quickly understands (Bolingbroke is astute enough to recognize effective
Machiavellian tactics when he hears about them) and agrees. We see the politic
al significance of their patching up their differences, but we don't really lear
n anything significant about either man's character (as we do, for example, in H
amlet's conversations with his father or with his mother, or Macbeth's conversat
ions with his wife). In that sense, the focus of the play is tightly confined t
o the political--hence the term History Play.
A Note on Richard II
Before turning directly to Henry IV, Part 1, however, I would like to clarify th
e narrative and dramatic basis of the play, for those of you who are not familia
r with Richard II, the play which immediately precedes it and which establishes
much of the foundation of Henry IV, Part 1. If we had sufficient time, we would
, of course, have included Richard II in the curriculum, since understanding Hen
ry IV, Part 1 fully requires some appreciation for that first play.
Richard II tells the story of how Richard, the legitimate king of England, is ov
erthrown by a civil rebellion launched by his powerful cousin, Henry Bolingbroke
. Richard is a very negligent king, who commits a serious offense against tradi
tion by confiscating Bolingbroke's inheritance, after having exiled him on somet
hing of a trumped-up charge for a crime which, the play strongly suggests, Richa
rd himself committed (the murder of their common uncle). Bolingbroke returns il
legally from exile, enlists the support of some powerful nobles who are upset wi
th Richard's incompetent rule (notable the Percy family: Northumberland, Worcest
er, and Hotspur), and together they defeat and imprison Richard. Bolingbroke th
en, very unexpectedly (in Shakespeare's play) announces that he will make himsel
f king (King Henry IV), and he arranges at the end of the play for Richard II to
be murdered (in order to solidify his position on the throne).
Richard II raises, as a central political issue, a major concern of Henry IV, Pa
rt 1, namely, the question of rebellion against legitimate authority. No one in
Richard II disputes the fact that Richard is the legitimate king. The laws and
traditions of the land confirm that point, and all the major figures in the pla
y have sworn allegiance to Richard. Hence, in rebelling against him they are br
eaking the law and their personal promises (as some figures in the play point ou
t repeatedly).
However, Richard is clearly a bad king, who fails to recognize and live up to hi
s responsibilities. He violates the very traditions which uphold his authority.
His actions thus leave his subjects with a difficult choice: either they must
endure the harm their king is inflicting on them and remain loyal to him (as man
y in the play do), or they must break their promises and the laws and rebel. Bo
lingbroke chooses to do the latter, not merely to correct the immediate wrong do
ne to him (the confiscation of his estates) but to install himself as king and t
hen to kill the legitimate king. It's clear throughout Richard II that Bolingbr
oke's actions are illegal (for he has no rival claim to the throne with which to
challenge Richard).
What's crucial about this action (for the purposes of our understanding of Henry
IV, Part 1) is that Bolingbroke (Henry IV) has decisively broken with the tradi
tional form of political authority--the common allegiance to a legitimate king,
who derives his authority from his inheritance and from the shared agreement tha
t that is the way the political order in the country should be determined--and h
as substituted for it his own power. He has become king, not from any legitimat
e, traditional claim (or, indeed, any legal claim whatsoever), but simply becaus
e he has a military superiority over the legitimate king and the desire to get r
id of Richard.
Bolingbroke may have some moral authority on his side, given that Richard II com
mits a number of crimes against Bolingbroke (and others), but Bolingbroke's acti
ons have consequences far beyond his original intentions, and these consequences
form a major theme in Henry IV, Part 1. This issue can be summed up as follows
: Once we have made power, military power, the basis for political order, how ca
n we have any shared agreements about political obedience, obligation, and legit
imacy? If power is the only basis for authority, what happens to a country in w
hich there are competing powers? What happens to our desire for political stabi
lity under a system in which we all understand clearly where our political oblig
ations ought to be? Furthermore, when power advances its interests through dece
ption (false promises and lies), how can anyone trust anyone else?
Let me elaborate on this for a moment. At the beginning of Richard II, everyon
e shares the same understanding of their political obligations: they have all sw
orn an oath of allegiance to the legitimate king, and he is (by common agreement
and tradition) the arbiter of any disputes (the agent of justice). To go again
st this system would be dishonorable and illegal, inviting public shame and puni
shment for breaking a common rule which holds society together. Here, one's pow
er is subordinate to one's honour: one's power is used in the services of one's
public obligations, to which one has made a public commitment, in keeping with l
ong-standing traditions. In such a system, justice is something everyone unders
tands readily enough, and public manifestations of power (like a trial or a cour
t hearing) endorse the arrangement in which everyone knows his own place and the
place of everyone else (not unlike a sports team on display). Henry IV, Part 1
contains a very important reminder of this medieval world in the person of Hots
pur, for whom pubic honour is far more important than personal gain (more about
him later).
But in Richard II, this arrangement of justice is overthrown for two main reason
s: first, the person most responsible for maintaining the system subordinates th
ose responsibilities to his own self-interest (failing to respect what belongs t
o other people) and, second, some very powerful people offended by those actions
, rebel. They break their promises, act deceitfully (i.e., lie and fail to keep
their public promises), and fight and murder their way into power. Clearly, fo
r them the old system of public honour and promise-keeping as the essential requ
irement for political justice is less important than their own self-interest.
The first important point to make about Henry IV, Part 1, is that it explores th
e consequences of this overthrow of traditional public justice. We are now deal
ing with a world in which power is the basis for political life, and disputatiou
s issues cannot be quickly and fairly resolved because there is no agreement abo
ut who is a fair judge (as there was at the start of Richard II)--everyone is no
w acting first and foremost out of self-interest. Bolingbroke (Henry IV), in oth
er words, is having to deal with a problem which his own illegal actions created
, but he does not have the traditional political authority to deal with them eff
ectively, because his actions (prompted by Richard's negligence) have struck a m
ortal blow at that authority (which rests on the agreement of all to abide by it
). Having violated the traditional allegiance owed to a king, he cannot now ef
fectively invoke it to protect himself and keep his powerful nobles in line. Ha
ving broken his promises to Richard, he is not in a position to trust what other
people say to him (nor are they encourage to believe him).
One way of looking at these first two plays we are studying is to see in Henry I
V, Part 1, an exploration of the enormous difficulty, perhaps even the impossibi
lity, of imposing order on a country through power alone--Bolingbroke is unable
to deal effectively with the problems his own actions have brought about; Henry
V, by contrast, seems to offer the picture of a ruler who has learned how to do
just that, to rise above the tangled web his father has created and to impose a
glorious order on his kingdom, a triumph of political justice restored (whether
that is precisely what the play adds up to or not we will be discussing later).
The Machiavel
Before taking up a more detailed discussion of Henry IV, Part 1, I'd like to use
the above remarks as an introduction to one of Shakespeare's favourite characte
r types, of which Bolingbroke is the first we meet in our study (though by no me
ans the first in Shakespeare's works)--an often complex and attractive personali
ty which Shakespeare never tires of placing in his plays in various guises as th
e central embodiment of all sorts of major thematic issues. This character is c
alled the Machiavel. And an understanding of these two plays, and of Shakespear
e's works generally, absolutely requires us repeatedly to explore the nature of
the Machiavel.
What exactly does this term mean? Well, Bolingbroke is a good initial example.
Simply put, the Machiavel sees political life (and often his own personal life)
as primarily, even exclusively, a matter of power to secure his own personal ga
in by whatever means are most appropriate to the task. The Machiavel, in other
words, sees morality--that is, a careful adjudication of whether what one propos
es or want to do is what one ought to do, in accordance with some system which d
iscriminates between good and evil conduct--as subordinate to efficiency, that i
s, securing through clever manipulation and power whatever it is one sees as nec
essary to satisfy oneself..
[The next few paragraphs are taken, with some modifications, from a previous lec
ture--not delivered in this English 366 course, the lecture on Richard III]
The term Machiavel is derived from the name of Machiavelli, one of the first gre
at modern voices in political and moral theory. He lived in Italy almost one hun
dred years before Shakespeare (from 1469 to 1527) and was most famous (or notori
ous) for a book called The Prince, which is a short work providing political adv
ice to the modern ruler. There is no time here to elucidate Machiavelli's politi
cal philosophy in detail, and there is no need to, because it is very unlikely t
hat Shakespeare had any first-hand knowledge of Machiavelli's writing. The Machi
avelli he was drawing upon and responding to was the popular conception of Machi
avelli, which was inevitably a simplified and exaggerated version of what Machia
velli was saying but which also contained an important part of the truth of his
political philosophy.
Machiavelli's fame or notoriety rested (and rests) on the fact that he insisted
as a first prerequisite of effective political rule that the ruler should forget
about traditional notions of virtue and morality. The essential quality of a ru
ler was the effective use of power to guarantee his own survival. And The Prince
is full of advice on how the ruler should skillfully use whatever resources are
available to maximize his own power and to reduce the power of his enemies. Mac
hiavelli is the great exponent of the popular maxim "The end justifies the means
," and the end he has in mind is the continuing political survival of the ruler.
 If, to stay in office, one needs to lie, cheat, deceive, or kill, that is all p
art of what the ruler must do without moral scruple. This requires, Machiavelli
insists, a complex set of practical abilities (what he calls virtu), and it may
well require the appearance of virtue (because that is a useful cloak to wrap on
eself in for public consumption--as public relations, so to speak). But it does
not require any strict adherence to old-fashioned notions of charity, honesty, c
lemency, or other components of traditional Christian virtue. Nor does it requir
e one to keep one's promises, if one's political survival requires one to break
those. Hence comes the old saying, with Machiavelli there is no virtue in virtu
.
The Machiavel figure in the English theatre, which originated before Shakespeare
(Marlowe even has Machiavelli as a character in one of his plays), is thus prim
arily a person who puts his own personal survival and power above any traditiona
l moral restraint. He is a person who believes that the assertion of his individ
ual desires is more important than observing any traditional ways of dealing wit
h people and who is prepared to do whatever it takes to achieve his personal des
ires. He is, thus, a self-interested individualist with no traditional scruples
about communal responsibilities and morality. The Machiavel is commonly an inher
ent source of social disorder, especially in a society which relies upon traditi
onal moral codes and social bonds to educate people about what they ought to do.
In carrying out his plans, the Machiavel typically demonstrates many of the part
icular skills which Machiavelli talks about. He is, above everything else, a rea
lly fine actor, a consummate hypocrite, who can adjust his looks and his talk to
meet any particular situation. He is a superb manipulator of people (especially
those who take his appearance for the truth). He has a really impressive practi
cal intelligence, being able to assess people and situations to his advantage, a
nd he uses people's credulity, stupidity, fear, ambition, and ignorance always t
o his own advantage. In many cases, he does not have a clear plan of action; he
initiates discord (or takes advantage of chaotic times) and then improvises his
way through, using an impressive range of efficient skills to get his way. Boli
ngbroke's rise to the throne is rather like this: he doesn't seem to set out the
get the throne (or at least that's unclear) but once the opportunity presents i
tself, he seizes it.
Many of Shakespeare's most interesting and famous heroes and villains are clearl
y Machiavel figures, in tragedies, comedies, and history plays: Bolingbroke, Ric
hard III, Macbeth, Don John, Iago, Claudius, Regan and Goneril, Edmund, and othe
rs. These figures all demonstrate a preoccupation with their own advantage and a
n unscrupulous way of achieving what they want. They also share many Machiavelli
an skills, especially the ability to act whatever role and use whatever language
they think the situation requires. What makes them often such complex embodimen
ts of evil is that almost all of them are, to a greater or lesser extent, recogn
izably normal; we meet such people in the world all around us. Their success, in
many cases, depends upon other people's failing to see them as anything but ord
inary. In some cases, Shakespeare's presentation of them makes them, in some way
s (initially, at least), quite likable and amusing (e.g., Iago, Edmund, Richard
Gloucester).
But what makes Shakespeare's treatment of this Machiavel figure so fascinating i
s that Shakespeare is no sentimental traditionalist deploring the immorality of
modern individualism (as so many critics of Machiavelli were). For he is acutely
aware that, although Machiavel qualities can lead people into monstrous evil, i
n the modern state certain qualities of the Machiavel are essential for politica
l efficiency and peaceful community. It is no longer the case that traditional v
irtues will be enough to keep a ruler in power. Once breaking promises and prete
nding to be something one is not become standard ways of operating in politics,
then a traditional morality is no longer effective (because too many people are
willing to ignore it), and stability in the political order requires someone who
 is very skilled at recognizing and dealing with deception and power grabs as th
e essence of politics. In a world of power political double dealing, the succes
sful leader must have some basic skills of the Machiavel (that seems to be one o
f the major themes of the Henry IV plays).
Hence, in Shakespeare's work, in addition to the examination of the evil brought
about by excessive devotion to self-interest, there is also an exploration of t
he necessary qualities the Machiavel figure brings to political rule. This, inde
ed, is one of the great themes of the second history cycle (as we shall see in o
ur study of Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry V): Prince Hal's education in how to beco
me king requires him to learn and to use many of the qualities we associate with
the Machiavel, and in Henry V these qualities are on display throughout. The fa
scinating question Shakespeare explores in this history cycle, particularly in t
he last play, is the complex issue of what a commitment to Machiavellian tactics
does to the humanity and the personality of the Machiavel (more about that late
r in the course). In other plays, of course, the Machiavellian origins of disord
er in a particular human personality are seen as much more immediately evil (e.g
., Iago, Edmund).
In Shakespeare the Machiavel figure appears in a variety of forms. Sometimes, h
e is a very melodramatic villain, not unlike a devil figure (Richard III, for ex
ample), sometimes the apparently unmotivated nasty spoiler (Don John, Iago), som
etimes the shrewd political operative seeking some important advantage (Bolingbr
oke, Goneril, Regan, Octavius Caesar), sometimes figures of enormous psychologic
al complexity (Macbeth). What these figures all have in common is a commitment
to deceit at the expense of traditional bonding between people, a ruthless disre
gard for others in pursuit of their own personal power agenda.
One quality to watch for particularly in the Machiavel is his use of language.
Typically, these Machiavels are, first and foremost, experts at adopting a langu
age suitable for any situation. Because they regard language as a tool for achi
eving their own secret purposes rather than as an essential part of a meaningful
ly honest communication with other human beings, they routinely deceive other pe
ople with false promises, lies, protestations of virtue or of ignorance, pretens
e, and so on. Their ability to manipulate people relies on their skilful instru
mental use of language more than anything else (this is particularly true of Hen
ry V). Allied to this talent is usually a very shrewd ability to listen to othe
r people, assess what needs to be said in order to deal with them, and then to f
rame a response which suits the occasion.
Because Machiavels are committed to using language deceitfully, it is often very
hard for us to figure out what they really mean (unless they tell us directly
in soliloquy--like Macbeth or Richard III). Hence, coming to grips with the ess
ential nature of the human being playing the Machiavel is often very difficult,
if not impossible, as in the case of Bolingbroke/Henry IV and Henry V (more abou
t this later).
Some Basic Observations About Irony
Before considering Henry IV in more detail, I'd like to say a few words about a
critical interpretative procedure essential to our studies of Shakespeare. That
procedure is the notion of irony, something we always need to remain alert to.
In fact, your developing skill as a literary interpreter (of Shakespeare or any
one else) depends upon your increasing sensitivity to ironic possibilities and y
our ability to recognize the dramatic consequences of these.
In common practice, the word irony is applied to some expression or action in wh
ich there are at least two levels of meaning: the obvious surface meaning and a
second implied meaning which may be quite different from the first. The second m
eaning, in other words, undermines the first meaning or qualifies it; in some ca
ses the second meaning may entirely contradict the first (when that happens and
both speaker and listener are aware of the second meaning contradicting the firs
t, we call the irony, which is very strong and obvious, sarcasm). In a more gene
ral sense, irony can also mean ambiguity. An ironical expression is one in which
we cannot be sure precisely what is meant because there is a range of possible
meanings.
For instance in Sonnet 138, when Shakespeare writes "Therefore I lie with her an
d she with me," the word lie carries an obvious ironical sense manifested in the
two possible meanings, to lie in bed with and to tell an untruth. Which one is
the correct meaning here? The obvious answer is that they are both equally corre
ct, and the ironical double meaning captures the emotional paradox the speaker o
f the poem is experiencing, that his sexual life with his love is based on mutua
l duplicity, for when they have sex together they are deceiving each other. Earl
ier in the same poem the word vainly functions in the same manner, meaning both
in vain and from vanity. The double meaning captures well the ironic tension at
the heart of the speaker's feelings: he knows his love is a self-defeating activ
ity, but he cannot stop because his vanity prompts him.
Irony in this sense is a vital part of most creative writing, because it is one
of the best vehicles for capturing the complex nature of human feelings in an ex
perience in which contradictory impulses are involved. The ironical resonance of
particular words enables to writer to express and symbolize accurately paradoxi
cal states of feeling. The effect is quite opposite to the scientific use of lan
guage, where the precise clarity of all terminology is essential to the style (a
nd where, thus, irony is not welcome).
Such verbal ironies are compounded in drama by other forms of irony. The most co
mmon is called dramatic irony, which occurs through an uneven distribution of kn
owledge. We, as readers or spectators, often know much more about what is going
on than any of the characters. Thus, when a character says something, the uttera
nce will often have two levels of meaning: what the character thinks it means an
d what the audience, with a fuller understanding of the entire situation, unders
tands it to mean. Dramatic irony may often be funny. In fact, in many comedies m
uch of the humour comes from what is called an uneven distribution of informatio
n. The audience knows everything, members of the story all know a part of the tr
uth (and what any one particular character may know may change in the course of
the play), and a great deal of the comic confusion will involve various misunder
standings, mistaken identities, and so on, which arise from the incomplete distr
ibution of information (Shakespeare's plays involving twins are the most obvious
example of this).
Beyond that, of course, plays are constantly requiring the reader or the audienc
e to reassess an earlier understanding of a character or an issue. We see a char
acter do or say something, and we make up our mind about that person or issue on
the basis of that incident. Then, the character will do or say something else,
and we have to reassess or qualify our earlier judgment. Or someone else will ac
t in a way that calls the same issue into question, and we have to qualify our e
arlier assessment of that issue. Paying close attention to a Shakespeare play re
quires, above everything else, a very close attention to the way in which our po
wers of judgment are constantly challenged by every event. If we use the term ir
ony in the widest possible sense to describe this process of adjustment and read
justment to the situations as they unfold, then an awareness of the ironical eff
ects of dramatic action and language will be our most important activity. And mo
st of our useful discussions about a play or a part of it will focus on the exte
nt to which we see irony at work and how we assess that.
Here's a simple example from the opening of Henry IV, Part 1. Early in the firs
t scene Henry IV talks solemnly about going on a crusade. The words give every
indication that he is serious, and we might well form an initial sense of Henry
as a genuinely pious man. But later in the scene we learn that he has known all
along that the crusade is not going to happen. So our initial sense of Henry i
s qualified in an ironic way. We're not quite sure where we stand with him. Is
that desire to go on a crusade sincere or just a public relations sentiment des
igned to make him look good. Or could it be both (does he really want to undert
ake a significant Christian act and sorry that he cannot)? There is no firm ans
wer to this question, because the ironic effect is inherently ambiguous. Nevert
heless, our understanding of Henry's character is going to depend on how we per
sonally interpret that issue. Later in the scene he talks about his son with su
ch sadness and regret, we get the sense of a person who might be suffering from
some sense of a guilty conscience for what he has done, a suggestive insight tha
t adds to our understanding of why Henry's desire to go on a crusade might be ge
nuine. Coming to grips with Henry's character requires us to negotiate a comple
x set of facts about him which qualify, challenge, and undercut what we have lea
rned about him already. That's irony in action.
A much more obvious example of such irony in Henry IV, Part 1, emerges in the wa
y Shakespeare deliberately forces us to explore a particular issue. For example
, many characters mention the word honour and discuss what they mean by the word
(Hotspur, Falstaff, Prince Hal, Henry IV). Then, they act upon that understandi
ng of the word. The reader or audience is pushed and pulled through different co
nceptions of the word and different actions (sometimes in the very same scene),
to the point where it is very clear that one important point of the play is an i
ronic exploration of that word really means. Whose definition of honour makes th
e most sense? Where do our intellectual and emotional sympathies lie? We thoug
ht we had a clear understanding of the word honour when we came into the theatre
, but now we're not sure what to think.
Rarely will Shakespeare arrive at or offer a clear and magisterial definition of
a concept: he leaves that for us to sort out. In the case of 1 Henry IV, whatev
er our understanding of the word honour when we started reading the play, by the
time we have finished, we have been forced to review a wide range of possibilit
ies (and to experience in action the consequences of those possibilities). We a
re not, however, given any final authoritative "answer" (if that is what we are
looking for). In fact, one point of the play may well be to encourage us to be
distrustful of simple, reductive answers to complex living issues.
In a similar way, a play can, in the action and presentation, often introduce ir
ony to undercut what seems like a firm affirmation. This is a common feature of
the endings of Shakespeare's plays. Is the ending of The Tempest an unqualified
comic celebration, or is it muted? Is there any irony present, and, if so, how s
trong is it? To what extent might we want to claim that the reconciliation achie
ved is fragile or illusory? Is it so muted or undercut with irony that it regist
ers as, in fact, a defeat? Similarly, is the end of Macbeth or King Lear a happy
triumph for the forces of good or something more complex, shot through with iro
nic deflations of the reassuring final actions? One important difference in ton
e between Twelfth Night and As You Like It, for example, comes from the sense ma
ny (perhaps most) readers or viewers get that the ending of the latter is uniron
ically celebratory, whereas, by contrast, the ending of the former is undershot
with complex ironic resonance which qualify the apparently "happy" comic resolut
ion of the conflict. This question is going to be an important one for us to co
nsider when we read Henry V: Is that play an unambiguous celebration of the perf
ect king? Or is that celebration undercut by ironic qualification, and, if so,
how does that ironic qualification alter our sense of what is being celebrated?
In particular scenes, the staging can be a source of complex ironies. When Hamle
t lectures his mother on her morally deficient character, the body of Polonius (
whom Hamlet has just killed) is lying on the stage throughout the scene. Shakesp
eare, it seems, wanted Polonius killed early in the scene so that, when Hamlet a
ttempts to take the moral high ground and lecture his mother on her corrupt char
acter, we have to match that element in his character against the ease with whic
h he has just killed and discarded the father of the girl he claims to love (and
the chief political figure in the kingdom after the monarch). The presence of t
he dead Polonius really qualifies our response to Hamlet's claims that he is a m
oral agent. That's an ironic element provided by the staging (which we might mi
ss when we are reading).
Similarly, in Henry IV, Part 1 Shakespeare deliberately has a serious military e
ncounter between Prince Hal and Hotspur take place alongside a parody of that in
a similar encounter between Douglas and Falstaff. The first is full of heroic t
alk and brave action; the latter is full of cowardice and evasion and humour. As
audience we are forced to evaluate military combat by the contrast between the
two. This play, in particular, is full of such ironic contrasts, as we move from
the world of the court, to the taverns, to the camp of the rebellious nobles (a
s we shall discuss).
Irony can be a slippery business, because once we sense it is present, we know w
e are on difficult ground. How deep do the ironies penetrate? Is there any firm
ground on which we can rest an interpretation? And in some writers, where ironie
s seem to be present everywhere (e.g., Montaigne), we can often find ourselves l
osing confidence in the possibility of any firmly shared meaning. One of the gre
at problems with Hamlet may well stem from this point: all energizing senses of
goodness and sympathy seem to be qualified so strongly and persistently with iro
nic counterweights, that at the end we are not sure how to sum up what we have e
xperienced. It is difficult, for example, in this play not to feel some sympathy
for almost every character and yet, at the same time, to judge each character a
s significantly deficient in some way or another.
Interpreting Shakespeare requires us to be alert to the possibility of such iron
ic complication and to the ways it can affect our understanding of the play. In
fact, many of our discussions will focus squarely on that issue. Is this speech
or this action to be understood literally? Does the character mean what he says?
How is this action or speech qualified, or undercut, or contradicted by other e
lements in the scene or in the play? How does the presence of irony (in varying
degrees) affect our response to the play?
Shakespeare's plays and poems offer a fertile ground for the consideration of th
ese questions, since they range from works that seem unambiguously affirming (li
ke, perhaps, As You Like It, and many of the sonnets) to others which offer limi
ted ironic possibilities (like, say, Twelfth Night, Henry V), all the way to the
other end of the spectrum where some works are so pervasively ironic that we ha
ve the greatest difficulty deciding finally what they might be claiming, if anyt
hing, about experience (like, for example, Hamlet, All's Well That's Ends Well,
Troilus and Cressida, or Sonnet 94).
The Political World of Henry IV, Part 1
Henry IV, Part 1 opens with a scene of royal power--King Henry IV is in control,
and he sits in council with his chief ministers. Henry talks in his opening sp
eeches of how his kingdom is now at peace how he now wants to undertake the fin
est duty of a Christian king--to organize a crusade. But from the opening words
, we recognize that the kingdom is in trouble: Henry's first words acknowledge t
hat he is sick, and we learn that he is deeply worried about the apparent excess
es of his son. Trouble seems also to be brewing with his former allies, the Nor
thumberland family, who helped him depose Richard.
By the end of the third scene, we see the open break between Henry and the North
umberland family, a break which is going to launch a prolonged civil war. It is
worth asking ourselves: Why does this breach occur? Why cannot these two allie
s, now that they have successfully gained power, exist together? These scenes m
ake the answer to that question clear: They cannot co-exist peacefully together,
because they no longer trust each other. Worcester makes the point explicit:
For, bear ourselves as even as we can,
The King will always think him in our debt,
And think we think ourselves unsatisfied
Till he hath found a time to pay us home. (1.3.279)
And already these allies of Henry's are talking about the illegitimacy of his cl
aim to the throne, exploring in their minds possible ways to challenge Henry's a
uthority.
The scene raises the question: Why cannot they trust each other? Having togeth
er worked to get rid of Richard II, why don't they just get on with their normal
business? The point here is that they cannot do that (as they once could) beca
use, in destroying Richard, Henry and his allies destroyed the basis for politic
al trust between powerful people, namely, that words (especially promises) have
permanent meaning, bind the parties to the promise, and thus guarantee a stable
future (to the extent that anything can be guaranteed). In order to get the th
rone, Henry and his friends pretended to be loyal (as they were obliged to be by
their oaths of allegiance) only to break that loyalty to increase their own pow
er. Now, they have inherited the world they created.
It's worth dwelling a moment here on a key issue in many of Shakespeare's plays,
the matter of language. For one important way to explore characters in Shakesp
eare is to look very closely at the language they use and the purposes for which
they use it. In these opening scenes of the royal court in Henry IV, Part 1, f
or example, Bolingbroke's language merits close attention. In his response to H
otspur on the matter of the prisoners, Henry uses words which are hardly diploma
tic (e.g., "foolish Mortimer," "wilfully betrayed," "redeem a traitor," "revolte
d Mortimer"), and when Hotspur protests, Henry addresses him as a servant ("sirr
ah"), before sweeping away, leaving Hotspur absolutely furious.
Why does Henry do this? Or, more pertinently, what is the significance of Shake
speare's showing us this? Given what we know about Henry's skills, it seems cle
ar enough that he's deliberately provoking his former allies into a quarrel. Th
e issue of the prisoners hardly seems something non-negotiable, and Hotspur is b
eing agreeable enough (at first). Either Henry's political skills have let him
down badly (which might be the case, given that he's sick and worried about his
son) or it's part of his deliberate power strategy to deal with those who are no
w dangerous, since what they helped him to do to Richard they are now capable of
doing to him.
The point I wish to stress about this here is that there is no way to tell preci
sely what Henry's motivation is for talking to Hotspur in this aggressive manner
. Because he uses words, not to express his real feelings or thoughts, but as a
political tool to achieve a particular end, we have no way of ascertaining his
real intentions or feelings. This, indeed, is one of the first things we percei
ve about him. As I mentioned above, all that talk about a crusade to the Holy L
and (in 1.1) reveals itself as so much moral posturing, for we learn that Henry
has known all along about the crisis that makes such a crusade impossible. And
we cannot conclude from all that pious talk whether or not Henry is sincere in h
is desire or not (we get no detailed look at him in private or in soliloquy, som
ething which might enable us to see the private man beneath the public figure).
And our difficulty in figuring out Henry IV's real character, real intentions, a
nd real feelings is something which his former friends now have to deal with as
well. The Northumberland family have no particular reason to hate or fear Bolin
gbroke, except the most important: now that power is the only arbiter of politic
al disputes, I have to be afraid of what someone else's power might do to me, if
 I don't get him first. I cannot trust the King to mean what he says.
[Parenthetically, it's interesting to think about how much in civilized life dep
ends upon people meaning what they say and living up to their promises, and how
much of our social interaction is poisoned or made impossible in a climate where
words are routinely used deceitfully. I'm tempted to offer the huge generaliza
tion that all our business and social life ultimately depends upon people's keep
ing their promises, meaning what they say (at least most of the time). Perhaps
that's why we nowadays, long after the concept of honour has ceased to be effect
ive, have so many lawyers and contracts and very detailed laws]
The opening court scenes in Henry IV, Part 1 manifest a style of politics which
is distinctively modern (in contrast to the medieval world of the opening of Ric
hard II) and focus on the central issue of modern politics: What is the basis fo
r trust and stability in a world where the only political reality is power? Whe
n we cannot rely upon people's sense of honour and truthfulness, how are we to d
eal with each other? And the answer that scene gives is clear: there is no basi
s for trust--power must be met with power.
There is one further element to stress about these opening scenes: that is the p
oint that here decisions have to be made. This world is an urgent one, in which
the participants have to respond to problems which they have to face up to if t
hey wish to survive. The political world is thus a world of action. It has roo
m for neither contemplation or fun. We see this most notably in the emphasis on
time and the importance of time. In the power political game, one has to scram
ble to keep up; any delay may cost one an important advantage. And whatever the
nature of Henry's illness, he has lost none of his decisiveness in making import
ant decisions:
Cousin, on Wednesday next our Council we
Will hold at Windsor. So inform the lords.
But come yourself with speed to us again.
For more is to be said and to be done
Than out of anger can be utterèd. (1.1.102-106)
The World of the Tavern
Perhaps the most distinctive feature of Henry IV, Part 1 is that it forces us to
contrast that world of the court--Henry IV's world--with something entirely dif
ferent, the world of the Tavern--Falstaff's world, where life's priorities and a
ctivities are entirely different. This contrast is forced upon us in two main w
ays: first, the opening of the play alternates the scenes between these two loca
les, and second the major figures in the play, Prince Hal and Falstaff, move bet
ween these two worlds. Particularly important here, of course, is that Prince H
al is in a position of having to choose between the two of them.
In terms of what I said earlier, the contrast between the world of the tavern an
d the world of the court is a major and recurring source of irony. We have in t
his play, so to speak, competing visions of life, of what matters most in life,
and so, although the two worlds are, in some respects, miles apart, our response
to one of them constantly qualifies in an ironic way our response to the other.
That we are strongly pressured to compare these worlds is obvious enough from th
e opening of 1.2, the first tavern scene, where the opening lines pick up the th
eme immediately announced at the ending of 1.1, the first court scene. Those li
nes closing lines (quoted above), which stress the urgency of time and the need
for quick, decisive action, link up directly with the opening lines of 1.2 and s
erve to introduce the marked contrast between the royal court and the Boar's Hea
d tavern. Falstaff's opening question asking Prince Hall to tell him the time br
ings out an emphatic reply that the question is utterly irrelevant to the way Fa
lstaff lives. In the process of making his reply, Prince Hal vigorously insults
Falstaff with a rhetorical excess which seems to indicate that he takes great pl
easure in the process:
Thou are so fat-witted with drinking of old sack, and unbuttoning thee after
supper, and sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to deman
d that truly which thou wouldst truly know. What a devil hast thou to do with th
e time of the day? Unless hours were cups of sack and minutes capons, and clocks
the tongues of bawds and dials the signs of leaping-houses, and the blessed sun
himself a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta, I see no reason why thou sh
ouldst be so superfluous to demand the time of the day. (1.2.2 ff)
These opening exchanges indicate that in this world, unlike the court, time is i
rrelevant. When one lives for the pleasure of each moment, one does not need to
subordinate one's desires to a strict schedule and scramble to keep up with even
ts. One keeps track of the time according to one's desires for pleasure, and if
that means sleeping in until noon, that's fine. Here, in the tavern, one is free
to subordinate time to one's desires, rather than to feel that one must answer
to the demands of a strict schedule (as in the royal court).
The same freedom is endorsed by the style of the insults. Gone is the formal poe
try of the court diplomacy, the carefully studied phrasing of high-stakes diplom
acy. Here the conversations rely on a freewheeling prose, delivered with an enor
mous gusto and often with a satiric mockery of the seriousness of religious or p
olitical rhetoric (many of Falstaff's speeches are clearly parodies of judicial
or religious language)..
In the tavern free-wheeling insults are the stuff of conversation, not because t
here's a desire to hurt anyone, but because they enable the speaker freely to in
dulge in the great pleasures of linguistic excess. No play that I know of is mor
e full of extraordinary verbal insults than Henry IV, Part 1 (the Shakespeare in
sult generator on the Internet relies very heavily on expressions from this play
). These insults are given and taken as a sign of affection. In the royal court,
the language one uses needs to be carefully chosen, because quarrels turn on th
e phrasing of a reply or a request; the person who does not mind carefully what
he says and how he expresses himself can quickly be in trouble (Henry's insults
to Hotspur turn the latter's mind decisively to rebellion, as Henry probably int
ends). In the Boar's Head, language, like life, is something to be enjoyed to ex
cess without regard to the rules of careful political dealing.
To put this another way, in both the royal court and the Boar's Head, people are
always playing games. But the political games devised by Henry and the Northumb
erlands are dangerous, carefully crafted, and secretive; the games in the Boar's
Head, by contrast, are open, free, anarchic. One can change the rules, invent n
ew games as one goes along, change stories, take on different roles, and enjoy t
he rarest and freest of human activities, the full play of the imagination, with
out fear of repercussions. Since there is no hidden agenda, beyond the setting u
p of the next jest, the people here are open and free with their affections for
each other.
The whole business of the Gadshill robbery, for example, is to set up Falstaff,
so that Hal and Poins can listen to how Falstaff is going to lie his way out of
their exposure of his cowardice. The young men know that they are never going to
be able to pin Falstaff down, but they also know that witnessing his amazingly
fertile imagination talk his way out of it is going to be great fun, a living te
stament to the anarchic spirit of life which the fat knight embodies. As much a
s anything else, the Prince and Poins undertake the exploit in order to provoke
Falstaff into a linguistic excess which they know will be delightful for its ow
n sake, for the fun of the moment.
If we look at the tavern in this light, we can readily enough understand Prince
Hal's fascination with and enjoyment of it. That his father disapproves he knows
well enough, but (and this is a frequent observation) Falstaff is also Prince H
al's father, providing him everything Bolingbroke cannot, an unrestricted zest f
or pleasure, excess, and freedom, a richness in living which is entirely incompa
tible with the carefully controlled, dangerous world of the royal court. And the
re is little doubt of Falstaff's genuine love for the young prince, an open affe
ction that we have never seen in Bolingbroke.
In that connection, it is significant that Prince Hal has no mother and, thus, n
o real home life in the court. His father is summoning him to be an adult, to ta
ke up his place in council (which he has lost), and enter the world of politics,
which is entirely dominated by serious adult men caught up in time-consuming se
rious and dangerous affairs. It's not difficult to see in Prince Hal's hesitatio
n at plunging himself into that world a desire to linger for a while in a very d
ifferent environment where he does not have to have his guard up all the time an
d constantly be on show. For that reason, I think we have to be careful about c
oming too quickly to any firm conclusions about that really important soliloquy
of his at the end of 1.2. There, of course, he sounds extremely calculating, re
assuring us that he's just using these tavern folk as apparent cronies in a shre
wd long-term political plan. And he may well be doing that (in fact, that's how
it all looks later). But he may also be trying to persuade himself, trying, th
at is, to rationalize his love for Falstaff with a scheme his father might appro
ve of. For there seems little doubt that Hal genuinely enjoys himself in the ta
vern and loves to play games with Falstaff. Certainly to the spectators, the ma
rked contrast between the serious, dangerous, and stern climate of Henry's royal
court and the sheer fun of Falstaff's tavern leaves little doubt about where we
would prefer to spend and evening.
There's more to the contrast than this, of course, and we will be coming to that
in a fuller discussion of Falstaff. But the opening movement of the play clearl
y invites us to compare the court and the tavern and to recognize how mutually i
ncompatible they are.
The Rebel Camp
The significance of this contrast become more complex in at the end of 1.3, when
we see the rebels plotting their action, and we get our first good look at Hots
pur. The leaders of the rebels, Worcester and Northumberland, are, like Henry IV
himself, caught in the consequences of their own self-interested support of Bol
ingbroke in his rebellion against Richard. Those consequences include now a perm
anent fear of what Henry might do to them if they ever drop their suspicions.
Worcester's words of suspicion about Henry (quoted earlier) are as close to poli
tical paranoia as a reasonable person can get, and it's clear that such thinking
leaves only one option: fight until one prevails or goes under. In that absence
of trust, there is no other alternative and no prospect for peace until the one
person left in control is so powerful that he has no one to fear.
If we read this play with Richard II still in mind, we can see an important poin
t emerging: those who use power deceitfully but efficiently, the way Bolingbroke
and Northumberland have in deposing Richard, will soon enough find themselves w
ith nowhere to turn to but their own power, even if there is no immediate threat
, simply because in a Machiavellian world everyone is always afraid of everyone
else (unless there's a compellingly strong single power to enforce the peace). I
f we frame the problem in terms of the concept of dialogue (which we introduced
in the lectures on Richard II), we can see that dialogue between Henry and the r
ebels is impossible, because they don't trust each other's words. The opening ar
gument between Henry and the rebels, interestingly enough, focuses on what Hotsp
ur has actually said, but it quickly becomes clear that the precise language he
used is irrelevant, because there is no firm trust in language (of the sort we w
itnessed at the ceremonious opening of Richard II, for example).
Hotspur, of course, is a rebel of a different sort. He is immune to the fear Wor
cester expresses because he has no clear understanding whatsoever of how the pol
itical world has changed. He's a throwback to a much older and more traditional
sense of politics as a matter of military honour won by individual prowess in ba
ttle:
Send danger from the east unto the west,
So honour cross it from the north to south;
And let them grapple. O, the blood more stirs
To rouse a lion than to start a hare!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap
To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon,
Or dive into the bottom of the deep,
Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,
And pluck up drownèd honour by the locks,
So he that doth redeem her thence might wear,
Without corrival, all her dignities. (1.3.194-205)
After a prolonged immersion in the court of Bolingbroke, we may well find that s
uch a firm assertion of the importance of personal value as a matter of public m
anifestations of individual courage comes as something of a breath of fresh air,
and it is not difficult to sympathize with Hotspur. We know where we stand with
him, for he says what he feels, without duplicity. He, we quickly recognize, i
s incapable of pretense or even (for that matter) of hiding his feelings. He is
the least Machiavellian of characters.
But we need to see how hopeless such an attitude is to work effectively in the m
odern world. Hotspur's sense of honour comes without an ounce of deceit; indeed,
he lacks the most necessary of all the Machiavellian virtues, the ability to co
nceal what he is feeling and shape his exterior appearance to suit the situation
. What he feels, he utters, even if, as with Glendower, what he says may be poli
tically inappropriate and strategically foolish. More than that, however, he is
incapable of recognizing that others may be deceitful. They may trick him or bet
ray him or manipulate his sense of honour so that he works on their behalf. And
Hotspur is manipulated throughout the play by the Machiavels he has to deal wit
h.
The second point to note about Hotspur's conception of honour is the strong mili
taristic shape it takes. It's a code of honour based upon blood, the killing of
one's enemies in hand-to-hand combat, one of the oldest and most durable male sy
stems of conferring status. In this activity Hotspur is a champion, but his comm
itment to glory through competitive blood combat makes him appear sadly out of d
ate. There may have been a time, long ago, when such a code might form the basis
for living (in the world of King Arthur, for example), but at a time when the k
ey issue is establishing peace in an unstable political world with no trust, suc
h an attitude is a dangerous anachronism. Appreciating this element is important
, because we need to be careful not to sentimentalize Hotspur and, in the proces
s, to see him as somehow a fit standard for the modern political world. For in t
he world of English power politics, Hotspur has become an anachronism. He is, o
f course, the person one wants to have as one's comrade in any fight once the ba
ttle starts, but once the fighting is over, he's not a person fit to negotiate h
is way through the complex deceits of modern politics.
Still, Hotspur is the only one of the major players in the civil war who does no
t deceive, who is what he appears to be, and who openly declares his feelings, e
ven at the risk of insulting potential allies (like Glendower). He is, in a sens
e, the only consistently honest major character in the play. He is also the only
major character who enjoys a healthy and loving marriage, a relationship remark
able for its humour, mutual respect, openness, and love. Nothing in the play doe
s more to establish the attractive emotional qualities of Hotspur than the scene
s with his wife. In that sense, Hotspur seems a fully integrated character, sure
of his values, confident of his identity, and honest in declaring what he think
s. The fact that such a character is hopeless at dealing with the modern politi
cal world is as much an indictment of that world as it is of his own character.
That fact raises the thorny issue (to be discussed in later lectures) of whethe
r it is possible in the modern world to be honest and honourable (in the old sen
se) and survive as a politician.
These characteristics, combined with his political naiveté, make him easy to manip
ulate, of course, and Hotspur is manipulated by almost everyone. He is persuaded
to rebel because that gives him an opportunity to fight and win more honour (he
has little interest in personal power and no fears about what Henry might do to
him). His potential allies let him down, his father betrays him, and his uncle
lies to him by not reporting Henry's offer of clemency. Prince Hal uses him to e
nhance his reputation, and Falstaff mutilates and uses Hotspur's dead body as a
commodity for financial gain. What Hotspur represents thus has a value in this s
ociety, but it's not an intrinsic value (except to him); the value comes from th
e ways in which Hotspur's qualities can be used to further deceitful political a
gendas.
Falstaff
If Hotspur is a permanent rebel because he is always needing someone to fight in
order to demonstrate his worth to himself and the world, then Falstaff is also
a permanent rebel, but of a very different sort. Hotspur's sense of honour, the
source of his participation in the political rebellion, is a very traditional co
de of military conduct. Falstaff, by contrast, repudiates any notion of a code w
hich might measure his conduct. In that sense, Falstaff is an anarchic spirit, r
eady to defy any rules in order to satisfy his own appetites.
No character in Shakespeare, other than Hamlet, has been written about more exte
nsively than Falstaff (modern Shakespeare criticism began with a long essay on F
alstaff), and his presence in Henry IV, Part 1 is the single most important fact
or which has made this play the most popular of Shakespeare's history plays (wit
h the exception of Richard III). And Falstaff's name and the adjective derived f
rom it, Falstaffian, are terms which have entered the popular idiom to denote a
giant zest for life, a huge appetite for pleasurable experience at the expense o
f any conventional notions of restraint, honesty, or moderation.
Falstaff is an enormous paradox. He is a huge man, who is so quick witted and so
deft at manipulating language that he remains eternally elusive (much of the hu
mour of Falstaff emerges from this combination of the enormously fat clown with
a lightning wit). He is quick to use others and has no sense of honesty, yet he
gives and inspires great affection in those around him. He is a relatively old m
an, yet he refuses to admit the fact. He is a knight of the realm, yet acknowled
ges no sense that being a knight requires of him any decorum, loyalty, or respec
table behaviour. He is an enormously selfish man, but he brings out of others so
me of their best qualities of wit, good fellowship, and conversation, as he hims
elf says in Henry IV, Part 2,
Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me. The brain of this foolish-compo
unded clay, man, is not able to invent anything that tends to laughter more than
I invent, or is invented on me. I am not only witty in myself, but the cause th
at wit is in other men. (1.2.5)
We can interpret Falstaff as some sort of Lord or Misrule, a figure of irrepress
ible energy and joyousness in life who exists as a counter to the necessary orde
r and stability in political society. And it may well be the case that Falstaff'
s theatrical origins include many such figures, the Kings of the Harvest Festiva
ls where the rules of order are temporarily suspended in the name of communal ce
lebrations free of normal restraints.
But we must be careful not to sentimentalize Falstaff (he invites us to do that,
of course), because if we do, we will fail to take account of his more corrosiv
e qualities. For Falstaff does not, like a festival lord of misrule, represent t
he temporary overthrow of traditional order in the name of communal celebrations
(that form of misrule depends upon and confirms the existing order which sancti
ons such a temporary letting go). His attitude includes also a deep skepticism w
hich undercuts all value, which empties words of any stable meanings, and which
therefore makes any form of shared life in a peaceful community impossible.
What brings this point out particularly well is Falstaff's rank. He is a knight,
ostensibly a member of the upper class responsible for law, order, and good gov
ernment. His subversive qualities would be far less powerful, were he simply a f
at common layabout. But he has the same rank as, say, Sir Walter Blunt, and is e
ntitled to join all the commanders in the consultation with the rebel leaders be
fore the battle and, as a knight, has the right and the responsibility to take c
ommand or the common men whom he presses into the king's service. Thus, his skep
ticism operates from within the system of "official" ordered value, and his refu
sal to comply with any restraint, his mockery of other people's attempts to do s
o, his ironic deflation of the rhetoric and actions of authority (like his conte
mpt for Blunt's sense of honour)--all these offer a much more corrosive ironic
counterpoint throughout the play.
This quality is most evident in Falstaff's contribution to the exploration of th
e theme of honour. Over against Hotspur's unequivocal tradition notions of honou
r, we have Henry IV's. This sense of military honour permits him to have several
other knights dress up in his royal armour and impersonate him on the battlefie
ld, so that his enemies will wear themselves out chasing and fighting the wrong
person. From Henry's point of view, this is clever military strategy--efficient
policy at work; from Hotspur's point of view it is a denial of what true honour
requires, which is not something politically expedient or efficient but somethin
g deeply personal, a manifestation of one's true character honestly and publicly
announced and maintained. From Falstaff's point of view, all honour which requi
res one to run the risk of losing one's life (especially in someone else's cause
) is absurd. In fact, any sense of honour which holds one back from seizing a go
od opportunity to enrich oneself is merely an empty word, to which he is not pre
pared to pay attention (although he is prepared to use the appearance of honour
to serve his own interests).
When we enjoy Falstaff's actions in the tavern, we should also see how, out of t
his approach to life, his attempt to cheat the hostess out of money, his conduct
with the conscript soldiers, and his mutilation of Hotspur's body follow quite
consistently. These actions complicate our response to him. In a stable society,
at peace with itself and observing shared nad honestly observed rules of conduc
t, such actions would seriously prejudice our opinion of the fat knight. But in
this play, our judgment is made much more difficult, because Falstaff's actions
are, in some respects, not all that different from what others are doing on a mu
ch bigger scale.
After all, Falstaff may well be abusing the king's press, but Henry is forcing p
eople to dress up and be killed on his behalf, to uphold his claim on the throne
, which he won by rebellion and murder. Falstaff mutilates Hotspur's dead body,
but Worcester and Prince Hal bring about Hotspur's death. Falstaff may rob the t
raveler at Gadshill, but others have stolen or are planning to steal the entire
kingdom. In a world where the leaders routinely dispense with moral consideratio
ns in their pursuit of power and manipulate language to suit their political pur
poses, Falstaff's actions appear less reprehensible than they otherwise might. A
fter all, if the king and the lords are lying, stealing, and deceiving, why shou
ldn't he? At least the scale of his operations is much smaller, and he seems to
have much more fun doing it (and bringing pleasure to others in the process). Mo
reover, he is quite candid about what he is doing and does not attempt (as Henry
and the rebels do) to justify his actions as somehow morally defensible (except
in mock justifications which parody the official language of the court). In fa
ct, his impersonation of them, his appropriation of their high-toned language fo
r satiric purposes, reminds us constantly of the hypocrisy of their special plea
ding. On top of all that, he has, as he observes, a capacity to bring joy to ot
hers, to make them laugh, to inspire their affections, in a manner quite impossi
ble in the royal court.
That's why the presence of Falstaff is much more subversive than a sentimental p
icture of him might suggest. He candidly acknowledges what he does and why he do
es it, and our knowledge of what is happening on the larger scale doesn't give u
s the solid assurances we need to deal with Falstaff as we might wish. If Falsta
ff is wrong (and his conduct would seem to be quite unacceptable to any normal d
ealings with each other), then where can we turn to find out some standard by wh
ich to measure the man? Is the difference between right and wrong conduct now si
mply a matter of one's political rank?
In that sense, Falstaff's references to himself as a devil take on a certain res
onance. Of course, he belongs to the famous tradition of the Vice, the clown-dev
il with a dagger of lath, surrounded by his cronies and dedicated to creating ha
voc among ordinary folk. Most of the obvious allegorical connections with such a
figure have been taken away or toned down, so that we see Falstaff primarily as
the spirit of anarchic play. But for all his fun, he carries also the disturbin
g presence of a skepticism which undercuts all meaning, all restraint, all settl
ed order. That is the reason why Prince Hal knows that he is going to have to se
ver the connection between them at some point.
Prince Hal
At the very centre of these various political issues stands Prince Hal, and how
we interpret his actions in relation to the various other characters and themes
will determine in large part how we understand Henry IV, Part 1. Hal apparently
undergoes a significant transformation in the course of the action, emerging by
the end as a shrewd and successful political operator, every bit as efficient as
his father. In that sense, Henry IV, Part 1 is, first and foremost, the opening
chapter in Shakespeare's study of the education of the modern ruler. This focus
on the education of the modern ruler continues in Henry IV, Part 2 and reaches
its culmination in Henry V, where we see Prince Hal, now king, fulfilling all th
e political duties of the king with maximum speed, efficiency, and success. Sinc
e we will be dealing with Henry V later, I'll confine my remarks here to Prince
Hal in Henry IV, Part 1.
Traditionally there are two common ways to interpret Prince Hal's development. T
he first, which is the older of the two, sees it as an unironic celebration of a
great king in training. According to this view, Hal learns from the tavern impo
rtant qualities which serve him well later on (e.g., how to understand common pl
easures, like drinking small beer, and the working life of his subjects, how to
relate to the people). He acquires a more mature understanding of life by acting
as a young rebel (mildly) and always retains his warmth and affection which gov
ern life in the tavern. In Prince Hal, then, Shakespeare is offering us, so this
view has it, a picture of the growth of responsibly mature modern political lea
dership, a celebration of the very best the new political order has to offer, a
king with the "common touch.".
[Parenthetically, it is interesting in this regard to recall Empson's observatio
ns on the reputation of the historical Henry V as the first really English king,
the first to use the English language in his official correspondence, and one o
f the first kings to acquire a glorious reputation as an Englishman.]
The second view is less charitable. It sees Prince Hal as a coldly calculating M
achiavel right from the start, a man who is, in effect, using his friends as mea
ns to a political end, without much regard for their feelings. Hal, in this view
, is far from warmly human and affectionate: he is, by contrast, a selfish and c
ruel political operator, fond of painful practical jokes (for example, his treat
ment of Francis), whose every move is part of a calculated game plan. Hence, Pri
nce Hal is Shakespeare's picture of just how nasty and inhuman successful politi
cal operators really are (or need to be).
How are we to choose between these two readings of the character? The script can
sustain either one, and, if these were the only two options, the style of the a
ctor playing the role would indicate which one we were dealing with in any parti
cular production. However, I'd like to suggest a middle course here, between the
se two extremes. For me, Prince Hal is Shakespeare's exploration not merely of w
hat it takes to be an effective political leader in a Machiavellian world but, m
ore importantly, of what such leadership costs. In other words, I would argue th
at Prince Hal's great success (and there is no doubt that he is spectacularly su
ccessful) comes at a price, and that price turns out to be very high.
I admit that this view of Prince Hal is not so clear in Henry IV, Part 1 as it b
ecomes later in the series of plays (especially in Henry V), but it has the meri
t of making the best sense of the evidence and turning the play into something m
ore challenging than a celebration or an indictment of modern political leadersh
ip. It becomes instead an exploration of the links between political effectivene
ss and a loss of human richness in one's life. To establish this point quickly,
let me list some obvious points.
Prince Hal has quite clearly committed himself to following in his father's foot
steps. He never debates with himself that point, and his first soliloquy at the
end of 1.2 (which is much disputed) tells us unequivocally that he is resolved t
o emerge and make a grand stir in the political realm. Furthermore, this soliloq
uy informs us that Prince Hal has a firm grasp on the fact that the essential qu
ality of the powerful leader is theatrical, the ability to put on a dazzling and
surprising public performance. His justification for being in the tavern, after
all, is that it will, like a good play, enable him to make a crowd pleasing sho
w out of his transformation. In that sense, he's fully committed to the modern
political world (just as everyone else in the play is, other than Hotspur); he h
as no sense of any other ways of operating (so this play does not include an exp
loration of political options, as, for example, Julius Caesar does--nor does it
ever engage in the nostalgic option that one can go back to the old ways of gove
rning before Bolingbroke's rebellion)..
But there may be more to his sojourn in the tavern than such rational self-inter
ested calculation. There is also a sense that in the Boar's Head he can experien
ce a happiness which is not available in the court. He can be himself. He can ex
periment with life, joke, make friends, and indulge in whatever takes his fancy,
as he says: "I am now of all humours that have showed themselves humours since
the old days of goodman Adam to the pupil age of this present twelve o'clock mid
night" (2.5.86). He can, in other words, shape his conduct to suit his feelings
(his "humours"), something not possible in the royal court. Such freedom will d
isappear as soon as he enters the political world. Hence, it is not difficult to
understand why he likes the tavern. Life with Falstaff is so much more fun, so
much more imaginatively alive than life with father at the palace.
It's true that that soliloquy at the end of 1.2 sounds very calculating, deliber
ate, and self-serving, especially the latent contempt in the opening lines:
I know you all, and will a while uphold
The unyoked humour of your idleness. . . . (1.2.173-4)
But these lines might be, as I mentioned above, more than just the declaration o
f an insidious rational intention. It may well be the case that in them Prince H
al is attempting to justify to himself the time he spends at the Boar's Head. If
he can attach a political strategy to hanging out with Falstaff, then he will b
e able for a while longer to enjoy a form of life which is unachievable in the p
alace.
This sense of his motivation emerges in a later scene in the following remark:
I am not yet of Percy's mind, the Hotspur of the North--he that kills me som
e six or seven dozen of Scots at a breakfast, washes his hands, and says to his
wife, 'Fie upon this quiet life! I want work.' (2.5.94-97)
His remarks here are, of course, a travesty of Hotspur's character, but there's
enough truth in the exaggeration to indicate that Prince Hal has a shrewd idea o
f the pointlessness of basing one's life on the value of killing others. But the
word that interests me here is that adverb yet. It adds an important qualificat
ion to Hal's criticism of Percy, for it indicates that he is aware that at some
point in the future he is going to have to play the role of Hotspur, he is going
to have to, as it were, out-Hotspur Hotspur, to make him, as he later tells his
father, his "factor," his instrument in achieving political goals.
This remark comes across as a casual joke, but it suggests an interesting inner
tension in Prince Hal, his awareness that the political life he is going to choo
se in the near future will require of him conduct (in a political role-playing e
xercise) which he knows is not spontaneously felt, not an essential part of hims
elf, something which he can see through easily enough, but which is a necessary
political role he will have to take on temporarily to achieve his political goal
s efficiently. Hotspur's way of life may, for Prince Hal, be ridiculous, but it'
s something he's going to have to deal with on Hotspur's terms soon enough. His
political future demands that.
Hal also knows that he is going to have to sever his connections with Falstaff.
In fact, this play telegraphs this divorce in one of the funniest and yet most m
oving scenes in the entire play, that part of 2.5 in which Falstaff and Hal pret
end they are in the royal court and they alternate roles. Once Hal takes on the
role of the king (his future destiny) he offers an official condemnation of Fals
taff:
Why dost thou converse with that trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of bea
stliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuff
ed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly,
that reverend Vice, that grey Iniquity, that father Ruffian, that Vanity of Yea
rs? Wherein is he good, but to taste sack and drink it? Wherein neat and cleanly
, but to carve a capon and eat it? Wherein cunning, but in craft? Wherein crafty
, but in villainy? Wherein villainous, but in all things? Wherein worthy, but in
nothing? (2.5.409-418)
In response to these questions, Falstaff (speaking in his role of Prince Hal) de
fends himself:
But say I know more harm in him than in myself were to say more than I know.
That he is old, the more the pity, his white hairs do witness it. But that he i
s, saving your reverence, a whoremaster, that I utterly deny. If sack and sugar
be a fault, God help the wicked. If to be old and merry be a sin, then many an o
ld host that I know is damned. If to be fat be to be hated, then Pharaoh's lean
kine are to be loved. No, my good lord, banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poi
ns, but for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant
Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant being, as he is, old Jack Falstaff,
Banish not him thy Harry's company,
Banish not him they Harry's company.
Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world. (2.5.425-438)
This, of course, is all part of the fun and games they have devised, but (depend
ing on how the scene is played) the moment has extraordinary reverberations. Fal
staff is making the case in his own defense. But is he still in the role of Prin
ce Hal speaking to King Henry IV (the situation when the speech began)? What see
ms to have happened here is that somewhere in the middle of the play-acting Fals
taff senses the reality underlying the pretense. The phrase "thy Harry's" may we
ll mean Bolingbroke's son, Prince Hal, but it might also mean that part of Princ
e Hal which belongs with Falstaff, the "Harry" part of him. The colloquial vigou
r and intimacy of the name and the formal repetition in the closing lines sugges
t that Falstaff is appealing to a bond established between them because, like Pr
ince Hal, he knows their bond may be ruptured. The game may be still going on, b
ut the tone of it has been quite transformed.
The key moment in this exchange (and potentially one of the most poignant moment
s in the play) is Prince Hal's reply to this defense, and how these lines are de
livered will indicate, more than anything else, the nature of Prince Hal's chara
cter and motives. For he states quite simply, "I do; I will." I have seen this l
ine delivered by Hal right at Falstaff with a tone of immense regret and love (a
nd with Hal's arms around Falstaff's neck); in other productions I have seen the
line tossed off casually. Of these two alternatives (and there are obviously ot
hers) the first one evokes Prince Hal's awareness of what is going to have to do
, the sense of the loss he will have to sustain, together with his resigned but
determined acceptance of that loss.
This important moment is decisive also because at that instant the political wor
ld breaks in upon the tavern fun, and the Prince, by the end of the scene, knows
that he must go and join his father's enterprise. When we next see him he is in
conference with his father, declaring his allegiance to his cause and his readi
ness to play the political role which has been waiting for him. In a sense, this
play-acting in the Boar's Head is the last truly carefree moment the Prince enj
oys, and it ends with him declaring his determination to leave Falstaff. From no
w on, Prince Hal's play acting will be on the wider and more dangerous stage of
English power politics.
Of course, the formal public rejection of Falstaff does not occur until the end
of Henry IV, Part 2, but it's noticeable that the next time we meet the fat knig
ht he is starting to complain about illness and decay, a process that continues
throughout the second play. And Prince Hal does return to the tavern. But he's c
ast his lot with the political world, and the scenes between him and his Boar's
Head cronies never regain the freedom and zest of the early parts of this play.
That divorce from Falstaff registers with us (and with Prince Hal) as something
of a loss. Falstaff has pleaded, "Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world,"
and there's a certain truth in that statement. To work as an effective political
leader, one has to banish plump Jack. That is obviously necessary. But that ban
ishment takes with it all the vital things that Falstaff makes available to thos
e around him, the things I have referred to repeatedly already, like spontaneous
affection, careless rhetorical excess, the joys of an unsuspicious friendship,
games where one's life is not at risk, even love. As I mentioned, it brings out
the cost of turning oneself into a king.
It also takes away Falstaff's keen sense for the hypocrisy and absurdity of much
 of the lofty rhetoric associated with political leadership. In the tavern one c
an afford to make fun of the language of authority (political and religious), to
, as it were, unmask its pretense to be firmly grounded in moral practice. On th
e larger stage, one's language has to fit the roles required of leadership and t
hat requires taking seriously (or pretending to take seriously) what anyone who
associates with Falstaff knows is empty moral posturing. Hence, there is a sense
that giving up the tavern for the royal council involves more than simply a los
s of carefree good times; it also involves surrendering oneself to the roles one
has to play in a game where the stakes are much higher and where the rules cann
ot be changed when the imagination prompts and where one cannot permit one's cri
tical awareness of one's own hypocrisy to interfere with the efficient carrying
out of whatever actions the situation demands (or speaking whatever language one
's role requires at any particular moment).
There may well be a feeling of this loss (or at least the beginning of it) when
Prince Hal has killed Hotspur and stands over the corpse and what Hal believes i
s the dead body of Falstaff (in 5.4). Here he is standing over his dead rival an
d his apparently dead friend, yet there's a curious sense of detachment about hi
m. He can pay tribute to Hotspur's spirit, but in calling attention to his feeli
ngs, he seems to suggest a noticeable lack of any deep emotion:
If thou wert sensible of courtesy,
I should not make so dear a show of zeal;
But let my favours hide thy mangled face. (5.4.93-95)
In paying tribute to Hotspur's great spirit, Prince Hal acknowledges that if Hot
spur were conscious he wouldn't be paying him this compliment. Whatever he's fee
ling at the moment, he's very clearly in control of it, so much so that his abil
ity to imagine Hotspur alive and think about how he would react differently in t
hat situation indicates no immediately passionate response. What he's saying, in
effect, is that in a different situation he would have to take on a different r
ole. The tribute is a fine one, appropriate in the circumstances, but perfectly
controlled, just what one might expect from someone with a fine command of appro
priate political rhetoric but with no deep feeling.
The subsequent tribute to Falstaff is similarly detached (enough to make a feebl
e joke about the body), and when he discovers Falstaff is alive, Hal does not in
dicate any great surprise or moving feeling. It's as if, having donned the role
of mighty passionate warrior and out-Hotspured Hotspur, Prince Hal can drop the
role. He's made his point, and is not, like Hotspur, wedded to it. That particul
ar part of the multiple performances he will now have to play is over. That's wh
y he can also let Falstaff take whatever credit belongs to killing Hotspur and l
et Douglas go.
What I'm trying to point to here is a sense that Prince Hal, in turning himself
into a political actor, becomes a consummate role player, efficiently dischargin
g his duties in whatever mode that requires (heroic warrior, magnanimous winner)
. But the efficient discharge of a particular role lacks the spontaneous energy
of the earlier life in the tavern. There's a calculation behind it. And once the
re's no more reason to play a role, Prince Hal seems to have little use for it.
I admit I'm heavily influenced in this sense by what comes in the later plays, b
ecause what we see there, especially in Henry V, is a king whose mastery of all
the roles of kingship is complete but who, we sense, in turning himself into suc
h an efficient and necessary political operator loses any spontaneous sense of s
elf. He becomes merely the totality of the public roles he plays and is graduall
y emptied of all complex humanity, in a process that is not unlike that of Micha
el Corleone, who becomes the shrewdest and most successful Godfather of all at a
n enormous price (in Godfather II), the loss of his family and the deadening of
his emotional centres.
Henry IV, Part 1 does not underline this development; indeed, the ending makes c
lear that there is still a good deal more of the story to come. But the major de
velopment of Prince Hal is well launched and with it the theme exploring what th
e human cost of effective political leadership might be. If we read the later pl
ays, witnessing the very public rejections of Falstaff at the end of Henry IV, P
art 2 and learn of his death (from a broken heart brought on by Henry's rejectio
n of him, so we are informed by one of Falstaff's tavern friends) then the trium
ph of Prince Hal as he becomes the perfectly successful king carries a strong ir
onic reminder that the price of effective political leadership might be more tha
n most people are willing or able to bear.
Postscript: Shakespeare's Political Vision?
If might be worth wondering for a moment or two what, if anything, we derive fro
m Henry IV, Part 1 in the nature of a political vision. Can we take away from th
is play a sense of what political leadership and political life amount to? Alter
natively put, is Shakespeare endorsing, celebrating, or indicting the success of
Bolingbroke and his son over the rebels? Is there anything here remotely releva
nt to our understanding of modern politics?
These questions (and other like them) are much debated these days, usually in th
e form of a question like the following: "Is Shakespeare defending the establish
ment of the modern vision of the state as controlled by an unscrupulous but effi
cient political leadership? Or is he undermining that vision of the state, holdi
ng it up for criticism, exposing its arbitrary injustice?"
These are complex questions, and I shall make no attempt to deal with them in an
y detail here, but a few final observations might be in order.
First, there are reminders throughout Henry IV, Part 1 that those at the bottom
are given little consideration. The men whom Falstaff gathers in to fulfill his
quota of soldiers are those who have no money to purchase their way out. They ar
e those with little stake in the structure of authority, and they are consequent
ly, as Falstaff cynically points out, "food for powder." And even in the tavern,
where people can forget about politics and play imaginative games with each oth
er, the lad who keeps the beer coming, Francis, is an indentured servant, forced
to labour for years in order to qualify as a bar man. There is no sense in this
play that these people have any resources to deal with their lowly situation no
r that any one in power cares enough about them. Thus, if the play is calling at
tention to the injustices built into the political system it depicts, it is cert
ainly not suggesting that there is any remedy at hand either in the consciousnes
s of the people at the bottom or in the political vision of those higher up. Th
ere is also a strong suggestion here that these people pay heavily for incompete
nce at the top: the casualties of civil war are not confined to those whose deci
sions initiate it.
Second, if we see this play as, in part, a celebration of the political skills o
f Prince Hal in acquiring the expertise to be a star player, there is a sense of
the emptiness which this commitment brings with it. A view of politics which se
es it, as this play does, as consummate role playing divorced from any political
vision other than short-term success over one's immediate enemies undermines th
e very skills which it endorses. Inevitably the question arises: Why dedicate on
eself to the enterprise, then, given that it has brought Bolingbroke no peace of
mind and launched England in a series of inconclusive civil wars? Falstaff's pr
esence in the play as the ironic satiric counterpoint to the high political rhet
oric powerfully adds to this undermining of any claims to some higher moral purp
ose in political leadership.
At the same time, however, it seems clear that the self-perpetuating civil wars
are inevitable in a political order based only on power and devoid of trust. T
o the extent that all political order exists for the security of the citizens go
verned, we are (I think) invited to see that the only answer here (if there is a
ny) is for one person to get so much power and skill, that no one will be able t
o muster forces against him. Just how that might happen, of course, the play do
es not make clear.
Third, there is no room in this vision of politics for women. We have said littl
e about the women in the play, because there is little to say. Significantly, th
e one moment where they emerge as most important is at the court of Glendower, t
he magical Welsh rebel, who belongs to a world far from the practical, hard-head
ed, self-serving power grabbing of the English court. There the women are linked
to the magic and mystery of spells and music. But significantly, the wonderful
contributions of music and song are in a language that no Englishman can underst
and, and the one person who is truly moved by them, Lord Mortimer, plays no sign
ificant political role in the rebellion (although his claim to the throne is the
ir ostensible justification for fighting against Henry). And from the news of wh
at the Welsh women did to the bodies of the dead soldiers, we are invited to see
them as belonging to some barbarous culture antedating the modern age (although
Falstaff also mutilates the dead). So whatever we are to make of the women in
this play, there is no sense whatsoever that they hold any influence over or ans
wers to the problems of modern politics, a thoroughly male business (a point whi
ch this play may not be celebrating at all but holding up as one source of the p
roblems).
What does this add up to? I'm not sure if I can summarize it easily. We are a fa
r distance from the opening of Richard II, where politics is conducted in open t
raditional rituals in which everyone speaks the same language, in which gardener
s going about their business in the palace gardens can see connections between n
atural and political order. In that world, single combat can be the arbiter of j
ustice because there is a shared faith that God has an interest in the human com
munity and will intervene to protect the right.
In Henry IV, Prince Hal's offer to fight Hotspur in single combat is, by contras
t, a theatrical gesture, made in deference to that old tradition but without any
conviction. He knows he won't be taken up on it. In this world, God does not ma
nifest Himself in history nor in the traditional rituals of justice. That is so
apparent that Bolingbroke's repeated references to a crusade strike one as incom
prehensible (until we learn in Henry IV, Part 2, that the expedition is part of
his political strategy to keep his domestic enemies busy in foreign quarrels).
Frequent mention of God's name, of course, is an important part of public rhetor
ic (as we shall see in Henry V], but faith in God is not longer an essential par
t of the political or judicial process.
Is this, then, a totally cynical view of history and politics? I don't think it
is quite that, although the vision is certainly ambivalent. On the one hand, thi
s play seems to be saying, effective political leadership must come from the top
if life is not to be an endless parade of civil wars; on the other hand, such l
eadership now consists of and requires, above everything else, the effective com
mand of theatrical pretense merely for the sake of maintaining power, without th
e need for any further religious, dynastic, or moral justification (other than a
s part of the pretense).
This ambivalence is sustained throughout Henry IV, Part 2 and culminates in Henr
y V. In that last play, we have the glorious celebration of Prince Hal's (now He
nry V) amazing political success in everything he attempts. But the very last wo
rds of the play tell us that all these achievements amount to nothing, because a
few years after his death, everything goes back to the way it was during the re
bellion. If this does not amount to a revolutionary doctrine satisfactory to ide
ologues who want to emancipate the working classes, then it seems to me it indic
ates at least some radical paradox at the heart of the new politics which makes
it, in some fundamental way, self-defeating.

henry v
1)Introduction
Shakespeare's Henry V is a curious work. Unlike most of Shakespeare's other pla
ys, it seems to present no continuing complex story, nor does it explore any sig
nificant character development into a new awareness of anything. It is apparent
ly designed more than anything else as a celebration of a particular personality
, Henry V himself, in his various capacities as king. In the course of the play
we see him performing the many different major functions of kingship: in counci
l, carrying out royal justice, negotiating with the enemy, leading a military ex
pedition, arranging a royal marriage, and so on. In all of these Henry is quick
ly and spectacularly successful. Hence, the play seems to lack the characterist
ic rhythm of a complex dramatic narrative, in which the conflict has a certain d
ynamic tension, some significant clash or complex character development.
This feature of the play has led some commentators to describe it as having a ce
rtain "epic" quality, meaning that the major purpose of the play seems to be to
present a series of episodes of Henry as king in such a way as to celebrate his
virtuoso performance, his unqualified success at everything he carries out. Tha
t quality is emphasized particularly by the presence of the Chorus, who announce
s the major demarcations of the play, each one involving an important shift in t
he scene and in the main political activity--in effect, announcing that now we a
re to witness one more illustration of Henry's success.. So in this play there
is no sense at all of the incompetence of Richard II, the sickness of Henry IV,
the ingenious plotting of Richard III, or the moral evasiveness and self-defeat
ing duplicity in earlier plays. Henry V would seem to present the triumphant an
swer to all the questions raised about modern politics in the earlier plays.
This aspect of the play is underscored by the way in which Henry himself dominat
es the scene. In no other play by Shakespeare is a single character so prominen
t, with such a large proportion of the lines assigned to him. No one in the pla
y emerges as at all significant in comparison with this central character (minor
characters, like Pistol or Fluellen, may be more dramatically interesting than
Henry, but they are hardly as important as he is in the action). Any opposition
from rebels at home or French nobles on the battlefield is quickly and perempto
rily dealt with. So we have here no continuing sense of a conflict of personali
ties (like, for example, the conflict between Bolingbroke and Richard in Richard
II or between Henry IV and Falstaff and Hotspur Henry IV, Part 1, and so on).
The play, from start to finish, puts Henry on display as an unopposed triumphant
theatrical presence.
How are we supposed to deal with this? What is Shakespeare's purpose in subordi
nating any complex or interesting plot or character conflict to the celebration
of an individual personality? Clearly, the answer has something to do with a de
sire to celebrate in Henry V the qualities of a totally successful monarch. If
Henry IV raises the question "How in the modern world of Machiavellian dealing c
an politics be possible?" then this play would seem to supply the answer. Here
we have the successful modern politician writ large. No other political figure
in all of Shakespeare is as consistently efficient and successful as Henry.
For many readers, however, the play raises more complex possibilities. Yes, ind
eed, Henry is spectacularly successful, without peer in the world of modern poli
tics, victorious in all encounters. But what has that cost him? To what extent
does this play, for all its celebration of the great and glorious king, also ca
ll attention to the liabilities that come with such success? Or, put another wa
y, just how much is the tribute to Henry V undercut by a complicating irony?
In order to address these issues in this lecture, I'd like to focus for a moment
on Henry's success (trying to explore some answers to the question about what i
t is exactly that makes him such a successful leader) and then move onto the mor
e disputed territory of the play's ironic possibilities.
Henry the Mirror of All Christian Kings
That Henry is consistently successful is an obvious feature of the play. We not
only see that for ourselves, but we are always being told by various figures in
the play just how marvelous Henry is. Everyone, from the clergy, to the powerfu
l nobles, the military officers, the common men, even the French enemy, constant
ly acknowledge how much they admire Henry. In the one plot against him, the maj
or conspirators instantly repent (once they are found out), and do not voice any
complaint against Henry himself.
All this is clear enough. However, things get a little more complex if we ask o
urselves just what, if anything, makes Henry a great king. Does this play illum
inate for us particular personal qualities which enable Henry to be so much more
successful than his predecessors? If so, just what does he possess or do to ma
ke his political actions so successful?
On the face of it, that question is at first rather perplexing, because we don't
see Henry debating various options, thinking his way through a particular probl
em, or even facing complex personal dilemmas. With one notable exception (which
we will discuss later) we never see him alone, wrestling with alternatives, ass
essing whom he should trust or what he should do. What we do witness is Henry a
cting once all that personal decision making which illuminates someone's charact
er has already taken place somewhere else--we see him carrying out in action amo
ng other people what he has decided to do. How or why that decision was reached
is not explored in any great detail.
What does stand out, in the absence of such a close glimpse of Henry's personal
characteristics, is his ability to adopt whatever public persona the situation r
equires. Whatever public style he needs to adopt to cope properly with a situat
ion, he adopts completely and successfully, and when the situation changes he ch
anges to meet a new circumstance.
So, for example, we see Henry at the start as a keen listener, letting his leadi
ng nobles and churchmen have their say about the decision whether or not to go
to war, and stepping into the discussion decisively only when necessary and appr
opriate. Later he can, to the satisfaction of everyone, stage his royal justice
in the unmasking of the conspirators. On the battlefield he can intimidate the
citizen of Harfleur into surrendering, mix easily with the common soldiers, rall
y his troops with the most famous battlefield speech in English literature, and
finally switch to the colloquial ease of a prosaic wooing scene with Katharine.
It's almost as if we are seeing a different personality in each of these situat
ions.
We should already be familiar with this quality from Henry IV, Part 1, where Pri
nce Hal is able to move smoothly from tavern to court to battlefield, seamlessly
fitting in to these very different situations by adjusting his behaviour and (m
ost importantly) his language to the new setting. Once the situation he has to
deal with is over, the role he has adopted to cope with it can be abandoned. F
aced with fighting Hotspur, Prince Hal can present himself as the full flower of
chivalric honour; once that task is accomplished, he can drop the role. It is
no longer necessary.
Henry, in other words, is, above and beyond all his other talents, a consummate
actor. He has that most important Machiavel skill, the ability to adjust who he
 is so as to adopt the role best suited for effective political action in a give
n situation. And this quality is most apparent in Henry's astonishing ability w
ith language. He is an absolute master of political rhetoric, and Henry V is, m
ore than anything else, a constant tribute to this talent.
Allied to this (perhaps it's the same thing) is Henry's astute sense of politics
as theatre. Always on public display, Henry has an unerring sense of manipulat
ing a situation (or, to sustain the theatrical metaphor) of directing situations
so as to emphasize his royal authority, his decisive public presence. And the
key talent required for this to work effectively is Henry's sense of his own sc
ript.
At the start of the play, for instance, we follow the decision to go to war with
France. It is not immediately clear just what Henry himself wants to do, and t
he way he conducts the royal council, it seems clear that he wants to assess the
situation, to let everyone else speak--not so much to find out if he is justifi
ed in fighting the war but rather to gauge the temper, the political climate, of
the meeting.. He quickly learns that, whatever the justification, everyone is k
een to fight. At that point, he can step in decisively (in his answer to the me
ssage from the Dauphin) and deliver his belligerent answer--a strategy which put
s him right in the spotlight, and enables him to confirm and appeal to the warmo
ngering spirit of his nobles. All this has been made possible by Henry's astute
sense of the need to sound out his nobles before having to deal with the French
ambassador. To achieve that he has to rely upon the key quality his father sho
wed in Richard II, the ability to listen to others, rather than making his own d
ecision and imposing it on others.
In the next episode, in which Henry deals with the conspiracy against him, he, o
nce again, stages a carefully arranged scene of theatrical politics. Instead of
simply confronting the conspirators with their treachery, Henry lulls them into
his theatre, so that he can step up and deliver a lengthy lecture on the import
ance of friendship and condemn them out of their own mouths.
What Henry is, in effect, doing is inviting his leading nobles to act as spectat
ors in his own drama, to see him as the leading character dominating the action,
calling the shots (not behind closed doors in closely argued debate or with ope
n displays of his own power) but by the theatrical enactment of his preeminence
. Henry's speech on friendship, like his lengthy response to the French ambassa
dor, has no particular effect on the action (in either case the English are goin
g to war and the conspirators are going to be executed), but they are essential
to the style of Henry's political leadership front and centre, providing his pow
erful nobles a sense of shared agreement, voicing their common feelings in respo
nse to a situation he has carefully orchestrated to give him the opportunity to
do that. He makes himself the splendid spokesman for their common desires.
Henry, in other words, like his father (and very unlike Richard II) obviously ha
s an intuitive sense of the importance of language and a theatrical royal public
presence as a central tool of effective political leadership. He is fully commi
tted to the concept of kingship as efficient role playing, responding to the dem
ands of a situation in a manner that most effectively deals with that situation
and, at the same time, reinforces the image of royal authority. Unlike Richard,
Henry is not in love with any particular role: how he acts is always determined
by a shrewd appreciation for what the realities of the situation demand. Hence
, he never falls into Richard's mistake of thinking that a particular role is it
self the political reality--for Henry every role is a temporary tool used to kee
p control over a potentially troublesome situation.
What makes this aspect of Henry's political style most clear is the puzzling det
achment he seems to have from the emotional content of the role he has to play.
What I mean by that is that Henry is fully capable of using the most emotionall
y charged language in his public pronouncements, but the emotions he expresses a
re entirely bound up with the role, so that, once that moment is dealt with, he
can quite dispassionately switch gears and effortlessly move into the next momen
t.
For instance, Henry can raise persistent royal doubts about the morality of his
actions in going to France--the situation requires that he display such moral co
ncerns. But once the theatrical display of the Archbishop's reply and the vario
us responses to it have taken place (without, for us, providing much of a convin
cing rationale), Henry can move on without any moral qualms into his warrior mod
e. The solemn moral language he uses, in other words, has no really deep meanin
g for him: the sentiments are those which the situation demands, nothing more, n
othing less.
Similarly, Henry can deliver a very emotionally charged lecture on friendship to
the conspirators (in 2.3), rehearsing the enormity of their betrayal, as if the
y are (or were) people particularly close and dear to him, and then, once the me
n are led away, instantly forget about that completely, and switching personalit
ies abruptly and without any transition: "Bear them hence./Now lords for France,
the enterprise whereof/ Shall be to you, as us, like glorious." The speech on
friendship has done its work--served to highlight in a theatrical way the nature
of royal justice--but the power of the rhetoric has no effect on Henry beyond t
he moment he uses it to act the role of the grieving monarch. After all, if the
se conspirators were indeed the very closest of friends (as Henry's speech sugge
sts that they were) and if he were as emotionally hurt as he describes, it would
seem rather odd that he could condemn them to death without any lingering emoti
onal effect.
This ability of Henry to detach his own feelings from the words he is expressing
accounts for the curious quality of many of his best known speeches, especially
the threats to the citizens of Harfleur (3.3). Henry can simultaneously repeat
edly indicate the extreme violence which will occur to the citizens if his soldi
ers take the town and disclaim his own involvement in the process ("What is't to
me, when you yourselves are cause" and so on). The speech is famous as an exam
ple of excessive military rhetoric, but what's curious is that it seems to be gi
ven here because that's what the situation demands, rather than anything Henry p
assionately feels. Once the governor of the town surrenders, Henry drops the to
ne completely and instructs Exeter to "Use mercy on them all." Is Henry a milit
ary butcher or a merciful conqueror? Well, that depends upon the immediate conte
xt.
Similarly, when faced with a potentially disastrous military situation before th
e Battle of Agincourt, Henry can talk sympathetically with the soldiers, seeking
to rouse them, pray to God for guidance, and then deliver a wonderfully inspiri
ng speech to his troops, justly famous as a rousing preparation for battle (a qu
ality one senses he has learned or observed in Hotspur). Then, once the victory
is complete, he can switch to the pious Christian thankful for his deliverance,
and later to the rough colloquial wooer of the French princess.
All of these changes are, of course, politically effective (that is, they secure
the desired short-term goals), and the play strongly suggests that the fact tha
t Henry can move so quickly and effortlessly from one political role to another,
with no apparent emotional strain, is his major political asset, since it enabl
es Henry to be the most flexible of political operators. But the characteristic
inevitably raises the key question: Who is the real Henry? What is there under
all the role playing?
Henry the Man
Answering questions about Henry's real personality are inherently difficult, sim
ply because, with one notable exception, we never see Henry except in a public r
ole. For most of the play, Henry simply is the role he is playing at the moment
, and the sum total of the various roles doesn't add up to a coherent personalit
y. In fact, that totality raises some awkward questions.
If Henry is as pious as he likes to appear--demanding a moral justification for
going to war, constantly invoking the name of God in all his public pronouncemen
ts, insisting on the importance of mercy, and so on--then why does he go to war
in the first place? How can he threaten such immoral violence on Harfleur, kill
the prisoners of war, execute Bardolph (once his friend or crony, in the days o
f hanging out with Falstaff), and so on? Or how can he at least not manifest so
me momentary misgiving? Is there not some logical inconsistency here, especiall
y since he seems to do it all so easily, without inner debate or emotional strai
n? Henry seems to invoke principles which he himself then denies in his actions
.
Many commentators on this play have seen in this inconsistency an important sour
ce of irony in the presentation of Henry's character, an irony that was present
also in the portrayal of his father, Bolingbroke. This irony to some extent (j
ust how much is a matter of dispute) undercuts the sense of celebration in Henry
's success, because it seems to suggest that success in modern politics, the maj
or demand of an effective Machiavel style, requires a thoroughgoing hypocrisy or
, beyond that, smothers the individual's distinctively human personality under t
he need for the various public roles demanded of the king.
This possibility raises the complex and perhaps pessimistic notion that success
in politics requires the sacrifice or repression of one's humanity. Modern poli
tics requires constant attention to the proper display and use of royal power, a
scrupulous attention to the languages of the various roles which manifest that
power, and an ability to move among these roles with none of the usual scruples
or demands of one's own self-interest or moral awareness. The most successful M
achiavel is merely the totality of the effective roles he is required to play.
In a sense, the more effective the leader, the less fully human he is, and, vice
versa, the more fully human being one is, the less suited one is for full polit
ical rule.
This point is made explicit in the one moment we see Henry alone in 4.1, in a s
oliloquy before the battle. Most of this speech explores the nature of his own
life, particularly his total commitment to "ceremony"--a word which sums up Henr
y's sense of what is required of him as king: "Art thou aught else but place, de
gree, and form,/ Creating awe and fear in other men?" His tone here suggests a
certain weariness in the face of the awareness that such "ceremony" has nothing
to do with the most essential things about life, which the common man can enjoy
without the responsibilities of being a hypocrite.
The very term "ceremony," together with the way Henry talks about it, suggests s
omething theatrical, a collection of props ("The sword, the mace, the crown impe
rial,/The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,/ The farced title running fore th
e king. . . .") and the theatrical staging associated with these props. None of
these, Henry admits, can answer to the deepest desires and fears of human being
s. In fact, some of the most cherished desires of human life (like a good night
's sleep) must be surrendered as the price of these ceremonial props. In that s
ense there is something artificial and false (and perhaps dehumanizing) about th
em.
Henry's reflections on these matters do not, however, lead him to any new awaren
ess or any new actions. And they certainly do not reveal any doubts about what
he has done or is doing--there is no slackening of purpose here. For the speech
itself, although expressing a certain weariness, goes nowhere emotionally (into
anger, uncertainty, or frustration, for example). So it's worth asking what we
 are supposed to make of this moment. There's little sense that Henry has any u
nease which interferes with his ability to rule effectively (before and after th
is moment), but the fact that he does have this moment suggests that his success
might come with a heavy price, his own awareness of how his commitment to Machi
avellian politics is corrupting his life. That assessment is probably too serio
us, since Henry's speech expresses no regret for any decision he has made, no se
nse of what he might have been, no apology for any harm to anyone else, so we mi
ght be tempted to write it off as an expression of his understandable anxiety be
fore the battle (especially given that his conversation with Williams may have t
ouched a raw nerve, reminding Henry of the necessary hypocrisy of his royal auth
ority).
That sense makes the prayer he now offers up particularly interesting. Henry wa
nts God to assist him in the coming battle (for obvious reasons). He feels he h
as to persuade God that he's worthy, and so he lists a number of "ceremonious" t
hings he has done to atone for his father's usurpation and execution of Richard.
Whatever Henry's moral sense, it doesn't seem to include anything very persona
l about his own feelings or his own more questionable actions. It's as if he is
treating God rather like one of his own subjects--trying to impress Him with a
list of his public actions. Given that he has just completed a discussion with W
illiams about the king's moral responsibility for the killings that will occur i
n the war--an issue which should be of major concern for anyone who sincerely wa
nts to live up to the highest standards of Christian morality--Henry's prayer is
, as so much of his talk, strangely dispassionate, detached from any powerful em
otional centre (one only has to compare this prayer with that of Claudius in Ham
let to sense this difference). Here he is alone, of course, with no subjects st
anding by. That fact makes his tone all the more interesting, as if in private
he's as detached and theatrically calculating as in public (even before God).
So this intense private glimpse into Henry's mind doesn't help all that much to
reveal anything significant about the man underneath the role playing (except to
offer the insight that there is no private man under the public roles). We get
no detailed sense of Henry's conception of himself as a person or as a leader,
other than a sense of weariness with the effort of maintaining a public show. B
ut that weariness does not offer an insight into any complexity of character--it
seems more like a momentary mood at an anxious time. Henry's real personality
remains as elusive as ever.
At the same time, we might still wonder about why Shakespeare puts this scene in
the play. The content adds nothing to what we need to know about the upcoming
battle, and it does not (as mentioned above) suggestively illuminate complexitie
s in Henry's character. It seems rather to highlight the lack of such inner com
plexity, to call attention in an ironic way, to the extent to which Henry's Mach
iavellian political tactics have colonized or suppressed or coarsened his moral
sensibilities. Or is it the other way around? Is Henry's successful political
style the result of a person with relatively coarse moral sensibilities (or none
at all) to begin with? And is such inner emptiness the necessary requirement f
or effective political leadership in the modern world?
It would be wrong, I think, to see Shakespeare as delivering here (or elsewhere
in the play) a firm answer to such questions. But the scene definitely raises t
hem. To the extent that we become aware of these interrogatives, our sense of H
enry's triumphs will, of course, be significantly undercut.
Further Complicating Ironies
These questions we might want to raise about the extent to which certain ironies
qualify our sense of Henry's character, leading us to wonder about what person
al price the successful leader pays for committing himself so thoroughly to mode
rn politics, have encouraged many people to point out other ways in which this
celebration of Henry's success also seems consistently to undercut that success,
so that we are left wondering just how we are to understand just what political
success might finally mean.
These ironic qualifications are so pervasively present in this play that there s
eems little doubt that Shakespeare wants to complicate our response to Henry, to
learn, as it were, that political success may be more immediately problematic t
han we had originally thought from the ease with which Henry deals with all the
problems he faces.
I don't propose to go through all the elements in detail, but let me list a few
(you can explore them in greater detail later on).
A. The Morality of War
The central issue in this play is the invasion of France and the glorious victor
y at Agincourt. Yet the play does not spare us explicit references to just what
war involves and repeatedly forces us to focus on the morality of Henry's decis
ion to go to war. Again, we might well ask ourselves why Shakespeare does this,
why, that is, he confronts us with the morality of Henry's political actions, r
ather than just appealing the the nationalistic sense of England's greatest mili
tary hero, papering over the complexities instead of raising them insistently..
The moral issue surfaces at the very start of the play, and it is raised repeate
dly by King Henry himself. At the same time, Shakespeare seems to go out of his
way to point out that the justification for invading France is at least questio
nable and at most totally spurious.
The justification of the war (the legal justification) is given to the Archbisho
p. Yet, before we hear him provide his best counsel, we learn that he is hopele
ssly compromised, since in a private conversation in the immediately preceding s
cene he clearly indicates that his first desire is to preserve the property of t
he Church and that he will do whatever he needs to in order to prevent passage o
f a law expropriating Church property. That short opening scene has no ostensib
le purpose except to call into question the moral authority of the highest spiri
tual representatives of the kingdom.
And the legal justification for the invasion is deliberately ridiculous, a pedan
tic, hair-splitting, and largely incomprehensible example of special pleading, w
hose own wording ("So that, as clear as is the summer sun. . . .") calls attenti
on to its own absurdity. If Henry is seeking moral reassurance, a firm and just
ifiable reason for the killing which will ensue (as he reminds us), then the Arc
hbishop's speech, if anything, simply highlights the lack of anything which migh
t possible pass moral muster. (For those who are fully in touch with the legitim
acy of Henry's claim to the throne, there's an added irony here, because the ver
y logic which Henry uses to justify his invasion of France would disqualify him
in favour of Mortimer and the rebels whom Henry is about to execute in the next
episode--although the play does not explore the legal basis for their conspiracy
).
So why is this scene here? Or why does Shakespeare so deliberately emphasize th
e trumped-up nature of Henry's excuse for going to war? It seems inescapably ob
vious that Shakespeare wants us to see that, for Henry, it's the appearance of a
moral discussion that matters, not its substance. No morally intelligent man co
uld possibly be satisfied with the reasons given for going to war. Does this me
an that Henry is a war-monger just going through the motions or a brutally stupi
d man (morally) who is ready to accept the Archbishop's logic or who is fooled b
y the Archbishop's conniving?
Only a particular production can clarify this issue for us. I like what Kenneth
 Branagh's film does here: the discussion is Henry's opportunity to sound out hi
s senior advisors about the war, to take the political temperature. Having the A
rchbishop present the legal case provides such an opportunity--what matters more
than the logic of this argument is the reaction to it of those listening. Once
Henry sees the united enthusiasm for the war, he makes his decision (with, to j
udge from the acting in that film, some reluctance). He recognizes what role th
e king now has to play: his independent moral sense is irrelevant, for the situa
tion requires him, in the name of keeping some domestic peace, to declare war on
France.
[Olivier's film, which seeks to make Henry an unambiguous hero, tries to neutral
ize the moral complexities of this scene with the Archbishop by turning it into
farcical comedy. This may disguise the moral seriousness but it doesn't entirel
y resolve them, because this interpretation leads one to wonder why Henry would
attend to such a clown]
In any case, the scene drives an initial ironic wedge between Henry's moral lang
uage, his constant references to God and his insistent statements about how he d
esires to do what is right, and his actions. We are invited to wonder just how
much Henry's moral language and his publicly expressed desire to do his Christia
n duty are anything more than public relations. This realization need not amoun
t to a personal indictment of Henry (although it might); one could react to it (
and this is how I incline to see it) as an illumination of modern political real
ity. In a world ruled by an absence of trust and the importance of power, the s
ystem requires someone extremely skilled in manipulating others into some form o
f cooperative endeavour, even if that involves a war with little justification.
Fighting the French at least stops the English from killing themselves. But so
me public show of moral deliberation must be retained.
[Those who remember Bolingbroke's instructions to his son about how to be an eff
ective ruler understand clearly the real reason for the war against France: it i
s designed to unite the powerful quarrelsome English nobles in a common enterpri
se. Hence, all the talk of moral justification is clearly a mask over a common
and effective Machiavellian strategy for consolidating royal power]
The other clear occasion when the issue of the morality of the war is thrust upo
n the spectator is the famous discussion Henry has with Williams, the common sol
dier (in 4.1). This exchange is worth attending to closely, because Williams ha
s a much finer appreciation for the heart of the moral issue than does the Archb
ishop. Williams makes the key point that unless the king's cause is just, then
he has a reckoning to make when divine judgment is handed out for all the killin
g that occurs. This, of course, is the king's responsibility, because the subje
cts do not have the choice about whether they fight or not and why. Unlike the
king, the common troops have no freedom of choice in going to war or not.
Henry's response--that war is God's way of punishing people for their bad deeds
and that, therefore, the deaths in war are the responsibility of those whom war
kills--is notoriously illogical (and the play later confirms this by killing the
boys, the young lads who have not had time to commit all the sins Henry lists).
Henry's subsequent irritation with Williams (which leads to an exchange of glov
es as gages for a quarrel) may well stem from his sense that Williams has touche
d a raw spot.
Once again, the relevant question to ask is why Shakespeare would include this s
cene, which adds nothing to the plot, but which does raise a complex moral issue
only to have Henry, in effect, talk it away in a chop logic worthy of the Archb
ishop. It strikes me that this scene, once again, forces us to confront the unw
elcome irony about modern politics: it will not bear clear moral scrutiny. Henr
y cannot answer Williams persuasively because Williams is right. Once again, th
e scene unmasks the moral emptiness which Henry's frequently pious language pape
rs over. Characteristically, however, Williams's objection does not arouse any
deep moral pondering in Henry himself. He concentrates instead on a short lamen
t about the difficulties of being a king.
B. The Issue of Friendship
In this business of the ironic qualifications to Henry's successes, as many have
pointed out, the issue of Falstaff arises once again. It's hard to avoid the co
nclusion that Shakespeare has a deliberately ironic intention in placing right a
fter the scene in which Henry denounces the conspirators for violating the deare
st bonds of friendship with a scene (one of the finest in all Shakespeare) where
Falstaff's death is reported and we witness the genuine grief of his cronies--t
ogether with the explicit accusation that Falstaff died of a broken heart becaus
e of Henry's rejection of him.
That accusation is, of course, overblown, but it serves to remind us, once again
, of the gap between Henry's public rhetoric, loaded with words of value, and hi
s political actions, which seem to ignore or violate those actions. As with the
issue of the morality of the war, the evaluative terms, the sense of moral inte
lligence, stands exposed as a rhetorical ploy--a necessary tool in the public po
litical world, but with no personal meaning.
Here again, we don't need to translate this into a personal condemnation of Henr
y--it may be yet another ironic insight into the price of political success, a r
eminder (for those who remember the tavern of Henry IV, Part 1) of what Henry ha
s had to repudiate in order to assume the mantle of leadership left to him by hi
s father.
That ironic point is clearly underscored when Bardolph is condemned to hang for
stealing from a church. Bardolph, of course, is an ex-crony of Prince Hal's fro
m the tavern days. But such friendship has no place here--not even if Bardolph'
s theft is extremely minor compared to what the English are trying to do, namely
, steal a kingdom by force. To achieve that they have broken the peace upon whi
ch the good life depends. Bardolph, significantly, has stolen a church item cal
led a pax, the Latin for peace. But the peace he steals will cost him his life.
Henry's theft of peace, which kills hundreds of men and devastates the land (as
the Duke of Burgundy points out) will make him a famous monarch, celebrated for
his virtue.
Some Final Summary Comments
The play ends with what looks like a devastating irony in the Epilogue spoken by
the Chorus, which opens by reminding us of Henry's great glory and then indica
tes that within a generation all his achievements were squandered by his success
ors. Hence, all the military and political gains of this most wonderful king ha
ve no lasting effect. The last thing we learn in Henry V seems to pull the rug
out from under everything that it has celebrated. If none of this lasted, then
what is the point?
That question may well lead us to some complex thoughts about the nature of mode
rn political life. For if Henry is, as the play clearly shows us, the most succ
essful modern politician, and if his achievements come at a huge personal cost a
nd are very short-lived, then success in politics would seem to be a problemati
c undertaking, carrying a huge personal cost (to the effective ruler) and no gua
rantee of lasting stability.
This impression is hard to deny, especially because the play does not offer us a
ny viable alternative to the style of politics as practised by Henry. That beco
mes clear in Shakespeare's treatment of the French royal court. Here there is m
uch talk of traditional honour. And the French nobility are clearly fond of fin
e things, horses, poetry, well-crafted armour, witty conversations--the familiar
trappings of the medieval world. They belong, in that sense, to a world which
has not yet converted to modern political life.
But the French are also rather silly and weak, no match for the ruthless efficie
ncy of Henry's armies and aggressive policies (a quality stressed by the repeate
d references to how much beef the English eat). If there is anything in them to
admire (in contrast to the English), that is sadly out of date. Significantly,
the only women in the play live in the French court (other than Mistress Quickl
y), and they quickly become appropriated by the English for political purposes.
Thus, there's a sense here that the style of politics exemplified by Henry is ne
cessary in the modern world. However much we may assess its ironic limitations
and, perhaps, long-term inefficacy, there is simply no other way to proceed. Ce
rtainly, those who, like the French, try to rely upon traditional chivalry are s
wept aside in the face of the sheer efficiency of Henry's political hypocrisy.
More positively, if we look at this play in the context of the entire second his
tory cycle, we can see that Henry does succeed, if only temporarily, where his p
redecessors failed: he does unite his powerful and factious nobles behind him.
For a short interlude, there is no more civil war.
This element is reinforced in the sub-plot featuring the soldiers of different n
ationalities: English, Irish, and Welsh, who may argue amongst each other but wh
o are united in their obedience to and respect for King Henry. The most promine
nt of these, Fluellen, significantly is Welsh, a member of the same people as Gl
endower, who in the earlier Henry IV plays were among Henry IV's most dangerous
and powerful enemies. Whatever else we might like to say about Henry's theatric
al royal power, it has imposed some measure of unity upon potentially factious d
ivisions among the people he rules.
However we assess that, what may be emerging in Henry V is something very pronou
nced in some of the plays which follow the second history cycle: a division of p
olitical experience into two separate and equally unsatisfactory worlds. The fi
rst is the brutally efficient and (in its own terms) successful world of Machiav
ellian politics, a dangerous world exclusively run by men, empty of fun, music,
women, fine things, a world totally committed to the efficient use of power thro
ugh deception for survival, and the second is the world of fun, pleasure, women,
fine manners, good food, and so on, a world which is fatally weak politically.
Such a division lies at the heart of Hamlet's Elsinore, characterizes the differ
ences between the Trojans and the Greeks in Troilus and Cressida, and is a major
theme in Antony and Cleopatra (among other plays). If we see such a division b
eginning in Henry V (and how important we make it will depend to a large extent
on the weight we give to the ironies which qualify our response to Henry's succe
sses), then this play becomes considerably more than a simple unambiguous celebr
ation of the wonderful virtues of the Mirror of All Christian Kings.
This view of Henry V also reminds us just how far Shakespeare's political vision
in the history plays has come since the Henry VI trilogy, among his very first
plays. What began as a deliberate attempt to court popularity with lots of batt
les, high rhetoric, and a simplistic notion of historical success and failure ha
s evolved into something much more complex, mature, and elusive, and something w
hich invites us to reach a fuller understanding of our own political life.

king lear
1)Introduction
Anyone setting out to deliver a lecture on King Lear begins with a sense of inad
equacy: How is one to capture properly this amazingly complex and powerful visio
n of human life? It's clear that anything I say here is going to be seriously in
adequate. That's true, of course, about any lecture on Shakespeare (or on any ot
her work of great literature), but for obvious reasons the issue is particularly
acute with King Lear. So I am here not going to attempt anything like a compreh
ensive introduction. What I offer are a few remarks to encourage you to recogniz
e some general things in this play, so that your next reading of it may be more
rewarding. I am not here, any more than anywhere else, offering what I take (or
anyone else should take) as a final word.
Some Obvious Points
In King Lear, as in so many great works of literature, many of the most importan
t elements are the most obvious, and we should not, for the sake of exploring pa
rticular complexities, lose sight of these elements.
First and foremost, King Lear is the story of an old man who moves from a positi
on of enormous power, status, wealth, responsibility, social complexity, and sec
urity step by step into a terrible isolation from his fellow human beings, his f
amily, and nature itself, suffers horribly from the stripping away of his entire
identity, goes mad as a result of his experience, recovers briefly, and then be
comes insane again in the moment before his death. In no other work of fiction (
not even in Oedipus or Macbeth) do we witness a total transformation from such m
agnificence to total despair rendered with such emotional intensity. That intens
ity is heightened by the fact that Lear's story is underscored throughout by the
similar experiences of the Duke of Gloucester.
Second, King Lear is in many respects a relatively simple story, and its structu
re has some obvious similarities with old folk takes ("Once upon a time, there w
as an old man who had three daughters. Two of them despised him, but the younges
t one loved him very much. One day he decided to test their love. . . . And so o
n). This apparent simplicity is brought out also in the elements of a morality p
lay surrounding the King. The forces of good and evil are grouped around him in
almost equal numbers, and the action of the play can be viewed as a struggle for
the life of the old man, since to a large extent these rival groups define them
selves by their attitudes to the suffering king. These elements give the particu
larity of Lear's unique narrative a much wider and more timeless quality. What w
e are dealing with here is not just a single old man (important as that point of
view is), but with human beings generally.
Third, the central struggle in the play (other than the main one going on in Lea
r's own mind) is between people who see their relationship with Lear and with ot
hers from different perspectives. Those who seek to assist Lear and strive to co
mbat the forces who wish to abuse him (e.g., Kent, Cordelia, the Fool, Edgar, Gl
oucester, and eventually Albany) are motivated principally by a traditional sens
e of love, respect, and allegiance--a complex set of virtues summed up in the im
portant terms "bond" and "ceremonious affection." These people see themselves as
defined in large part by their significant relationships with other people, esp
ecially with Lear himself.
The other group is made up of those who serve primarily themselves, whose attitu
de towards others is largely determined by their desire to use people for their
own self-advancement (e.g., Regan, Goneril, Cornwall, Edmund, Oswald). For them,
traditional notions of the importance of bonds are illusions, outmoded conventi
ons standing in the way of their individual desire for power. Thus, they are rea
dy to violate established bonds (like those between a father and child or betwee
n a husband and wife or between a king and subject) in order to pursue their own
agendas. In the context of the vocabulary we have been using for other plays, t
hese characters are recognizably Machiavels.
Fourth, by the end of the play, the opposing forces have largely annihilated eac
h other. Those remaining have very little to say. Unlike the end of other Shakes
pearean tragedies, there is no clear and confident voice of authority directing
things (e.g., Fortinbras, Malcolm), and there is no attempt to sum up what has h
appened or to offer any sort of a tribute to the dead hero. We will be looking l
ater at different interpretative possibilities with the closing moments of King
Lear, but if we simply confine our attention to the text, there is little sense
of a communal coming together at the end with hopes for a healthy regeneration.
Whatever the action adds up to is thus left for us to figure out.
The Denial of an Easy Moral Understanding of King Lear
Given the strongly allegorical basis to the groupings of characters in the play,
it might be tempting to see the most important feature of King Lear as the illu
stration of some sort of "lesson" as the working out of some theme or other. Thi
s approach, it should be clear from our dealings with other plays, I would like
to avoid at all costs, since (as I have repeatedly stressed) Shakespearean trage
dy at its finest cannot be reduced to some easy moral summation, some statement
about the "meaning" of what we have just witnessed.
Now, one interesting feature of King Lear is that the author seems to have gone
out of his way to make any such tendency to moralize the story difficult to carr
y out. And one obvious (and interesting) way he does that is to have particular
characters in the story offer their own moral evaluations of what they are going
through (or putting others through). These evaluative statements attempt to inv
oke some simple moral explanation to account for what is going on. Here is a sam
ple of what I mean:
O, sir, to willful men,
The injuries that they themselves procure
Must be their schoolmaster. (3.1.296-298)
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;
They kill us for their sport. (4.1.57-58)
This shows you are above,
You justicers, that these our nether crimes
So speedily can venge! (4.2.79-81)
It is the stars,
The stars above us, govern our conditions: (4.3.31-32)
Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither;
Ripeness is all. (5.2.9-11)
The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us. (5.34.169-170)
These moral generalizations attempt to place the sufferings that are going on in
to some conventional framework of justice. The sayings range from a sense that t
he gods are irrationally cruel ("They kill us for their sport") to a sense that
there is a providential justice at work in events, to a call for Stoical resigna
tion. But the point is, I think, that they all fail to capture the totality of o
ur experience of what is going on. We recognize such moments for what they are:
attempts to rationalize the emotional suffering that is going on, to place it in
some familiar conceptual framework. But we also recognize the inadequacy of suc
h quick and easy moral summations of events, for the action going on here simply
is too complex, ironic, and particular to be contained by a short formula. The
pattern of these moments is designed to put pressure on us to recognize that, ho
wever we make sense of this play, we are going to have to attend to its detailed
 particularity and complexity, which will not be fitted easily into the usual si
mple moral categories upon which we rely most of the time.
This point becomes explicit in the closing lines of the play (spoken by Edgar or
Albany, depending on the edition you are using):
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. (5.3.322.325)
All one can do, these lines suggest, is seek to honour one's own deepest feeling
s about the drama we have witnessed. At such times whatever our moral framework
of belief (what "we ought to say") must give way before the genuine expression o
f our imaginative sympathies, which may well be difficult to formulate clearly.
With this insight in mind, I shall avoid trying to offer a rational explanation
of what King Lear is "about." Instead I will offer some separate observations of
things which, it strikes me, are central to any reflections about this play.
The Issue of Lear's Identity: The Descent Into Madness
At the start of the play King Lear has rich, powerful, and complex social identi
ty. He is both king of his country and patriarch of his family, the lynch pin wh
ich holds together the structure of the society, which the opening scene present
s to us in full formal splendour. Everyone looks to him as the source of order a
nd meaning in the society. The opening scene of this play, like the opening scen
e in Richard II, serves to give us a full visual symbol of the society united in
a shared vision of what matters in the human community. This is the only time i
n the play where such a vision of the human community stands in working order in
front of us. Before the first scene is over, it has already started to fracture
.
Lear himself is very powerfully aware of his importance. His vision of himself i
s perfectly satisfied because the world gives back to him the image of himself t
hat he has, an image which he obviously likes a great deal, because his chief pu
rpose at this stage is to hang onto it. Lear's sense of himself is clear enough
if we ask ourselves just what he is doing in this opening scene. Officially he i
s transferring the power and the responsibilities of the throne onto his childre
n: he is resigning. We are not given an explicit reason other than that Lear wan
ts to spend the rest of his life free of the cares which come with the position
of king. He has carefully arranged an unnecessary ritual in order to celebrate h
is own importance.
But in surrendering the position, Lear has no intention of ceasing to be treated
as if he is, in fact, still the king: He is not going to alter his identity:
Only we still retain
The name, and all the additions to a king. . . (1.1.135-136)
Lear clearly believes that his identity as king is something separable from the
actions, duties, and responsibilities which are required of a king (i.e., from h
is social actions), just as he thinks his authority as a father is something sep
arable from the duties of a father. This suggests initially a very limited under
standing, not only of the people he is dealing with, but also of how the society
he has been in charge of (or indeed, any society or family) is held together. C
ordelia invokes the term "bond," and we shall have more to say about the word la
ter on. Lear's sense of social or family bonding seems clearly to be that the bo
nds work in one direction only, that is, they indicate what people owe him. And
he assumes by reflex that such one-way bonding can continue once he ceases to di
scharge the duties of king. So initially there is a strong sense that Lear's ide
ntity, his sense of himself, rests on no firm understanding of other people and
his relationships to them.
Some critics make much of the fact that Lear's decision to divide up the kingdom
is a sign of foolishness (symbolized by the division of the crown between Alban
y and Cornwall) and the fact that the ritual Lear sets up before granting the va
rious allocations of territory (which have been decided in advance) is designed
totally to reinforce his powerful ego. But neither of these actions in itself ne
ed lead to disastrous consequences, and no one seems to object to them.
The real cause of the sequence of events which leads ultimately to Lear's death
is Lear's inability to tolerate any view of himself except the one he himself ha
s. What's important is not that he quarrels with Cordelia for spoiling his self-
flattering court pageant but the way he quarrels with her. The extraordinary spe
ed and violence of his response tell us at once that we are witnessing here an e
normously powerful ego which simply cannot accept any external check on his sens
e of how he should be treated because of who he is.
We know from the actions of France (who is the only one on stage equal in social
status to Lear) and Kent (who speaks very bluntly and stops only when Lear char
ges him on his "allegiance") and from the remarks of the sisters at the end of t
he scene, that Lear is making an enormous misjudgment. But we also realize clear
ly enough that at this point that Lear simply cannot hear or see anything which
does not fit his own conception of himself. The strength of this solitary ego ma
nifests itself in the extraordinarily powerful and brutal images with which Lear
expresses his anger at Cordelia's refusal to play along with his game:
The barbarous Scythian,
Or he that makes his generation messes
To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
Be as well neighbored, pitied, and relieved,
As thou my sometime daughter. (1.1.116-119)
The language here and the emotions it expresses are so incommensurate to the sur
face events which have prompted it, so in excess of the cause, that there can be
only one explanation: Lear is so passionately wrapped up in a particular concep
tion of himself that he simply explodes emotionally when any form of a challenge
(however politely framed) from any quarter manifests itself.
The anger here launches the story, which, from this point on, focuses (among oth
er things) on the stripping away of all those things that Lear has always relied
upon to reinforce his sense of his own importance, of his identity, until he is
left alone, naked, and mad running through nature away from all society. Becaus
e Lear cannot tolerate Cordelia's apparent failure to live up to what he require
s from her for his own self-gratification, he unleashes a chain of events which
ultimately removes everything from him which reassures him who he is.
It's in the context of this step-by-step loss of his earlier identity (or the ex
ternal manifestations of it) that the question of Lear's hundred knights becomes
a central issue. The hundred knights are not, in themselves, at all necessary t
o Lear's daily routine and comforts (as the sisters point out, quite correctly).
But they are essential to his sense of his identity as the leader, the person t
o whom others defer and give allegiance. They are there to give back to him the
image of himself he wants to maintain.
Regan and Goneril are quite correct to resent Lear's huge retinue and to sense t
hat their father is gripped by a self-image which has no accurate perception of
the new reality. Depending upon how the knights behave in any production of the
play, the audience can see the truth in their objections. In Brook's famous film
 of King Lear, the behaviour of Lear and his knights is disgraceful; they spend
all their time making a great deal of noise, eating and drinking (or demanding m
ore), and in general throwing the palaces into turmoil. So it's not necessarily
the case that denying Lear his knights makes the two sisters bad people. Here ag
ain, what matters (as we shall see later) is how they handle the issue.
Lear's story is a tragedy because, faced with external circumstances which incre
asingly do not support his vision of himself, Lear refuses to compromise. He wil
l not listen to what the fool is telling him, he resists his own growing awarene
ss that he might have made a mistake, and, most important, he will not adjust hi
s desires or his conduct to fit what his daughters are prepared to do for him. H
e would sooner take on the natural world alone and endure the enormous suffering
that brings upon him than compromise with his sense of himself in the face of p
olitical realities.
This characteristic makes him, of course, a passionately egocentric, loud, and i
n many respects unsympathetic character. But what redeems him is the quality of
his passion and his willingness to suffer. He has launched himself on a voyage e
xploring what it means to be a human being once one strips away all the extras t
hat help to tell him what he is. That's not his conscious purpose, of course, bu
t that is the direction in which the logic of his passions leads him. He is not
going to compromise his sense of himself to suit the world; he'd sooner reject t
he world or, more immediately, move away and create his own.
That impetus pushes Lear out into the storm. To return to the castle would be to
concede defeat, to admit he no longer is King Lear (as he sees himself), becaus
e he would be living by conditions imposed by someone else. Instead he will try
to impose his sense of himself on the elements of nature. If he cannot find just
ice in his family and in his kingdom, he will seek it from the gods:
Let the great gods,
That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads,
Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,
That hast within thee undivulgéd crimes,
Unwhipped of justice. Hide thee, thou bloody hand;
Thou perjured, and thou simular of virtue
That are incestuous. Caitiff, to pieces shake,
That under covert and convenient seeming
Hast practiced on man's life. Close pent-up guilts
Rive your concealing continents, and cry
These dreadful summoners grace. I am a man
More sinned against than sinning. (3.2.47-58)
At this stage, Lear sees the storm as a possible manifestation of divine anger a
t the way he has been treated. He is searching for a sign from the gods that he
is right. His stance is (to us) absurd (although we have probably all known some
old men with a similar tendency to scream at the world if they don't get their
way), but his sense of outrage is so powerful, he is filled with such a passiona
te self-pity, that he is, like Job, demanding justice from the chaos of natural
forces all around him, seeking an answer from God.
But there's more to Lear's passion here than his demand for justice. He is also
fighting a war against himself, against the growing awareness that he, too, migh
t be a sinner. Earlier, he has given some brief signs that a sense of his own cu
lpability is growing within--for example, the cryptic statement "I did her wrong
--" (1.5.20), and his repeatedly expressed sense that he may be starting to lose
his mind indicates that his rage at the storm is, in part, an increasingly desp
erate demand for something to protect his own sense of his identity as king-vict
im against the corrosive effects of a new awareness of his own responsibilities.
His extraordinarily powerful language is his attempt to compensate for a lack o
f physical power to bring his vision of justice upon those who have offended him
as well as his attempt to project his personality out into the world so he will
not have to deal with his inner doubts, which make him very afraid, because the
y force him to rethink who he is.
In this regard, it is significant that, the moment before he goes mad, Lear for
the first time stops thinking about himself and calling attention to his own sen
se of injustice. Instead for the first time he expresses some genuine feeling fo
r the sufferings of others:
Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall our houseless heads and unfed sides,
You looped and windowed raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en
Too little care of this! (3.4.29-34)
That final sentence is something we have not heard from Lear before, an assumpti
on of responsibility, a piece of unprompted self-criticism. But this hint is not
something that leads, as it might in a comic character, to some growth in his u
nderstanding, for the instant later he goes mad. It's as if he can no longer han
g onto the identity he has been defending for so long and he has nothing to put
in its place or is incapable of seeing what he might put in its place.
The sight of Edgar disguised as Poor Tom, the naked madman, drives Lear beyond a
ny sense of a sane identity. Having no place in which to find a suitable reflect
ion of himself, Lear throws himself on the insanity of the world. He asked for j
ustice from nature, and it threw a madman in his face.
Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou owest the worm no silk, th
e beast no hide, the sheep no wool, that cat no perfume. Ha! Here's three on's a
re sophisticated! Thou are the thing itself; unaccommodated man is no more but s
uch a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art. Off, off, you lendings! come unbutt
on here. (Tearing off his clothes) (3.4.95-101)
The act of tearing off his clothes (which, as we shall discuss, Lear repeats at
the very end of the play) is the forcible rejection of the last element of civil
ized life which gives him a sense of who he is and where he belongs. It signifie
s, among other things, Lear's inevitable surrender to the torment in his mind wh
ich has desperately been seeking for some reassurance. Having found none, he ack
nowledges the absurdity of the world by joining it, not as the result of reflect
ing upon what he might have learned and consciously deciding, but because he can
not hang onto any reliable indication of who he is. This formulation may be too
neat, however, for there is a sense that the tearing off of his clothes and the
leap into madness is something willed. He makes the decision to go mad (which, i
n itself, may be a sign of madness), thus retaining control over his own life (r
ather like Oedipus determining to punish himself by gouging out his eyes and ban
ishing himself from the city). Since he feels as if the world has gone insane an
d since Lear always responds instantly to his most powerful feelings, he commits
himself to the full isolation of insanity.
The fact that the sight of Edgar in disguise prompts the action is interesting.
Perhaps there's a sense that Lear recognizes in Poor Tom the nearest image of hi
mself, an "unaccommodated man," that is, a man without any mark of society upon
him, for he lacks the most basic of all the things which help to tell us who we
are, clothing and organized speech.
Just as the order in the natural world is rendered absurd by the storm, so the o
rder in the social world is rendered absurd by the absence within it (for Lear)
of any vestige of justice, any of that order, ceremonious affection, allegiance,
 and mutuality which define us in terms of our relationships with others. Lackin
g the customary social components of his identity, Lear loses any sense of who h
e is and, consequently, surrenders his grip on reality.
The situation, however, is more complex than this, because, of course, Poor Tom
is not really mad and Kent is not really who is appearing to be. And Gloucester
is doing what he can to assist. In other words, the social relations necessary t
o foster a rich identity are present. For Kent truly loves Lear, as does the Foo
l, and Gloucester has a firm sense of love and duty to the old king. Edgar, too,
is only pretending to be mad as a way of protecting himself. So, in a sense, th
e very thing that Lear most needs are readily available to him.
The problem is that he not attuned to recognize these qualities in others (as th
e repeated metaphors of seeing and blindness remind us). His old identity only e
nables him to see what he wants to see. What doesn't fit doesn't enter his consc
iousness, and he dismisses it, drowns it out, or doesn't listen to it sufficient
ly to recognize what he later comes to understand when he wakes up in Cordelia's
camp. Act III of King Lear is a vision of world gone mad, not because there is
no significant love or trust or courage or virtue in the world, but because King
Lear himself is not at this stage equipped to recognize those things. He has tr
ied so hard to impose his will on the world and received no response other than
the meaningless storm, that he determines to join it.
A high point of Lear's initial madness comes in 3.6, in the mock trial scene, in
which the mad Lear, the apparently mad Edgar, the disguised Kent, and the Fool
set up a court of justice to arraign and try Regan and Goneril, while the storm
rages outside the hovel. On the page a good deal of this scene makes little sens
e, and it certainly loses much of its impact. But we should see its point readil
y enough. In the world Lear has entered, the world of unaccommodated man, human
beings reduced to the minimal humanity of their naked bodies, justice becomes ab
surd. The demand for justice may be as powerful as ever, but the process by whic
h one seeks it out and the language appropriate to that have become a cruel farc
e or a meaningless game which simply prolongs the suffering of the players (it's
possible to see in Act 3 of King Lear an anticipation of the Theatre of the Abs
urd, in which a central concern is the often cruel games people invent simply to
convince themselves they are passing the time appropriately).
The intense psychological cruelty of this absurd farce is powerfully underscored
by the next scene, one of the most painful in all English theatre, the gouging
out of Gloucester's eyes. This, too, is a "justice" scene, in the sense that som
eone is being judged and punished. The scene is not played out in the midst of t
he storm by a bunch of isolated social outcasts, but the physical cruelty of the
arbitrary punishment matches the psychological absurdity of the scene in the ho
vel. Lear's madness leaves him incapable of dealing with reality, but this scene
insists that reality itself has become equally mad, equally unjust, equally cru
el. The punishment of Gloucester is carried out in the name of policy by importa
nt political officials in a measured and calculated way in the name of self-inte
rested "policy," for there is no passionate personal animosity involved here. An
d it has been made possible by a son's betrayal of his father. It is a vision of
life every bit as arbitrary and absurd as the punishment the inner and outer st
orms are inflicting on Lear (or, rather, which Lear is bringing down upon himsel
f in the storm).
The full terrible absurdity of both of these stories comes together in 4.6, when
the blind Gloucester, immediately after his attempted suicide, meets the solita
ry Lear "fantastically dressed with wild flowers." Lear at this stage is still e
vidently completely mad, having lost all faith in any sense of order, meaning, o
r stablity in the world, obsessed with the intimate connection between evil and
female sexuality and the total perversion of justice everywhere.
Yet Gloucester recognizes him (from his voice) as the king, and Lear acknowledge
s that title ("Aye, every inch aking!" 4.6.105), but for him the very notion of
kingship has become absurd; there is no significant place any more for what a ki
ng represents and carries out, so he refuses Gloucester's offer to kiss his hand
and torments Gloucester about the loss of his eyes (even though he does admit a
t last that he recognizes Gloucester). The possibility of sharing something with
Gloucester, of acknowledging Gloucester's love and loyalty or even sympathizing
with his obvious suffering (and perhaps being acknowledged in return) Lear reje
cts in a passionate frenzy against the injustice of the world.
Here it's as if Lear, reduced to nothing but his overpowering sense of betrayal
and loss, can come up with only one way of dealing with the world: "Then, kill,
kill, kill, kill, kill, kill." What will not answer to his sense of who he is an
d how the world ought to be can only be destroyed. Rather than destroy within hi
mself the egocentric will which demands that the world answer to him, Lear prefe
rs to will the destruction of the world.
By why is it that Lear cannot see Gloucester and accept him as an extraordinary
victim? In a well known essay on this play, Stanley Cavell suggests that all of
Lear's actions, from the very opening to the end of the play, stem from a desire
to avoid shame, to avoid accepting the world (rather than demanding it answer t
o him), because accepting the world would mean that he would have to allow the w
orld to recognize him for who he is. Lear's persistent refusal to express love a
nd let others (especially Cordelia) express their love openly and honestly (whic
h is something quite different from wanting the world to perceive him as a belov
ed father and king, the motivation for the opening staged ritual) stems from som
ething he senses about himself and does not wish to reveal to the world. Cavell
further suggests that Lear's extraordinary rage at seeing Gloucester comes from
his being confronted directly with a consequence of his own attempts to avoid sh
ame. This is not simply a matter of the mutilation of Gloucester but also a merg
ing of Gloucester's and Lear's characters. In a sense, Cavell argues, Gloucester
is for Lear an image of what Lear has done to himself. (See "The Avoidance of L
ove: A Reading of King Lear" in Disowning Knowledge in Six Plays of Shakespeare)
Whether we accept Cavell's argument or not, it is clear in this extraordinary sc
ene that Lear is still far too preoccupied with his own agenda, with discharging
his passionate anger out into the world, to pay attention sympathetically to an
ything going on in the world. The way in which he teases Gloucester about the lo
ss of his eyes may be more than just the effects of madness (an expression which
explains nothing); the black humour functions as a protection for Lear. So long
as he can joke about Glouchester's condition, he does not have to do anything a
bout it and can, with increasing desperation, protect himself. He has to push aw
ay Gloucester's offer to pay allegiance in order to make that possible; if he le
ts Gloucester too close he may have to really look at him and reveal to Gloucest
er who he really is and acknowledge that to himself, as well.
The Forces of Evil
Lear, of course, does not himself willingly bring down upon his head the forces
which drive him out into the heath. His fault (if that is the right word) is to
create a situation where others can give rein to their desire to promote their o
wn individualistic interests, their quest for power, against the normal bonds wh
ich restrain them. Lear is not the source of the immediate forces which create h
is enormous suffering, but he is responsible for giving those who oppose him an
opportunity to act successfully against him and his followers.
King Lear thus is the culmination of a frequent Shakespearean theme, the idea th
at the forces of evil require for their operation the willed neglect or ignoranc
e of or carelessness about the responsibilities which sustain justice in the hum
an community. It's as if, to invoke the image of order in Ulysses's speech on de
gree, the collapse of the moral order which sustains normal life always begins w
ith an important lapse in the responsiblity of those charged with maintaining it
. This lapse may come from selfishness, ignorance, an egotistical preoccupation
with one's own importance, or any other such cause. The important point is that
once that occurs those whom the moral order normally can deal with have opportun
ities to violate the traditional rules.
However, the vision of evil here is different in some respects. Evil in King Lea
r is not a metaphysical presence, as it is in Macbeth, nor is it some personific
ation of the Devil loose in the land, as in Richard III. One of the most reverbe
rating issues in this play is the sense that evil is something normal, residing
in the hearts of people all around us, those on the surface indistinguishable fr
om ourselves, people whom we would have no reason to suspect of being capable of
evil acts and who, were circumstances different, might very well not turn to ev
il.
Regan and Goneril, after all, are not witches. Their most distinctive characteri
stic is, in some ways, their normality. They are ambitious women who have waited
a long time to receive the power which is to be their inheritance. And once the
y have the power, they are anxious to use it for their own immediate self-intere
st. No special opprobrium attaches to them for telling their father how much the
y love him. What they say is obviously an exaggerated lie, but they are playing
a game which he has set up. And, as I have mentioned above, their objections to
Lear's retinue are (or can be seen as) largely justified. One can even have some
sympathy for their sense that if they turn their father loose with all those kn
ights, there may be some political trouble.
The source of their evil is an absence of love or respect for their father, both
as a father, a king, and a human being. Lear may very well be a difficult perso
n to deal with--a strong egotist with excessive demands. But Regan and Goneril,
once they have power, have no further interest in Lear as a person. He is simply
a nuisance. We do not need to demonize this attitude, because Lear clearly is a
nuisance. But the casual way in which they rationalize away their neglect of hi
m speaks volumes. They set their own interests above those of anyone else, inclu
ding their father. This does not spring from any particular desire to hurt their
father. It is simply an expression of their pre-eminent concern for their own i
nterests, a concern which enables them to treat anyone who has nothing they want
as an object. But the habit, once initiated, leads step by step to conduct of e
xtreme cruelty (like the putting out of Gloucester's eyes) and his banishment to
Dover.
Regan and Goneril thus represent a particular vision of evil as stemming from a
self-interested quest for power and self-interest which simply ignores any limit
s which an attention to traditional "bonds" might require (other than a duplicit
ous pretense to honour such bonds when it serves their interests). This origin i
s common enough; that it leads logically enough to uncommonly cruel conduct is s
omething this play makes us contemplate.
Edmund's attitude is precisely the same. He is not a diabolically evil person, a
devil incarnate like Richard of Gloucester. And he has no specific agenda. He i
s a recognizably normal person who wants to get on the world and who is prepared
to abandon ancient communal traditions in order to secure an advantage for hims
elf. He's not all that interested in being cruel to others or killing them just
for sake of hurting others, but he's not going to let any traditional notions of
obligation, respect, virtue, or bonding prevent him from making what he can of
his opportunities.
Edmund's soliloquy at the opening of 1.2 repays close scrutiny, because it indic
ates his basic attitude to life. For him the idea of "Nature" signifies a world
without legitimacy. One is entitled to whatever one can gain by one's wits. He r
elishes the notion of being a bastard because that is the most obvious manifesta
tion of his commitment to denying traditions. For him, as for Regan and Goneril,
there is no standard of virtue which determines the value of one's life. People
are what they are, and that is simply a compound of desires and talents to seiz
e opportunities. The prose soliloquy at the end of the scene brings this point o
ut very explicitly:
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortun
e, often the surfeit of our own behavior, we make guilty of our disasters the su
n, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heaven
ly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance; drunka
rds, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and
all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whor
e-master man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! My father
compounded with my mother under the dragon's tail, and my nativity was under Urs
a Major, so that it follows, I am rough and lecherous. Fut! I should have been t
hat I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.
(1.2.109-122).
This prose soliloquy indicates Edmund's sense of the total absence of a controll
ing metaphysical or moral component to human life. Human beings are what they ar
e--and, in Edmund's view, they are anything but admirable, simply one more greed
y animal with a "goatish disposition." That being the case, his task, as he sees
it, is to create for himself out of the materials at hand his own life to suit
his individualistic desires.
This, for most of us, is such a natural stance, that we don't initially have too
much trouble in seeing the logic of Edmund's position. He wants to fashion his
own life, rather than being held back by traditional customs which have labeled
him unfit or ineligible to attain the sort of life he wants for himself. He sees
himself as just as intelligent and able as his older brother and therefore is n
ot willing simply to concede that the customs which will make his brother a duke
while leaving him on the sidelines, just because he was born illegitimately fou
rteen months later than Edgar, should have any bearing on what he chooses to do.
Edmund expresses himself with a rough and candid vigour tinged with self-depreca
ting humour and a cynical intelligence which is (at first) quite attractive. We
can feel in this character something of the same intimacy with the audience as w
e felt in Richard of Gloucester. In a play which features such characters as Lea
r and Gloucester, so out of touch at first with the living heart of the bonds wh
ich link human beings, so complacent about their own patriarchal authority, Edmu
nd's response does not lack some justification.
And it's important to note that Edmund (unlike Richard of Gloucester or Macbeth)
does not have his eye fixed on any final goal. He wants to stir things up so th
at he can improvise his way to a better position, which for him means attain mor
e power and prestige. As he says, "Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit;/
All with me's meet that I can fashion fit" (1.2.167-169). He has no particular d
esire to injure his father or his brother; he just wants them out of his way, so
he can be what he wants to be. His later complicity in the torturing of his fat
her is a logical extension of this attitude to life, not part of his original de
sire to mutilate Gloucester. But his willingness to betray his father indicates
just how much he sees other people merely as instruments to be manipulated to hi
s own ends.
As mentioned above, Regan and Goneril are much the same. It's not that they bear
any special animosity against Lear. They are not seeking revenge or anything li
ke that. They just want him out of the way so that they can create their own liv
es, without the need to attend to Lear's demands. Like Edmund, they have some ju
stification for this attitude initially, for Lear is in some ways really difficu
lt to deal with. But the logic of their self-interest leads to conduct which mos
t of us reject (that fact that we may at first have some sympathy or admiration
for Edmund, Regan, and Goneril, which is later cancelled out when we see the con
sequences of that attitude more clearly, is one way Shakespeare forces us to rec
ognize, not just the normality of evil, but also the superficial attractiveness
of the attitude which can lead to it).
I'm stressing this point in order to underline the presentation of evil in this
play. Part of the disturbing power of King Lear comes from the fact that Edmund,
Goneril, Regan, and Cornwall are at first so normal in their vision of themselv
es and their actions. We all know people like them, and we can even feel some ge
nuine sympathy for how they initially behave. What this play forces us to consid
er, however, is where this individualistic, aggressive self-fashioning stance lo
gically leads. Everything that Edmund and the sisters do in this play is quite c
onsistent with their initial attitude, so that we are invited to consider how th
e grossest of evils arise out of something we see all around us and perhaps even
feel from time to time in ourselves.
In the twentieth century we have become familiar with his vision of evil, largel
y as the result of World War II, in which horrific evil was organized, carried o
ut, and justified by ordinary people, who often began by simply wanting to "get
ahead." The best known example is Adolf Eichmann, for whom Hannah Arendt, in her
study of his trial (Eichmann in Jerusalem), coined the phrase "The Banality of
Evil." The frequent attempt to demonize such individuals, that is, to make them
as abnormal and unnatural as possible, is one indication of how uncomfortable we
are with the notion that they are recognizably normal.
The Forces of Goodness
The way in which Shakespeare here anchors the origins of evil in certain practic
al, common attitudes with which we are all familiar applies also to much of his
treatment of those who seek to oppose Edmund, Goneril, Regan, and Cornwall. The
play, in other words, explores the normality or, one might say, the banality of
goodness, by which I mean that opposition to evil comes from recognizably normal
sources all around us..
Before looking at this in more detail, however, we need to acknowledge that in C
ordelia we have a symbol of traditional goodness, unambiguously and clearly pres
ented to us. Cordelia's name and some of her utterances (and normally also her a
ppearance) suggest that we are to see her, in large part, as the purest form of
Christian love in action. She loves her father unreservedly and acts immediately
to relieve his suffering, an action which costs her her life. In that sense, Ki
ng Lear offers us an vision of traditional goodness as an ideal, based on a firm
acknowledgment of the essential bonding between human beings, especially betwee
n parents and children. She is in the moral realm what Richmond is in the politi
cal realm in Richard III.
But what I want particularly to call attention to here is that in this play othe
r people work against the forces of evil in quite a different manner. They are n
ot unambiguous symbols of goodness, but much more naturalistically rendered huma
n characters who have to wake up to their moral responsibilities and act on them
. And in this play, such action really matters.
Take, for example, one of my favorite characters in all of Shakespeare, a man wh
ose brave and suicidal actions have a decisive effect on the final outcome. He d
oes not even have a name, but when his moment comes he embodies for us the norma
lity of goodness. I refer to Cornwall's First Servant in 3.7 who steps forward t
o intervene in the blinding of Gloucester:
Hold your hand, my lord:
 I have served you ever since I was a child;
But better service have I never done you
Than now to bid you hold. (3.7.73-76)
He is a lowly servant, without any power other than his own person, and he has b
een a servant all his life, trained to obey his master. But he cannot stand by a
nd see his master so degrade himself. He recognizes what everyone in the room kn
ows: that what is going on here is deeply wrong. But he doesn't rationalize away
the danger or remain silent, neutral on the sidelines, or give in to his fear.
He acts to intervene. The action costs him his life and does not save Gloucester
's eyes. But his brave moral stance has its effects, for he wounds Cornwall so b
adly that the latter is not around for the battle at the end of the play.
Let me remind you of how when we looked at Richard III I called attention to the
moral evasions of many characters in that play, a pattern which suggests that S
hakespeare wants us to witness how the success of evil in the world relies upon
the cowardice, ignorance, and self-interest of others who are in a position to s
tand up against it. This is a similar moment, except that here the anonymous Fir
st Servant acts to prevent what his moral sense cannot tolerate.
Moments like these remind us that the moral vision in Shakespeare's plays so oft
en is all-encompassing. We may be dealing for most of the time with kings, dukes
, and various nobles, but the issues which fracture the human community do not l
eave anyone on the sidelines. Innocence or neutrality is never enough. Whatever
our role, however low we may be in the power structure, we still have a moral ro
le to play if we choose to do so.
We see this point made very explicit in the play by the very interesting role pl
ayed by Albany, Goneril's husband. Initially he seems politically and morally co
nfused and ignorant, and his wife dismisses him as a weak person. Events take pl
ace around him which he does not appear fully to understand, and Goneril clearly
wields the power in the relationship. But we see him wake up to his moral respo
nsibilities. He does not let the injustice he witnesses around him dull his mora
l sense; nor does he evade the issues. Throughout the play, his development is m
arked by a steady moral growth until he is, at the end, a transformed individual
who has played a decisive part in dealing with the evil in the kingdom.
Other characters like Edgar and Kent also manifest an active commitment to goodn
ess, at considerable risk to themselves and with much ingenuity. Their conduct,
together with that of the people I have just mentioned, suggests that there is n
othing automatic about good overcoming evil in this world. There is no provident
ial system of history here which will guarantee that harmonious order is restore
d eventually, no controlling divine justice which will right all wrongs if we ar
e only patient. Instead there is the vision that evil can be resisted only if ac
tive, intelligent, brave, and resourceful people are prepared to put their lives
on the line to counter the spreading triumphs of those who want to use other pe
ople as instruments for their own power seeking. Where such people come from the
re is no way of telling. What turns one man into Cornwall or Oswald and another
into Albany or Kent? There is no magic formula about it, nor any divine assistan
ce.
In this connection, it might be worth noting that Cordelia, the idealized vision
of goodness in the world, fails. She not only fails to defeat those who are wor
king against her father, but she loses her life in the attempt. The battle in Ki
ng Lear is speedily concluded, Cordelia and Lear are seized, and taken away (mor
e about this later). There seems to be here perhaps a deliberate emphasis on the
fatal weakness of mere idealized virtue, virtue as some ideal at work in the wo
rld, virtue as a symbolic embodiment of the highest Christian values. For the re
ally effective work of combating the evil is carried out by much more naturalist
ically rendered characters, like the First Servant, Edgar, and Albany.
King Lear as an Allegory
I have been stressing the naturalistic elements of King Lear, and I began this l
ecture by reminding us that the most important thing about this play is that it
is the story of the suffering of one particular old man. Thus, I am not encourag
ing a view which interprets this play primarily as an allegory, a vision in whic
h the illumination of the clash of concepts is a more important issue than the p
articular human conflicts presented.
However, King Lear has attracted allegorical interpretations. And it is easy to
see why. The fairy-tale nature of much of the story, the clearly positioned grou
ps of "good" and "bad" people around Lear, and the constant reference to words l
ike "bond," "allegiance," "nature," and to questions of the self invite some con
sideration of allegorical possibilities.
For instance (and I am here looking very cursorily at some ideas suggested by J.
F. Danby), if we choose (for the moment) to subordinate the particularity of th
e characters to the major conceptual concerns of the play, we can see here as a
major component of the play at least two rival versions of human life working ag
ainst each other. The one we might label the traditional communal Christian view
, which stresses faith, hope, and charity (that is, mutual love) built upon the
sense of a human society held together by "bonds." A human life most fully reali
zed lives up to the responsibilities of those bonds which tie together the famil
y and the larger social group. Such a view stresses the essential roles of givin
g and receiving spontaneously and honestly and confers upon individuals a rich s
ense of a social identity where each person's place in a hierarchical order is p
ublicly recognized and honoured.
Over against this view is what we might call the new individualism manifested in
Edmund, Regan, Goneril, and Cornwall. This sees the good life for human beings
as principally a matter of shaping one's future to fit one's own sense of onesel
f. We need not rest on what the community tells us we are; instead, we may activ
ely seek to change what we are by applying our wit to alter our given circumstan
ces as opportunities arise.
The clash between these two groups hinges on the different interpretations of th
e word "nature." For the first group, nature is an ordered moral construct in wh
ich the signs of the constellations and the actions of the heavens are manifesta
tions of structure in which human societies participate. Its faith is based on a
n inherent divinely sanctioned system of meaning in the world (that sense of ord
er which Ulysses appeals to in his speech on degree in Troilus and Cressida). Th
e second sees no moral order in the world. What the world is will be what we mak
e of it for ourselves. The first view sees the good life as essentially a matter
of service to traditional ideals; the second sees the good life as an aggressiv
e assertion of one's own individuality.
It is possible to locate this debate historically. And some have argued that Sha
kespeare's age, the early 17th century, was a time in which the rising energies
of individualism and capitalism were challenging the older order in a contested
vision of political and social life and that Shakespeare's play is, in part, a d
ebate between these two competing visions (between, if we wish to put names onto
the debate, the rival visions of Hooker and Hobbes).
If we want to view the play in this manner, and the text of the play invites us
to do so in part (how important we make this conceptual level of the play is ope
n for debate), then we may well wonder about whether the play leads us to any fi
rm conclusion. Does Shakespeare take sides in this dispute or resolve it in any
firm way?
My sense from the text is that his treatment of such a thematic concern is part
of the play's power, especially the power of its bleaker possibilities. Even if
we say, as we might, that there is a sense of nobility and traditional warmth in
the vision of the old order, in its ceremonious affections and firm sense of co
mmunity, it is clear here that the old order is insufficient because some of its
most important members do not live up to its demands. They are blind (that cent
ral metaphor is, of course, crucial) to their own obligations, insensitive to th
e complex dynamics of human interaction, and tyrannically addicted to their own
power. Gloucester can joke in public about the "sport" he had in conceiving a ba
stard son and talk about how he has kept him away from court life, and Lear can
rage at Cordelia for not playing the role he has determined for her in his self-
flattering game. Like Richard II before them, they have an insufficiently intell
igent and sensitive appreciation for the demands of virtue on which the old orde
r rests and thus inevitably contribute to fostering a situation in which that ol
d order falls apart.
The new order, in its turn, once self-assertive individualism has room to maneuv
er, breaks all customary ties, creates temporary alliances for power, and ends u
p with everyone pursuing his or her own agenda. In the process, sisters murder s
isters, sons betray their fathers, and the quest for power leads to its inevitab
le conclusion, self-destruction.
King Lear offers no sense of a permanently established natural order from which
human beings can devise some sense of how they ought to behave towards each othe
r, how they ought to live their lives. When Lear goes out to seek justice in the
storm, nature answers with an unintelligible and threatening tempest, from whic
h the only sane thing to do is to huddle down in the nearest hovel and pass the
time playing absurd games. Unlike the power of nature in As You Like It, which o
ffers a place full of sunshine and fertility where people can discover in a newl
y invigorating way who they really are and what relationships matter most to the
m, nature in King Lear is harsh and unresponsive to human beings' search for a r
eassuring moral order. In the Forest of Ardenne, the courtiers, through conversa
tion and song, repair themselves so that they can return to society to lead bett
er lives. On the heath, where there is no conversation only howls of anger and p
ain, the only thing Lear learns is that life, reduced to its basic elements, is
insane.
Nature and Female Sexuality
Before moving to consider in some detail the ending of the play, I would like to
raise an obvious but deeply ambiguous element in the play, the emphasis on (per
haps even the obsession with) female sexuality as a key element in Lear's rage.
This issue emerges unmistakably in Lear's passionate denunciations of his daught
ers and seems even to extend beyond that to include all women in general. What w
e are to make of this, I'm not sure, but that it's a key element in the play is
surely unquestionable.
To begin with, we note that neither Lear nor Gloucester is married: there is no
female partner in their families, and their firmly patriarchal male control thus
does not have to answer to any countervailing female presence. Gloucester can t
herefore joke easily and crudely about the "sport" he had in making Edmund, and
Lear can assert his dominating sense of himself from a position of total male co
ntrol.
Lear's initial rage is generated by a young woman, his daughter Cordelia, becaus
e she speaks up for herself. Many critics have speculated about her motivation,
but that seems to me a rather pointless exercise. What Cordelia is doing, as her
asides make clear, is speaking her own mind, declaring her own understanding of
how she should live her life. This challenge to Lear's ego exerts its effect no
t just because it demolishes his tidy little self-gratifying ritual but also bec
ause it's coming from a young woman, who is also his child. The rage is the refl
ex power of a male ego that will not accept unwelcome responses from children, w
omen, or subordinates.
His rage at Cordelia, which summons up the horrific vision of parents eating the
ir own children, begins with an invocation to "the mysteries of Hecate," and tha
t's an interesting allusion, because it is precisely the mysteries of that enigm
atic and powerful female goddess of the moon, a graphic symbol of the female pri
nciples at work in the cosmos, that Lear is least in touch with. So there's a po
werful irony that he should invoke such a figure in the very process of demonstr
ating just how incapable he is of even imagining such a presence.
His denunciation of Cordelia, however, is, in some respects, mild compared to th
e tirades he launches against Goneril and Regan and, beyond them, against women
generally. Here the emphasis is explicitly sexual. He wants their femininity and
fertility blasted away, as if that is somehow the source of the problem and the
refore a suitable punishment for not answering to his wishes.
Hear, Nature, hear! dear goddess, hear!
Suspend they purpose, if thou didst intend
Top make this creature fruitful!
Into her womb convey sterility!
Dry up in her the organs of increase;
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honor her! (1.4.252-266)
And at the height of his madness in the storm, at the very centre of Lear's dest
ructive rage is a violent sense of the sexuality of women (especially of Regan a
nd Goneril) as the source of all the evil which is tormenting him:
Behold yond simpering dame,
Whose face between her forks presages snow;
That minces virtue, and does shake the head
To hear of pleasures name;
The fitchew, nor the soiléd horse, goes to 't
With a more riotous appetite.
Down from the waist they are Centaurs,
Though women all above.
But to the girdle do the gods inherit.
Beneath is all the fiend's; there's hell, there's darkness,
There's the sulphurous pit, burning, scalding,
Stench, consumption! Fie, fie, fie! pah! pah! (4.6.115-126)
Locating hell in a woman's sexuality, seeing in women's sexual organs the devil'
s home and the source of all the hypocrisy introduces a powerfully disturbing se
nse of how much Lear's ego, that hard masculine shell he has encased himself in,
rests on a fear of what he cannot understand. The very process of summoning up
the image seems to drive him into even deeper agony (as the closing words indica
te). As Joyce Carol Oates has pointed out, there's no particular reason to locat
e the source of Regan's and Goneril's betrayal of him in their sexuality. Their
treatment of him springs much more from their masculine qualities (if we can use
that term), than from any deeply rooted source of evil unique to women's sexual
life. So Lear's passionate desire to see in their sexuality the source of his t
orments (and the world's evil) links the suffering in this play to a significant
ly displaced understanding of women. There's a sense that Lear, unable to unders
tand, accept, or control female sexuality, releases all his pent-up hatred of th
e world on that, for precisely that reason.
Now, we should be used to this in Shakespeare by now, especially from our readin
g of Hamlet. For in that play, Hamlet repeatedly generalizes from his emotional
distress a sweeping and often harsh indictment of women's sexuality (which presu
mably is the source of his violence against Ophelia and Gertrude). But, in compa
rison with Lear, we might want to argue that Hamlet has more understandable grou
nds. For Gertrude, his mother, now sleeps with Claudius. But this does not apply
to Lear, who is, one assumes, beyond the age where savage sexual jealousy (of t
he sort which later affects Regan and Goneril) is an important element in his li
fe. The fact that the female sexuality he is objecting to so violently belongs t
o his daughters (and thus is directly linked to the future of his family) makes
the denunciation all the more striking.
We might also want to think for a moment about how different Macbeth and Lady Ma
cbeth are in this respect. They give every indication of understanding very well
the importance of sexuality as a creative force in the natural process of thing
s. There is a sense in which they might very well be a sexually compatible coupl
e. That's why, in planning the murder, Lady Macbeth has to pray to be "unsexed"
and Macbeth has to go against his sensitivity to the natural processes of life i
n order to steel himself for the murder. And unlike Hamlet and Lear (and Othello
), Macbeth does not express his tragic suffering in terms which set women's sexu
ality up as the source of his torment. In that sense, he seems to have a maturer
sense of sexuality than the others, even if he sacrifices that sense to attain
his goals. For the fact that the close union of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth falls a
part after the murder of Duncan is one of the many painful consequences of their
desire to be unnatural. And there's a deep irony in the fact that after that pr
ayer to violate nature, Macbeth cannot abide the thought of Banquo's descendants
will get the crown.
If we further recall the language of some of the Dark Lady sonnets, those astoni
shingly passionate denunciations of sexuality ("lust") as the source of the spir
itual torment of the speaker, we can better understand why most interpreters wan
t to date them at about the same time as the tragedies and why others see a need
for some important biographical event which might trigger such a pronounced shi
ft (especially in comparison with As You Like It).
What we are to make of this I am not sure. But it strikes me that the violence a
gainst particular women (verbal and physical), the death of so many women, even
those entirely innocent (like Ophelia, Desdemona, Cordelia, and Lady Macduff), a
nd the absence of any women at the end of so many of the tragedies (other than t
he witches in Macbeth) establish a strong link between the tragic vision of life
and self-assertive and distinctively male ego. One point at the very ending of
King Lear which seems to emphasize this possibility is the way that the play bri
ngs back the bodies of Regan and Goneril (who have died offstage), so that the f
inal image insists upon the deaths of all the women in the family.
There may be other reasons for bringing back the dead bodies (to present a remin
der of the opening scene, for example, or to lend a corrosive irony to Edmund's
dying words about how he was "beloved"), but the firm insistence on what this tr
agedy has cost in the multiple killings of women introduces gender issues which
are hard to ignore.
The Ending of King Lear
I have many times suggested that King Lear offers us a particularly bleak view o
f human existence. It shakes our assumptions in many of the most cherished illus
ions we hang onto in order to confer significance on our lives. But I don't want
to conclude this lecture before looking in more detail at the ending, for there
is an important and interesting critical debate about how to read the ending of
the play. Is it, in fact, as I have described it, or are there some more optimi
stic and life-affirming possibilities?
Without exploring many alternatives, I would like to consider some of the materi
al in the closing moments of this play which feeds this debate. The central poin
t concerns Lear's "regeneration," his waking up a transformed person in the arms
of Cordelia. Here he is apparently very different person from the loud egoist o
f most of the play. He begs for forgiveness and has a genuine sense of that impo
rtant virtue, humility. There is clearly a sense here that Lear has discovered o
r rediscovered his capacity to love and to recognize in that bond the most impor
tant element of life.
Thus, when he and Cordelia are captured and sent off to prison, he accepts the e
vent because now being with Cordelia, sharing their love together, is far more i
mportant than any question of justice or injustice in the world. His poetry on t
his occasion is memorable. In response to Cordelia's practical question, "Shall
we not see these daughters and these sisters?" Lear replies,
No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison.
We two alone will sing like birds i'the cage.
When thou dost 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, and who's out;
And take upon 's the mystery of things,
As if we were Gods' spies; and we'll wear out,
In a walled prison, packs and sects of great ones,
That ebb and flow by the moon. (5.3.8-19)
How are we to read these lines? On the one hand, they seem to indicate a transfo
rmed understanding within Lear, some transcendent awareness of new priorities wh
ich place human love, "bonds," far above the meaningless power political world o
f the court with which Lear has been so obsessed. They invite us to think that L
ear's suffering has at last given him a magnificent insight into something of en
ormous and lasting value.
On the other hand, the speech is also a turning away from any practical action t
o deal with their present situation (after all, Cordelia's question is a request
to sort out what they should do next). So we can also read the speech as one mo
re illusion Lear is constructing in order to keep control of his life. The enorm
ous distance between the metaphysical power he is here claiming for himself ("As
if we were Gods' spies") and the reality of his situation is underscored by Edm
und's line immediately following this speech, "Take them away," a curt manifesta
tion of the real power at work in the world. So if we want to see in this speech
some important earned insight into the nature of life, we also have to recogniz
e that it's an insight that takes no account of what needs to be done and is, in
fact, impotent in the face of armed antagonism, in the face of the historical f
acts of his situation.
There may well be a suggestion here of a theme we have met already (particularly
in Hamlet) and are going to encounter again, namely, that love and politics are
mutually incompatible. For politics of the modern sort requires an ethic like t
hat of Polonius. And if Lear goes to negotiate with the sister, he will have to
descend to their level and, if he is to be successful in any way, to adopt the M
achiavellian tactics which guide the world in which the sisters live. Such a wor
ld crushes the spontaneous giving on which the highest forms of love depend. On
the other hand, to say, as Lear does here, that love is the higher priority and
to turn one's back on one's political situation is to leave one totally vulnerab
le to those who make politics their first and only priority. So even if we see L
ear's awareness here as full of a visionary understanding of the mystery of love
, there's a powerful irony underneath that declaration, a tone which insists upo
n the fact that such insight comes at the high price of political impotence.
And whatever Lear has learned about life is insufficient to sustain him, once Co
rdelia is killed. He may have thought his newly discovered sense of love would e
nable him to transcend the world of politics and rest finally on some deeper und
erstanding of the world, but whatever he has learned cannot cope with the sudden
destruction of the object of his love. And so his newly found mental equanimity
collapses, and he returns just before his death into a fit of insanity, seeing
in Cordelia's death the denial of any significance to human life:
No, no, no life!
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never!
Pray you, undo this button. Thank you, sir.
Do you see this? Look on her, look her lips,
Look there, look there! (5.3.304-310)
And he dies in a mad fit, tearing off his clothes (the same gesture which signal
ed the onset of his insanity in the storm), still trying to convince himself tha
t Cordelia cannot be dead. He thought he had come to some new awareness, but tha
t insight is removed. The mystery of life is not so benevolent as Lear thought i
t might be (and as we may have been seduced into thinking by the beauty of Lear'
s declaration of love). Hence, the hope of a significant transforming insight is
cancelled, and we are left in ambiguous doubt. The remaining characters say ver
y little, and there is no clear assumption of authority by anyone. Kent's commen
t salutes Lear's death as something to be welcomed:
Vex not his ghost. O, let him pass! He hates him much
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer. (5.3.312-314)
That image of Lear's life as a torture session does not encourage us to build mu
ch hope upon Lear's earlier declaration of love for Cordelia (of the sort which
might be fostered if Kent had said something like "Well, at least he found love
again before he died"). If the survivors see nothing of value in what has taken
place, we are not given any encouragement to find something on which to build an
y final reassuring insight.
If the text leaves us little to build any hope upon, the staging of the final mo
ments of King Lear can indicate something to us of where this human community go
es from here. And if you ever witness a production of this play, on stage or fil
m, it is worth paying close attention to the final movement. You need to be part
icularly attentive to whether or not the Fool is present and what he is doing.
The Fool: Dead or Alive?
Lear's Fool is one of the most interesting characters in the play, and his prese
nce in the ending will exercise an important interpretative effect. In the text,
the Fool apparently disappears in 3.6 with the cryptic final line, "And I'll go
to bed at noon" (3.6.78). From the text, he does not seem to reappear. One stan
dard historical explanation for this is that the character playing the Fool also
plays the role of Cordelia, and since she is about to reappear, the Fool has to
disappear. This, of course, is not an issue for modern productions, where the r
oles are hardly ever doubled. And so the question arises: What has happened to t
he Fool?
Lear's comment near the very end, "And my poor Fool is hanged!" (5.3.304) is nor
mally taken as a reference to Cordelia, although there are those, like Goddard,
who maintain that this is a reference to the Fool. So the text is quite ambiguou
s on the fate of the Fool, and anyone mounting a production of the play will hav
e to decide.
Why should this matter? Well, it matters, in large part, because it's important
for us to know whether the qualities that the Fool brings into the play survive
or not. And to assess the importance of this point, we need to consider some asp
ects of the character's role in the play.
The Fool has no power other than his language. He is attached to Lear by a stron
g bond, although he knows that honoring this bond is physically dangerous, for h
e is fully aware of the consequences of what Lear is doing in his dealings with
his daughters and his headstrong rush away from the castle into the storm. As a
fool, his role is to provide a stream of riddling verbal commentary on the actio
n, to expose the truth under the words of others. But his commentary is curiousl
y bitter and sad. He knows that his words are ineffective; they may express impo
rtant truths, but they will never penetrate Lear's consciousness or do much to c
hange the situation as it unfolds. At a time when the ruling facts of life are c
lashes of power (military and natural), the Fool's language has no significant e
ffect on the action. The professional manipulator of language counts for very li
ttle when so many others are twisting words to suit their own purposes.
But words are all he has. Faced with the destructive collision of the rival grou
ps and the ensuing suffering and chaos, the Fool does what he can to transform t
he harshness of events to some form of linguistic play, not because he has any s
olution to offer but simply because that's his way of dealing with suffering. So
long as one can talk and make jokes (even bitter ones) about experience, one ca
n, to an extent, endure that experience. The sadness of the Fool comes from his
awareness of the inadequacy of his language to do anything more than hold back t
he chaos momentarily and of the necessity of making the attempt, because to stop
talking would be to surrender to the meaninglessness of the storm. As Edgar obs
erves, "the worst is not/ So long as we can say 'This is the worst'" (4.1.27-28)
.
The Fool is significantly the only source of music in the play. And we should re
cognize by now that music plays a really important role in Shakespeare's style a
s a symbol for human creativity, hope, and joy. The Fool's songs, like his jokes
, are sad, riddling, and thin (nothing like the robust harmonious group singing
in As You Like It), but they express at least the human attempt to impose some o
rdered and creative meaning on the chaotic flux of life, to salvage something fr
om the absurdity of history. They offer us in symbolic form a vision of an impul
se upon which it might be possible to construct something valuable. So long as t
here is music, human feeling will find ordered expression and seek to communicat
e that to others (at least, that is the hope brought out by music).
That is why the fate of the Fool at the ending of this play matters. His death a
dds to the quantity of needless suffering which has extinguished love, community
, and possibilities for beauty and meaning. The music is over, and nothing rests
but the silence of total destruction. His survival, especially if he is given a
pivotal role in the closing moments, sets quite a different tone.
Here I want to refer to two film versions of King Lear, both very famous and bot
h very different. The first one, by Peter Brook (which is available at Van Isle
Video on Northfield Road) provides a really stark vision of the play. The ending
of Brook's version is a scene of desolation, with the survivors (no women among
them) huddled together facing a harsh bleak landscape and no sense of where any
form of regeneration is to come from. The landscape around them is chillingly h
ostile. The ending really brings out how the destruction of that original unity
has left no remnant from which something healthy might spring. There is no Fool
present. He has been destroyed alongside all the others. What remains is absurdi
ty.
The second film is the version of the celebrated Russian director of Shakespeare
in film, Grigori Kozintsev (a film which incidentally had its North American pr
emiere in Vancouver in 1971, at a Shakespeare conference which I attended). Kozi
ntsev has, throughout the film, associated the Fool with music, specifically wit
h playing a small wooden flute. In the closing moments of the film, we hear the
Fool playing his music above the desolation, and as he plays, we see the crowds
of people (including, significantly, women) slowly and tentatively start to pick
up things and move towards the beginning of some reconstruction.
Incidentally, the music in this film (composed by Shostakovitch) is truly memora
ble, one of the most eloquent reminders in the history of Shakespeare film produ
ction of the importance of music in shaping and sustaining a particular interpre
tative mood.
This final image of the common people initiating a process of rebuilding has imp
ortant implications for the political sense we take from this play (something I
will not be discussing in any detail). For it suggests that the old order of pat
riarchal feudalism has now gone. Most of its leading members are dead or about t
o die, and the few remaining (Edgar and Albany) are so isolated that there is no
rich social hierarchy for them to repair. The aggressive self-serving individua
ls are also dead. Hence, the future of the community is going to be in the hands
of the people, the ones who earlier in the film looked to the imposing figures
of the court for security and guidance. Such a vision would, of course, accord w
ell with any Marxist view that this play envisions the destruction of both the f
eudal aristocracy (which lacks any intelligent sense of virtue) and the new indi
vidualism (which turns everyone loose against everyone else). Any hope for the f
uture thus rests with the common people working, as they are here, together, in
harmony.
At the presentation of his film, Kozintsev spoke eloquently about how his vision
of Lear had been shaped by the experience of the siege of Leningrad, the site o
f particularly painful and sustained suffering in World War II. And, as I recall
, he referred to how a sense of the recuperative powers of humanity, as presente
d in King Lear, had sustained him during that horrific time. In the light of tha
t, his subsequent comments on the music in the closing moments of his film were
particularly significant. And I can think of no better last word for this lectur
e than the reflections of this wise artist on Shakespeare's most famous fool:
Symbols change. The Fool's cap and bells have long since gone out of fashion
. Perhaps the Fool's foolery isn't quite what it used to be either? I imagined a
paradoxical situation. The Fool is laughed at, not because he is foolish, but b
ecause he speaks the truth. He is the one who shams idiocy--no longer a court co
median but an urchin taken from among the most humble. The least significant tel
ls the most mighty that he's a fool because he doesn't know the nature of his ow
n daughters. Everyone laughs--but it is the truth.
For these people nothing is funnier than the truth. They roar with laughter
at the truth, kick it like a dog, hold it on a leash and make a laughing stock o
f it--like art under a tyrannical régime. I am reminded of stories about how, in a
Nazi concentration camp, an orchestra of prisoners was got together. They were
forced to play outside in the compound. They were beaten so that they would play
better. This was the origin of the Fool-musician--a boy taken from an orchestra
composed of men condemned to death.
This was the origin of the particular tone of the film, its voice. In King L
ear, the voice of human suffering is accorded more significance than the roar of
thunder. Working on the score with Dmitri Shostakovitch, I dismissed the idea o
f dignified fanfares and the roll of drums. We were carried away by ideas of a c
ompletely different kind of instrumentation--the sound of a wooden pipe, which t
he Fool has made for himself. I'd asked for the film titles to be written on coa
rse, torn sacking. This linkage of ideas acted as kind of key. Rags, and the sof
t sound of the pipe--the still voice of suffering. Then, during the battle scene
s, a requiem breaks out, then falls silent. And once again the pipe can be heard
. Life--a none too easy one--goes on. Its voice in King Lear is a very quiet one
, but its sad, human quality sounds distinctly in Shakespeare's work. (from "'Ha
mlet' and 'King Lear': Stage and Film," in Shakespeare 1971: Proceedings of the
World Shakespeare Congress Vancouver, August 1971 [Toronto: U. of Toronto Press,
1972]: 190-199).
2)
Thou art a soul in bliss, but I am bound
Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead.
Lear
The moment of Lear's awakening is one of the most moving scenes in our literatur
e, coming as it does after so much grotesque and senseless horror; it marks not
simply the reconciliation of King and mistreated, exiled daughter, the reconcili
ation of the tyrannical, aggressive Lear and his loving, all-forgiving Cordelia,
but the mysterious moment of "awakening" of the soul itself for Cordelia, with he
r unearned kiss, symbolizes that moment of grace that forces the tragic action t
o a temporary halt, and allows a magical synthesis of the bliss of eternity and
the tragedy of time that is so powerful in Shakespeare, because it is so rare.
It is moving, yes, but bitterly moving, and our emotions will be turned against
us shortly, for the visionary experience of a timeless love cannot compete in Sh
akespeare with the tragic vision, the grim necessity of history. Only when he ch
ose to call attention to the magical and therefore "unserious" elements of his own a
rtwork, as in The Tempest, could Shakespeare go beyond the terrible tradition of
history, that enemies be put to death, that no one be forgiven except the dead.
In reality, history cannot be stopped, and history is no more than the recordin
g of men's actions against one another so Shakespeare might have concurred with Na
poleon's cynical remark that history is the only true philosophy, and he would h
ave eagerly chosen as a villain the man of modern times who, like Edmund, placed
so passionate a faith in his ego's powers as to claim that such sentimental con
cepts as "friend" and "enemy" do not exist except as the ego forces them into be
ing.1 We accept, unquestioning, the prejudice of a personality that disguises it
s pessimism in the form of art, especially if the art is that of "tragedy" which
demonstrates by its surface action the rightness of such a prejudice, but only b
y its surface action. The mysterious core of tragedy is its ritualistic affirmat
ion of the life-force; as a form of religious observation, tragedy becomes "arti
stic" only as the artist steps forward to declare his individuality, his unique
powers of perception. No one has really written about tragedy from the inside that
is, from the point of view of the writer of tragedy, who deals not only at seco
nd-hand with the spectacle before him (or at third- or fourth-hand, since as lat
e as the time of Pope true genius was '"carefully, patiently, and understandingl
y to combine," not to invent), but immediately and intimately with his own perso
nality, his largely unconscious attitudes grouped as external elements of charac
ter, event, in King Lear even as setting. If the Shakespeare who brought togethe
r the various lively elements that constitute Hamlet could have anticipated, or
imagined, the naive response of a Partridge (in Tom Jones) to that work, he migh
t have had faith that, for some members of his audience, or for some layers of t
he human personality, the original magic of the ritual still worked. Yet it seem
s to me doubtful that Shakespeare did believe this: moments of transcendence in
his plays are usually fleeting, often expressed by women, and in any case when t
hey are brought to trial against the "cheerless, dark, and deadly" night of the
unredeemed universe, they are always defeated. External history takes precedence
over subjective experience, and the violent wheels that are individuals, mad fo
r power, must turn full circle; whatever "promised end" the soul yearns for, ima
gining that a certain measure of suffering has crucified its sinful egotism, mus
t be thwarted by the demands of history, which is unredeemed.
For most writers, the act of writing is itself a triumph, an affirmation, and th
e anguish experienced by an audience is not really in response to an emotion wit
hin the work itself (since real life would furnish much more convincing emotions
) but the artist's genius, his ability to transmute into formal images an archet
ypal human drama. In the case of tragedy, this is an inconsolable grief that nev
ertheless testifies to a higher, supreme order not the raw ritual any longer, whic
h is experienced immediately as "religious" and not enjoyed in our sense of the
word, but the ritual brought into human terms, incarnated into flesh, into heavi
ng, bleeding conflict.
"TRAGIC" VISIONS
Why is the underplot of King Lear in which Edmund figures lifted out of Sidn
ey's Arcadia and spatchcocked onto a Celtic legend older than history?
Stephen Dedalus
in the library scene of Ulysses
As tragedy evolves from simple ritual into art, and into increasingly complex, s
tylized, and individualized art, a new force enters history the diminishment of tr
agic "elevation" in the anonymous, rather democratic art of folk-tales and balla
ds, which always remain for all the wisdom they convey more or less artistically
naive; and, in formal art, the increasingly important factor of the self-consci
ous and self-declaiming creator, the arranger of the elements of ritual. A delib
erate and deliberating consciousness asserts itself. When scholars like Hardin C
raig, G. B. Harrison, and Russell Fraser draw our attention to the discrepancy b
etween the Lear sources and Shakespeare's transformation of them2 as well as to t
he violent yoking-together of the Lear and Gloucester stories, never before unit
ed we must remember that individual expressions of the tragic vision of life, howe
ver aesthetically and emotionally powerful they appear, are, first of all, to th
e artist a challenge of his individual artistry and an opportunity for him to ex
periment with partly conscious or totally unconscious elements in his own person
ality; but only in so far as these liberated elements can compete with the princ
iple of reality itself, in tragic times usually represented by not symbolized by a p
olitical and social order involving a great deal of oppression. What we experien
ce as infinite and universal, then, must be seen as a direct response to a given
environment: not necessarily our environment, but valuable so far as the repres
sive nature of any force external to the individual can be externalized as a his
torical given. Is the tragic view of life necessarily the highest view of life,
or the most beautifully rendered view of any life possible at the time of its ha
ving been rendered.9 which is a way of questioning our usual acceptance of the art
ist's "formal" message (which the environment of his time forced into him and th
en from him) to the exclusion of those incontestably exciting moments, at times
no more than in the interstices of the overwhelming general action, in which the
liberating forces, the rebellious forces of life itself, are honored.
Harry Levin states bluntly that he can see "very little point in pretending, thr
ough some Hegelian exercise in cosmic optimism, that tragedy is other than pessi
mistic,"3 and yet it seems possible that one can redefine the concept of "pessim
ism" itself and determine whether, in certain historically determined works of a
rt, there is not a possibility of some transcendence, however forced by the conv
entional plot to be defeated. Not that Desdemona, Cordelia, Edmund, Hotspur, Fal
staff, and others who cannot be contained within the established society are def
eated but that they have been imagined into being at all, that their voices, their
imprudence and vitality, have been given any expression whatsoever this does repr
esent a triumph of the artist's personality, and we have only to remove the trou
blesome rebels from these works to see how pointless, how nakedly propagandistic
, the "tragic vision" would have been. And how inexpressive of the complexity of
Shakespeare's genius! But if this does not quite answer the charge that tragedy
fails to elevate, that it is profoundly pessimistic, one can consider whether p
essimism, as such, is always negative; Nietzsche in his preface to The Birth of
Tragedy claims that the ancient Greeks required the "art-work of pessimism" in o
rder to evolve into a higher consciousness:
. . . Is there a pessimism of strength? An intellectual predilection for wha
t is hard, awful, evil, problematical in existence, owing to well-being, to exub
erant health, to fullness of existence?
and the obvious Yes to these queries leads us into one of the great works on trag
edy, which seeks to define it in terms of the issue Nietzsche would develop thro
ughout his life, the relationship of the individual as Creator to the vast proce
ss of evolution in which he participates. Nietzsche's vision is the fundamentall
y religious position that one cannot be allowed an "easy" belief; like Job, grea
t suffering must attend and strengthen faith. But Nietzsche's faith in a tragic
joy, in an awakening of stopped-up Dionysian wonders by the sheer violence of ex
ternal events, is not at all Shakespeare's as Tolstoy believed, the natural religi
ous temperament, the mystical as opposed to the institutionally religious, is so
mehow missing in Shakespeare; one finds nobility, stoicism, momentary alliances
like that between Lear and Cordelia, in which human love is celebrated, but the
Dionysian energies in themselves are felt as dangerous, chaotic, and never healt
hy.
When Matthew Arnold spoke of the assumption by poets of the religious and philos
ophical function,4 he anticipated a coordination of moral and intellectual facul
ties that would allow one to distinguish between aesthetic values on one hand, a
nd the "unconscious poetry" he saw in the religious temperament on the other; ot
herwise he would not have been as optimistic as he was. For, without the psychol
ogical experience of which the "religious" attitude is an intellectual result, t
he pessimism of certain great works of art is experienced apart from the rituali
stic impulse that allowed them to be, originally if ever affirmative. And we come to
accept as a universal statement about the condition of man what the artist know
s to be, from the inside, hypothetical and sometimes playful variations on a the
me.5 Above, I grouped Desdemona and Cordelia along with Edmund, not meaning to e
radicate the traditional divisions (at least in Lear) into "good" and "evil" cam
ps, but to suggest that, for the artist, a more important consideration is wheth
er or not he can locate any crevices, any openings, any fountains in his work, t
hrough which the life-force can move, regardless of moral distinctions. The Unco
nscious supposedly does not recognize socially accepted distinctions of good or
evil, but craves only some form of organism-centered completion, the release and
celebration of energy in some form and, though the art-work is infinitely more co
mplicated than the biological organism, the need to push forward, to violate the
existing homeostatic condition, is just as natural, just as relentless. Allowin
g for the restrictions of the era, which are not always antagonistic to the indi
vidual, the art-work becomes the public vehicle for the artist's private vision;
and the more melodramatic the better, since the form of dramatic conflict best
parallels the conflict of the personality's various elements, conscious or uncon
scious contents that can never reach a stable equilibrium so long as life contin
ues. (Questions of haphazard organization of scenes, unlikely disappearances and
reappearances in Shakespeare's plays, as in contemporary films, are relevant on
ly to the experience of these works on the printed page; as visual spectacles, w
hich release emotions in a sequence of scenes, they need answer to the same logi
c as our dreams, which they very much resemble.)
Whether tragedy in its "highest" form is really affirmative, or only worked, his
torically, to frighten its viewers into an intellectual affirmation of the statu
s quo, there is no doubt that individuals in our time experience it as pessimist
ic, regardless of what they have been taught. The naive response is, after all,
one's best expression of human instinct. One does not analyze a dream in order t
o know what sort of emotions to feel about it; one uses the emotion to seek out
the meaning, inseparable from the experience itself. Thus, Lear is profoundly pe
ssimistic for us in the twentieth century, and we cannot know or approximate its
value to the past. Once we distinguish our intellectual expectation of emotion
from our actual emotions, we are prepared to approach a work of art from our own
point of view, and only by this method can we discover what might be timeless i
n it.
GODDESSES
That moments of transcendence must be followed, and dramatically, by catastrophi
c endings is part of the fabric of tragedy; one might speculate that an art-form
that is in itself predetermined will most convincingly present a worldview that
is predetermined in contrast, for instance, with the greater freedom of the reali
stic forms of drama and fiction that have followed Shakespeare's time. Where for
mal freedom is enjoyed by the artist, freedom is more likely to be enjoyed by hi
s characters, though the evolution of "freedom" in its various aspects is always
related to the historical moment.
However, the incompatibility of the visionary and the tragic in King Lear is exc
essive even for tragedy, and a way of isolating and analyzing the terms of this
incompatibility is by noting the work's presentation of women: goddesses, all, b
ut of a totally unpredictable and possibly terrifying nature.
The world of Lear is one in which the particularized, personalized human being f
inds himself in some contention with his role a representative of his species, his
rank, his "place" King, Father, Everyman, God-on-Earth; Daughter; Bastard; Loyal
Servant; Madman; Traitor. The terms in which he dramatizes these roles soon beco
me uncontrollable by him, though he imagines initially as Lear certainly does that
he is in absolute control, and even the wise Cordelia miscalculates her power to
absorb the violent emotions in her father which she has provoked; it is not so
much raw aggression that leads to tragedy, but the loss of control that results
from a simple refusal on the part of a "character" to conform to a "role." Hence
, the youngest and fairest daughter of the king refuses to be the daughter of a
king, but insists upon speaking as a woman who is Cordelia, and no other. In the
acknowledgment of a separate, unique destiny, a personality possessed not by th
e sovereign but by the individual, there is a hint of the Void: formless horror,
the music of the spheres violated, the unstoppable upheaval of raw nature. In t
his woman's insistence upon a moral intelligence not determined by her social ro
le we have rebellion, the first and the most surprising of all. The others are f
or gain, for power, for exciting, new, lustful alliances, but Cordelia's is with
out any ostensible purpose: she declares herself unwilling to lie, she declares
herself as a self.
The "self" of Lear, however, is overwhelmed by the authority of the "King," in t
he grip of the most primitive of emotions, a human being dying inside an archety
pe. By the time of Lear's redemption, however, from this ignoble self, what is m
ortal in him has been lost to any role that might be accommodated in the structu
red world of man of politics, of history. Shakespeare's cynicism is darker than on
e thinks, at least in Lear, for, though one may be broken upon the wheel of betr
ayal the denial of Kingship by both a kingdom's subjects and by Nature itself and "c
ut to the brains," the only knowledge he returns with is the knowledge that one
cannot operate sanely in that place where "poor rogues/Talk of Court news." The
necessary withdrawal of the enlightened man from politics, from the world as it
exists in history, must have seemed to Shakespeare the only way in which a measu
re of transcendence, or true "selfness," could be retained. And yet to surrender t
he world to those who demand it, precisely those who should not possess it! Part
of the play's terrible pessimism is due to this assumption of a (saintly) passi
vity in the face of history, as if politics, the world, history, time, contamina
ted the morally virtuous: an assumption that is probably quite psychologically v
alid for most people, and yet presents, in art, an intolerable paradox.
However, having detached himself from the "role" he had been cast in, having fle
d into and through Nature itself, Lear satisfies our emotional demands for a dra
matic rejection of the ego (by way of rejecting the superficial, time-determined
roles of that ego), and his loving alliance with Cordelia suggests a wedding of
sorts, an embrace of contrarieties: male and female, civilization and "great cr
eating nature" rather than nature in its evil sense. A critical approach that ex
amines the play as a coherent narrative, dealing with fully realized psychologic
al events, arranged in a causal pattern, may be quite rewarding in that it satis
fies our uneasy wishes that a work of art make sense on the most fundamental lev
el, but it may be ultimately self-defeating; for one cannot disagree with Tolsto
y, who was angered by the absence in Shakespeare's work of recognizable human be
ings, as well as the multiplicity of "unnatural" events one may only disagree abo
ut whether these elements are always essential. It is impossible, now, knowing w
hat we do about the effects of environment upon all human beings, including arti
sts, to pretend that a work may not be valuable precisely in what it omits, what
it rejects, what it demonstrates as unconscious assumptions unconsciously given
voice in the externalization-process that is art.
One of Lear's more desperate passions is to know whether there is "any cause in
nature that makes these hard hearts" (III, vi, 75). His fate is to learn that th
ere is, there must be, since the hardness of hearts unites (in Shakespeare's ima
gination) man with nature, and nature must always be chaotic because it is not t
he Court, because it is not Art it promises no immortality because it has no memo
ry. The very form of the sonnet is outrageously and shamelessly egocentric, and
allows the ego a pleasure that somehow activates guilt for its very celebration
of form and language: hence the sonneteers acknowledge their constant terror of
death, by guaranteeing themselves and their patrons the word "immortality," if n
ot the condition. Confronted with the ungovernable processes of nature, many men a
nd not just the baffled, infuriated Lear imagine that their "wits begin to turn."
For nature when it is Nature, when it is experienced as outside the human ego, t
he human intellect, the human capacity for tyrannies of any kind the most subtle,
the most winning, the tyranny of language itself is always the enemy, always falle
n; and if animals are evoked they are not animals, but "beasts," and we experien
ce the rage of authoritarian disappointment in terms of savage wolves, tigers, s
erpents, vultures, kites, adders and insects, rats, and "mad" and "biting" dogs.
Tragic enough, certainly, yet the ultimate tragedy is the experiencing as "enemy
" the entire female sex, even one's dead and buried and presumably docile queen.
The dilemma is that, for both Lear and Shakespeare, redemption must come only f
rom the female, temporarily exiled in France, but required and so pragmatically, a
s well as instinctively in order that some measure of salvation be assured. If the
re could be a force or a being somehow uncontaminated by nature, a creature imma
culately conceived, perhaps, then Man might be saved; the old kingdom restored.
But there is only one savior possible, Cordelia: that one daughter of Man who, i
n the anonymous gentleman's words, "redeems Nature from the general curse/which
twain have brought her to" (IV, Vi, 2023. Yet Cordelia is a woman, and as a woma
n she is Nature; she will not die and so she must be murdered.
Shakespeare deliberately alters the ending of the Lear story, in order to defeat
the very salvation his work, from the inside, requires; it is not necessary to
assume, as some critics do, that Shakespeare was projecting his own revulsion fo
r women into the play, but it seems necessary to assume that whoever came to emb
ody Nature, whoever spoke and acted freely, spontaneously, naturally, and reject
ed the archetypal role in order to affirm individuality, must be murdered her magi
cal powers, undeniably wonderful, stem from Nature and are therefore dangerous.
Harbage notes that Shakespeare alone "and in defiance of precedent conducted Lea
r to ultimate misery"; pre-Shakespearean forms of the story ended happily.6 One
feels that he acted in defiance not only of precedent but of the unconscious fol
kwish the play surely dramatizes, that the mortal ego be reunited with its soul,
its own capacity for divinity, felt as such an irresistible psychological neces
sity that, as everyone knows, and imagines to be absurd, Nahum Tate rewrote the
conclusion in 1680, in the order that Cordelia and Edgar might marry: if not the
old man, then at least let Edgar have her! the folk-impulse gratified, and yet cu
riously unworkable. The play is so baffling, so unconvincing, and yet so unforge
ttable, precisely because there is no conclusion possible at all, given the prem
ises of the problem Shakespeare set himself that fallen Nature somehow engenders a
being not corrupt and not fallen, a savior. It was an impossible task. And, whi
le the play is remarkable, even for a Shakespearean play, in its disregard for v
erisimilitude, the offstage event in which Cordelia is "killed" seems to me unim
aginable from any angle. One cannot visualize that scene, not even with the grea
test good will, for it requires us to believe that a soldier might enter Lear's
and Cordelia's cell, noticing neither Lear nor Lear's agitation at his daughter'
s hanging that Lear wait as the soldier hangs his daughter, and then that he sprin
g to life, and murder the soldier. It is so preposterous a scene, even in an all
egorical work, that had Shakespeare wanted to bring it into the dramatic action
he could never have made it work not delicacy but good sense required that it be k
ept offstage, like the Greek catastrophes it seems to parallel. (It is unfair, o
f course, to analyze a poetic work in terms of naturalism but perhaps justified in
this unusual case, since Shakespeare himself invites us to question that ending
, by daring to force it out of its natural curve toward redemption.)7 What is "c
heerless, dark and deadly" is the conception of Nature as antithetical to Art or
Artifice, and this curse determines the tragedy, quite apart from characters an
d their motivations and actions. Great art usually allows the instinctive life i
ts articulation on a high, aesthetically satisfying plane: in Lear the very life
force itself is denied, and it is impossible to see the work as "religious" in a
ny way.
Yet Arthur Sewell, along with other scholars and critics, would defend the play
against charges of nihilism; Sewell even goes so far as to ask, "Does not the pl
ay look forward to Dostoyevsky, rather than back to Seneca?"8 How peculiar, to h
ave read Dostoyevsky in such a way that the possible death of Sonia or Alyosha c
ould have been entertained to have misread Dostoyevsky as a tragedian, rather tha
n a mystic, whose vision of mankind is comparable to Dante's and whose "comic" s
ide could accommodate a saint who disappoints his adolescent worshippers by begi
nning to smell quickly after his death yet is no less a saint, for embodying natur
e's caprices. What Dostoyevsky and Shakespeare certainly have in common, along w
ith their genius, and their fantastic imaginations, is the belief that suffering
democratizes and allows growth and the awakening of wisdom; but this is not a "
tragic" view necessarily. Folk-art teaches us the same thing.
Yet there is no single man, no single "Shakespeare"; Anthony Burgess's novel, No
thing Like the Sun, for all its gorgeous language, bitterly disappoints us in it
s portrayal of only the Shakespeare of the darkest plays, ignoring the Shakespea
re of The Tempest. And in this we see how difflcult, how very nearly impossible
it is, for the serious artist to deal with the religious, affirmative spirit, or
even with the phenomenon of a changing self, a self in flux. The critic must li
mit himself, in all honesty, to speaking only of the author of the work before h
im. Therefore, though I use the name "Shakespeare" I am really referring only to
the author of Lear, a temporary personality, yet one in which many of the incli
nations revealed in other works (in Hamlet and the sonnets, for instance) are gi
ven specific, savage voice: the wholesale denunciation and destruction of the fe
male element, though this action will result in the thwarting of the tragic elem
ent itself, and the play as a whole will impress us as the aesthetic equivalent
of a suicide. (Re-enter Lear, with Cordelia dead in his arms: mortal man, his so
ul dead inside him.)
Because Shakespeare was a dramatist, it was natural that he perceive his charact
ers more from the outside than the inside, as "actors" in a total spectacle, and
that he force their individual personalities into roles, especially when he dea
lt with history. The more individual a character is, like Hotspur, Falstaff, Edm
und, Mercutio, and the irresponsible Prince Hal before he becomes the responsibl
e and priggish Henry V, the more it is necessary to subdue him, to annihilate hi
m or transform him so that, at the play's conclusion, the audience is left with
a single impression. One can interpret this from a pragmatic point of view all pro
fessional dramatists are wonderfully pragmatic or, as C. Wilson Knight does, more
sympathetically, as Shakespeare's attempt to create a "poetic wholeness" that al
lows in a work like Lear "the most fearless artistic facing of the ultimate crue
lty of things in our literature."9 For Knight, Lear is a great work in that it c
onfronts the very absence of tragic purpose, and that it gives us a tragic purlf
ication of the "esentially untragic."
Whether Shakespeare's Lear is an intensely private vision of evil, or whether th
e joining-together of the two stories and the alteration of the ending is a dram
atist's private attempt to outdo earlier versions, or whether both possibilities
are operating here, one cannot tell: we are left, however, with no single perso
nality in the play that is not firmly trapped in "Nature," since only Edgar and
Albany survive, and the single means by which Nature was to have been redeemed i
s dead. All is subdued to this conclusion, which bears little resemblance to the
cathartic and rejuvenating conclusions of more conventional tragedy. Edmund may
have contemptuously rejected the planetary influences (as the doomed Hotspur al
so rejects them), but Shakespeare dare not reject them as a dramatist, for to do
so would be to strengthen his rebels' sense of freedom. When Shakespeare himsel
f is freer, in terms of sympathizing with both sides of a conflict (as in Antony
and Cleopatra, and Troilus and Cressida), it is important to note that he tends
toward cynicism, rather than the more truly tragic realization of, for instance
, Aeschylus in Libation Bearers that "Right clashes with right." In Lear he sugges
ts a tragically false dualism: Edmund's "Goddess," raw nature as interpreted by
a bastard son of instinct, by which is meant sheer anti-social egotism, and, by
contrast, the asexual "Goddess" it is Cordelia's fate to give life to, and to di
e in. She is also her own father's "soul in bliss," the perfect savior and the p
erfect victim. As Lear's unrepressed "inner voice" she speaks defiantly before t
he Court the world like another Eve involving us in another Fall, an unfortunate div
iding of the kingdom into two and not into the mystical, indissoluble three. The
"promised end" is the Apocalypse, in one sense; in another, the inevitable horr
or that follows when Nature (or woman) is given the freedom to act spontaneously
, to upset ritual, rising in rebellion against masculine authority. All the "god
desses" the "good" Cordelia, the "evil" Goneril and Regan must die, the kingdom mus
t be totally purged of the female, not in order that mere evil be eradicated, bu
t that the life-force itself be denied. Lear generates excitement through its dr
amatization, in fantasy, of the suicidal wishes that lie behind all political an
d moral repression.
A KINGDOM WITHOUT A QUEEN
The disgust expressed in the play toward women is more strident and articulate,
and far less reasonable, than the disgust expressed in Othello and Hamlet and ce
rtain of the sonnets. In other works, Antony and Cleopatra, and the comedies, wo
men are allowed a certain measure of equality with men, but only through having
lost or rejected their femininity; though Cleopatra is alluring, a temptress, we
are shown the ways by which she deliberately calculates her triumph over Antony
's defenses, and she emerges as more of a comrade, an "equal," not an intensely
feminine and therefore magical (the interpretation is Iago's) woman like Desdemo
na, whose very innocence is fatal. In Othello and Hamlet and in the sonnet seque
nce, sexual loathing is in response to real or imagined infidelities on the part
of beloved women; in Lear, however, sexual loathing is only a part of the gener
al fear and loathing of Nature itself, most obviously represented by women. Cord
elia is virginal and all but sexless, yet she is no less a woman, "a wretch whom
Nature is ashamed/Almost to acknowledge hers" (I, i, 215).
Lear goes on to rail against Goneril and Regan as if their attitude toward him,
in subsequent scenes, sprang from something inherently feminine in their nature,
even something erotic; but in fact both daughters are behaving toward the old K
ing, at this point in the play, like rebellious sons who are testing their fathe
r's authority. There is nothing feminine about them at all, and in the original
Lear story in the Arcadia it was really Lear's sons-in-law who rebelled against
him in order to get his kingdom, not his daughters. But Shakespeare deliberately
goes against his source and makes both daughters enemies, and Albany a sympathe
tic character. In order to give a poetic wholeness to the antifeminine brutality
of the play, it was necessary that Shakespeare do this; in a causal sequence, C
ordelia initiates the tragic action, her sisters continue it, her sisters die, b
ut their evil continues so that Cordelia herself is executed, as a consequence o
f feminine rebellion of one kind or another. Edmund, of course, behaves in an ev
il way toward his father, but we are told that he is a bastard who has sprung fr
om some "dark and vicious place" (that is, an unmarried woman's womb) and that G
loucester's succumbing to sexual instinct, so many years before, has now cost hi
m his eyes. Intolerable as female evil is to men, yet for some reason it cannot
be easily annihilated, as Albany laments:
See thyself, devil!
Proper deformity seems not in the fiend
So horrid as in woman.
. . .
Thou changed and self-covering thing, for shame,
Bemonster not thy feature. Were't my fitness
To let these hands obey my blood,
They are apt enough to dislocate and tear
Thy flesh and bones. Howe'er thou art a fiend,
A woman's shape cloth shield thee.
[ALBANY to GONERIL, IV, ii, 59ff ]
So, while women like Goneril and Regan do not hesitate to obey the promptings of
their "blood," like the bastard Edmund, a truly noble man like Albany does resi
st for though such evil is obvious, it is shielded by "a woman's shape."
In purely metaphorical terms, Cordelia's natural mate would be Edmund: both are
those dangerously spontaneous children, those outcasts, through whom the life-fo
rce leaps so explosively. But in terms of the plot Edmund is the mate both siste
rs desire, implausible though it is that such fiendish creatures could succumb t
o genuine love for love it is, and not simply lust, since no man or woman ever cho
se to die for lust:
GON (Aside) I had rather lose the battle than that sister
Should loosen him and me.
[v, i, 18-19]
No attempt is made on Shakespeare's part to account for the sentimental rivalry
over Edmund that would lead the vicious sisters to such extreme statements, and
to death, for though Cordelia is granted the transcendence of the flesh that mak
es her into a "soul in bliss," her sisters are seen in these famous terms:
Down from the waist they are Centaurs,
Though women all above.
But to the girdle do the gods inherit,
Beneath is all the fiends'.
 There's Hell, there's darkness, there's the sulphurous pit,
Burning, scalding, stench, consumption, fie, fie, fie!
[IV, vi, 126ff]
It is not dramatically clear why the sisters' cruelty to their father should be
related to sexual desire, or why Lear should speak of "divorcing the tomb" of hi
s dead wife, unless madness may be used to account for all his excesses. Yet he
is not "mad" in the first act of the play, in which he threatens Goneril with th
e "kindness" of her sister:
I have another daughter
Who I am sure is kind and comfortable.
When she shall hear this of thee, with her nails
She'll flay thy wolvish visage. Thou shalt find
That I'll resume the shape which thou cost think
I have cast off forever.
[I, iv, 327ff]
The bestiality of women, then, is not an absolute; when it is in the service of
the King it is "kind and comfortable." What is absolute is the King's authority ev
en when he is raging, when he is mad so that Gloucester quite naturally asks if he
may kiss Lear's hand, after the impassioned curse quoted above, which compares
women to Centaurs, and Kent's buffoonery before Gloucester's castle is honorable
. It is a world in which the masculine archetype can do things wrongly, and yet
never embody wrong, and in which the highest embodiment of the feminine, Cordeli
a, is represented as totally selfless, the perfect sacrifice.
One of the strangest interpretations of Cordelia's role is Freud's, in an early
essay (1913) called "The Theme of the Three Caskets." Freud argues that Cordelia
, as the third daughter, is Death itself, and that the "silent goddess" who dest
roys Lear is the last of the three forms his relations with women must take. Sin
ce nearly everything in Freud's cosmology is related back to the Oedipal complex
, it is not surprising that Lear, an elderly patriarch who manages to attain a t
rue transcendence of his personal miseries, should nevertheless be seen in these
reductive terms: ". . . it is in vain that the old man yearns after the love of
woman as once he had it from his mother; the third of the Fates alone . . . wil
l take him into her arms."10 Since Freud tended to equate the "feminine" with th
e "Unconscious," and both with those contents that threaten civilization, and th
e masculine ego, with dissolution, he is led to the extreme of reversing the pla
y's general insistence upon Cordelia as lifebearing and spiritual, rather than a
deathly embodiment of the Earth Goddess, and his interpretation cannot possibly
account for the play's conclusion, in which the old man appears with Cordelia d
ead, in his arms. Cordelia as a form of Death cannot be supported by any evidenc
e within the play, in terms of poetic imagery, for she is not only dissociated f
rom raw, unspiritualized passion, but Lear is led to speak of her, at the play's
conclusion, as dead as earth itself so that she seems to us as far removed from
the Magna Mater, the Terrible Mother, as it is possible for a female character t
o be. It would not be ironic that she is dead as earth itself, if "earth" had be
en, in any way, a suitable metaphor for her. What is curious is that Freud does
not remark upon the imbalance of the kingdom the one-sidedness of a kingdom ruled
only by a king. A psychology that has as its model a balance of male-female, or
"masculine-feminine" characteristics, might have speculated that "tragedy" issue
d from such one-sided development, both in the individual and in culture. Freud'
s psychology, of course, does not have this kind of balance as a model.
King Lear strikes us, at the same time, as an experimental work one that poses and
tests a vision of life necessarily related to the social and political milieu o
f the times (in which intrigue, hypocrisy, scandal, and murder were commonplace)
, but timeless in its anguished tension between what is "natural" and what is "u
nnatural" in human experience. How, given the savage terms of the play's univers
e, can man be redeemed from a partial, one-sided, blind fate? pulled in one direc
tion by the archetypal role he must play, and in another by a human, emotional,
instinctive need that cannot be suppressed, or expressed, without violent conseq
uences? Scholars suggest that the play was written sometime before December 26,
1606, but probably after the death of Elizabeth in 1603 after the death of a queen
; and the work is characterized by a nightmarish sense of peril, of impending ap
ocalypse that has nothing to do with the masculine hierarchical world, but stems
directly from nature itself:
GLOU. These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us: though
the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourg
ed by the sequent effects: love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide: in
cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond crac
ked 'twist son and father. . . . We have seen the best of our time: machinations
, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to our
graves.
[I, ii, 111ff]
True, no doubt: as it seems generally true today, and true for all times, since
the Apocalypse as a form of collective ego-despair and ego-love is always immine
nt, and always expressed by an era's imaginative artists in such terms. Yet for
some reason the feminine forces arc if not in actual league with not so vulnerable
to the sequent effects. The play issues a stern, puritanical warning to all men
: if one strays outside the harmonious structure as it is realized by men, if on
e descends to that "dark and vicious place" where the bastard Edmund is conceive
d, civilization itself will be destroyed.11 The wheel will come full circle.
GRACE
Lear is experimental as well in its dramatizing of the soul's yearning for infin
ity, the desire of man to reach out to a higher form of himself, if not actually
to "God" (Shakespeare's atheism seems unarguable). In purely psychological term
s, Lear is the incomplete personality, the immature adult, forced by suffering t
o undergo a transformation that takes him far beyond himself. If hubris necessar
ily invites the death-blow of nemesis, the neurotic or unfulfilled personality n
ecessarily indicates a higher self, the potentiality for fulfillment on a higher
level that is totally lacking in contented, "normal" human beings, who have rea
ched the end of their development. Clinical psychology and imaginative literatur
e may or may not support a theory of the neuroses as unfulfilled contents of the
self that are immensely valuable; and that are in some way related to unfulfill
ed elements in culture itself, but the aesthetic structure of a dramatic work is
built upon the presupposition of change of some kind, in time; an incomplete co
ndition is allowed its completion. In the melodramatic tragedy Shakespeare wrote
, the latent villainy and the latent heroism of such a man as Macbeth are allowe
d their development, and the "man" who embodies them the character who is called M
acbeth must be seen as little more than the vehicle, the metaphor, for that develo
pment. One is not given a character, Macbeth, whose psychological state leads hi
m to certain acts of villainy, and ultimately to a kind of transcendental courag
e, but rather the illustrative acts themselves, flowering out of circumstances,
to some extent "fated" by nature. G. Wilson Knight is surely correct when he str
esses, in Shakespeare's tragedies, the significance of the pattern rather than t
he particles that make it up.
Lear demonstrates more powerfully than Shakespeare's other works the value of ex
perience, even if that experience is suffering and death itself. In resisting an
d banishing the "Other," that part of the soul that is highest in man, Lear exag
gerates man's natural tendencies to resist his own fulfillment, just as this tra
gic work exaggerates the literal dangers of such resistance: "I fear I am not in
my perfect mind," Lear says, after he has been broken out of his "perfect" egot
ism, and succumbed to temporary madness. In order to complete his soul and be re
deemed (in psychological terms: to activate his fullest identity) the hero must
unite with the element that seems to oppose him. Because King Lear rules a world
by himself, without a queen, his inclination toward the most dangerous of all m
asculine traits tyranny cannot be checked, except by the rebellion of a spontaneous
intuition within the soul, but out of reach of the conscious mind. Hence, Corde
lia, the youngest and fairest of the King's daughters, a part of his flesh itsel
f, must oppose him. She is instinct's unsuppressable truth, required by Lear's o
ne-sided soul; yet it is a supra-individual predicament, a one-sidedness that is
symptomatic of Lear's culture itself, and not so readily cured.12
The vision Shakespeare might have been attempting in King Lear is the mystic's s
ynthesis of self and "Other," time and eternity, the finite and the infinite, po
etically symbolized by a union of male and female elements. Act IV shows us Lear
asleep in the French camp, with "soft music playing"; when he is wakened by Cor
delia he believes, at first, that he is dead, in hell, and that his daughter is
a spirit:
You do me wrong to take me out o' the grave.
Thou art a soul in bliss, but I am bound
Upon a wheel of fire that mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead.
[IV, vii, 44]
She tells him that he is "in his own kingdom"; the great rage of his former pers
onality is now "killed in him." Cordelia functions as the embodiment of grace, t
hat which is unearned, the redemption of the personality from the inside, out of
the control of the conscious will. "Grace" is the usual religious term for this
miraculous self-healing, but all of the healing sciences medicine, psychology are b
ased upon the ability of the organism to heal itself, with or with out the activ
e interference of the will.
From this point onward Lear demonstrates a wholeness of personality that takes h
im beyond the nobility of soul possessed by any tragic hero in Shakespeare. He d
oes not lust for revenge, but is prepared to "wear out,/In a walled prison, pack
s and sects of great ones/That ebb and flow by the moon" (v, iii, 17-19); he spe
aks of himself and his daughter as "sacrifices." Not until Cordelia is hanged do
es he commit any act of violence himself. When Lear carries Cordelia onstage, de
ad, Kent asks "Is this the promised end?" that is, is this the end of the world, t
he Apocalypse itself? and we feel that the "promised" completion in terms of the h
oped-for rejuvenation of Nature has been totally thwarted, while the play's deep
er movement, toward an eradication of all transcendental awareness that is predi
cated upon the feminine, has been brought to absolute completion. The Apocalypse
serves man's purposes, for it brings together "Heaven" and "earth" but excludes
the kind of raw, sensuous nature that Edmund worships. This "religious" one might
almost say Protestant Apocalypse is not a mystical union of all of the universe,
experienced as divine once history is suspended, but rather an expression of pol
itical rage, as in Young Clifford's words upon seeing the body of his dead fathe
r, in II Henry VI:
O, let the vile world end,
And the premised flames of the last day
Knit earth and Heaven together!
Now let the general trumpet blow his blast,
Particularities and petty sounds
To cease!
 [v, ii, 40ff]
"Ripeness is all": a statement of the body's limitations, and the need of the sp
irit to adjust itself, stoically, to such limitations. There is no visionary rel
ease from the body, or from history, and the play's ostensible hero who will inher
it the kingdom seems to be saying, in these lines, that the vicious gouging-out of
his father's eyes was somehow deserved:
My name is Edgar, and thy father's son.
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.
[v, iii, 169ff]
A puritanism that is so uncompromising draws the ideal into flesh only at the te
rrible risk of having to murder the ideal, because it is flesh: Cordelia, like C
hrist, is an inevitable victim. But it is unlikely that Shakespeare would say, a
s Milton did, that the Fall of Man might be justified might even have been a good si
nce it brings the redemption, the divine into flesh. The Fall is not an event in
Lear's world so much as a norm; one does not want to survive, given these condi
tions Kent speaks of a "journey" he must take soon, indicating that, like Lear, he
will not long outlive these images of revolt and chaos. To remain alive and rul
e the kingdom, as Edgar will, is a duty, an obligation only. The world has been
emptied of all vitality, that of the soul's spontaneous rebellion against the eg
o, as well as that of bastardy and excess. Though Cordelia is murdered, one feel
s that the value she represents should not have been murdered; yet Edgar will ru
le the kingdom as Lear did, without a feminine counterpart.
Because the Lear stories concentrate upon the masculine predicament of kingship
and fatherhood, and the dangers in relinquishing both forms of authority, it is
dramatically necessary that the queen be already dead. Symbolically, however, it
is the psychological value of the queen the feminine that is dead, absent, so that
below the level of consciousness Shakespeare might have been led to attribute to
that very absence a power for harm, dissolution, and terror: much as repressive
and ego-fixated cultures tend to attribute to the suppressed elements (normal i
nstinctive urges) an uncanny power. Within the individual, the melodrama is a fa
miliar one, raised to tragedy when the instincts are so violently suppressed in
the name of "rationality" that destruction results aggression turned outward upon
a usually innocent object of one's projected emotions, or aggression turned inw
ard in the form of madness or suicide. In Erich Neumann's monumental The Origins
and History of Consciousness the projection of "transpersonal" contents upon in
dividual persons is discussed at great length, as well as the dangers to sanity
that result from a helpless confusion of one's own person with the archetype one
partly embodies. The patriarch's unspoken imperative, Away from the unconscious
, away from the mother, is dangerous precisely because it is unspoken, unarticul
ated, kept below the threshold of consciousness itself. But, because the "uncons
cious" is so feared, the ego begins to project these fears upon the outside worl
d, and so we have the common phenomenon of paranoia, which rages in those indivi
duals who attempt to direct their lives away from the unconscious and in line wi
th an idealized moral code. One of the extraordinary things about life which Shake
speare's tragedies reflect so powerfully is that while men of good will and intell
igence can recognize the unconscious elements determining another's paranoia, th
ey are invariably blind to their own projections; and, indeed, there is no way t
o determine what is real and what is simply projected, except insofar as one beg
ins to experience intense emotions that are out of proportion to what other peop
le are experiencing, given the same objective stimuli. The psychology of the pur
itan, the zealously moral man who overreacts to sin, and who is fascinated with
sin, is only available to analytical study when his culture has developed away f
rom him, so that he is italicized against it: so Shakespeare gives us that parad
oxical but wise "dark comedy," Measure for Measure, in which repression itself g
enerates the drama, but, in King Lear, it seems to me that Shakespeare was too i
nvolved in Lear's sexual paranoia to clearly delineate the psychopathology that
has gripped the king. Very exciting it is, extremely convincing Lear's dread o f t
he daughter who will speak her mind, the chaos of nature that will not be govern
ed, the female impulses that leap, uncontrolled, to the most forbidden of all ob
jects, the illegitimate son; and it is exciting and convincing because Shakespea
re feels Lear's passion from the inside.
When the feminine or maternal is not objectified, it begins to take on too power
ful an essence. It "haunts" the conscious mind. Denied finite objectivity, the f
eminine is inflated out of all proportion to any individual's ability to contain
it, just as any unconsolidated, unvoiced yearning becomes inflated and deadly,
threatening to crowd consciousness out altogether. There is no clear dividing li
ne between the harmless eccentricity that is one's "humour" and the obsession th
at ultimately drives one to madness and the sense of bewilderment and gradual dist
aste we feel in reading such comically obsessive writers as Swift and Louis-Ferd
inand Celine (both of whom seemed to despise quite ordinary natural functions) g
rows out of our not knowing, as readers, how serious the obsessions are. Dealing
with them as "art," we are inclined to experience them with a certain detachmen
t, and to imagine that the writers themselves felt this detachment until we learn
more about them through letters or journals. It is rare that an obsessive writer
like Dostoyevsky (who hated Jews, Roman Catholics, and various "foreign element
s") can produce works of art that avoid this violent identification of author an
d subject, and transcend limitations of the personal ego.
Ironically, Cordelia functions as that archetype of the soul, the sister or "ani
ma," that is not maternal and that in such forms as Athena and the Virgin Mary repr
esents a triumph over the Terrible Mother, the formless and all-devouring force
of the unconscious that threatens dissolution; yet Lear (and Shakespeare, perhap
s) responds to her initially as though she were an enemy. When she is banished,
all of nature becomes suspect, and her two sisters far closer to the "unconscious"
instincts than Cordelia herself rapidly degenerate. The primordial form of all go
dliness is the Magna Mater or the Terrible Mother who, like the Hindu goddess Ka
li, gives birth and devours without regard to individual achievements, personali
ties, gradations of consciousness: in short, the nightmare that threatens civili
zation itself. The "anima" figure, however, is intimately connected to the male,
and is a helper of the male: so Athena springs full-grown from the head of Zeus
, and does not require a woman in order to be born. Lear's three daughters have
no mother, in a sense, but are his. Yet, because the very differing functions of
the "anima" and the "Magna Mater" are confused, because all of the feminine con
tents have been imagined as evil, Cordelia is identified with the very force she
should be defeating. In Neumann's words, the "activity of the masculine conscio
usness is heroic" insofar as it voluntarily takes on the struggle to raise itsel
f out of ignorance,13 but it is doomed to tragedy when the struggle is involunta
ry, when paranoia blinds a man like Lear and causes him to imagine enemies in th
ose who love him best.
And so the value Cordelia represents does die with her. Though one may argue abo
ut whether the play's conclusion is "uplifting" or "depressing," it seems incont
estable that the drama's few survivors experience it as an "image" of the horror
of the Apocalypse that is, an anticipation of the end of the world. We are left
with no more than a minimal stoicism (though Kent does not intend to live) and
an acquiescence to the "gods" as they punish "pleasant vices" with wholesale dev
astation that wipes out the innocent along with the guilty. For what purpose? to t
urn the wheel full circle, it would seem, back to the primary zero, the nothing
that is an underlying horror or promise throughout. As the Fool tells Lear in th
e first act: ". . . thou art an O without a figure: I am better than thou art no
w; I am a fool, thou art nothing" (I, iv, 211ff).
Nothing will come of nothing: a self-determining prophecy.
NOTES
1. "I can declare anyone enemy or friend at will" Hitler.
2. Hardin Craig considers the linking-together of the Leir and Plangus (Gloucest
er) stories as a "stroke of genius," in his edition of the Works (New York, 1951
), p. 981, while G. B. Harrison speaks of Shakespeare's having "transmuted an ol
d tale in which evil is punished and good restored into a tremendous and pessimi
stic drama," in which the Gloucester story underscores the tragic irony of the L
ear story (in Harrison's 1952 edition of the Works, p. 1137), though the final p
roduct remains difficult, perhaps a kind of poetic experimentation with imagery.
However, Russell Fraser's commentary in his Essential Shakespeare (New York, 19
72) suggests that the Shakespearean version of the stories leaves us with a sens
e that both have somehow been violated, and that "abnormal behavior is the norm"
(380).
3. In "Shakespeare end 'The Revolution of the Times,"' Triquarterly Special Issu
e: Literature in Revolution, Winter-Spring 1972, p. 244. In the universe of Shak
espeare's time there could be no true freedom, since men's actions had planetary
significance, and could unhinge the entire cosmos; to defy this cosmic order in
itiates "tragedy."
4. Matthew Arnold, "The Study of Poetry" (1880) .
5. And sometimes the variations are severely conditioned by the class to which t
he artist belongs, or has rejected; by the immediate events in his private life
which are transfigured into objective and frozen attitudes in his art; by his pa
trons' or his audience's demands. In an essay largely concerned with the powerle
ssness of art to alter political conditions, Louis Kampf questions the validity
of what he calls the "humanist thesis," which allows artists to "generalize from
their personal concerns to those of all people. If the artist feels tragic, the
sense of tragedy becomes the human condition." "Understanding the Concrete Need
s of the Historical Moment," Arts in Society: The Humanist Alternative, Spring-S
ummer 1973, p. 66.
6. Alfred Harbage, The Complete Pelican Shakespeare (New York, 1970), p. 1060. H
arbage acknowledges that the play "ends as it began," and that its main gift for
an audience is the gift of "feeling pity." When Harbage states that Lear is "re
ligious, as all great tragedies are religious" and that the brutal killing of Co
rdelia is therefore a "sacrifice" and not a mere turn of the screw, one experien
ces that sense of vertigo, that bewilderment one was taught never to express as
an undergraduate: to declare a tautology a tautology is to speak, like poor doom
ed Cordelia, against the Institution, and risk exile. One may learn very little
about the "great works," but a great deal about one's own time, by studying crit
ical responses to those works.
7. When the instinctive pattern is violated, everyone suffers, there is no possi
bility of an authentic "catharsis." As Erich Neumann in The Origins and History
of Consciousness (Princeton, 1971), states:
So long as a content is totally unconscious, it regulates the whole and its
power is then at its greatest. But if the ego succeeds in wresting it from the u
nconscious and making it a conscious content, it is mythologically speaking overcome
. As, however, this content still goes on using up libido, the ego must continue
to work at it until it is fully incorporated and assimilated. Ego consciousness
cannot therefore avoid further dealings with the "conquered" content and is lik
ely to suffer. . . . the ascetic whose ego consciousness has triumphantly repuls
ed the instinctual components that threatened to master him experiences pleasure
with his ego, but he "suffers" because the instinct he has denied is also a par
t of his total structure. [348]
8. Arthur Sewell, "Tragedy and the Kingdom of Ends," in Shakespeare: Modern Essa
ys in Criticism, ed. Leonard Dean (New York, 1957), p. 331. Dostoyevsky fuses ar
chetypal and individual features because he experienced the world in this way an
d because, to him, Sonia might be Sonia, a prostitute, and also St. Sophia; Alyh
osha might be the youngest son of a depraved nobleman, and yet a form of Christ.
Sewell fails to see that it is through an examination of the vital differences
between Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky that one can approach some valuable understa
nding of both.
9. G. Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire: Interpretations of Shakespearian Tragedy
(New York, 1968), p. 174. Knight's deep, thoughtful study, at times more a medi
tation than an analytical work, was originally published in 1930, reissued count
less times, and remains one of the finest works of criticism on Shakespeare, or
on any subject. In his prefatory note to the 1947 edition of The Wheel of Fire,
Knight states clearly his belief in dramatic relationships that take precedence
over individual "particles," the "poetic wholeness" he finds in Shakespeare havi
ng a similarity to the emphasis placed upon pattern rather than permanence, in m
odern physics. Poetry is
. . . pre-eminently a blend of the dynamic and the static, of motion and for
m; and, at the limit, the perfectly integrated man, or superman, is to be concei
ved as a creature of superb balance, poise, and grace. Interpretation is, then,
merely the free use of a faculty that responds with ease, and yet with full cons
ciousness of the separate elements involved, to this space-time fusion, or relat
ionship, this eternity, of art, in which every point on the sequence is impregna
ted by the whole. [viii]
10. Freud, in Character and Culture, ed. Philip Rieff (New York, 1963), p 79
11. If the life-force is always to be interpreted as a threat, and in political
terms any enforced change in the status quo is "unnatural" and therefore "evil,"
what is suppressed (whether instincts or human beings like Edmund himself) will
always overwhelm the status quo eventually. There can be no perfect order, no p
ermanent authority. It was not the Apocalypse that was coming, but the Puritan R
evolution; so Jan Kott's claim that Fate, in Shakespeare, is "represented by the
class struggle" makes sense of a kind, though one might say, paradoxically, tha
t the "class struggle" in certain works (Othello as well as King Lear) accounts
for the tragedy itself. But Kott can reimagine King Lear only in terms of grotes
que dark comedy, an Endgame of the Renaissance. See Jan Kott, Shakespeare, Our C
ontemporary (London, 1964).
12. John Danby speculates upon the probability of the "Shakespearean breakdown o
f confidence" being a reaction against Elizabeth's "overstimulation of the cult
of Gloriana" see "The Fool and HandyDandy," in Shakespeare's Doctrine of Nature: A
Study of King Lear (London, 1949). In The Story of the Night (London, 1961), Jo
hn Holloway discusses King Lear in terms of being, among other things, a "rehear
sal of the end of the world."
13. "The deflation of the unconscious, its 'dethronement' by the patriarchal tre
nd of conscious development, is closely connected with the deprecation of the fe
male in the patriarchate.... The association of the unconscious with feminine sy
mbolism is archetypal, and the maternal character of the unconscious is further
intensified by the anima figure which, in the masculine psyche, stands for the s
oul. Consequently, the heroic-masculine trend of development is apt to confuse '
away from the unconscious' with 'away from the feminine' altogether." See Neuman
n, p. 340. It is interesting to note that when Shakespeare abandons the world of
 grim political reality, of "history," he can translate these various tensions i
nto The Tempest: Cordelia becomes Miranda, Edmund, Caliban, Prospero, not only a
uthoritarian ruler but poet, creator, as well which is to say God, omnipotent and
all-forgiving. The maternal elements are absorbed into the paternal Prospero is
both everything and nothing, like Shakespeare himself. But only in fantasy: only
on that island. In England, in Lear's time-tormented world, masculine conscious
ness must triumph over all opposition, including life itself.
macbeth
1)by Freud
Analytic work has no difficulty in showing us that it is forces of conscience wh
ich forbid the subject to gain the long-hoped-for advantage from the fortunate c
hange in reality. It is a difficult task, however, to discover the essence and o
rigin of these judging and punishing trends, which so often surprise us by their
existence where we do not expect to find them. For the usual reasons I shall no
t discuss what we know or conjecture on the point in relation to cases of clinic
al observation, but in relation to figures which great writers have created from
the wealth of their knowledge of the mind.
We may take as an example of a person who collapses on reaching success, after s
triving for it with single-minded energy, the figure of Shakespeare's Lady Macbe
th. Beforehand there is no hesitation, no sign of any internal conflict in her,
no endeavour but that of overcoming the scruples of her ambitious and yet tender
-minded husband. She is ready to sacrifice even her womanliness to her murderous
intention, without reflecting on the decisive part which this womanliness must
play when the question afterwards arises of preserving the aim of her ambition,
which has been attained through a crime.
Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thought, unsex me here
... Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers!
(I v 41)
... I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe below that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.
(I vii 54)
One solitary faint stirring of reluctance comes over her before the deed:
... Had he not resembled
My father as he slept, I had done it ...
(II ii 14)
Then, when she has become Queen through the murder of Duncan, she betrays for a
moment something like disappointment, something like disillusionment. We cannot
tell why.
... Nought's had, all's spent,
Where our desire is got without content:
'Tis safer to be that which we destroy,
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.
 (III ii 4)
Nevertheless, she holds out. In the banqueting scene which follows on these word
s, she alone keeps her head, cloaks her husband's state of confusion and finds a
pretext for dismissing the guests. And then she disappears from view. We next s
ee her in the sleep-walking scene in the last Act, fixated to the impressions of
the night of the murder. Once again, as then, she seeks to put heart into her h
usband:
Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, wh
en none can call our power to account?
(V I 40)
She hears the knocking at the door, which terrified her husband after the deed.
But at the same time she strives to "undo the deed which cannot be undone". She
washes her hands, which are blood-stained and smell of blood, and is conscious o
f the futility of the attempt. She who had seemed so remorseless seems to have b
een borne down by remorse. When she dies, Macbeth, who meanwhile has become as i
nexorable as she had been in the beginning, can only find a brief epitaph for he
r:
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
(V v 17)
And now we ask ourselves what it was that broke this character which had seemed
forged from the toughest metal? Is it only disillusionment -- the different aspe
ct shown by the accomplished deed [Endnote 1] -- and are we to infer that even i
n Lady Macbeth an originally gentle and womanly nature had been worked up to a c
oncentration and high tension which could not endure for long, or ought we to se
ek for signs of a deeper motivation which will make this collapse more humanly i
ntelligible to us?
It seems to me impossible to come to any decision. Shakespeare's Macbeth is a piéc
e d'occasion, written for the accession of James, who had hitherto been King of
Scotland. The plot was ready-made, and had been handled by other contemporary wr
iters, whose work Shakespeare probably made use of in his customary manner. It o
ffered remarkable analogies to the actual situation. The "virginal" Elizabeth, o
f whom it was rumoured that she had never been capable of child-bearing and who
had once described herself as "a barren stock" [Endnote 2], in an anguished outc
ry at the news of James's birth, was obliged by this very childlessness of hers
to make the Scottish king her successor. And he was the son of the Mary Stuart w
hose execution she, even though reluctantly, had ordered, and who, in spite of t
he clouding of their relations by political concerns, was nevertheless of her bl
ood and might be called her guest.
The accession of James I was like a demonstration of the curse of unfruitfulness
and the blessings of continuous generation. And the action of Shakespeare's Mac
beth is based on this same contrast. [Endnote 3]
The Weird Sisters assured Macbeth that he himself should be king, but to Banquo
they promised that his children should succeed to the crown. Macbeth is incensed
by this decree of destiny. He is not content with the satisfaction of his own a
mbition. He wants to found a dynasty -- not to have murdered for the benefit of
strangers. This point is overlooked if Shakespeare's play is regarded only as a
tragedy of ambition. It is clear that Macbeth cannot live for ever, and thus the
re is but one way for him to invalidate the part of the prophecy which opposes h
im -- namely, to have children himself who can succeed him. And he seems to expe
ct them from his indomitable wife:
Bring forth men-children only!
For thy undaunted mettle should compose
Nothing but males ...
(I vii 72)
And equally it is clear that if he is deceived in this expectation he must submi
t to destiny; otherwise his actions lose all purpose and are transformed into th
e blind fury of one doomed to destruction, who is resolved to destroy beforehand
all that he can reach. We watch Macbeth pass through this development, and at t
he height of the tragedy we hear Macduff's shattering cry, which has so often be
en recognized to be ambiguous and which may perhaps contain the key to the chang
e in Macbeth:
He has no children!
(IV iii 216)
There is no doubt that this means: "Only because he is himself childless could h
e murder my children." But more may be implied in it, and above all it may lay b
are the deepest motive which not only forces Macbeth to go far beyond his own na
ture, but also touches the hard character of his wife at its only weak point. If
one surveys the whole play from the summit marked by these words of Macduff's,
one sees that it is sown with references to the father-children relation. The mu
rder of the kindly Duncan is little else than parricide; in Banquo's case, Macbe
th kills the father while the son escapes him; and in Macduff's, he kills the ch
ildren because the father has fled from him. A bloody child, and then a crowned
one, are shown him by the witches in the apparition scene; the armed head which
is seen earlier is no doubt Macbeth himself. But in the background rises the sin
ister form of the avenger, Macduff, who is himself an exception to the laws of g
eneration, since he was not born of his mother but ripp'd from her womb.
It would be a perfect example of poetic justice in the manner of talion if the c
hildlessness of Macbeth and the barrenness of his Lady were the punishment for t
heir crimes against the sanctity of generation -- if Macbeth could not become a
father because he had robbed children of their father and a father of his childr
en, and if Lady Macbeth suffered the unsexing she had demanded of the spirits of
murder. I believe Lady Macbeth's illness, the transformation of her callousness
into penitence, could be explained directly as a reaction to her childlessness,
by which she is convinced of her impotence against the decrees of nature, and a
t the same time reminded that it is through her own fault if her crime has been
robbed of the better part of its fruits.
In Holinshed's Chronicle (1577), from which Shakespeare took the plot of Macbeth
, Lady Macbeth is only once mentioned as the ambitious wife who instigates her h
usband to murder in order that she may herself become queen. There is no mention
of her subsequent fate and of the development of her character. On the other ha
nd, it would seem that the change of Macbeth's character into a bloodthirsty tyr
ant is ascribed to the same motives as we have suggested here. For in Holinshed
ten years pass between the murder of Duncan, through which Macbeth becomes king,
and his further misdeeds; and in these ten years he is shown as a stern but jus
t ruler. It is not until after this lapse of time that the change begins in him,
under the influence of the tormenting fear that the prophecy to Banquo may be f
ulfilled just as the prophecy of his own destiny has been. Only then does he con
trive the murder of Banquo, and, as in Shakespeare, is driven from one crime to
another. It is not expressly stated in Holinshed that it was his childlessness w
hich urged him to these courses, but enough time and room is given for that plau
sible motive. Not so in Shakespeare. Events crowd upon us in the tragedy with br
eathless haste so that, to judge by the statements made by the characters in it,
the course of its action covers about one week. This acceleration takes the gro
und from under all our constructions of the motives for the change in the charac
ters of Macbeth and his wife. There is no time for a long-drawn-out disappointme
nt of their hopes of offspring to break the woman down and drive the man to defi
ant rage; and the contradiction remains that though so many subtle interrelation
s in the plot, and between it and its occasion, point to a common origin of them
in the theme of childlessness, nevertheless the economy of time in the tragedy
expressly precludes a development of character from any motives but those inhere
nt in the action itself.
What, however, these motives can have been which in so short a space of time cou
ld turn the hesitating, ambitious man into an unbridled tyrant, and his steely-h
earted instigator into a sick woman gnawed by remorse, it is, in my view, imposs
ible to guess. We must, I think, give up any hope of penetrating the triple laye
r of obscurity into which the bad preservation of the text, the unknown intentio
n of the dramatist, and the hidden purport of the legend have become condensed.
But I should not subscribe to the objection that investigations like these are i
dle in face of the powerful effect which the tragedy has upon the spectator. The
dramatist can indeed, during the representation, overwhelm us by his art and pa
ralyse our powers of reflection; but he cannot prevent us from attempting subseq
uently to grasp its effect by studying its psychological mechanism. Nor does the
contention that a dramatist is at liberty to shorten at will the natural chrono
logy of the events he brings before us, if by the sacrifice of common probabilit
y he can enhance the dramatic effect, seem to me relevant in this instance. For
such a sacrifice is justified only when it merely interferes with probability [E
ndnote 4] not when it breaks the causal connection; moreover, the dramatic effec
t would hardly have suffered if the passage of time had been left interdetermina
te, instead of being expressly limited to a few days.
One is so unwilling to dismiss a problem like that of Macbeth as insoluble that
I will venture to bring up a fresh point, which may offer another way out of the
difficulty. Ludwig Jekels, in a recent Shakespearean study, thinks [Endnote 5]
he has discovered a particular technique of the poet's, and this might apply to
Macbeth. He believes that Shakespeare often splits a character up into two perso
nages, which, taken separately, are not completely understandable and do not bec
ome so until they are brought together once more into a unity. This might be so
with Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. In that case it would of course be pointless to r
egard her as an independent character and seek to discover the motives for her c
hange, without considering the Macbeth who completes her. I shall not follow thi
s clue any further, but I should, nevertheless, like to point out something whic
h strikingly confirms this view: the germs of fear which break out in Macbeth on
the night of the murder do not develop further in him but in her. It is he who
has the hallucination of the dagger before the crime; but it is she who afterwar
ds falls ill of a mental disorder. It is he who after the murder hears the cry i
n the house: "Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep ..." and so "Macbeth shal
l sleep no more"; but we never hear that he slept no more, while the Queen, as w
e see, rises from her bed and, talking in her sleep, betrays her guilt. It is he
who stands helpless with bloody hands, lamenting that "all great Neptune's ocea
n" will not wash them clean, while she comforts him: "A little water clears us o
f this deed"; but later it is she who washes her hands for a quarter of an hour
and cannot get rid of the bloodstains: "All the perfumes of Arabia will not swee
ten this little hand." Thus what he feared in his pangs of conscience is fulfill
ed in her; she becomes all remorse and he all defiance. Together they exhaust th
e possibilities of reaction to the crime, like two disunited parts of a single p
sychical individuality, and it may be that they are both copied from the same pr
ototype.
2)Some Introductory Considerations
Macbeth, as I have already mentioned, is in some respects a relatively simple pl
ay. Like Richard III and numerous pre-Shakespearean plays, its structure follows
a standard conventional form: the rise and fall of a great man. The first part
of the play follows Macbeth's rise to power. By 3.1 he has assumed the kingship.
The rest of the play follows the disintegration of all he has achieved, a proce
ss which culminates with his death and the installment of new king. In that sens
e, there is very little difference in the structure between Richard III and Macb
eth.
But, of course, they are vastly different plays. And in this lecture I want to f
ocus, in particular, on the key difference, the psychological portrait of the he
ro. Earlier, in the lecture on Richard III, I strongly suggested that in Richard
there is an amalgam of different theatrical depictions of evil and that, from m
y point of view, the predominant one was the Vice-Machiavel, the Devil incarnate
, who is presented in such a way that we are not encouraged to probe very much i
nto his motivation, his psychological response to events as they unfold, and his
disintegration. We do have some clear hints at a possible psychological source
for Richard's conduct (the opening soliloquy points to his deformity and his ina
bility to love), but I suggested that these are more symbols of his evil than th
eir cause. This approach to Richard's character allows us to develop in more det
ail an appreciation for how much the effects of this play depend upon Richard's
theatricality, on his outward behaviour (which he invites us to admire in a shar
ed understanding of how clever he is in comparison with everyone else), rather t
han on any inward complexity.
Macbeth is totally different. There is nothing at all theatrical about the prese
ntation of his character. He does not, like Richard, confide in us or seek to es
tablish any cozy relationship with the audience. There is nothing in Macbeth's c
haracter or conduct which invites us to see any black humour in the play (other
than the brief scene with the porter). Instead there is an astonishingly penetra
ting development of Macbeth's character. The focus here is directly upon what he
is thinking and feeling, why he acts the way he does, and what consequences his
own evil brings about upon himself. And the profundity of Shakespeare's examina
tion of these questions makes this play immeasurably more complex than Richard I
II. Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's most compelling characters, and the play is,
of all Shakespeare's great tragedies, the one which responds most immediately t
o character analysis. One quality, in comparison with Richard III which makes th
is difference very apparent, is that in Richard III most of the really effective
drama takes place in the first half, during Richard's rise to power (where the
focus is squarely on Richard's devilishly clever actions); in Macbeth, by contra
st, the second half of the play, which features the disintegration of Macbeth's
world, compels even more attention than the first half.
So I would like to begin by examining some key questions of Macbeth's character.
I don't want to suggest that there are not some vitally important themes being
explored here, but I would like to defer an examination of those until we have d
ealt with the protagonist.
Macbeth as a Tragic Character
Macbeth's story is obviously a tragedy in the formal sense. At the start of the
play he is a very successful and highly esteemed member of a social group, loade
d with honours and enjoying every prospect of further commendation. He has a lov
ing wife and a secure home in his castle at Inverness. As the play opens, we lea
rn of his heroic actions in defense of the kingdom. We see him interact with oth
er nobles, and their friendship and esteem are evident, as is Duncan's high rega
rd, which expresses itself in terms of fertile growth, the beauty of natural pro
cesses, and spontaneous generosity (with promises of more to come).
At the end of the play Macbeth is totally alone. He has lost all his friends, he
 is universally despised, his wife is dead, and all his most eager hopes have be
en disappointed. He is a man without a place in the social community. He has bec
ome totally isolated. In Roman Polanski's film, Macbeth stands alone in his cast
le to fight the entire army coming in to kill him, one by one. That image seems
entirely appropriate given what has happened.
All this loss of things which made him a great man has come about because of his
own free decisions. Nothing that Macbeth does in the play is forced upon him, a
nd he is never deceived by some human agent (someone manipulating him). In that
sense, he alone is the architect of his own destruction, and the more he tries t
o cope with what he senses is closing in on him, the more he aggravates his dete
riorating condition. His death is thus the inevitable consequence of what he has
chosen to do for his own reasons. Whatever the nature of his challenge to life,
he destroys himself.
The Murder of Duncan
So one might usefully begin with the obvious question: Why does Macbeth decide t
o launch his bloody career by murdering Duncan? Why is he not sufficiently happy
with the high social position he occupies and the honoured status he has acquir
ed among his peers? There is a very simplistic answer to this (much beloved some
teachers who do not wish to wrestle with complex issues), and that is to say hi
s problem is that he is too ambitious. Ambition is a sin, of course, and therefo
re Macbeth is punished for his sins. If we are not prepared to probe much more d
eeply, this response to the question is almost entirely unsatisfactory, because
it is much too simple and neat. It turns the work from an extraordinarily comple
x study of evil into a straightforward morality play and closes off discussion o
f the most challenging aspects of the work.
Now, there is some evidence for the charge of ambition. Macbeth does want to bec
ome king, and he refers to that desire as ambition ("I have no spur/ To prick th
e sides of my intent, but only/ Vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself/ And fa
lls on th'other" (1.7.25-28). But we need to be careful here not automatically t
o take a character's own estimate of his motivation for the truth, or at least f
or a completely adequate summary statement of all that needs to be said. We need
to "unpack" just what that concept of ambition contains in the character to who
m we apply it.
For a fascinating aspect of Macbeth's motivation is that he is in the grip of so
mething which he does not fully understand and which a part of him certainly doe
s not approve of. This makes him very unlike Richard Gloucester, who announces h
is plans with glee and shows no scruples about what he has to do (quite the reve
rse: he looks forward to doing away with his next victim and invites us to share
his delight). Clearly a part of Macbeth is fascinated with the possibility of b
eing king. It's not entirely clear where this desire comes from. The witches (wh
om we will discuss later) put the suggestion into the play, but there is a stron
g hint from Lady Macbeth that she and her husband have already talked about the
matter well before the play begins--"What beast was't then/ That made you break
this enterprise to me?" (1.7.48-49). In that case, the appearance of the witches
may be, in part, a response to some desire in Macbeth. He has not exactly summo
ned them, but they are responding to his innermost imaginative desires (more abo
ut this later).
What seems clear is that Macbeth is constantly changing his mind. His imaginatio
n is in the grip of a powerful tension between his desire to see himself as king
and his sense of the immorality of the act and of the immediate consequences, w
hich he knows will be disastrous. Part of the great fascination we have with Mac
beth's character is that he has a very finely honed moral sense and never seeks
to evade the key issues (rather like Claudius at prayer in Hamlet). He is no hyp
ocrite in this respect. He knows he will have to violate what he believes. Moreo
ver, he is intelligent enough to appreciate the public consequences of killing D
uncan. In that sense he is totally different from Richard who seems to believe t
hat once he is king he will have all that he wants. Macbeth knows, even before h
e does the deed, that he will have to pay and that the cost will be high. But he
cannot shrug off the desire.
It's not that Macbeth is averse to killing. He is famous as a warrior, and the f
irst thing we hear about him, well before he enters, is that he is drenched in b
lood and has slit someone open from the nave to the chaps. His high social statu
s comes from his effectiveness as a bloody warrior. So it's not a compunction ab
out killing that holds him back. It is rather a clear awareness that in killing
Duncan he will be violating every rule that holds his community together. This a
wareness is accompanied by an intelligent appreciation for the immediate consequ
ences to himself:
But in these cases
We still have judgement here, that we but teach
Bloody instructions which, being taught, return
To plague th'inventor. This even-handed justice
Commends th'ingredience of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips.
To act on his desire to become king is to drink from a poisoned chalice. No one
knows that better than Macbeth. And when that awareness is uppermost in his mind
, he determines not to carry out the murder but to enjoy his newly won social ho
nours.
The problem is that his imagination just will not let go of the possibility that
he can become king. Banquo, too, is also tempted by the witches (he would like
to talk further about what they said), and, it seems clear, likes to remember wh
at they have prophesied for him. But Banquo puts at the front of his consciousne
ss an awareness that if he should try to act to bring about that favourable even
t, he will compromise his honour, that is, his place in the social community). S
o the rosy prospect of a royal line of descendants does not grip Banquo's imagin
ation; it does not, in a word, obsess him, as it does Macbeth, who cannot put fr
om his mind so easily the vision of himself as king; it's a possibility which wi
ll not leave him alone.
One of the chief functions of Lady Macbeth in the early part of the play is to k
eep this vision alive within him by any means at her disposal. She taunts him to
act on his desires. What she is saying, in effect, is that he must not let any
communal scruples stand in the way of his realization of everything which he wan
ts for himself (in other words, he should not be like Banquo). Unlike Macbeth, s
he has no countervailing social conscience. In fact, she expressly repudiates th
e most fundamental social aspect of her being, her role as a woman, wife, and mo
ther. Interestingly enough, part of her tactics with Macbeth is to urge him to b
e more of a man. She identifies his scruples as something unmanly.
We should not on that account blame her for Macbeth's actions. He freely chooses
to kill Duncan in response to his own deepest desires. Neither his wife nor the
witches compel him to do what he does, and he is free at any time to refuse to
carry out the murder or, having carried it out, to seek out various courses of n
ew action. But his decision to carry out the deed is marked by a curious indecis
ion. In a sense, Macbeth is never entirely satisfied with or firm about what he
needs to do to become king or what he really wants to do. When he goes out to co
mmit the murder, he is hallucinating the sight of a dagger leading him toward th
e deed, and he is filled with a sense of horror at what he is about to do. He is
, it seems, in the grip of his imagination and is not serving some conscious rat
ional decision he has made. But, in the very act of letting his imagination lead
him on, he is aware that what he is doing is wrong. It's as if the dagger is p
ulling him toward the murder (against his will)--he's following an imagined proj
ection of his desires, rather than being pushed into the murder by some inner pa
ssion.
For that reason, for a long time I found it difficult entirely to accept the fac
t that Macbeth is capable of killing Duncan. How can a man in such an odd state,
with so many huge reservations about what he has to do, a man who is pulled tow
ard his victim in a virtual trance, actually commit the violent act? My doubts w
ere not resolved until I saw the Polanski film of Macbeth, which, unlike theatri
cal productions, shows us the murder. In that film, the moment is brilliantly re
alized, one of the greatest scenes in the history of movies of Shakespeare's pla
ys for the interpretative insight it provides.
Macbeth enters with the daggers, looks down on Duncan, and hesitates. It's as if
he suddenly realizes just what he is about. He starts to draw back, as though r
efusing to undertake something so horrible, changing his mind, as he has done be
fore. Then, and this is an extraordinarily revealing interpretative moment, Dunc
an wakes up. He sees Macbeth standing over him with the daggers and is about to
cry out. Macbeth now knows he has little choice. By following his imaginative vi
sion and entering the room, he has already compromised himself; he has, in effec
t, already surrendered to evil, and to protect himself he murders the king (in a
very bloody scene).
This interpretation of the murder is, as I say, quite brilliant, because it brin
gs out something central to this entire play: Macbeth has freely chosen to embra
ce evil in his imagination. He has not resisted the impulse to imagine himself k
ing and what needs to be done in order for that to come about (or he has not res
isted it sufficiently). But he vacillates, knowing full well what the act means.
For as long as he has not actually killed Duncan, he thinks he is free to imagi
ne what being king would be like, that is, he is free to indulge in his evil des
ires, and yet he is also free to change his mind (as he does). But before he rea
lizes it, his commitment to his evil desires has trapped him. By taking pleasure
in imaginatively killing Duncan and letting that vision lead him into Duncan's
bed chamber, he creates a situation where he has to carry out the murder without
having actually decided once and for all to do so. His imagination has committe
d him to evil before his conscious mind realizes that the decision has been made
. As I shall mention later, this moment seems to me to express something powerfu
l and complex about the nature of evil in the play.
It's important to stress the imaginative tensions in Macbeth's character before
the murder and to appreciate his divided nature. That's why summing up his motiv
ation with some quick judgment about his ambition is something one should resist
. That resolves the issue too easily. Macbeth, in a sense, is tricked into murde
ring Duncan, but he tricks himself. That makes the launching of his evil career
something much more complex than a single powerful urge which produces a clear d
ecision.
After all, one needs to notice clearly how he is filled with instant regret at w
hat he has done. If driving ambition were all there was to it, one would think t
hat Macbeth and his wife would not become morally confused so quickly. Macbeth's
entrance after the killing brings out really strongly a sense that if he could
go back to the speech about the imaginary dagger, he would not carry out the mur
der. Lady Macbeth thinks a little water will solve their immediate problem; Macb
eth knows that that is too easy. He cannot live with what he is done and remain
the same person.
Macbeth As King
The tragic element of Macbeth's character emerges most clearly from his career a
fter the killing of Duncan, above all in his decision that, having violated all
the most important rules of communal society by killing Duncan, he will continue
in the same course of action, even if that means, as it obviously does, that he
will simply bring upon himself even greater suffering than the killing of Dunca
n occasions.
It worth asking ourselves what in Macbeth commands our attention throughout the
second half of this play. After all, he is in many respects the least admirable
tragic hero of all. In characters like Othello, Romeo, Cleopatra, Lear, Antony,
Hamlet (to say nothing of Oedipus, Ajax, or Clytaemnestra) we can usually find s
omething to admire. We may not like them (they are not very likable people), but
there is something in their characters or their situation on which we can hang
some sympathy, even if there is not enough for us to rationalize away their acti
ons. But Macbeth is a mass murderer, who does away with friends, colleagues, wom
en and children, often for no apparent reason other than his own desires. Why do
we keep our attention focused on him?
The answer, I think, has to do with the quality of his mind, his horrible determ
ination to see the entire evil business through. Having, with the murder of Dunc
an, taken charge of the events which shape his life, he is not now going to reli
nquish the responsibility for securing his desires. The most remarkable quality
of the man in this process is the clear-eyed awareness of what is happening to h
im personally. He is suffering horribly throughout, but he will not crack or see
k any other remedy than what he alone can deliver. If that means damning himself
even further, then so be it.
This stance certainly does not make Macbeth likable or (from our perspective) in
many respects admirable. But it does confer a heroic quality upon his tragic co
urse of action. He simply will not compromise with the world, and he will pay wh
atever price that decision exacts from him, even though as his murderous career
continues he becomes increasingly aware of what it is costing him.
It seems clear that what his murder has cost him is the very thing that made him
great in the first place. For no sooner has he become king than he becomes over
whelmed with fear, nameless psychological terrors which will not leave him alone
. We know that Macbeth has had enormous courage before, but there's a powerful i
rony manifesting itself in the fact that his evil has made him terrified of his
inner self. He stands up to that fear and that terror--in fact throughout most o
f the second half of the play Macbeth is obsessed with removing his inner tormen
t. His later murders are motivated by that far more than by any political consid
erations or any desire for physical security. The fascination we have with his c
haracter stems, I think, from his increasingly futile attempts to resolve the in
ner pain which he has brought upon himself (and his accurate diagnosis of what i
s going on inside him). Those attempts lead finally to his self-destruction.
This quality sets him clearly apart from his wife. She has thought that a little
water and a few lies will clear them of the murder of Duncan, but she cannot ev
ade the psychological consequences of what she has encouraged Macbeth to do. She
lacks his will power, his determination to continue, his ability to withstand t
he inner torment. And so as he becomes more and more determined to keep killing
his way to some final solution, she falls apart. This begins with her fainting s
pell as soon as the news of Duncan's death becomes public, continues in her anxi
ous fretting before and after the banquet scene, reaches its clearest expression
in her sleepwalking, and culminates in her suicide. This lack of inner will to
confront fully the consequences of her and Macbeth's actions makes her story one
without the tragic significance of her husband's.
The phrase "lack of inner will" above is not meant to indicate some serious limi
tation in Lady Macbeth. For at the root of her difficulty is her inability to d
ivorce herself from her own human nature. She had thought that she could unsex
herself, push away from her any of her deepest feelings about, for want of a bet
ter word, love of others, and become a pure agent of destruction. So long as th
e murders have not started, she plays that role with great rhetorical effectiven
ess (especially in her taunts about Macbeth's manhood). But once Duncan is dead
, she finds herself in the grip of the most powerful human feelings, without any
of her husband's determination to act to resolve those feelings. With this in
mind, her reference to Duncan looking like her father takes on an important reso
nance.
What's particularly noticeable, too, is the way in which, following the murder o
f Duncan, their relationship becomes estranged. We have every reason to believe
that before Duncan's murder, they are very close. Certainly Macbeth shares all h
is thoughts and feelings with her, and she feels quite equal to speaking candidl
y to him about what she thinks he must do. They are (and this, in my view, is an
important point for a production to bring out) at first a very close and loving
couple.
But right after the coronation of Macbeth, just before the banquet scene, Macbet
h and his wife are clearly changing in different directions. He has further murd
ers planned (of Banquo and Fleance), but he is not telling her about them. He is
resolved to proceed alone, to do whatever is necessary to ease his mind without
any moral scruple (although his body is still fighting that commitment to evil,
hence the frequent references to a lack of sleep).
But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer,
Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep
In the affliction of these terrible dreams
That shake us nightly. Better be with the dead,
Whom we to gain our peace have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy.
This declaration is worth close scrutiny. Macbeth cares less about the future of
the world than he does about his own determination to "resolve" his inner torme
nt. He is determined to set his life in order, to obtain what he set out to acqu
ire with the first murder. And nothing in the world is going to stop him. The mu
rder of Banquo and Fleance stem from this desire. It's not that they present any
immediate threat. Macbeth appears secure on the throne, and there is no talk an
ywhere of any immediate rebellion. But his mind is not at ease, and that is Macb
eth's overwhelming concern. The emphasis here is totally psychological rather th
an political.
However, he has not lost his moral sense. Again, he is under enormous tension, f
or he still feels the pull of the "that great bond." His dreadful prayer to the
night--a passage particularly eloquent for its evocation of the horror of what i
s happening--is a plea for the suppression or the elimination of the scruples he
still might have:
Come, seeling night,
Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day,
And with thy bloody and invisible hand
Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
Which keeps me pale. (3.3.47-51)
Just as his wife does before the murder of Duncan, Macbeth is here urging the da
rk powers of the night to take away any vestiges of human feeling he still has f
or the communal standard, the "great bond" which links him to his fellow creatur
es. Lady Macbeth made the prayer, but could not sustain that urge. Macbeth ends
the speech with a key statement:
Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.
What matters increasingly to him is not whether something is good or bad; for he
is willing himself beyond those moral categories into a state of being in which
acting on his own desires is all that concerns him. What matters now is the str
ength to keep going on the course where he imposes his desires on the world, eve
n at the expense of any lingering connections he may feel to that society of whi
ch he was, only a short while ago, a very honoured part.
What we witness, as Macbeth continues to murder his way in the frantic desire fo
r peace of mind, is his gradual dehumanization. His loss of physical relationshi
ps is accompanied by something even more horrible, his loss of any power to feel
sensitively about life. In a sense, he gets what he has prayed for. The great b
ond that links him to other human beings does virtually disappear, so that the p
ursuit of his desire for inner peace makes him care less and less for anything l
ife has to offer. In other words, the successful attainment of his human desires
creates a life with no human value in it. What is the point of realizing one's
desires when there is nothing left in the world one finds desirable?
I have lived long enough. My way of life
Is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf,
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have, but in their stead
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath
Which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not. (5.3.23-29)
That is the reason why, when he receives the news that his wife is dead, he resp
onse is so low key and bitter. In one of the very greatest speeches in all of Sh
akespeare, he accepts the news with a horrifying calm:
She should have died hereafter.
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. (5.5.16-27)
This famous speech acknowledges fully the empty mockery his life has become. Onc
e again, the remarkable quality of this passage is Macbeth's refusal to evade th
e reality of the world he has created for himself. His life has become an insane
farce, not because he no longer has any power or physical security (he has both
and, as he remarks earlier, could easily withstand the siege), but because he h
as ceased to care about anything, even about his wife. There is no one to blame
but himself, and he has learned too late the truth of what he understood would h
appen if he gave into his desires and killed Duncan. It's not surprising that im
mediately after this speech, once he hears about the moving wood, he decides to
end it all in a final battle, not because he has any desire to win but because w
ants to take charge of the final event, his own death. The life he has created f
or himself leaves him with nothing else to do.
As many people have observed, the theatrical metaphor in this famous speech reso
nates throughout the play. Macbeth has, in a sense, tried to seize control of t
he script of his life, to write it in accordance with his desires, in the clear
knowledge that that's probably going to be disastrous. Instead of living out hi
s life, as normal people (including Banquo) do, in a drama out of his total con
trol, he seeks to change the plot. And the result is a play that leaves him fee
ling increasingly pained, disoriented, and afraid (that we in modern terminology
might call inauthentic). His returns to the witches and the murders that resul
t are frantic attempts to keep rewriting the script, to turn it into something a
nswering his needs. But all he succeeds in doing is to turn the play into a sin
king nightmare of strutting and fretting (in which, interestingly enough, there
are frequent references to how his clothes, like a poorly cut theatrical costume
, just don't fit).
This point above about Macbeth's bringing about his own death is an important el
ement in his tragedy. Having set himself above all conventional morality and pru
dence to tackle life on his own terms in answer to his desires, Macbeth will rem
ain in charge until the end. Like so many other great tragic heroes (Oedipus, Le
ar, Coriolanus, Othello, and so on), he self-destructs (this makes his ending si
gnificantly different from Richard III's). He has come to the full recognition o
f what taking full charge of his own life, without any concessions to his commun
ity, really means. And that realization fills him with a sense of bitterness, fu
tility, and meaninglessness.
The Witches: Agents of Evil?
No discussion of Macbeth would be satisfactory which did not make some attempt t
o deal with its most famous symbols: the coven of witches whose interactions wit
h Macbeth play such a vital role in his thinking about his own life, both before
and after the murder of Duncan. Banquo and Macbeth recognize them as something
supernatural, part of the landscape but not fully human inhabitants of it. They
have malicious intentions and prophetic powers. And yet they are not active agen
ts in the sense that they do anything other than talk and offer visions and poti
ons. They have no power to compel. So what are we to make of them?
A good place to begin is to dispel at once any temptation to indulge in that mis
leading exercise which encourages us to think that we can only adequately deal w
ith these witches by appeals to historical facts, like the beliefs of a seventee
nth-century audience or the intense interest of James I in witches. All that may
be true, but we are not in the seventeenth century, and the purpose of these le
ctures is not to take us back there. If we are to explore the significance of th
ese witches we must do so by treating them as vital poetic symbols in the play,
essential manifestations of the moral atmosphere of Macbeth's world (like the gh
ost in Hamlet), and every bit as intelligible to a modern audience as to Shakesp
eare's.
The most obvious interpretation of the witches is to see them as manifestations
of evil in the world. They exist to tempt and torment people, to challenge their
faith in themselves and their society. They work on Macbeth by equivocation, th
at is, by ambiguous promises of some future state. These promises come true, but
not in the way that the victim originally believed. The witches thus make their
appeal to Macbeth's and Banquo's desire to control their own future, to direct
it towards some desirable ends. They have no power to compel belief, but they ca
n obviously appeal strongly to an already existing inclination to force one's wi
ll onto events in order to shape the future to fit one deepest desires.
Banquo's importance in the play stems, in large part, from his different respons
e to these witches. Like Macbeth, he is strongly tempted, but he does not let hi
s desires outweigh his moral caution:
But 'tis strange,
And oftentimes to win us to our harm
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles to betray's
 In deepest consequence. (1.3.120-124)
Macbeth cannot act on this awareness because his desires (kept alive by his acti
ve imagination and his wife's urging) constantly intrude upon his moral sensibil
ities. Hence, he seizes upon the news that he has just been made Thane of Cawdor
, using that information to tell him what he most wants to believe, that the wit
ches tell the truth.
This supernatural soliciting
Cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success
Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor. (1.3.129-132)
But Macbeth's inner question here has already been answered by Banquo a moment b
efore (in the quotation immediately above). Macbeth's framing the question in th
is way is an indication, not that he has not heard what Banquo has just said, bu
t that he doesn't want to believe it.
The witches, in other words, appeal to what Macbeth wants to believe. They don't
make him believe it. And they do not tell him what to do in order to achieve wh
at they prophesy. They say nothing about killing Duncan (or anyone else). In tha
t sense, they cannot be the origin of the idea of the murder. They may be appeal
ing to that idea (which we are given to believe originates in Macbeth some time
previously), but they do not create it.
The same is true of their later prophecies about Birnam Wood and about no one of
woman born being able to harm Macbeth. These confirm for Macbeth the fact that
acting on his desires will keep him secure, that he can take charge of his futur
e with nothing to fear. But these prophecies do not offer any specific instructi
ons about immediate actions. We must, thus, I think, resist any temptation to se
e Macbeth's actions as determined or controlled by the witches. He is always fre
e to choose how he is going to act.
Hence, these witches exist as constant reminders of the potential for evil in th
e human imagination. They are ineluctably part of the natural world, there to se
duce anyone who, like Macbeth, lets his imagination flirt with evil possibilitie
s. They have no particular abode and might pop up anywhere, momentarily, ready t
o incite an eternal desire for evil in the human imagination, the evil which ari
ses from a desire to violate our fellow human beings in order to shape the world
to our own deep emotional needs.
It's important to note that the witches are not dealt with in this play. By the
end, Macbeth has been defeated and killed, but the witches are still around, som
ewhere. Years ago, when I directed a production of Macbeth I considered the fact
that nothing is said about the witches in the resolution and that the audience
will naturally wonder about them. It struck me then that they must be observing
the final celebration, there on the stage hovering around the solemn pieties and
celebration at the end, and thus lending a powerful note of irony to the triump
h of the forces of good over Macbeth. It's as if such a conclusion is saying som
ething like, "Yes, you have dealt with one evil man, but if you think you have t
herefore dealt with evil, you are indulging in illusory hopes."
Polanski's film of the play makes such a irony in the end even stronger by concl
uding the film with a scene of Donaldbain riding alone in to meet the witches, a
scene which brings out a sense that the cycle we have witnessed is going to con
tinue. Polanski links that with the rebellion of the Thane of Cawdor, so that we
get a vision of human life which is a series of manifestations of evil and the
corresponding efforts to deal with those who respond to it. Macbeth's story thus
is simply one episode in an endlessly bloody and repetitive struggle.
The cyclical nature of the recurrent visions of evil may be underscored by a pre
dominant contrast throughout the play between light and darkness. Macbeth is an
intensely dark play, metaphorically and literally. After Duncan's conversation a
bout the natural pleasantness of Macbeth's castle, such references to nature as
benevolent disappear, and we are plunged into a world of twilight and darkness,
a constant sense that Macbeth's prayers to the evil in the world are bringing ou
t the gradual extinction of any life-sustaining light and growth. The forces of
Malcolm are described in terms of regeneration and a newer and healthier vitalit
y (the miraculous power of the English king to heal illness is an important imag
e of that point). But there may be (depending on how the play is staged) no firm
sense that the final triumph of the forces of goodness over this manifestation
of evil have done anything to alter the recurring cycle. For the play has not ba
nished the darkness; it has simply brought back a circle of light.
Postscript I: The Vision of Evil in Richard III and Macbeth
It should be clear from some of the above remarks that the vision of evil in Mac
beth is considerably more complex than the vision in Richard III. The latter pla
y places the evil in a particularly evil personality who, nevertheless, carries
out God's work in punishing past evildoers, like Clarence, Edward, Hastings, and
so on, before he himself is finally destroyed by the forces of goodness. As I m
entioned in the lecture on Richard III, this vision is a traditional allegorical
understanding of history as the working out of God's providence, a system in wh
ich evil itself works towards God's final purposes in history.
I mentioned in our consideration of Richard III that there is a sense that Shake
speare, in writing the play, found this vision of evil in some respects too easy
, for there are moments (like the seduction of Anne or Clarence's dream) where w
e do sense much more complex reverberations. But such moments are not sustained,
and the final movement which brings closure to the first history cycle is almos
t formulaic.
Macbeth offers us something much more complex and challenging. Here the potentia
l for evil, manifested in the witches, is a permanent feature of the landscape,
with no redeeming higher moral purpose like some providential scheme. The witche
s thus exist as a permanent threat, not only to particular individuals but also
to the human community. They exert their effect through the deepest desires of h
uman beings to set aside their shared sense of communal values, and they deceive
those who listen to them with equivocating promises: they punish (if that is th
e right word) those whom they successfully tempt by giving them what they want,
by living up to their promises, only to reveal just how empty and self-destructi
ve life becomes for those who surrender to their egocentric desires.
Is Macbeth, then, a Christian play? There are many explicitly religious referenc
es and some strong suggestions of a Christian morality at work (especially allud
ing to Malcolm, the English King, and the forces moving against Macbeth). But th
e overt Christian belief system is not insisted upon (there is no institutionali
zed religious presence in the play, as there is in the history plays), and the s
ense that evil has an objective existence, over and apart from any divine purpos
es, both in the landscape and in the imaginations of individuals, is disturbing
in a profoundly un-Christian sense. And there is no insistence at all upon any f
uture judgment. The sense is explicitly that the judgment upon Macbeth is "here,
" in this world, that Macbeth's affirmation of himself at the expense of any com
munal morality brings its social and psychological consequences in this life. Th
e great bonds of nature which Macbeth and his wife violate might be interpreted,
I suppose, from a Christian perspective, but the play does not require that, an
d to the extent that such a Christian interpretation might ease the unsettling c
omplexities of the vision of evil in the world (by imposing a reassuring doctrin
e upon the conclusion of the play), I would tend to reject it. If we see the met
aphysical questions about good and evil as central to a religious sensibility, t
hen Macbeth is a profoundly religious play, but it does not deliver an explicitl
y Christian message (here again there is an important difference perhaps between
Macbeth and Richard III).
That may be the reason why in his extremely effective interpretation of the play
, Polanski set Macbeth back in pagan times, in a very tough militaristic society
dominated by assertions of force amid an unforgiving natural setting. Such a vi
sion helps us see even more clearly (as many of the best tragedies almost always
do) the fragile and perhaps illusory nature of those social institutions which
we like to believe in at those moments when we feel we need an ordered and moral
ly significant community. Macbeth's decision to move beyond that morally signifi
cant community has failed, his attempt to impose a new order based on murder has
failed, but his attempt has exposed the falseness of any complacent assumptions
about the effectiveness of traditional order to hold evil easily at bay.
How we interpret the ending of Macbeth will, in large part, depend upon how we s
ee the role of the witches at the end. Some (e.g., Goddard) see the end as an un
ambiguous triumph of good over evil. Scotland has been cleansed by the combined
forces of the Christian English king, who has miraculous powers to cure disease,
and the Scottish nobility. My own sense is that the ending is a good deal more
ambiguous, for the witches are still around and have not been dealt with. If the
y are present on stage as the lights fade, then the victory over Macbeth will be
a good deal more ironic.
I tend to see this play as insisting that the human community exists in a small
arena of light surrounded by darkness and fog. In this darkness and fog, the wit
ches endlessly circle the arena of light, waiting for someone like Macbeth to re
spond to his imaginative desires and perhaps natural curiosity about what lies b
eyond the circle. There will always be such people, often among the best and the
brightest in the human community. So overcoming one particular person is no fin
al triumph of anything. It is a reminder of just how fragile the basic moral ass
umptions we make about ourselves can be. In that sense, Macbeth, like all great
tragedies, is potentially a very emotionally disturbing play. It does not reassu
re us that the forces of good will always prevail, rather that the powers of dar
kness are always present, for all our pious hopes and beliefs.
One final point. To talk this way about a vision of evil is to offer a comment u
pon a thematic concern of the play. But one should not therefore think that Macb
eth is somehow a coherent philosophical statement of such a theme, something whi
ch invites rational analysis. Macbeth is a work of art, and if it is effective,
it does its work through our emotional responses to the poetry (and the action i
n a performance), not by making some closely argued case about the nature of the
world.
Postscript 2: The Witches Once More: The Revenge of the Proletariat or The Reven
ge of the Id?
The above interpretative suggestions about the witches has deliberately ignored
questions a modern reader might well raise: What about the witches as people? Wh
y are they women? Is there any point to examining the social and political impli
cations of the presence of these characters? Traditionally, these questions have
not mattered very much, for the various approaches to Macbeth have treated them
very much the way I have above (as symbolic manifestations of the potential for
evil). However, an eminent modern literary critic, Terry Eagleton, raises a new
possibility:
To any unprejudiced reader--which would seem to exclude Shakespeare himself,
his contemporary audiences and almost all literary critics--it is surely clear
that positive value in Macbeth lies with the three witches. The witches are the
heroines of the piece, however little the play itself recognizes the fact, and h
owever much the critics may have set out to defame them. (William Shakespeare, p
. 2)
For Eagleton, the social reality of the witches matters. They are outcasts, livi
ng on the fringe of society in a female community, at odds with the male world o
f "civilization," which values military butchery. The fact that they are female
and associated with the natural world beyond the aristocratic oppression in the
castles indicates that they are excluded others. Their equality in a female comm
unity declares their opposition to the masculine power of the militaristic socie
ty. They have no direct power, but they have become expert at manipulating or ap
pealing to the self-destructive contradictions of their military oppressors. The
y can see Macbeth's destruction as a victory of a sort: one more viciously indiv
idualistic, aggressive male oppressor has gone under.
This suggestion is not (I think) entirely serious (Eagleton observes that the pl
ay does not recognize the issue he is calling attention to), but it underscores
a key point in the tragic experience of Macbeth, its connection to a willed repu
diation of the deep mysterious heart of life, the place where sexuality and the
unconscious hold sway. This aspect of life is commonly associated with and hence
symbolized by women, for complex reasons which there is not time to go into her
e (but which would seem to be intimately bound up with women's sexuality and fer
tility, contacts with the irrational centres of life which men do not understand
and commonly fear). In seeking to stamp his own willed vision of the future ont
o life, the tragic hero rejects a more direct acquaintance with or acceptance of
life's mystery. Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth intuit this point, because they b
oth pray to the gods to make them "unnatural." And they both pay the price, for
nature will never subordinate herself for long to the individual's desire to exe
rcise control over her. In that sense, Macbeth, like other tragedies, might be s
aid to call attention to the "unnatural" or "oppressive" understanding of life i
nherent in traditional tragedy.
The notion that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are, in a sense, punished by some life
force drew a short comment from Freud (in Some Character-types Met With in Psych
o-analytical Work, 1916), in response to questions about the accuracy of Shakesp
eare's depiction of their motivation and subsequent psychic breakdown. While con
fessing himself at something of a loss to account for the characters of Macbeth
and Lady Macbeth in detail, Freud sees an important suggestion in the notion of
childlessness:
It would be a perfect example of poetic justice in the manner of talion if t
he childlessness of Macbeth and the barrenness of his Lady were the punishment f
or their crimes against the sanctity of generation--if Macbeth could not become
a father because he had robbed children of their father and a father of his chil
dren, and if Lady Macbeth suffered the unsexing she had demanded of the spirits
of murder. I believe Lady Macbeth's illness, the transformation of her callousne
ss into penitence, could be explained directly as a reaction to her childlessnes
s, by which she is convinced of her impotence against the decrees of nature, and
at the same time reminded that it is through her own fault if her crime has bee
n robbed of the better parts of its fruits.
Freud notes that the compressed time frame of the play does not invite this anal
ytical conclusion, so he does not push home this possibility. And he concludes h
is short remarks with the suggestion (developed from Ludwig Jekels) that Macbeth
and Lady Macbeth are, in effect, a single personality, so that, considered as a
unit, "Together they exhaust the possibilities of reaction to the crime, like t
wo disunited parts of a single psychical individuality, and it may be that they
are both copied from the same prototype." This final suggestion might help us to
see that the impact of the tragedy is, in part, conveyed to us by the falling a
part of the couple who, when we first meet them, seem entirely in harmony with o
ne another (a point mentioned earlier).
merchant of venice
1)Plot Summary
By Michael J. Cummings..© 2003
..5
.......Bassanio's heart brims with love for the fair Portia, a wealthy heiress.
He must have her. However, his pockets brim only with emptiness. How can he cour
t a woman of such elegance with a vacant purse? Bassanio asks his friend Antonio
for money to woo and win delightful Portia. Three thousand ducats will do the t
rick. Antonio, a wealthy merchant of Venice, is willing to do anything for Bassa
nio, his most excellent friend. But because most of Antonio's money is tied up i
n lofty enterprises, he does not have enough cash on hand to make a loan. Noneth
eless, because ships he owns will soon arrive laden with merchandise, he agrees
to post his property as collateral so Bassanio can obtain a loan. On a street in
Venice, Bassanio encounters a Jewish moneylender, Shylock, and asks him for the
money, telling him Antonio will guarantee repayment at the end of three months.
.......Shylock has suffered frequent ridicule from Antonio and other Christian V
enetians. They despise him not only because he charges exorbitant interest rates
but also because he is a Jew. Nevertheless, Shylock agrees to lend Bassanio the
money. However, if Antonio does not repay the loan in three months, he must for
feit a pound of flesh. Antonio signs a contract binding him to this strange cond
ition, confident that his ships will arrive in time with merchandise to repay th
e loan. Shylock, of course, secretly hopes Antonio will default on the loan so t
hat he can cut away the pound of flesh (certain death) as revenge against his Ch
ristian enemy. .......Bassanio, now with money and wooing rights, leaves for Por
tia's home, Belmont, near Venice. Although Portia loves Bassanio, she promised h
er late father that she would marry the man who chooses the correct of three cas
kets: one gold, one silver and one lead. The correct casket is the one containin
g a portrait of her. Suitors from around the world have been calling and choosin
g. So far, no one has picked the right casket.
.......Meanwhile, Shylock's daughter Jessica has eloped with Bassanio's friend L
orenzo, taking with her a goodly portion of Shylock's jewels and gold. When Bass
anio arrives at Belmont with his friend Gratiano, Portia's heart soars. To help
him choose the right casket, she has a song sung that gives him a clue, and he p
icks the correct casket, the lead one. Portia then vows to marry Bassanio and pr
esents him a ring, telling him never to lose it or give it away.
.......But Bassanio and Portia aren't the only happily united lovers; for Gratia
no, who has had an eye for Portia's servant Nerissa, successfully woos her. As t
he couples rejoice at their good fortune, Lorenzo and Jessica arrive with a mess
enger who gives Bassanio a letter from Antonio. Bassanio welcomes the new arriva
ls, then opens the letter and reads terrible news: Antonio's ships have been wre
cked; he cannot repay the loan.
.......In Act III, Scene II, Jessica warns that Antonio will be held to Shylock'
s condition, saying, ''I have heard him swear / . . . that he would rather have
Antonio's flesh / than twenty times the value of the sum / that he did owe him'
' (Lines 291-295). Portia then offers a vast sum of gold to satisfy the debt. Af
ter she and Bassanio are married, Bassanio leaves for Venice to pay off Shylock.
Portia says she will remain behind at Belmont. However, Portia, who has brains
as well as beauty, is no one to sit by idly. She has a scheme of her own to save
Antonio, and she and Nerissa disguise themselves as men and follow Bassanio to
Venice.
.......At the Venetian court of justice before the Duke of Venice, the duke asks
Shylock to show mercy and give up his claim for a pound of flesh. Shylock refus
es. Bassanio then offers Shylock more than he is owed, but Shylock continues to
insist on exacting a pound of flesh. Nerissa, dressed like a law clerk, arrives
and introduces the disguised Portia as Bellario, a learned doctor of law. Portia
then goes to work on Antonio's behalf, first trying to soften the hard-hearted
Shylock. Portia says,
.
........The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
........It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
........Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
........It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
........'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
........The throned monarch better than his crown;
........His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
........The attribute to awe and majesty,
........Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
........But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
........It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
........It is an attribute to God himself;
........And earthly power doth then show likest God's
........When mercy seasons justice. (Lines 190-203)
.
But Shylock is in no mood to be merciful, saying, ''. . . I crave the law / the
penalty and forfeit of my bond'' (Lines 212-213). Portia then suggests he settle
for triple the amount owed him. Shylock refuses; he wants only his pound of fle
sh. When Portia tells Antonio he will have to bear his chest for Shylock's knife
, all seems lost. Shylock, overjoyed, hails Portia (Bellario) as ''Most rightful
judge!'' (Line 311).
.......The clever Portia then warns Shylock that when he cuts away the pound of
flesh, he must take only flesh, not blood; for the signed agreement calls only f
or a pound of flesh and nothing else.
.
........Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh;
........But, in the cutting it, if thou dost shed
........One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods
........Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate
........Unto the state of Venice. (Lines 318-322)
.
Shylock, outwitted, then says he will settle for money.
.......But he not only does not get a single ducat, he must forfeit half his pro
perty for conspiring to kill Antonio. What's more, he must become a Christian an
d, upon his death, bequeath his property to Jessica and Lorenzo. Shylock, stunne
d and broken, agrees to the settlement. Leaving the court, he says, ''I am not w
ell'' (Line 461). When Portia (still in disguise) refuses payment from Bassanio,
he insists she accept a remembrance. To his dismay, she takes the ring she told
him never to give up. Later, when Portia (no longer in disguise) welcomes Bassa
nio, Gratiano, and Antonio back to Belmont, she pretends to scold Bassanio after
Gratiano tells her that Bassanio gave his ring the one Portia told him never to g
ive up to Antonio's attorney, the doctor of law. Then she gives another ring to An
tonio. When he recognizes it as the ring he gave to the attorney, he realizes it
was Portia who saved Antonio in the court of justice. Everyone lives happily ev
er after except Shylock.
Characters......................................................................
.........................................................................Booksto
re
.
Protagonist, Comic Plot: Antonio, the Merchant
Protagonist, Tragic Plot: Shylock, the Moneylender
Antagonist, Comic Plot: Shylock
Antagonists, Tragic Plot: Antonio, Jessica, Portia
Duke of Venice: Ruler who sits as the judge in the trial of Antonio, the merchan
t of Venice
Antonio: A merchant of Venice who borrows money from Shylock on behalf of his fr
iend Bassanio. Antonio agrees to pay a pound of flesh if he defaults on the loan
.
Shylock: Wealthy Jewish moneylender who seeks revenge for ill treatment by Chris
tians. Because he is a tragic figure and the most compelling character in the play t
he drama takes on overtones of tragedy.
Portia: Wealthy heiress wooed by many suitors. Although often described by Shake
speare interpreters as noble, upright, and benevolent, a close reading of the pl
ay reveals her as a racist and a snob.
Bassanio: Friend of Antonio who loves Portia.
Prince of Morocco, Prince of Arragon: Suitors of Portia.
Salanio, Salarino, Gratiano, Salerio: Friends of Antonio and Bassanio.
Jessica: Shylock's daughter.
Lorenzo: Jessica's suitor.
Tubal: Lorenzo's Jewish friend.
Launcelot Gobbo: clown and Shylock's servant.
Old Gobbo: Launcelot's father.
Leonardo: Bassanio's servant.
Balthasar, Stephano: Portia's servants.
Nerissa: Portia's maid.
Minor Characters: Magnificoes of Venice, officers of the Court of Justice, gaole
r (jailer), servants of Portia, attendants
.
Settings
.
The action takes place in Venice, Italy, and Belmont, the site of Portia s estate.
Shakespeare does not identify the precise location of Belmont, but the stage di
rections refer to it as being on the Continent (Europe). Presumably, Belmont is no
t far from Venice. Venice (Venezia) is in northeastern Italy on the coast of the
Adriatic Sea. In late medieval and early Renaissance times, Venice was one of E
urope s greatest centers of commerce.
.
Dates, Sources, and Type of Play
.
Date Written: About 1596
Probable Main Sources: Il Pecorone (1378), by Giovanni Fiorentino; Gesta Romano
rum (Latin, 13th Century); oriental tales; the Jew of Malta, by Christopher Marl
owe (1564-1593)
Type of Play: Although the play is considered a comedy, it is probably better ca
tegorized as a tragicomedy (a play with both comic and tragic elements). As a co
medy, the play focuses on Christians whose problems have a happy resolution. As
a tragedy, the play focuses on the downfall of a Jewish moneylender, Shylock, wh
o is forced at the end to become a Christian and to forfeit property. He leaves
the stage a broken man.
Number of Words in Complete Public-Domain Text: 22,310
Individual Copies for Schools: Folger Shakespeare Library Edition (Low Cost)
.
Themes
.
Theme 1: Friendship requires sacrifice. Antonio risks his fortune--and later his
life--to help Bassanio win Portia. Tubal lends Shylock the 3,000 ducats request
ed by Antonio.
Theme 2: Appearances are deceiving. Neither the gold nor the silver casket conta
ins the key to winning Portia. Instead, it is the plain lead casket. Shakespeare
expresses this theme--appearances are deceiving--in a message inside the golden
casket. It says, "All that glitters is not gold." The latter quotation can also
apply to characters who tie their happiness, destiny, or status to money, inclu
ding Antonio, Bassanio, and Shylock.
Theme 3: Revenge ultimately destroys its perpetrator. Shylock seeks revenge agai
nst his enemies, but it is he who suffers the downfall after Christians unite to
trick him. Perhaps he would have had more success if he had pursued justice ins
tead of revenge.
Theme 4: Jews suffer bigotry and other forms of mistreatment because of their re
ligion and race. Christians alienate Shylock simply because he is a Jew. In anci
ent, medieval, and Renaissance times, Jews almost always encountered prejudice f
rom non-Jews around them. Scholars are divided on whether Shakespeare, in The M
erchant of Venice, was attempting condemn anti-Semitism by sympathizing with Shy
lock or approve of anti-Semitism by ridiculing Shylock. It may well be that Shak
espeare was simply holding a mirror to civilization to allow audiences to draw t
heir own conclusions. An essay on this page contends that Shakespeare wrote The
Merchant of Venice to condemn the moral and ethical values of errant Christians,
not the Jewish moneylender Shylock.
Theme 5: Women can be just as competent as men, maybe even more so. Portia, disg
uised as a man, speaks eloquently in defense of Antonio and persuades the Duke o
f Venice to rule in Antonio's favor.
Theme 6: Women can be just as ruthless as men, maybe even more so. Portia, who l
ectures Shylock and the court on the importance of mercy, exhibits racism after
she rejects the Prince of Morocco because he is black. Moreover, she cleverly tr
icks and ruins Shylock without showing a hint of remorse.
Theme 7: Don't count your ships until they're in port. Antonio confidently pledg
es the merchandise on his ships at sea to repay Shylock's loan to Bassanio. But
all the ships are wrecked before they reach Venice.
Theme 8: Great wealth and privilege breed apathy and disquietude. In the opening
line of the play, Antonio says, "In sooth, I know not why I am so sad." Then, i
n the first line of Act I, Scene II, Portia expresses a similar sentiment: "By m
y troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary of this great world." Nerissa, Portia
's servant, understands what the privileged classes cannot understand: "They are
as sick that surfeit with too much as they that starve with nothing."
.
Study Questions
.
(1) Was Shakespeare an anti-Semite? Or was he using Shylock to arouse opposition
to anti-Semitism? (2) The Merchant of Venice is classified as a comedy. Do you
think it is a comedy or a tragedy? (3) Why is the play entitled The Merchant of
Venice? Who is the merchant? (4) In medieval and Renaissance times, why was Veni
ce such an ideal city for a merchant to conduct business? (5) Why does Portia, a
woman of astute intellect, abide by her father's plan to have her marry a man s
elected by chance? Does Portia do anything to help her favorite suitor choose th
e right casket? (5) What would Portia have done if the wrong man selected the ri
ght casket? (6) In Act II, Scene VII, the Prince of Morocco chooses the gold cas
ket and discovers a message therein that opens with this famous line: All that g
litters is not gold. What does this line mean? (7) In what ways are Portia and J
essica different, besides the fact that Portia is a Christian and Jessica a Jew?
.
Climax and Additional Background
.
Climax: The climax of a play or another narrative work, such as a short story or
a novel, can be defined as (1) the turning point at which the conflict begins t
o resolve itself for better or worse, or as (2) the final and most exciting even
t in a series of events. According to both definitions, the climax occurs during
the trial in Act IV, Scene I, when Portia thwarts Shylock's attempt to gain rev
enge against Antonio.
Anti-Semitism in England: Prejudice against Jews increased in England around 119
0 after non-Jews borrowed heavily from Jewish moneylenders, becoming deeply inde
bted to them. In York, about 150 Jews committed suicide to avoid being captured
by an angry mob. King Richard I (reign: 1189-1199) put a stop to Jewish persecut
ion, but it returned in the following century during King Edward I's reign from
1272 to 1307. The government required Jews to wear strips of yellow cloth as ide
ntification, taxed them heavily, and forbade them to mingle with Christians. Fin
ally, in 1290 Edward banished them from England. Only a few Jews remained behind
, either because they had converted to Christianity or because they enjoyed spec
ial protection for the services they provided. In Shakespeare's time 300 years l
ater, anti-Semitism remained in force and almost no Jews lived in England. Chris
topher Marlowe, a contemporary of Shakespeare, wrote a play entitled The Jew of
Malta, which depicted a Jew named Barabas as a savage murderer. Shakespeare, whi
le depicting the Jewish moneylender Shylock according to denigrating stereotypes
, infuses Shylock with humanity and arouses sympathy for the plight of the Jews.
Revenge: "There appears in [The Merchant of Venice] such a deadly spirit of reve
nge, such a savage fierceness and fellness, and such a bloody designation of cru
elty and mischief, as cannot agree either with the style or characters of comedy
." Rowe, Nicholas. Quoted in Shakespeare. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1939 (Page
83).
Use of Disguises: Time and again, Shakespeare disguises women as men to further
a plot. For example, In All's Well That Ends Well, Helena wears the attire of a
pilgrim to get close to Bertram. In Cymbeline, Imogen becomes a page boy to win
back Posthumous. Julia also becomes a page boy in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, a
s does Viola in Twelfth Night. In The Merchant of Venice, Portia disguises herse
lf as a male judge to save the friend of her lover in a court of law. Rosalind,
in As You Like It, dons the garb of a man to become a shepherd as she seeks out
her love, Orlando. In each of these plays, the women disguised as men eventually
reveal their true female identities All of this could have been quite confusing
to playgoers in Shakespeare's day, for only men played women's roles. Thus, in
the above-mentioned plays, men played women disguised as men who at some point d
offed their male identities to reveal themselves as females.
..Was William Shakespeare anti-Semitic?
........One school of Shakespeare interpreters answers yes, resoundingly. Their
primary evidence is his depiction of the Jewish moneylender Shylock in The Merch
ant of Venice as grasping, vengeful, and ethnically foul. Shakespeare s message: J
ews are evil.
........However, close scrutiny of the play reveals that Shakespeare wrote it to
condemn the moral and ethical values of errant Christians, not Jews. The Christ
ian characters in The Merchant of Venice assess their own worth and the worth of
others according to faulty standards, believing that money, position, and estab
lishmentarian affiliations are the sum of a man or a woman. It is they who force
Shylock into moneylending; it is they who seed his monomaniacal lust for reveng
e. To be sure, Shylock exhibits monstrous behavior, but it is reactive behavior.
He makes his living through usury because usury is the only way he can compete
in Christian Venice; he accumulates wealth because he believes it undergirds his
security and independence in a hostile Christian world.
........What Shakespeare thought about Jews is profoundly important to writers,
teachers, actors, historians, social scientists, members of the clergy indeed to e
very thinking human being because of the extraordinary influence his literary lega
cy exerts on human thought and endeavor. No other writer of any age is more wide
ly read; no other writer is more argued over and written about. The popularity o
f Shakespeare films in recent times further aggrandizes his reputation while ins
tilling uneasiness in those who believe he harbored prejudices that inflame anti
-Semitism.
........To find out Shakespeare to try pin him down on the Jewish question critics g
enerally scrutinize The Merchant of Venice and its characters as well as six oth
er Shakespeare plays in which characters slur Jews. They also peruse the Elizabe
than era s record of strong anti-Semitism.
........A daunting task for explorers of this subject is to put aside their own
biases. Not all researchers can. Consequently, they guide themselves toward the
desired conclusion rather than letting the research guide them to the most logic
al conclusion. Lovers of Shakespeare bardolaters, George Bernard Shaw called them in
his day are prone to such bias. So are fault-finders who criticize Shakespeare fo
r the offensive dialogue in The Merchant of Venice and other plays.
........To be sure, there is much for these fault-finders to complain about in T
he Merchant. Throughout the play, Christians depersonalize and alienate Shylock
by refusing to use his given name. Instead, they call him the Jew, the villain Jew, t
his currish Jew, impenetrable cur, harsh Jew, infidel, cruel devil, and the devil
ikeness of the Jew. To the Christians, Shylock is diabolically foul.
.This essay is protected by federal copyright
Shylock's Passion
.
........Of course, there can be no denying Shylock s passion for accumulating weal
th. Verily, he breeds it, as rams and ewes breed lambs, he tells Antonio in Act
I, Scene III. He also tells his daughter, Jessica, that he even dreams about mo
neybags. After Jessica raids those moneybags and her father s store of jewels to a
bscond with Lorenzo, a Christian, Salanio tells his companion Salarino in Act II
, Scene VIII:
.
................I never heard a passion so confused,
................So strange, outrageous, and so variable,
................As the dog Jew did utter in the streets:
................'My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter!
................Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats!
................Justice! the law! my ducats, and my daughter!
................A sealed bag, two sealed bags of ducats,
................Of double ducats, stolen from me by my daughter! (Lines 12-19)
.
........These lines appear to indict Shylock as a man so consumed by his love of
money that he cares more for his ducats than he does for his daughter. However,
while acknowledging Shylock s avarice, careful Shakespeare exegetes also should n
ote that Salarino, a Christian, is a biased reporter who prefaces his news with
the slur dog Jew. In a court of law, his credibility would be nil. But what if he
reported the exact words of Shylock? In that case, consider that the passage is
framed at the beginning and end by my daughter and that the fourth line of the pas
sage is also so framed. It indicates that Shylock cares about Jessica. That she
would steal from him and run off with an avowed enemy wounds him deeply...Christ
ian gibes also brand Shylock as Satan in godly clothing. In Act I, Scene III, af
ter Shylock quotes the Bible to make a point, Antonio tells Bassanio:
.
................The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
................An evil soul producing holy witness
................Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
................A goodly apple rotten at the heart:
................O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath! (Lines 98-102)
.
........Shylock eventually suffers spiritual and material ruin after Portia s clev
er dupery at the trial strips him of property and forces him to accept Christian
ity. Nevertheless, interpreters of the play who see a malevolent Shakespeare beh
ind the Christian taunts accuse him of anti-Semitism.
.
Holocaust Scholar's View
.
........Distinguished scholar Racelle R. Weiman, Ph.D., director of the Center f
or Holocaust and Humanity Education at the Cincinnati Campus of Hebrew Union Col
lege, says the message of The Merchant of Venice is clear: Jews and Judaism are c
orrupt; Christianity is the religion of mercy, Judaism of a cruel justice. The o
nly salvation lies in conversion to Christianity. . . .
........British playwright Arnold Wesker believes the play is so outrageously an
ti-Semitic that he wrote a counter-play about Shylock, investing him with a nobili
ty lacking in Shakespeare. For example, Wesker s Shylock spends his money on the p
oor and rescues Jewish texts from book-burners.
........Weiman and Wesker, as well as like-minded Shakespeare interpreters, worr
y that 21st Century readers of Shakespeare will regard Shylock as so many reader
s of previous centuries regarded him: as an archetype a typical Jew manifesting th
e characteristics of all Jews. In his time, the 19th Century French novelist and
poet Victor Hugo (1802-1885) believed Shylock was indeed perceived as an archet
ype by Shakespeare s audiences. In his book William Shakespeare, Hugo wrote: While
Shakespeare makes Shylock, the popular tongue creates the bloodsucker. Shylock i
s the embodiment of Jewishness; he is also Judaism, that is, to say, his whole nat
ion, the high as well as the low, faith as well as fraud. . . (224).
.
History of Anti-Semitism
.
........Anti-Semitism dates to ancient times, resulting in part from Jews refusal
to acknowledge the pantheon of Greek and Roman gods and from their refusal to s
ubmit to Roman rule. In Book V of his History, the Roman historian Publius Corne
lius Tacitus (56-120 A.D.) spurns Jewry unequivocally.
Whatever is held sacred by the Romans, with the Jews is profane: and what in oth
er nations is unlawful and impure, with them is permitted. . . . They eat and lo
dge with one another only; and though a people of unbridled lust, they admit no
intercourse with women from other nations. Among themselves no restraints are im
posed. . . . The first thing instilled in their proselytes is to despise the god
s, to abjure their country, to set at naught parents, children, brothers. (321-3
22)
.
........Blamed for the death of Christ, Jews suffered severe persecution between
1 A.D. and 1616, the year of Shakespeare s death, including torture, loss of prop
erty, and forced conversion to Christianity. Because of fabricated charges of blo
od libel, in which malicious Christians accused Jews of sacrificing Christian chi
ldren at Passover, many Jews were burned at the stake. In England and other Euro
pean countries in the late Middle Ages, laws required Jews to wear identifying p
atches not unlike the yellow stars in Hitler s Germany centuries
later. During outbreaks of plague, Christians implicated Jews for spreading the
disease. England decided to solve the Jewish problem once and for all by expelling
Jews in 1290.
........Such a measure was not as extreme as the Nazi final solution, but it did r
emove almost all Jews from English soil. In Shakespeare s time, English law contin
ued to forbid Jews from living in England, but a few hundred survived in London
and other cities in the guise of Christians. One of them, Portuguese doctor Rode
rigo Lopez, served as physician to Queen Elizabeth I. Evidence indicates that he
also spied in the service of the King of Spain. When a court snoop, the Earl of
Essex, discovered his true identity, he accused Rodriguez of plotting to poison
the queen, a charge that was probably untrue. After his trial and conviction, R
odriguez suffered an excruciating execution in 1594. First he was hanged and the
n, while still alive, drawn and quartered. The citizenry already envenomed against
Jews celebrated his death.
........It was during this time of heightened anti-Jewish fervor that Shakespear
e wrote the Merchant of Venice (1596-1597) and staged it (probably just before 1
600). When printed in a quarto edition, the play was entitled The Most Excellent
History of the Merchant of Venice, With the Extreme Crueltie of Shylocke the Je
w Towards the Said Merchant in Cutting a Just Pound of His Flesh. It was the sec
ond play within a decade to star a Jew as a villain. The first was Christopher M
arlowe s The Jew of Malta, performed about 1590. In that play, the titular charact
er, Barabas, is so detestable that his enemies boil him in a cauldron. Audiences
loved the play, many of them not realizing that Marlowe s main intent was to sati
rize Christians. The play enjoyed a revival four years later, after the executio
n of Lopez, and it probably influenced Shakespeare in his depiction of Shylock.
.
Shakespeare's Intent
.
........Given the anti-Jewish climate in Elizabethan England and Shakespeare s por
trayal of Shylock as a negative stereotype, it seems reasonable to conclude that
Shakespeare was indeed anti-Jewish. But that would be far from the truth. In fa
ct, the more reasonable conclusion if based on a detailed study of the play and pe
rtinent background information--is that Shakespeare was presenting life as it wa
s, not life as it should be. In The Breath of Clowns and Kings, Theordore Weis s
ays Shakes presents Shylock as a flawed human who happens to be Jewish:
.
[Shylock in The Merchant of Venice] is one individual who, happening to be a Jew
, is . . . a most meager man, a wretch no more and no less than others in Shakes
peare who happen to be, as they are individual men, Irish, Welsh, French, Italia
n, English. One can judge the play an indictment of all Jews, and grossly anti-S
emitic, if one cares to. Certainly in an age like ours, with our humanitarianism
and simultaneously the monstrous persecution and destruction of the Jews, it is
difficult not to. But the play, in my understanding of it, involves no such ind
ictment. What it does say is: see what happens to a man altogether committed, wi
th a passion well nigh religious, to materialism; how it has destroyed him even
as it would through him destroy others. . . . (127)
.
The real evil in The Merchant of Venice is the corrupt value system of the princ
ipal Christian characters who are, of course, representative of people in Shakes
peare s time. Antonio, the merchant of the title, is among the worst of the lot. A
lthough he enjoys a sterling reputation among fellow Christians as a righteous,
self-sacrificing citizen and friend a Christ figure, even he despises Shylock primar
ily because he is a Jew; Antonio, thus, is a true bigot. Thou call dst me dog befor
e thou hadst just cause, Shylock complains to Antonio in Act III, Scene III. Beh
ind Shylock s back, Antonio ridicules him as a moneylender, then without qualm req
uests a loan from him on behalf of wastrel Bassanio. In Act I, Scene III, Shyloc
k who, unlike the Christians, never lies and always speaks his mind--calls attenti
on to Antonio s tartuffery:
.
................Signior Antonio, many a time and oft
................In the Rialto [center of business in Venice] you have rated [ber
ated] me
................About my moneys and my usances [usery, moneylending at interest]
:
................Still have I borne it with a patient shrug,
................For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.
................You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,
................And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,
................And all for use of that which is mine own.
................Well then, it now appears you need my help:
................Go to, then; you come to me, and you say
................ Shylock, we would have moneys : you say so;
................You, that did void your rheum upon my beard
................And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur. (Lines 106-118)
.
........Arrogantly, Antonio pledges a pound of his own flesh as security for the
loan against the day when his bounty-laden ships arrive with riches to repay th
e loan. Patricia Truxler Coleman has observed in Midsummer Magazine that "Antoni
o is so morally smug that he cannot fathom the possibility of nature conspiring
against him by preventing the return of his three ships. A storm, a mutiny, an a
ttack by pirates such reversals could not possibly interdict the flow of his wealt
h. But of course the Fates and Furies know otherwise.
........It is true, of course, that Shylock charges interest for loans, a practi
ce considered immoral by the Venetian Christians in the play. However, beginning
in the 13th Century, lending money at interest was legal in parts of Europe, an
d English law in the Elizabethan Age sanctioned the practice. But whether legal
or illegal, moneylending was sometimes the only way a Jew severely restricted in t
he Christian world of commerce could support himself and his family. In Venice of
the 16th Century, the setting of The Merchant of Venice, Jews even had to live i
n a ghetto, separated from Christian-kind. The word ghetto (Italian for foundry ) was
first used during this time to refer to the Jewish quarter of a city because th
e Venice ghetto had a cannon foundry within its boundaries.
.
Portia a Racist
.
........Alienation, prejudice, raw hatred the Jews of 16th Century Venice suffered
all of these indignities at the hands of Christian bigots. But Jews were not th
e only victims. In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare uses the Prince of Morocc
o, a suitor for the hand of Portia, to make this point. The prince is a black Mo
or, like Othello. Even before he arrives at Belmont to select a casket, Portia,
an overbearing snob and racist, tells Nerissa in Act I, Scene II: If he have the
condition of a saint and the complexion of a devil, I had rather he should shriv
e me than wive me. Like Antonio, she is a true bigot. After the prince presents h
imself to choose a casket (Act II, Scene I), he correctly senses Portia s racist t
endencies and says:
.
................Mislike me not for my complexion,
........ The shadow'd livery of the burnish'd sun,
........ To whom I am a neighbour and near bred.
........ Bring me the fairest creature northward born,
........ Where Phoebus' fire scarce thaws the icicles,
........ And let us make incision for your love,
........ To prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine.
........ I tell thee, lady, this aspect of mine
........ Hath fear'd the valiant: by my love I swear
........ The best-regarded virgins of our clime
........ Have loved it too: I would not change this hue,
........ Except to steal your thoughts, my gentle queen. (Lines 1-12)
.
........Portia assures him he is as fair as any comer I have look d on yet for my a
ffection (Line 21). After he chooses the wrong casket disqualifying him for Portia s
hand in marriage he leaves Belmont disappointed. Portia, though, rejoices, making
a blatantly bigoted remark in the last two lines of Act II, Scene VII: A gentle r
iddance. Draw the curtains, go. / Let all of his complexion choose me so.
........Christian hypocrisy is never more odious, though, than during the trial.
First, the duke asks Shylock, ready to claim his pound of flesh, How shalt thou
hope for mercy, rendering none? (Line 89). Ever outspoken Shylock replies:
.
................What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong?
................You have among you many a purchased slave,
................Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules,
................You use in abject and in slavish parts,
................Because you bought them: shall I say to you,
................Let them be free, marry them to your heirs?
................Why sweat they under burthens? let their beds
................Be made as soft as yours and let their palates
................Be season'd with such viands? You will answer
................'The slaves are ours:' so do I answer you:
................The pound of flesh, which I demand of him,
................Is dearly bought; 'tis mine and I will have it. (Act IV, Scene I
, Lines 90-101)
.
........Then, after Portia speaks eloquently of the need for clemency and compas
sion in her quality of mercy courtroom speech, she and her friends humiliate Shylo
ck, ruin him financially, and force him to accept Christianity. After the trial,
without the slightest prick of conscience, the Christians hie off to Belmont a ki
nd of way station between this world and heaven--to partake in the pleasures of
the idle highborn and wealthy. They have their pound of flesh, Shylock s heart. Th
ey also have his daughter, a convert to Christianity.
........It is hard to believe in fact, well nigh impossible to believe--that Shake
speare intended to lecture his audience, vilifying Judaism and Jewry, through th
ese shockingly ruthless characters, especially in view of the following famous l
ines spoken by Shylock in his plea in Act III, Scene I, for recognition as a wor
thy human being:
.
................. . . . I am a Jew. Hath
................not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
................dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
................the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
................to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
................warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
................a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
................if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
................us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
................revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
................resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
................what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
................wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
................Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you
................teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
................will better the instruction. (Lines 56-71)
.
........In the end, Shylock, becomes a victim of a perverse world, a victim of
people who mislead, misuse and prejudge him and force him to take a desperate stan
d and lose everything. The Christians, meanwhile, live on happily ever after, al
lowing the play to be called a comedy. But it is not a true comedy. At the end,
while Christians exult in their victory at Belmont, one can imagine Shylock walk
ing the streets of the Rialto or the Jewish ghetto looking for his dignity and t
he glow of a friendly candle. The great British actor Peter Ustinov told me once
in an interview that a comedy is just a tragedy gone wrong, and a tragedy is jus
t a comedy gone wrong. The Merchant of Venice, it seems, is a comedy gone wrong."
As Nicholas Rowe has observed, "There appears in [The Merchant of Venice] such
a deadly spirit of revenge, such a savage fierceness and fellness, and such a bl
oody designation of cruelty and mischief, as cannot agree either with the style
or characters of comedy" ( 83).
2)Shylock and History
by Jami Rogers
Towering over Shakespeare's romantic comedy The Merchant of Venice is the tragic
figure of Shylock. Before we can begin to understand Shylock, though, we must u
nderstand the historical and dramatic influences under which Shakespeare wrote.
Although Shakespeare wrote possibly the most famous Jew in English literature, t
here were virtually no Jews in England during his lifetime. It isn't known wheth
er Shakespeare would have come into contact with anyone who was Jewish. It would
also be impossible to surmise how detailed his knowledge of the historical fact
s about Jews in England was, but fact and myth were certainly handed down throug
h the ages, and it is safe to assume that he would have been aware of his countr
y's historical folklore.
Jews in Early England: Assimilation to Expulsion
One of the first documented groups of Jews residing in England comes from Oxford
in 1075. For more than a century, English Jews were not confined to ghettos, un
like many of their European counterparts. Eyewitness accounts report that Jews a
nd non-Jews visited each other's houses, indicating that they lived side by side
in relative harmony. Jews, however, were not citizens. They were viewed as outs
iders, and were often barred from many professions because of their religion. On
ly Christians could belong to the artisan guilds -- the professional association
s of the era -- and own land, which left Jews with few means of earning a living
. Christians, however, could not lend money with interest, and many Jews earned
a lucrative living as usurers. This profession was not a sure path to riches, as
debts often had a way of going unpaid. The Jewish lender often had to become hi
s own debt collector, and in trying to regain the debt owed to him, he frequentl
y became the target of resentment. As usury was a profession comprised exclusive
ly of Jews, religion eventually became the focus of much of this bad feeling.
In the late 12th century, preparation for the Third Crusade brought a heightened
level of anti-Jewish sentiment. Anti-Semitic violence culminated in two massacr
es, one at the coronation of Richard I in 1189, when 30 Jews were killed, and th
e other in 1190 in the city of York, when 150 Jews were massacred. The Magna Car
ta, the basis for English constitutional law, is itself a testament to the growi
ng unpopularity of Jewish money-lending activities. Two clauses in the 1215 docu
ment state that if a debtor dies before his debt is paid, neither his heir nor h
is widow will be responsible for repaying the debt.
Repressive measures against Jews continued to grow as the century wore on until
finally, in 1275, they were forbidden to be money-lenders. Several more edicts a
gainst Jews were implemented at this time, including the taxation of any Jew ove
r the age of 12 and the wearing of badges that identified people as Jewish. With
the loss of their primary source of income, and thus their value to the King's
coffers, Jews became expendable to the Crown and were expelled from England in 1
290, not to be readmitted until 1655.
After the Expulsion, the English view of Jews began to be formed by several myth
s that grew in popularity through the centuries. The strongest of these myths wa
s undoubtedly that of ritual murder (or "blood libel"), which remained in circul
ation in England long after the Jews had been expelled. There were several varia
tions of this ritual murder legend, the most prevalent one being that of Jews ki
dnapping children at Easter and using them in ritual practices. It was also beli
eved that adult Christians would be killed and their blood used for Passover cer
emonies. Not one of these myths had any basis in fact; instead they stemmed from
fear of an unknown culture and, yet, they were regarded as truth by many.
Jews in Elizabethan Society
The world in which Shakespeare lived was an exceedingly dangerous one. The threa
t of a civil war was never far away. When Elizabeth ascended the throne in 1558,
she staved off the threat of rebellion by dealing ruthlessly with any hint of t
reason. Many of her enemies -- perceived or actual -- were beheaded.
Much of the plotting against Elizabeth I had its origins in the religious intole
rance of the era, begun when Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII, broke with the Cath
olic Church. Desperate for a male heir to guarantee the Tudor succession, Henry
was eager to divorce his then-wife and marry Anne Boleyn, whom he hoped would gi
ve him an heir. The Pope refused to grant him a divorce, and Henry VIII's soluti
on to this conundrum was to break from the Catholic Church and create the Church
of England, installing himself as head of a new Protestant religion.
A religious war for the soul of England then developed. By the time Elizabeth wa
s Queen, the threat was not just internal but international, as the Pope and Cat
holic European countries plotted against the Protestant monarch in the hope of r
eturning a Catholic to the throne of England. Elizabeth was forced into a series
of reprisals against recusant Catholics (people who outwardly seemed to be Prot
estant, but who secretly practiced Catholicism), many of whom were murdered.
Elizabeth, however, was by no means the first Tudor monarch to engage in such ac
tions. Her own father was guilty of similar intolerance, and her Catholic sister
, Mary, had imprisoned Elizabeth herself in the Tower of London when it became c
lear that she was the focus of Protestant insurrections against Mary, then queen
. She soon earned the epithet "Bloody Mary" because of her murderous actions aga
inst the Protestants. It would be no understatement to say that religion was ser
ious business in Elizabethan England.
Where do the Jews fit in this climate of religious intolerance? Despite their ex
pulsion 300 years earlier, small groups of Jews sought refuge in England from th
e Spanish Inquisition and were living quietly during Elizabeth's reign. These Je
ws, known as Marranos or Conversos, people who had converted to Christianity fro
m Judaism, and though they outwardly appeared to be Christians, many retained th
eir Jewish heritage, even if they did not actively participate in Jewish religio
us practices. Another small group of Jews made its way to London in the 1500s an
d became musicians at the Court of King Henry VIII. Some scholars have even sugg
ested that the "Dark Lady" of Shakespeare's sonnets was one Emilia Bassano, desc
ended from these same musicians.
Most people of Jewish descent living in England in the 16th century were not per
secuted by their Christian neighbors. But there was one notorious event which co
uld hardly have escaped Shakespeare's notice. In 1593, a few years before The Me
rchant of Venice was written, Queen Elizabeth I's physician Roderigo Lopez was a
ccused of trying to poison her. Lopez, allegedly in league with the King of Spai
n, was convicted of treason, hung, and drawn and quartered in 1594. His was a ve
ry public execution, and the fact that he was a Marrano led to an outbreak of an
ti-Jewish sentiment in the country. He was taunted by slurs on the scaffold as h
e died, still proclaiming his innocence. It was a clear but unfortunate sign tha
t there was a latent anti-Semitism within the English public. Suspicion was not
reserved for Jews alone, though. At this time all foreigners were regarded with
suspicion and distrust, at this time, because they were seen as a threat to the
security of the English nation. Anti-Spanish sentiment, for instance, was even m
ore prevalent than anti-Semitism at the time of Lopez's death.
Shakespeare and Shylock
William Shakespeare, being a man of the theatre, would have been heavily influen
ced not only by history, but also by the theatre that had preceded him. He was a
lso an exceptionally good businessman with a keen sense of what his audience wan
ted. Portrayals of Jews in drama were a long-standing tradition by the time Shak
espeare wrote The Merchant of Venice. The Jew seems to have been the guy audienc
es loved to hate in medieval and Renaissance drama -- the equivalent to American
s' glee at watching the television exploits of the fictional J.R. Ewing two deca
des ago.

The roots of Shakespearean drama begin with mystery and miracle plays. During th
e Middle Ages, touring troupes primarily sponsored by the church performed the s
tories of the Old and New Testaments for a largely illiterate audience. Within t
hese performances lurked the medieval dichotomy of feeling about the Jewish race
that had dogged Christianity. On the one hand, Jewish patriarchs such as Moses
were admired, while on the other Jews were often seen to be responsible for Chri
st's crucifixion.
With the coming of the Renaissance this strictly biblical, if somewhat biased, p
ortrayal of Jews gave way to an overly melodramatic perception. Jews became the
evil villains of Elizabethan drama. Frequently portrayed as Machiavellian or gre
edy or both, they were not complex characters. In fact, many of Shakespeare's co
ntemporaries simply told a story, rather than added any psychological layers to
characters and their motives. Even Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare's greatest r
ival, fell into the one-dimensional trap in his play The Jew of Malta, written i
n 1589 -- nearly a decade before The Merchant of Venice. Both Barabas in The Jew
of Malta and Shylock are money-lenders and they both have daughters who leave h
ome with their father's money, but there the similarity ends. Barabas is an over
-the-top villain who steals, cheats, and indulges in murder until he finally mee
ts a gruesome end -- boiling in oil. Shakespeare's characterization of Shylock b
roke with theatrical tradition. Shylock is a complex man, whose every action can
be understood and who, finally, elicits understanding from his audience.
Shylock
Elements of all these influences -- historical, societal, and theatrical -- help
ed to mold Shylock's character. What we can draw from the play regarding Shakesp
eare's ideas about the Jewish people, however, is pure supposition. Shakespeare
left no journals, no lifetime correspondence from which a biographer could draw
a full picture of the author and his work. It is even questionable his plays wou
ld have survived if it weren't for a band of actors pooling their memories toget
her seven years after his death to publish the First Folio.
Shylock began the play much as an Elizabethan audience would expect: He exhibite
d every sign of being the piece's villain. As the money-hungry Jewish usurer tha
t had become a stock character in Elizabethan drama, Shylock made himself thorou
ghly unpleasant, with asides to the audience stating that he hated Antonio becau
se Antonio was a Christian -- "but more" he continued, because he lent money wit
hout interest, thus competing with Shylock's business and threatening Shylock's
sole means of supporting himself and his family.
In Shylock's final scene, Shakespeare had him act out another stereotype: a ritu
al murder. Of course, there is no mention in the play that Shylock would use Ant
onio's blood in any religious ritual. But the audience would have immediately as
sociated the stage action with the myth. Shakespeare seemed to be giving his aud
ience exactly what they expect from a stage Jew. In Portia, the audience got the
means to stop the ritual murder because she would not let the Jew shed one drop
of Christian blood. The text specifically says "Christian," reinforcing the "bl
ood libel" legends.
While he perpetuated received notions of Jews, Shakespeare also did an extraordi
nary thing for an Elizabethan playwright: He created a Jewish character who was
flawed, and human, and oppressed by the Christians surrounding him. The audience
was told time and again of Shylock's encounters with Christians and how they sp
at upon him, called him nasty epithets, and spurned him. Shylock was the very pi
cture of a man who suffered much at the hands of his fellow men and who had fina
lly reached his breaking point. Growing scholarship points to the possibility th
at Shakespeare's family were themselves recusant Catholics, oppressed in Stratfo
rd and fallen from their high place in local society while Shakespeare was still
a boy. If this is true, then perhaps Shylock's oppression was a metaphor for En
gland's religious oppression during Shakespeare's lifetime. His forced conversio
n also fits with this notion, as it was not only Jews being forced to become Chr
istians, but also Catholics forced to become Protestants and vice versa, dependi
ng on who was in control of the throne at the time. They had to convert or lose
their lives. This theory is pure speculation, but it would hardly be the first t
ime -- or the last -- that theatre was used to make a covert political statement
.
Viewing the play through modern eyes, Shylock can be seen as both an Elizabethan
stereotype and a fully drawn human being. Ironically, it is precisely because o
f the stereotypical elements in Shylock's character that many people argue again
st The Merchant of Venice, viewing it as an anti-Semitic work -- an understandab
le reaction in a post-Holocaust era. Shakespeare, however, did not write a one-d
imensional villain, but a complex character who defies explanation and who will
probably never be fully understood.
Jami Rogers received her training as a Shakespearean actress at the London Acade
my of Music and Dramatic Art. She has performed at the MacOwan Theatre in London
, written a play performed by Boston Theatre Works, and has worked for Masterpie
ce Theatre and MYSTERY! since 1997.

midsummer night's dream

1) A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of Shakespeare's most-performed plays: a
delightful comedy, but full of enough potential tragedy to avoid becoming saccha
rine. Much of that tragic possibility comes from Shakespeare's sources, as he di
rectly acknowledges in Act V. The entertainments Philostrate proposes, all stori
es taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses, show the unhappy endings all too likely to s
pring from tales like that of the four lovers of Shakespeare's play, or the stri
fe-torn fairy rulers.
"The battle with the Centaurs, to be sung / By an Athenian eunuch with the h
arp" (V.i.44-5) is the first of Philostrate's suggestions, and the most blatant.
Centaurs are almost an epitome of the dangerous fairy-world that underlies so m
uch of Shakespeare's play: half-man, half-beast, they recall Bottom's similar, a
lbeit more humorous, condition. Lust and jealousy cause the undoing of the marri
age feast, for the Centaurs' theft of women provokes a battle. Thanks to the fai
ry intervention, all in Shakespeare's play are happy with their spouses: but how
might the wedding have been marred if Demetrius and Lysander both still loved H
ermia? "These are the forgeries of jealousy" (II.i.81) cries Titania to Oberon,
and their contention, likewise a result of lust and jealousy and unbridled natur
e, luckily enters the play only peripherally. Theseus' law, and fairy medicine,
overrules the lusty, animal side of love and prevents such violence from marring
, indeed unmaking, the comedy.
"The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals, / Tearing the Thracian singer [Orpheus] i
n their rage" (V.i.48-9) is an alternate selection, but one just as significant.
"The mad Ciconian women" (p.259) cry "There is our despiser!" before killing Or
pheus -- they destroy him because, in his grief for the dead Eurydice, he will n
ot join them, will not make love to these revellers in the rites of Bacchus, to
women caught in the spirit of wild unbridled romantic revelry. Again, love can b
e a dangerous and destructive emotion, and it is only the demands of the comic p
lot, the machinations and mistakes of the fairies, and Shakespeare's dramatist's
hand above all that have brought characters and audience to a safe and comforta
ble conclusion.
"A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus / And his love Thisby: very tragical
mirth" (V.i.57-8) is the only of the offered entertainments to be performed, an
d it, too, hints at the dangers of unbridled love. Interestingly, the frame-stor
y for this and the other of Ovid's tales in Book IV of the Metamorphoses is the
daughter's of Minyas' refusal to engage in the Bacchic rites, instead remaining
at home to tell tales. Bacchus' rites are indeed a far cry from the Diana who fi
gures so prominently in the Dream, and here Minyas' daughters try to impose Thes
eus' peace, where destructive emotion is abjured. Yet the tale itself reveals mu
ch about Shakespeare's own play as well.
Pyramus and Thisbe cannot marry because "their parents forbade it" -- much t
he same irrational law-giving with which Theseus and Egeus trouble Lysander and
Hermia early in the Dream. And, indeed, this tragic tale shows how the lovers' t
ale probably should have ended: a journey to the dangerous wild (here the woods
around Ninus' tomb) followed by overthrow by the frightening forces of Nature (t
he lion) and the sorrowful death of both lovers. Yet the fairies and Shakespeare
have ensured otherwise, so we have not a tragedy but the comedy of Shakespeare'
s play and the reconciliation and marriage of Act V.
Even the Mechanical's presentation of "Pyramus and Thisbe" keeps off its tra
gic nature. Their inept presentation never lets us forget that they are actors:
the actors themselves are present more than the characters. Never can we fall in
to suspension of disbelief and believe that Pyramus has died for love: it is alw
ays Bottom, striving mightily to perform an affecting (indeed, over-done) death
scene. The meta-drama overcomes the actual play, and what was tragic becomes "tr
agical mirth," what was a dire warning to heed society's laws or fear the conseq
uences is a gross entertainment and slapstick.
 Theseus' laws have overcome the bloody, passionate side of love: the man him
self appears to have ceased his earlier, youthful amours to settle down with a w
ife, Hippolyta, vigorous enough to match his own martial nature. Indeed, he disc
ounts the entertainments as those which he has already heard or told -- they are
old news to him, settled affairs, and he needs hear of them no more. The only r
eason "Pyramus and Thisbe" receives a hearing is its odd synopsis -- and equally
odd presentation! Shakespeare shows the alternate endings his play could all to
o easily have taken, to make us relish all the more the happy solution he and th
e characters have found.
othello
1)Shakespeare: Othello -
Bradley on Othello
From Shakespearean Tragedy (1904), by A. C. Bradley.
... Othello is, in one sense of the word, by far the most romantic figure among
Shakespeare's heroes; and he is so partly from the strange life of war and adven
ture which he has lived from childhood. He does not belong to our world, and he
seems to enter it we know not whence -- almost as if from wonderland. There is s
omething mysterious in his descent from men of royal siege; in his wanderings in
vast deserts and among marvellous peoples; in his tales of magic handkerchiefs
and prophetic Sibyls; in the sudden vague glimpses we get of numberless battles
and sieges in which he has played the hero and has borne a charmed life; even in
chance references to his baptism, his being sold to slavery, his sojourn in Ale
ppo.
And he is not a merely romantic figure; his own nature is romantic. He has not,
indeed, the meditative or speculative imagination of Hamlet; but in the strictes
t sense of the word he is more poetic than Hamlet. Indeed, if one recalls Othell
o's most famous speeches -- those that begin, "Her father loved me", "O now for
ever", "Never, Iago", "Had it pleased Heaven", "It is the cause", "Behold, I hav
e a weapon", "Soft you, a word or two before you go" -- and if one places side b
y side with these speeches an equal number by any other hero, one will not doubt
that Othello is the greatest poet of them all. There is the same poetry in his
casual phrases -- like "These nine moons wasted", "Keep up your bright swords, f
or the dew will rust them", "You chaste stars", "It is a sword of Spain, the ice
-brook's temper", "It is the very error of the moon" -- and in those brief expre
ssions of intense feeling which ever since have been taken as the absolute expre
ssion, like
If it were now to die,
'Twere now to be most happy; for, I fear,
My soul hath her content so absolute
That not another comfort like to this
Succeeds in unknown fate,
or
If she be false, O then Heaven mocks itself,
I'll not believe it;
or
No, my heart is turned to stone; I strike it, and it hurts my hand,
or
But yet the pity of it, Iago! O Iago, the pity of it, Iago!
or
O thou weed,
Who are so lovely fair and smell'st so sweet
That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst ne'er been born.
And this imagination, we feel, has accompanied his whole life. He has watched wi
th a poet's eye the Arabian trees dropping their med'cinable gum, and the Indian
throwing away his chance-found pearl; and has gazed in a fascinated dream at th
e Pontic sea rushing, never to return, to the Propontic and the Hellespont; and
has felt as no other man ever felt (for he speaks of it as none other ever did)
the poetry of the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war.
So he comes before us, dark and grand, with a light upon him from the sun where
he was born; but no longer young, and now grave, self-controlled, steeled by the
experience of countless perils, hardships and vicissitudes, at once simple and
stately in bearing and in speech, a great man naturally modest but fully conscio
us of his worth, proud of his services to the state, unawed by dignitaries and u
nelated by honours, secure, it would seem, against all dangers from without and
all rebellion from within. And he comes to have his life crowned with the final
glory of love, a love as strange, adventurous and romantic as any passage of his
eventful history, filling his heart with tenderness and his imagination with ec
stasy. For there is no love, not that of Romeo in his youth, more steeped in ima
gination than Othello's.
The sources of danger in this character are revealed but too clearly by the stor
y. In the first place, Othello's mind, for all its poetry, is very simple. He is
not observant. His nature tends outward. He is quite free from introspection, a
nd is not given to reflection. Emotion excites his imagination, but it confuses
and dulls his intellect. On this side he is the very opposite of Hamlet, with wh
om, however, he shares a great openness and trustfulness of nature. In addition,
he has little experience of the corrupt products of civilised life, and is igno
rant of European women.
In the second place, for all his dignity and massive calm (and he has greater di
gnity than any other of Shakespeare's men), he is by nature full of the most veh
ement passion. Shakespeare emphasises his self-control, not only by the wonderfu
l pictures of the Fist Act, but by references to the past. Lodovico, amazed at h
is violence, exclaims:
Is this the noble Moor whom our full Senate
Call all in all sufficient? Is this the nature
Whom passion could not shake? whose solid virtue
The shot of accident nor dart of chance
Could neither graze nor pierce?
Iago, who has no motive for lying, asks:
Can he be angry? I have seen the cannon
When it hath blown his ranks into the air,
And, like the devil, from his very arm
Puffed his own brother -- and can he be angry? [Endnote 1]
This, and other aspects of his character, are best exhibited by a single line --
one of Shakespeare's miracles -- the words by which Othello silences in a momen
t the night-brawl between his attendants and those of Brabantio:
Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them.
And the same self-control is strikingly shown where Othello endeavours to elicit
 some explanation of the fight between Cassio and Montano. Here, however, there
occur ominous words, which make us feel how necessary was this self-control, and
make us admire it the more:
Now, by heaven,
My blood begins my safer guides to rule,
And passion, having my best judgment collied,
Assays to lead the way.
We remember these words later, when the sun of reason is "collied", blackened an
d blotted out in total eclipse.
Lastly, Othello's nature is all of one piece. His trust, where he trusts, is abs
olute. Hesitation is almost impossible to him. He is extremely self-reliant, and
decides and acts instantaneously. If stirred to indignation, as "in Aleppo once
", he answers with one lightning stroke. Love, if he loves, must be to him the h
eaven where either he must leave or bear no life. If such a passion as jealousy
seizes him, it will swell into a well-night incontrollable flood. He will press
for immediate conviction or immediate relief. Convinced, he will act with the au
thority of a judge and the swiftness of a man in mortal pain. Undeceived, he wil
l do like execution on himself.
This character is so noble, Othello's feelings and actions follow so inevitably
from it and from the forces brought to bear on it, and his sufferings are so hea
rt-rending, that he stirs, I believe, in most readers a passion of mingled love
and pity which they feel for no other hero in Shakespeare, and to which not even
Mr Swinburne can do more than justice. Yet there are some critics and not a few
readers who cherish a grudge against him. They do not merely think that in the
later stages of his temptation he showed a certain obtuseness, and that, to spea
k pedantically, he acted with unjustifiable precipitance and violence; no one, I
suppose, denies that. But, even when they admit that he was not of a jealous te
mper, they consider that he was "easily jealous"; they seem to think that it was
inexcusable in him to feel any suspicion of his wife at all; and they blame him
for never suspecting Iago or asking him for evidence. I refer to this attitude
of mind chiefly in order to draw attention to certain points in the story. It co
mes partly from inattention (for Othello did suspect Iago and did ask him for ev
idence); partly from a misconstruction of the text which makes Othello appear je
alous long before he really is so; [Endnote 2] and partly from failure to realis
e certain essential facts. I will begin with these.
1. Othello, we have seen, was trustful, and thorough in his trust. He put entire
confidence in the honesty of Iago, who had not only been his companion in arms,
but, as he believed, had just proved his faithfulness in the matter of the marr
iage. This confidence was misplaced, and we happen to know it; but it was no sig
n of stupidity in Othello. For his opinion of Iago was the opinion of practicall
y everyone who knew him: and that opinion was that Iago was before all things "h
onest", his very faults being those of excess in honesty. This being so, even if
Othello had not been trustful and simple, it would have been quite unnatural in
him to be unmoved by the warnings of so honest a friend, warnings offered with
extreme reluctance and manifestly from a friend's sense of duty. [Endnote 3] Any
husband would have been troubled by them.
2. Iago does not bring these warnings to a husband who had lived with a wife for
months and years and knew her like his sister or his bosom-friend. Nor is there
any ground in Othello's character for supposing that, if he had been such a man
, he would have felt and acted as he does in the play. But he was newly married;
in the circumstances he cannot have known much of Desdemona before his marriage
; and further he was conscious of being under the spell of a feeling which can g
ive glory to the truth but can also give it to a dream.
3. This consciousness in any imaginative man is enough, in such circumstances, t
o destroy his confidence in his powers of perception. In Othello's case, after a
long and most artful preparation, there now comes, to reinforce its effect, the
suggestions that he is not an Italian, nor even a European; that he is totally
ignorant of the thoughts and the customary morality of Venetian women; [Endnote
4] that he had himself seen in Desdemona's deception of her father how perfect a
n actress she could be. As he listens in horror, for a moment at least the past
is revealed to him in a new and dreadful light, and the ground seems to sink und
er feet. These suggestions are followed by a tentative but hideous and humiliati
ng insinuation of what his honest and much-experienced friend fears may be the t
rue explanation of Desdemona's rejection of accepting suitors, and of her strang
e, and naturally temporary, preference for a black man. Here Iago goes too far.
He sees something in Othello's face that frightens him, and he breaks off. Nor d
oes this idea take any hold of Othello's mind. But it is not surprising that his
utter powerlessness to repel it on the ground of knowledge of his wife, or even
of that instinctive interpretation of character which is possible between perso
ns of the same race, [Endnote 5] should complete his misery, so that he feels he
can bear no more, and abruptly dismisses his friend (III iii 238).
Now I repeat that any man situated as Othello was would have been disturbed by I
ago's communications, and I add that many men would have been made wildly jealou
s. But up to this point, where Iago is dismissed, Othello, I must maintain, does
not show jealousy. His confidence is shaken, he is confused and deeply troubled
, he even feels horror; but he is not yet jealous in the proper sense of that wo
rd. In his soliloquy (III iii 258 ff.) the beginning of this passion may be trac
ed; but it is only after an interval of solitude, when he has had time to dwell
on the idea presented to him, and especially after statements of fact, not mere
general grounds of suspicion, are offered, that the passion lays hold of him. Ev
en then, however, and indeed to the very end, he is quite unlike the essentially
jealous man, quite unlike Leontes. No doubt the thought of another man's posses
sing the woman he loves is intolerable to him; no doubt the sense of insult and
the impulse of revenge are at times most violent; and these are the feelings of
jealousy proper. But these are not the chief or the deepest source of Othello's
suffering. It is the wreck of his faith and his love. It is the feeling,
If she be false, oh then Heaven mocks itself;
the feeling,
Iago, the pity of it, Iago!
the feeling,
But there where I have garner'd up my heart,
Where either I must live, or bear no life;
The fountain from the which my current runs,
Or else dries up -- to be discarded thence ...
You will find nothing like this in Leontes.
Up to this point, it appears to me, there is not a syllable to be said against O
thello. But the play is a tragedy, and from this point we may abandon the ungrat
eful and undramatic task of awarding praise and blame. When Othello, after a bri
ef interval, re-enters (III iii 330), we see at once that the poison has been at
work, and "burns like the mines of sulphur".
Look where he comes! Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owedst yesterday.
He is "on the rack", in an agony so unbearable that he cannot endure the sight o
f Iago. Anticipating the probability that Iago has spared him the whole truth, h
e feels that in the case his life is over and his "occupation gone" with all its
glories. But he has not abandoned hope. The bare possibility that his friend is
deliberately deceiving him -- though such a deception would be a thing so monst
rously wicked that he can scarcely conceive it credible -- is a kind of hope. He
furiously demands proof, ocular proof. And when he is compelled to see that he
is demanding an impossibility he still demands evidence. He forces it from the u
nwilling witness, and hears the maddening tale of Cassio's dream. It is enough.
And if it were not enough, has he not sometimes seen a handkerchief spotted with
strawberries in his wife's hand? Yes, it was his first gift to her.
I know not that; but such a handkerchief --
I am sure it was your wife's -- did I to-day
See Cassio wipe his beard with.
"If it be that," he answers -- but what need to test the fact? The "madness of r
evenge" is in his blood, and hesitation is a thing he never knew. He passes judg
ment, and controls himself only to make his sentence a solemn vow.
The Othello of the Fourth Act is Othello in his fall. His fall is never complete
, but he is much changed. Towards the close of the Temptation-scene he becomes a
t times most terrible, but his grandeur remains almost undiminished. Even in the
following scene (III iv), where he goes to test Desdemona in the matter of the
handkerchief, and receives a fatal confirmation of her guilt, our sympathy with
him is hardly touched by any feeling of humiliation. But in the Fourth Act "Chao
s has come". A slight interval of time may be admitted here. It is but slight; f
or it was necessary for Iago to hurry on, and terribly dangerous to leave a chan
ce for a meeting of Cassio with Othello; and his insight into Othello's nature t
aught him that his plan was to deliver blow on blow, and never to allow his vict
im to recover from the confusion of the first shock. Still there is a slight int
erval; and when Othello reappears we see at a glance that he is a changed man. H
e is physically exhausted, and his mind is dazed. He sees everything blurred thr
ough a mist of blood and tears. He has actually forgotten the incident of the ha
ndkerchief, and has to be reminded of it. When Iago, perceiving that he can now
risk almost any lie, tells him that Cassio has confessed his guilt, Othello, the
hero who has seemed to us only second to Coriolanus in physical power, trembles
all over; he mutters disjointed words; a blackness suddenly intervenes between
his eyes and the world; he takes it for the shuddering testimony of nature to th
e horror he has just heard, [Endnote 6] and he falls senseless to the ground. Wh
en he recovers it is to watch Cassio, as he imagines, laughing over his shame. I
t is an imposition so gross, and should have been one so perilous, that Iago wou
ld never have ventured it before. But he is safe now. The sight only adds to the
confusion of intellect the madness of rage; and a ravenous thirst for revenge,
contending with motions of infinite longing and regret, conquers them. The delay
till night-fall is torture to him. His self-control has wholly deserted him, an
d he strikes his wife in the presence of the Venetian envoy. He is so lost to al
l sense of reality that he never asks himself what will follow the deaths of Cas
sio and his wife. An ineradicable instinct of justice, rather than any last quiv
er of hope, leads him to question Emilia; but nothing could convince him now, an
d there follows the dreadful scene of accusation; and then, to allow us the reli
ef of burning hatred and burning tears, this interview of Desdemona with Iago, a
nd that last talk of hers with Emilia, and her last song.
But before the end there is again a change. The supposed death of Cassio (v I) s
atiates the thirst for vengeance. The Othello who enters the bed-chamber with th
e words,
It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul,
is not the man of the Fourth Act. The deed he is bound to do is no murder, but a
sacrifice. He is to save Desdemona from herself, not in hate but in honour; in
honour, and also in love. His anger has passed; a boundless sorrow has taken its
place; and
this sorrow's heavenly:
It strikes where it doth love.
Even when, at the sight of her apparent obduracy, and at the hearing of words wh
ich by a crowning fatality can only reconvince him of her guilt, these feelings
give way to others, it is to righteous indignation they give way, not to rage; a
nd, terribly painful as this scene is, there is almost nothing here to diminish
the admiration and love which heighten pity. And pity itself vanishes, and love
and admiration alone remain, in the majestic dignity and sovereign ascendancy of
the close. Chaos has come and gone; and the Othello of the Council-chamber and
the quay of Cyprus has returned, or a greater and nobler Othello still. As he sp
eaks those final words in which all the glory and agony of his life -- long ago
in India and Arabia and Aleppo, and afterwards in Venice, and now in Cyprus -- s
eem to pass before us, like the pictures that flash before the eyes of a drownin
g man, a triumphant scorn for the fetters of the flesh and the littleness of all
the lives that must survive him sweeps our grief away, and when he dies upon a
kiss the most painful of all tragedies leaves us for the moment free from pain,
and exulting in the power of "love and man's unconquerable mind".
Endnotes
Endnote 1
For the actor, then, to represent him as violently angry when he cashier
s Cassio is an utter mistake. [Return to text]
Endnote 2
I cannot deal fully with this point in the lecture. [Return to text]
Endnote 3
It is important to observe that, in his attempt to arrive at the facts a
bout Cassio's misdemeanour, Othello had just had an example of Iago's unwillingn
ess to tell the whole truth where it must injure a friend. No wonder he feels in
the Temptation-scene that "this honest creative doubtless Sees and knows more,
much more, than he unfolds". [Return to text]
Endnote 4
To represent that Venetian women do not regard adultery so seriously as
Othello does, and again that Othello would be wise to accept the situation like
an Italian husband, is one of Iago's most artful and most maddening devices. [
Return to text]
Endnote 5
If the reader has even chanced to see an African violently excited, he m
ay have been startled to observe how completely at a loss he was to interpret th
ose bodily expressions of passion which in a fellow-countryman he understands at
once, and in a European foreigner with somewhat less certainty. The effect of a
difference in blood in increasing Othello's bewilderment regarding his wife is
not sufficiently realised. The same effect has to be remembered in regard to Des
demona's mistakes in dealing with Othello in his anger. [Return to text]
Endnote 6
Cf. Winter's Tale, I ii 137 ff.:
Can thy dam? -- may't be? --
Affection! thy intention stabs the centre:
 Thou dost make possible things not so held,
Communicatest with dreams; -- how can this be?
With what's unreal thou coactive art,
And fellow'st nothing: then 'tis very credent
Thou may'st cojoin with something; and thou dost,
And that beyond commission, and I find it,
And that to the infection of my brains
And hardening of my brows. [Return to text]

richard ii
1)Introduction
In choosing to offer the pairing of Richard II and Hamlet, I am immediately awar
e of the considerable differences between the two plays. However, this pairing w
ill enable us to focus initially on an important interpretative issue in Shakesp
eare's style, nowhere more evident than in these two plays, the intimate link be
tween important issues of characterization and the styles of speech displayed by
particular characters. What I hope will emerge from these remarks is a greater
appreciation for the importance of Shakespeare's varied use of language, not onl
y to denote character but to evoke themes central to the interpretation of these
and other plays.
In both of these plays, there is an important dramatic conflict between characte
rs who use language in different ways, that is, who seek to understand and deal
with the world (including their role in it) by a characteristic use of words, so
that the antagonism between the members of each pair also expresses an importan
t conflict in the way human beings use language deal with the issues which confr
ont them.
We can characterize this central conflict in a number of ways. Most obviously, i
n both Richard II and in Hamlet, we witness the confrontations between two very
distinct characters. The first is one who has what we might call a strong "poeti
cal" streak (using the term very loosely), that is, whose response to experience
is characterized by a marked tendency to immediate verbalizing in highly imagin
ative language. The second is a hard-headed pragmatic Machiavellian, whose speak
ing style reflects his desire to use his public language as one more way to achi
eve certain very specific political goals. The first, as often as not, uses lang
uage to forestall any need for immediate action; the second sees language as an
essential part of a plan of action, that is, as a tool with which to manipulate
people.
Chatterers and Activists
In his famous book Pedagogy of the Oppressed (a text which should be required re
ading for all would-be teachers), the famous modern pedagogical philosopher Paul
o Freire distinguishes between two inauthentic uses of language.
As we attempt to analyze dialogue as a human phenomenon, we discover somethi
ng which is the essence of dialogue itself: the word. But the word is more than
just an instrument which makes dialogue possible; accordingly, we must seek its
constitutive elements. Within the word we find two dimensions, reflection and ac
tion, in such radical interaction that if one is sacrificed--even in part--the o
ther immediately suffers. . . .
An unauthentic word, one which is unable to transform reality, results when
dichotomy is imposed upon its constitutive elements. When a word is deprived of
its dimension of action, reflection automatically suffers as well; and the word
is changed into idle chatter, into verbalism, into an alienated and alienating "
blah." It becomes an empty word, one which cannot denounce the world, for denunc
iation is impossible without a commitment to transform, and there is no transfor
mation without action.
On the other hand, if action is emphasized exclusively, to the detriment of
reflection, the word is converted into activism. The latter--action for action's
sake--negates the true praxis and makes dialogue impossible. (75)
Freire's point is that significant human interaction requires dialogue, some sha
red interchange which involves a commitment to shared action. Such dialogue beco
mes impossible if the participants use language for personal purposes which unde
rcut a common bond of love and concern for the human community.
Now, Hamlet and Richard are, from the perspective of this initial analysis, both
chatterers, compulsive talkers who use language to protect themselves from acti
on. They would much rather talk about the world and about themselves in a ceasel
ess verbal reflection than address the world with sense of commitment to action
based on an understanding shared with others. Both of them live in a highly-char
ged political world and have clear responsibilities for action within it. They b
oth demonstrate an incapacity for an intelligent discharge of those responsibili
ties, because they would sooner comment on the world, reflect on their own situa
tion, and place the people around them in a rhetorically constructed image of th
eir own making rather than listen carefully, assess intelligently, and act on th
e basis of some understanding established through dialogue.
Operating against these two are Bolingbroke and Claudius, two accomplished Machi
avels. Both of these men are shrewd political operators who listen very carefull
y to others and use their language for the most part not for reflection but for
action. They say what the particular situation demands, framing their responses
in language immediately appropriate to the active demands of the situation in or
der to get their own way. It's characteristic of Bolingbroke, for example, that
he talks only when he has to and then he shapes what he has to say to suit the o
ccasion. He spends a great deal of time on stage listening and responding rather
than giving orders directly or forcing others to listen to him (an excellent ex
ample of this is 2.3). Much of the sense of power emanating from Bolingbroke com
es from this guarded silence and careful expression of what needs to be said (in
theatrical presentations, a silent person often generates a much greater sense
of power than a compulsive talker, just as a person sitting on stage typically e
xpresses more power than a person standing up).
[It's worth nothing, for example, how in Act 2 as Bolingbroke says very little b
ut spends much of his time listening, observing, and commenting, his power keeps
growing scene by scene; whereas, while Richard maintains a constant stream of t
alk, his power correspondingly diminishes]
Claudius, too, when we first see him in action (in 1.2) impresses us at once as
a very sophisticated public speaker, consolidating his power with words. His lon
g speech to the court touches on all the right political bases, involving the pe
ople there in his decision making, reminding them of their share in the decision
about the marriage to Gertrude, addressing particular people with courtesy and
flattery, discharging publicly the nation's business--it's a masterful performan
ce which, unlike the characteristic talk of Richard and Hamlet, does not call at
tention to himself but directs itself outwardly at those listening in such a way
as to earn their attention, respect, thanks, and compliance. It's made clear in
the play that Claudius, like Bolingbroke, is primarily a listener, who shapes h
is language in response to what others say, and the primary purpose of his langu
age is to move others in the direction he wants them to go. In this, he is exact
ly like Polonius, his chief executive.
In a sense, all four characters are actors, but there's a great difference in th
e scripts they follow. Richard and Hamlet are both constructing a play in which
they are the main characters (in a sense, the only characters). Their vision of
the world is preoccupied with their sense of themselves, and the language they u
se is in some ways deliberately designed to construct a situation in which they
do not have to listen to others and act among other human beings. Richard is imp
ervious to the urgent advice of his senior followers to act. He would sooner sit
down on the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings. Hamlet is not in
terested in listening to what Ophelia or his mother might have to say. He is int
erested only in talking to them (often very roughly), smothering them in his lan
guage so that he does not have to confront any pictures of the world other than
those of his own devising. When Hamlet and Richard are alone, they spend their t
ime in moody introspections centred on themselves.
To claim that Richard and Hamlet never listen invites important qualification. R
ichard is accused of listening too much to flatterers. But this point, of course
, reinforces what has already been said, because flatterers give Richard back th
e image of himself he is so busy projecting in his talk. In a sense, by listenin
g to flatterers (and, one senses, only to flatterers) he never has to hear any l
anguage except his own. Hamlet listens very attentively to his father's ghost, o
ver eager to act on every word he hears. This rapt attention to someone else is
so unusual in Hamlet that it suggests a significant clue to his character lies i
n the relationship with his father. Of course, here again, it's important to not
ice that the ghost talks in many respects in the same language as Hamlet himself
(in the characteristic imagery and verbal patterns), so in a sense he is giving
back to Hamlet what Hamlet wants to hear (a point which may indicate one reason
why Hamlet never pauses seriously to explore the credibility of the ghost, unti
l the idea of the play-within-the-play strikes him).
Claudius and Bolingbroke are also accomplished actors, but the script they are a
cting in is an improvised one. They are responding to events as they unfold, alt
ering their own dialogue to keep the action going in the way they want. They (pa
rticularly Bolingbroke) are more interested in letting others talk themselves in
to a position in which they expose themselves and become vulnerable. In the famo
us deposition scene in which Richard surrenders the crown, Bolingbroke exerts no
apparent compulsion (certainly not verbally): he just lets Richard talk. Richar
d's obsession with compulsive verbalizing, his desire to keep up the stream of d
ialogue which places himself at the centre of attention, leads him to, in effect
, give away his most valuable political asset, the crown. There a sense that he
will do anything to maintain a self-dramatizing role, and what better way of get
ting and holding attention than to surrender his authority? The only alternative
to that would be to carry out some active resistance. Bolingbroke lets him act
out that role. When Claudius wants to understand what Hamlet is up to, his natur
al response is to get Hamlet in a situation where he can listen to him, either f
rom behind the tapestry or through the agency of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
[Parenthetically, I might mention that I once had in my Shakespeare class as a s
tudent a senior college administrator who told me afterwards that studying Richa
rd II had taught him more about how to operate politically in a bureaucratic atm
osphere than anything else he had ever read. As a result of witnessing Bolingbro
ke's tactics, he shifted his style in committees and concentrated on listening a
nd responding rather than on taking the lead in seeking to persuade. He found th
is gave him much more useful power, since people often talked themselves into a
corner or revealed things about themselves which then made getting one's own way
much easier. As a tactic in getting people to do what one wants them to do, suc
h a process is far more effective. Those of you who are going to be teachers and
who are thus going to be spending a great deal of time sitting on committees mi
ght profit by thinking of this point, although Freire would insist that the bett
er option would be to learn to enter into true dialogue]
The Seduction of Chatter
When we read these two plays we have to be careful not to overreact to the langu
age Richard and Hamlet use. We need to see it always in the immediate political
and social context in which they both find themselves. The reason for this warni
ng is straightforward: Richard and Hamlet are both very seductive talkers. There
is, for example, a strongly poetic quality to Richard's language. He thinks in
images. Characteristically he likes to establish an image and expand upon it, le
tting his imagination play with how far he can extend that image to correspond w
ith his present mood, as he himself admits while sitting in his prison cell:
I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world;
And for because the world is populous,
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.
My brain I'll prove the female to my soul,
My soul the father, and these two beget
A generation of still-breeding thoughts;
And these same thoughts people this little world
In humours like the people of this world
For no thought is contented. (5.5.1-11)
The result is that Richard's language is often extraordinarily fertile with evoc
ative poetical images, and it's no accident that some of the most memorable poet
ry in this play comes directly from Richard's facility with language. There is c
learly a poetical sensitivity at work in his imagination. But we should not, for
that reason, fail to observe just how much Richard is using such poetical langu
age to protect himself from having to think about more complex and significant m
atters, like the political realities of the world around him or his own responsi
bilities (to subjects, friends, wife, and so on). We need to be alert to the ext
ent to which Richard is using his poetical inclinations to shield himself from t
he world and from his responsibilities for acting intelligently within it. His o
wn language in the above quotation reveals in the phrase "still-breeding thought
s" the crux of the matter. "Still" means constantly, without ceasing, and refers
us to Richard's habit of constantly generating poetical images. But "still-bree
ding" also implies still-born or dead, and reminds us that Richard's poetry, for
all the delight we might take in its quality, is infertile, for it never takes
him anywhere other than to more pictures or more detailed aspects of the same pi
cture.
This point we might reinforce by calling attention to the ways in which Richard'
s "poetical" nature always has a tendency to call attention to himself and often
to evoke a strong sense of self-pity. Richard is more concerned with expressing
his own self-dramatizing sense of himself as an injured party than in doing any
thing effective to meet his present circumstances. His many references to himsel
f as Jesus Christ (in 4.1 especially) are the most forceful indication of this t
endency. And there is no indication anywhere in the play that his narcissistic p
reoccupation with himself ever fractures enough for him to acknowledge his own c
omplicity in his destruction and (we need to note) the destruction of his follow
ers. He fails to learn from what has happened. By contrast, there's a strong sen
se that his constant talking is designed to protect him from just such an awaren
ess. There's an interesting example of this very near the end of the play:
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me,
For now hath time made me his numb'ring clock.
My thoughts are minutes, and with sighs they jar. . . . (5.549-51)
The opening clause suggests a potential moment of self-discovery, an admission o
f responsibility. But Richard denies himself that insight, for he immediately ta
kes the image of time and plays with it (for several lines more) in such a way a
s to emphasize his own inability to penetrate beneath the desire to play with la
nguage as a substitute for intelligent thinking.
The point is not that we should overlook Bolingbroke's "crime" and harsh treatme
nt of Richard, but rather that we need to have a full appreciation for how Richa
rd's language indicates one important source of the problem: he has no interest
in any dialogue with the world, in any intelligent listening to what other peopl
e (like Gaunt and the Duke of York) have to say. If the world does not give him
what he wants, he will verbalize away what the world is telling him. In that sen
se, Richard uses language always to deceive himself: so long as he is talking, h
e is, in a sense, at the centre of attention. And in order to remain at the cent
re of attention he must keep talking.
Here a brief comparison with Macbeth might be in order. For Macbeth, like Richar
d, repeatedly explores his own situation in poetic images. But Macbeth is always
unflinchingly honest in his assessment of the deteriorating situation. There is
not an ounce of self-pity nor any attempt to evade his own sense of the ironic
consequences of his own actions. Indeed, that is probably the most compelling ch
aracteristic of this tragic hero and lends a power to his decline and fall. By c
ontrast, Richard's inability to move beyond the cocoon of his own language sever
ely limits the tragic impact of his death. He become a pathetic figure, without
any profound tragic resonance.
Hamlet's language exercises the same potential seductiveness. We hear a great de
al at length from Hamlet in his soliloquies, in which he is much given to moody
speculations about the state of the world. These speeches are justly famous, but
we have to be careful to interpret them in the context of the play and not to s
et them up as independent pieces of Shakespearean "wisdom," thus turning Hamlet
into some brooding philosopher-prince too intellectually noble to take part in t
he dirty world of Elsinore politics (a common reaction of nineteenth century cri
tical responses to the play).
For Hamlet's soliloquies, in general, do not reveal a mature understanding of th
e nature of the world, some earned insight into higher or richer meaning. They a
re, by contrast, far more indicative of a restless dissatisfaction with the worl
d and with himself. The imagery there strongly evokes a desire to reduce the wor
ld to its lowest common denominator, seeing it as full of weeds, garbage, diseas
e, toil, and futility. There is a strongly suicidal impulse at work in some of h
is private utterances, combined with an very powerful and inescapable obsession
with the duplicity of women, his mother in particular. His language characterist
ically demonstrates a desire to rest on demeaning generalizations about the worl
d rather than on any sharply focused image which might lead him to decide anythi
ng.
What makes Hamlet in his soliloquies a good deal more complex and interesting th
an Richard is that Hamlet is aware of his tendency to verbalize, to substitute "
philosophical" speculation for precise thought which might lead to decisive acti
on. And this awareness really troubles him. He cannot understand himself, especi
ally in comparison to those people around him who do not seem to suffer from the
same debilitating condition (e.g., Fortinbras). He (or part of him) really woul
d like to act decisively. At the same time, his only response to what he has to
deal with and to what he is feeling is further verbalizing. It's symptomatic tha
t, while wrestling with his inability, he stalls by using the idea of the langua
ge of a play in order not to carry out any firm action, just as, once the play w
ithin the play is over and he has had all the confirmation he might need, he rat
ionalizes away with more words the clearest of all opportunities he has to carry
out the revenge.
In his dealings with others, Hamlet hides behind his language, adopting a very a
ggressive set of verbal roles (idiot, insulter, jokster) to keep them at bay wit
h verbal confusion and force them to listen to him and to protect himself from a
nything they might be trying to learn from him. This form of linguistic protecti
on is more important to him than listening to others or offering any form of gen
uine dialogue. These exchanges are often quite funny (although we might notice t
hat Hamlet's humour generally comes at someone else's expense), but they effecti
vely prevent any dialogue. And they indicate clearly Hamlet's preference for wor
ds over deeds. So long as he talks to people this way, he will not have to deal
with them in action.
And if he acts spontaneously, he at once starts talking to push away any awarene
ss of the significance of what he has done. Hence, he can kill Polonius and, cas
ually stepping over the body, lecture his mother on her moral character. For him
, the action is relatively unimportant; what really matters is what he has to sa
y to her. When he has to deal with the corpse at the end of the scene or in a co
nversation with Claudius, the dead Polonius serves as material for some casual v
erbal jokes.
It interesting in this regard that Hamlet obviously feels most linguistically at
ease with the players, those people whose lines don't need to be taken seriousl
y, because they are not real. His affection for them appears to be the most genu
inely warm feeling he expresses to anyone (unless we take the professions to Hor
atio as candidly meant, rather than as flattery to get Horatio to carry out an a
ction on his behalf). And he listens to them with a rapt attention he does not h
ave for real situations.
Because both Richard and Hamlet are so verbal and because their language is almo
st always intriguing we may tend to miss the extent to which their verbalizing l
ocks them into an immature emotional stance from which there is no escape. They
are both almost impervious to any criticism about their ways of using language (
although Hamlet criticizes himself, he is incapable of dealing with the issue),
and hence they both ultimately fail to act effectively. Both Richard and Hamlet,
we learn, are capable of courageous, impulsive action, but they have to be push
ed into it. Their characteristic approach to experience is to shield themselves
from the world by imposing a linguistic barrier between themselves and the reali
ties they face (for them, their language is the reality). Hence, they both fall
victim to a world that does not answer to one's self-pitying images of oneself a
s a victim or to one's morbid generalizations about the inherently unsatisfactor
y nature of all experience.
The Limitations of Activism
Claudius and Bolingbroke, however, also fail to achieve what they set out to acc
omplish. Supremely effective in the world of immediate practical action, tailori
ng their language to shape events in the short-term, they enjoy quick success in
a political world in which they can act very efficiently. They are both superbl
y practical judges of people, responding well to political situations as they ar
ise. This is particularly the case with Bolingbroke who, in a sense, improvises
his way to the crown. We are kept in the dark about his exact motives when he re
turns, but he assures his followers he is seeking only his inherited estates and
titles. But once the crown is dangled in front of him, he seizes the opportunit
y.
Bolingbroke's political success, as I mentioned above, depends a great deal on h
is ability to present a personality and a language suitable to the immediate occ
asion he has to deal with. He is so good at this, that his real personality rema
ins somewhat elusive. What is there to Bolingbroke, who is he, apart from the su
m total of political personalities he assumes to direct events the way he wants?
We don't see enough of him alone or at intimate moments to be able to respond.
We do not witness Claudius' action to obtain the crown and his queen. But we kno
w enough about the events to recognize that he, too, has taken advantage of an o
pportunity to get rid of Hamlet Senior by a duplicitous murder and has won the q
ueen, in part by persuading others that the marriage is a good idea. There is no
sense in the court that anyone other than Hamlet and perhaps Horatio, neither o
f whom have been in Elsinore during the events, objects to the marriage. So Clau
dius, like Bolingbroke enjoys short-term success.
Neither of them, however, has reflected upon the consequences of the tactics use
d to attain their immediate goals. And clearly they are both suffering, because,
in part, they lack a language to deal with the psychological problems brought a
bout by their manipulation of others and murder. Since neither Claudius nor Boli
ngbroke is the single most important character in the play, we don't get to see
their inner thoughts very much (otherwise they might take over the play), but we
do learn enough about them to recognize that they are having to deal with long-
term consequences of their political efficiency and are having difficulty doing
so.
By the end of Richard II and throughout the Henry IV plays Bolingbroke is suffer
ing from an increasing sense of guilt for what he has done. And when we see Clau
dius at prayer we recognize at once the inner suffering he is going through. In
fact, there's something deeply ironic about watching this master of words in the
political realm try to find the right words to earn God's repentance. He's inte
lligent enough to know that he cannot operate with God the way he does with huma
n beings (just as Macbeth is), but he's going to try anyway because that's the o
nly way he can think of to deal with a complex problem. Words have worked for hi
m on earth; they might just do the trick with God.
Love, Self-Love, and Self-hatred
I began this comparison (which may be starting to appear somewhat strained) with
a reference to Paolo Freire. By way of winding up this part of the lecture let
me return briefly to his remarks on language. Freire is concerned about public l
anguage because he stresses that only through authentic discourse can social jus
tice and the absence of domination be achieved. And for authentic discourse ther
e is one absolute requirement, love of other human beings.
Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the wo
rld and for men. The naming of the world, which is an act of creation and re-cre
ation, is not possible if it is not infused with love. Love is at the same time
the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself. It is thus necessarily the task
of responsible Subjects and cannot exist in a relation of domination. . . .If I
do not love the world--if I do not love life--if I do not love men--I cannot ent
er into dialogue.
On the other hand, dialogue cannot exist without humility. . . . Dialogue, a
s the encounter of men addressed to the common task of learning and acting, is b
roken if the parties (or one of them) lack humility. How can I dialogue if I alw
ays project ignorance onto others and never perceive my own? How can I dialogue
if I regard myself as a case apart from other men--mere "its" in whom I cannot r
ecognize other "I"s? (78)
If we wish to apply this analytical insight to the two plays we have been discus
sing, we might note that all four main characters suffer from some inability to
love. Richard clearly is so much in love with himself, with the image of himself
either as king or victim, that he has no contact at all with other people in an
y meaningful way, either with the subjects whom he is injuring or with his allie
s in the defense of the realm. Bolingbroke seems to have little sense of love fo
r his country or for those people he wishes to rule; his motive is clearly his o
wn advancement. We have very little idea why he decides to usurp Richard's thron
e. Bolingbroke can profess love for someone else (as he does for the Duke of Yor
k), but he has a clear political aim in view at such a moment. Whatever the reas
on for his decision to take the throne, the consequences in this play and the He
nry IV plays are clear. He fails to see that using language as a tool for effect
ive action in manipulating others, language used without any deep reflection on
how he is treating others (as "its," as objects), may well lead him to a conditi
on where there is no trust in language any more, no possibility for genuine huma
n interaction, only eternal suspicion and fear in a world where language has bec
ome suspect because there is no trust in his words, no love. The fact that he th
inks he has lost the love of his son indicates just how much he is paying for th
e way he has used words.
Part of Bolingbroke perhaps realizes this. At the very end of the play, Henry se
eks to transfer the blame for Richard's murder to Exton, who has carried out Hen
ry's wishes. But very pious public rhetoric of his closing lines, where he vows
to undertake a voyage to the Holy Land, "To wash this blood off from my guilty h
and," may be more than one more appropriate public statement. It may answer to H
enry's awareness of the moral consequences of what he has done. It's hard to tel
l. We learn from the Henry IV plays that Henry regards such a pilgrimage or crus
ade primarily as a useful political tactic to unite the factious nobility in a c
ommon cause, now that there is no firm unity in England, so it may also be the c
ase that Bolingbroke is so firmly anchored on language only as a useful politica
l tool that he cannot reflect fully on the consequences; all he can do (as he do
es in the later plays) is seek to keep killing the rebels, his former allies.
Hamlet is surrounded by people who apparently love him, particularly his mother
and Ophelia. But he is incapable of responding to them with anything genuinely a
ffectionate, that is, he is incapable of entering into a dialogue with them, bec
ause (to use Freire's terms) he is always projecting onto them all the imperfect
ions of the world without ever once coming to terms with his own by listening to
them. Why this should be so is part of the great interpretative mystery of Haml
et's character. But it is hard to escape the very strong sense which emanates fr
om Hamlet that he fundamentally hates life, or, to use Wilson-Knights's famous p
hrase, to miss the extent to which he has become "death infected." It's a curiou
s feature of the play (and very significant) that Hamlet is most verbally abusiv
e to these two women, almost as if he is fighting the desire to let love have it
s say.
Claudius has let his love of Gertrude and for the throne overrule any wider refl
ections about his fellow human beings. It may well be the case (as some producti
ons make clear) that Hamlet Senior is a particularly unpleasant person and that
Claudius and Gertrude really make a warm and loving couple, so that we have a fi
rm sense of how the murder has put in charge a much more compatible and attracti
ve couple. And Claudius's deep suffering in the prayer scene may earn him consid
erable sympathy. All that may be true. But Claudius's actions have clearly been
motivated above all by what he wants for himself. There is no sense that seizing
the crown of Denmark has come from any genuine love and regard for his fellow D
anes, a sense of their needs as opposed to his own.
Shakespeare does not make this theme explicit in either play, at least not in th
e sense of drawing an easy and clearly articulated moral. His presentation of th
e action forces us to consider the limitations and the self-defeating consequenc
es of the way these four characters use language to establish or to inhibit rela
tionships between themselves and the world. It's not that any of these four is a
totally unsympathetic person, for it's possible to find something in each of th
em to admire. But they all emerge as limited in some significant ways. They beco
me prisoners of their own understanding of the world as that expresses itself in
the language they use to cope, and they cannot move beyond that into some fulle
r and richer understanding of others and of themselves.
Of the four, Claudius appears to have the best grasp of what has happened to him
. His acknowledgment of what his life has brought him seems honest and heart fel
t enough. Bolingbroke clearly sees some connection between his deeds and his lat
er distress, but that issue is not explored in any great detail (otherwise the s
tory of Henry IV as a tragedy might well overwhelm the focus on Prince Hal in th
e Henry IV plays). But Richard and Hamlet, for all their remarkable command of l
anguage, remain unable fully to understand just how much their suffering and the
considerable suffering they bring to others result from their characteristic wa
ys of talking about the world (or if that is too simple, from something which pr
ompts that language).
We will be exploring some of these issue in connection with Hamlet in the later
lectures on that play. For now, however, I would like to turn to another aspect
of Richard II which is related to, although somewhat different from, the central
concern with Richard's language.
[Note for those interested in the Freire text, the references are to Paulo Freir
e, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, translated by Myra Bergman Ramos (NY: Seabury Pres
s, 1968)]
The Transformation of the Language of Politics
There is, however, more to the importance of language in Richard II than what it
reveals about the characters of Richard and Bolingbroke, for in the course of t
he play the language of politics itself and therefore the very nature of politic
s changes significantly.
At the very start of Richard II we witness Richard carrying out in full state th
e king's most important function, the administration of justice. At the end of t
he play, we witness Bolingbroke doing the same. But the two worlds are very diff
erent. The rebellion and usurpation have thus done more than simply replace one
king with another; they have also transformed the nature of political life. And
that emerges most clearly from the contrast in the language of the opening and c
losing court scenes.
The opening of Richard II confronts us with a recognizably medieval world. The p
roceedings are dominated by a shared group ceremony, in which the traditional fo
rmality of the occasion manifests itself in the formal dignity and ritualistic q
uality of the verse (emphasized by the frequent use of rhyme and repetitive phra
seology). The full nobility of England stand together, everyone in his own recog
nized place, with Richard where he belongs, at the centre of it all. There is a
formal exchange of charges and countercharges, a formulaic attempt to reconcile
the antagonists, and a firm decision about the trial by combat. All this is cond
ucted in the open, in a ceremony that everyone is familiar with. The very concep
t of a trial by combat rests on a shared faith in the notion of justice as an op
en and divinely guided business, one over which God's representative on earth, t
he king, presides to make sure that the ceremony is done properly.
Here we see Richard at his best. He seems fully up to the task of administering
royal justice in the traditional way. Of course, this is fully consistent with w
hat I have mentioned earlier, because this ceremony puts him at the centre of th
ings, keeps everyone's attention on him, and requires a language which insists o
n Richard's importance. We have no sense yet of what might be lurking in Richard
's heart, although the next scene immediately asks us the qualify our sense of R
ichard, since in 1.2 the Duchess of York charges Richard with the murder of whic
h Mowbry is being accused and John of Gaunt agrees. Thus, when we come to 1.3, t
he trial by combat, we do not see it with quite the same eyes as we did 1.2 (spl
itting the scene in this way with a short interlude which gives us additional in
formation, so that we have to assess Richard differently is a standard practice
in Shakespeare, a way of alerting us to the potential complexities lurking under
apparently ordered events).
However, what is noticeable about the trial by combat scene (1.3) is that everyo
ne is coordinated in this enterprise, and Richard's judgment, when it is deliver
ed, is agreed to, even though some people do not like the result. In other words
, at the opening of this play, the realm is apparently functioning as it should.
There is a shared order to society, and the language and ritualistic action emp
hasize the traditional and public nature of this communal order. This is possibl
e because everyone shares the same public language and the meanings are clear an
d out in the open. Disputants have submitted themselves to this in the name of j
ustice.
The point to stress here is that we are witnessing a society facing an important
crisis. We know that there are all sorts of ambiguous undercurrents, that all i
s not as it may seem on the surface. But the traditional ritual is holding the c
risis in check: the issue is being worked out according to an old ceremonial cus
tom. No swords are drawn, no one is in a hurry, and everyone shares a common und
erstanding of what is taking place. The rules, codified in the style of language
used, are being observed. Thus, by the end of the scene, when Richard has deliv
ered his judgment, justice has been done, and everyone moves off to go about the
ir business.
Near the end of the play, in 5.3, King Henry has to deal with Aumerle, son of th
e Duke and Duchess of York, who has joined a plot against Henry. This scene is,
by contrast with the first one, private, rushed, even improvised, without any of
the formal dignity of the opening of the play. Here we are again at a critical
moment, but there is no shared way of dealing with it. There is no formal dignit
y to the pleading (there's an air of desperation about it), no measured process,
no sense of ceremony. There's a frantic urgency to what is going on. And, of co
urse, nothing is resolved, because the shared order in the kingdom is broken, an
d now differences between parties will have to be adjudicated by civil war.
To underscore what has been lost, we witness one side of the family arguing agai
nst the other (an obvious sign of the disunity in the political world Bolingbrok
e's rebellion has created). The power to determine the issue now rests squarely
on the king's whim, for the traditional ceremonies have long since been abandone
d. Henry's verdict offers us perhaps some indication of how he feels about what
he has done: "I pardon him as God shall pardon me" (5.3.129). Immediately after
that pardon, Henry indicates that he has a civil war to deal with.
Of course, between these two extremes of the play, there is a middle scene (earl
y in Act 4) in which Aumerle and Fitzwater argue about the murder of Richard's u
ncle (the issue in the trial by combat at the start). This characters in this sc
ene try to proceed by the old rules (that is, by throwing down their challenges
and having them picked up), but it's clear the old order simply will not work he
re. There are so many gages being thrown down onto the stage and so much interna
l bickering going on that we can see quite clearly that the traditional form of
justice will no longer work. The formulaic quality of the old ritual does not wo
rk when the spirit of it is entirely absent. There is insufficient harmony or ag
reement and too much mutual hostility and suspicion to permit the rituals of jus
tice to work. All Bolingbroke can do in this situation is to postpone doing anyt
hing at all.
The sequence of these scenes suggests that we are invited to contemplate in Rich
ard II a world in which an old order is destroyed and the one which replaces it
by the end of the play is clearly different. Justice and cooperative dealing, an
d the language in which those used to be maintained, have disappeared, and we ar
e now in a world where the personal power of the king to hang onto what he can i
s going to be the central issue. This, of course, is a central theme of the Henr
y IV plays. And it's worth noting that in them public political language is some
thing to be treated with care. People no longer share the old rituals, and those
 seeking power may shift language about to suit their purposes. One of the most
important things Prince Hal has to learn in order to be an effective king is to
use language appropriately. He becomes the consummate efficient ruler, in part,
because he develops that talent to the fullest. And part of the great attraction
of the tavern scenes, in contrast to the court, is that in the tavern one can s
ay what one wants; one does not have to keep one's guard up at all times.
Shakespeare is not here necessarily endorsing the old order, celebrating it as s
omething we should return to, any more than he is justifying Bolingbroke's new p
olitical style. What the play is doing is forcing us to contemplate the nature o
f the change; it is pressuring us to come to a fuller understanding of some comp
lex social and political issues without resolving them for us.
Accompanying this transformation of justice (and closely related to it) is the t
ransformation in the understanding of politics. As Katharine Maus has usefully p
ointed out in her introduction to the play, Richard and Bolingbroke represent di
fferent ways of understanding royal authority. For Richard, royal authority come
s from above; it is endorsed by God as part of the natural order of things. He o
ught to be obeyed because he is the Lord's deputy in England. This view of royal
authority appears to be widely shared (or at least adhered to) at the opening o
f the play and is clearly at work in the difficulties York experiences in sortin
g out his allegiance and in the objections of Carlisle to Bolingbroke's ascendin
g the throne.
This vision of order quite clearly depends for its efficacy on the king's virtue
. That is, as the Lord's deputy in England, the king has the responsibility to a
ct virtuously in using the power he receives from above. Unless he observes this
principle, then justice in the community will be compromised (as it is in this
play when Richard airily dismisses the objections of John of Gaunt and the Duke
of York). There's a strong sense in this play that, given the lack of virtue in
the king, the traditional order which depends upon that virtue is unjust.
Bolingbroke's conception of politics rests, not on virtue, but on power (that at
titude makes him clearly a Machiavel). For him royal authority comes from below,
from the following one can gather up among the people and the more powerful nob
les. We learn early in the play about how Bolingbroke, on his way into exile, co
urts the common people (suggesting that his ambitions for the crown may have sta
rted very early on), and we see time and again how he wins over people, not by a
ppeals to God or any abstract system of justice, but to the self-interest of tho
se around him.
By the end of the play, Bolingbroke's vision of politics as power from below has
triumphed over Richard's sense of politics as a part of God's natural order, bu
t the triumph is a short-term victory, and the story is not finished. The remain
der of the second history cycle will explore the key question which Bolingbroke'
s defeat of Richard poses: If power from below is the operative principle in the
new politics, then how can we ever attain lasting stability? How do we prevent
politics from becoming just a succession of power grabs similar to Bolingbroke's
?
[Parenthetically, it might be worth noting that such a question was a very impor
tant issue early in the 17th century, and it gave rise in mid-century to one of
the very greatest works of modern political philosophy, Thomas Hobbes's Leviatha
n, a book which in many ways establishes the basis for the modern state. That te
xt takes the reality of power very seriously, dismisses the notion that virtue i
n the ruler will ever be sufficient to ensure justice in the community, and sets
down the key principle that a clear and equal system of laws enacted and backed
up by a strong central government must be the basis of the modern state]
The Betrayal of Order
What has led to the destruction of the old order? The most obvious reason is Ric
hard's failure to respect that structure which it is his major responsibility to
uphold. Nothing more clearly indicates Richard's failure to understand the lang
uage of justice than the casual way he dispenses with the Duke of York's advice
not to confiscate Bolingbroke's property once John of Gaunt dies. The crux of th
e issue is summed up in York's lines:
Take Hereford's rights away, and take from Time
His charters and his customary rights:
Let not tomorrow then ensue today;
Be not thyself, for how art thou a king
But by fair sequence and succession?
If Richard violates traditional ceremonies, meanings, the language of the law, t
hen he strikes at the very order which upholds his authority, which depends, abo
ve all else, on a shared understanding of and respect for the meaning of things.
Bolingbroke's very name and title, the Duke of Hereford, become meaningless if
the position and property that the word Hereford stands for can be arbitrarily t
aken away upon a whim of the king.
Richard does not bear the entire responsibility, however. For Bolingbroke clearl
y takes advantage of the social and moral uncertainty created by Richard's polit
ical actions. We have no way of knowing exactly when and what Bolingbroke planne
d, but there are enough hints of his political actions before the rebellion to s
uggest that he has had some early aspirations to seek power. And he doesn't have
to take the throne or kill Richard. To that extent Bolingbroke also contributes
to the change.
But, and this is the important point, without the fracture of the old way, peopl
e like Bolingbroke would not be successful. Richard creates the climate which fr
actures the unity on which his authority and power depend, leaving people, like
the Duke of York, confused. In such a climate, shrewd political operators like B
olingbroke can make their move and be successful, because people have lost their
shared sense for the meanings of things. Words like allegiance, trust, and loya
lty lose their public definitions, when each person operates with his own sense
of the terms. And in such a world, it may well be the case (as we shall see in t
he Henry IV plays) that Machiavels like Bolingbroke are necessary to maintain an
y form of civil peace in a nation state. In that sense, a knowledge of and skill
in the use of Machiavellian tactics is a necessary component in a king's charac
ter.
The effect of Richard's actions should remind us of the lines from Ulysses's spe
ech on degree:
O when degree is shaked,
Which is the ladder to all high designs,
The enterprise is sick. How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogenity and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And hark what discord follows. Each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy. The bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
And make a sop of all this solid globe;
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead.
Because Richard violates traditional degree, he creates a moral chaos, a politic
al situation in which it is impossible to obtain a clear bearing and thus politi
cal questions become inevitably matters of power, and resolving political issues
peacefully (as in the opening of the play) becomes impossible.
The clearest evidence of this is the Duke of York, who bears a divided allegianc
e. He is Bolingbroke's uncle, the brother of John of Gaunt, and also Richard's c
hief political officer in England. In the altered circumstances, he simply doesn
't know what he ought to do. And his moral paralysis (which Bolingbroke very ski
llfully exploits, first, to neutralize his power and, second, to co-opt his serv
ices) is an inevitable outcome of a fractured system of order, in which the pers
on in charge of maintaining that order and the chief symbol of its communal valu
e disregards his own responsibility. (Incidentally, that scene in which Bolingbr
oke returns as a rebel and confronts York [2.3] is the best example of Bolingbro
ke's extraordinary capability to use language to manipulate people for short-ter
m political goals; it repays the closest analysis).
This issue emerges as one of the major themes of the Second History Cycle, the q
uestion of the legitimacy of a rebellion against a legal but unjust authority. W
e will be looking at this point more closely in our discussion of Henry IV. But
the issue is clearly established in Richard II. Its characteristic of Shakespear
e that neither here nor anywhere else does he give us an easy answer to the prob
lem: in fact, the function of the play(s) is rather to make us realize just how
complex such an issue is.
richard iii
1)o read, one immediately after the other, a play from Shakespeare's earliest wo
rk and a play from his mature tragic period (e.g., Richard III and Macbeth) is t
o become aware of an astonishing development in the quality of Shakespeare's dra
matic poetry. Paying some attention to a few fairly obvious features of this dev
elopment not only gives one a finer appreciation for the quality of Shakespeare'
s best work but also can serve as a very useful educational exercise in the crit
icism of poetry generally.
Initial Observations on Dramatic Poetry
The phrase Dramatic Poetry or Poetic Drama very simply refers to poetic language
spoken aloud by characters in a drama or, in the case of individual poems, poet
ic language which suggests a strongly dramatic context (e.g., poetry directed to
a particular listener in a specific setting, as in dramatic monologues). This d
efinition is very loose, but for our purposes, what is particularly important is
that Shakespeare's dramatic language is largely poetry, and thus a full appreci
ation for what matters in any particular play needs to take into account the poe
tic quality of the spoken language.
Traditional dramatic poetry differs from dramatic prose mainly in the formal con
struction of the poetic utterance, which is organized on the basis of a repetiti
ve rhythmic structure for each line. Until this century (with the development of
free verse), that regularly repeating rhythmic structure clearly differentiated
virtually all poetry from prose. In addition, poetic language often tends to ma
ke much more frequent use of figures of speech (similes, metaphors, and images)
and a range of special linguistic devices, most importantly, rhyme, alliteration
, and specific patterns in the arrangements of words. Dramatic poetry, in other
words, gives us spoken language which departs considerably from naturalistic spe
ech patterns, mainly because the poetry is more tightly and formally organized (
i.e., patterned).
Interpreting plays written in dramatic poetry thus requires the interpreter to t
ake into account various features of poetic language in order to understand full
y the meaning of any particular utterance. It is not enough simply to grasp the
literal denoted meaning of what a particular character says. One needs also to a
ttend carefully to the ways in which the various poetic qualities of the languag
e evoke an emotional understanding in the listener of the utterance. This point
is crucial. With many characters, what matters is not so much the literal meanin
g of what they say (or not just that), but the patterns in the language they use
to express their thoughts. That language indicates to us their emotional intell
igence, the particular nature of their feelings about what they are saying, the
sense of values uppermost in their minds. Language, in other words, does not jus
t reveal factual information; it also communicates to us a sense of the emotiona
l attitude and intelligence of the speaker. This point is no less true of prose
than poetry, but responding to this emotional quality in poetic speech generally
is more challenging than doing the same with prose speech.
In some cases, this emotional factor may be decisive in the evaluation of a part
icular character. For example, to evaluate Hamlet's character intelligently, we
need to attend, not just to what he literally says about his mother's remarriage
, but to the way in which he expresses himself. In other words, we have to inter
pret his poetic utterances to explore the emotional intelligence at work in the
character (and we need to account for the fact that his speech poetic patterns a
re, in some respects, very like those of his father).
One way of emphasizing this matter is to point out that, in examining dramatic s
peech, we should not fall into the easy habit of separating style and substance,
talking first about what someone says and then about how the character expresse
s herself. The reason for this is the old principle that style is part of the su
bstance. The way a character expresses her opinions is as much a part of the sub
stance of what she is saying as is the information conveyed. To expresses that i
nformation in a different style is to say something different. Hence we need to
remain alert to what the different styles of utterance reveal about the people a
cting out the drama.
Such interpretation is not always easy, and most new readers of Shakespeare requ
ire considerable practice before they are able to speak meaningfully about the p
oetic qualities of the text. However, no study of Shakespeare would be adequate
without some attempt to introduce students to some ways of dealing with the basi
c medium of the plays, Shakespeare's poetic language.
Blank Verse
The most obvious poetic feature of Shakespeare's plays is the regularly repeatin
g rhythmic arrangement of lines. The standard line contains ten syllables, five
of which are stressed (i.e., emphasized) and five unstressed (i.e., not emphasiz
ed). The lines normally do not rhyme with those before or after (although, as we
shall see, there are exceptions).
In the most regular form of Shakespeare's verse, the ten syllables are arranged
so that every second one is stressed (i.e., the second, fourth, sixth, eighth, a
nd tenth syllables are stressed), and the others are unstressed. Such a line is
called an iambic pentameter (the iamb is a pair of syllables in which the first
is unstressed and the second is stressed; the pentameter refers to the fact that
there are five such iambs in the line of blank verse). This basic line (the unr
hymed iambic pentameter) is called blank verse, and it is the standard form for
an enormous amount of English poetry, from well before Shakespeare until very mo
dern times (when there was a deliberate attempt to break what some perceived as
the tyranny of blank verse in English poetic styles). The iambic pentameter is p
articularly suitable for English dramatic verse because normally spoken English
often falls into an iambic pattern.
Here is an example from a pre-Shakespearean play of a series of lines, each of w
hich is a perfect iambic pentameter. If you read this aloud, you will notice tha
t the stress falls always on the even numbered syllables (underlined in the foll
owing lines).
Your lasting age shall be their longer stay,
For cares of kings, that rule as you have ruled,
For public health and not for private joy,
Do waste man's life, and hasten crooked age,
With furrowed face and with enfeebled limbs,
To draw on creeping Death a swifter pace. (Gorboduc)
The effect of such regular rhythm is to lend a certain formality to the utteranc
e (in comparison with normal prose). The cadence of the lines is governed by a r
egularly repeating beat, and the punctuation (as in the above passage) can tend
to encourage regular pauses (e.g., at the ends of lines).
[Parenthetically, one should observe that scanning blank verse, that is, indicat
ing the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables (and observing the stresses
in reciting the lines) is partly a subjective matter. One can really emphasize
the regularity by stressing every alternate syllable, even when that violates ho
w one would normally pronounce the words. At the other extreme, one can pronounc
e the words as one normally would (given the dramatic context) and, if necessary
, violate the regular rhythm, hence sacrificing some of the formal poetic cadenc
e. At different times in the history of producing Shakespeare, these two differe
nt styles of speaking blank verse have been predominant. In the past fifty years
(at least) the prevailing tendency has been the second of the two options outli
ned above, that is, letting the accent fall where it sounds most natural. In the
above passage from Gorboduc, this is not a problem, because in each line the ac
cent falls on the second syllable quite naturally]
The formality of blank verse in contrast to regular prose can be a significant f
eature in some of Shakespeare's plays, nowhere more so than in Henry IV, Part 1,
where the contrast between the controlled political world of the court and the
free-wheeling fun of the tavern is brought out repeatedly by the sudden change i
n language from formal poetry to colloquial prose. Part of the sense of anarchic
freedom we sense in the tavern comes from the unfettered use of colloquial lang
uage. And Rosalind's decided preference for prose in As You Like It is an import
ant indication of her attitude to love in contrast to the variously "poetic" sty
les of love adopted by those around her.
This formality can be considerably heightened by introducing a regular rhyme sch
eme so that the blank verse becomes rhyming iambic pentameter couplets or triple
ts:
My life thou shalt command, but not my shame.
The one my duty owes, but my fair name,
Despite of death that lives upon my grave,
To dark dishonour's use thou shalt not have.
I am disgraced, impeached and baffled here,
Pierced to the soul with slander's venomed spear. . . . (Richard II)
Shakespeare does not make frequent use of rhyming couplets, but when they do occ
ur, the effect, as in this scene from Richard II, is generally to heighten the f
ormality of the speech and thus to bring out more the ceremonious and ritualisti
c nature of the scene (an important point in the opening of Richard II, as we sh
all see in our discussions of that play). This is particularly the case when the
lines have punctuation (i.e., pauses) at the end, as in the above selection, so
that the pause forces one to dwell upon the emphatic and regular rhyme (more ab
out this later). The effect of such regular rhythm, strong rhyme, and end punctu
ation is to bring out emphatically the regular cadence in the lines (and in the
above passage the astute reader will also notice how the alliteration contribute
s to that same effect).
There are moments in Richard III where Shakespeare quite deliberately draws upon
this formal quality of regular rhyming iambic pentameter to create a moment of
high ritual:
Children: Ah, for our father, for our dear Lord Clarence!
Duchess of York: Alas, for both, both mine, Edward and Clarence!
Queen Elizabeth: What stay had I but Edward, and he's gone?
Children: What stay had we but Clarence, and he's gone?
Duchess of York: What stays had I but they, and they are gone?
Queen Elizabeth: Was never widow had so dear a loss!
Children: Were never orphans had so dear a loss!
Duchess of York: Was never mother had so dear a loss! (2.2.72-79)
Here's a similar example from later in the play:
Queen Margaret: I had an Edward, till a Richard killed him;
I had a husband, till a Richard killed him.
Thou hadst an Edward, till a Richard killed him;
Thou hadst a Richard, till a Richard killed him.
Duchess of York: I had a Richard too, and thou didst kill him;
I had a Rutland too, and thou holpst kill him.
Queen Margaret: Thou hadst a Clarence too, and Richard killed him. (4.4.40-4
6)
This shift to a suddenly much more formal pattern (virtually a group chant) seem
s deliberately designed to enhance the role of the grieving women and children a
s a ceremonial and ritualistic chorus which places the actions of this play into
the context of the entire sequence of family killing depicted in the First Hist
ory Cycle and thus to remind us of the long-term vision of history central to th
e tetralogy. I'm not sure how effective this technique is (and the lines are oft
en omitted in productions), but the shift in the pattern of the blank verse seem
s to have that choral intention.
Now, blank verse as formally regular as the selection from Gorboduc or Richard I
II above obviously can become monotonously regular and thus emotionally inert. H
ence, a great deal of the challenge of dramatic blank verse is varying the basic
rhythm in significant ways, so that the pattern of stressed and unstressed syll
ables serves to express appropriate states of feeling in a more vital and intere
sting way. In other words, the mere presence of blank verse does not convey arti
stic merit upon dramatic poetry; the form has to be used skillfully and flexibly
, often in unexpected ways, so that the full poetic effects of patterned speech
can be realized. It is important to remember that blank verse, like any artistic
convention, needs to be put to significant use and not simply employed in a pre
dictable and boring way.
One common experience in moving directly from Richard III to Macbeth should be a
sense of how much better the blank verse sounds in the latter play. For a great
deal of the blank verse in Richard III is very conventionally written, without
much rhythmic variety or interest. Many (perhaps most) of the speeches sound ver
y much the same, even at times of heightened emotions, and it is far less easy i
n this play, as in later works, to recognize a particular speech pattern as belo
nging to a particular character (other than Richard himself, whose character see
ms to have inspired Shakespeare to invest his lines with a particular energy). A
s we shall see in a moment, this point is not simply a matter of rhythm alone, f
or other important factors are involved, but the remarkable shift in the poetic
quality of the two plays indicates, among other things, Shakespeare's developmen
t in his use of blank verse.
One way to notice this as you read is to think about how overwritten a great dea
l of Richard III is. There are many scenes which prompt one to reach for the edi
tor's pencil (none more so than the excessively long and inconclusive attempt of
Richard to win Elizabeth as his wife in 4.4). And productions of the play routi
nely excise large portions of text as unnecessary. With Macbeth, on the other ha
nd, it is very difficult to imagine removing anything from the poetry.
One should notice, too, how flexible the blank verse has become in Macbeth. Shak
espeare has clearly learned not to be imprisoned by the demands of the iambic pe
ntameter but to use it to evoke the mood appropriate to a particular moment, oft
en deliberately violating the regular pattern:
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
A cursory comparison of the rhythms of this speech with those from Gorboduc or a
lmost any passage from Richard III provides a fine example of how, in Shakespear
e's hands, the formal patterning of blank verse becomes something much more than
simply a standard convention for patterning poetical language.
The Importance of Punctuation
Shakespeare's text is an acting script, and the punctuation is there primarily a
s an aid to speaking the lines. If you are in the habit, as you should be, of tr
ying to read the verse aloud from time to time, it is really important that you
respect the punctuation (and that means, among other things, that you do not pro
vide any of your own where there is none, particularly at the ends of lines).
The major purposes of punctuation in Shakespeare's verse are to control the rate
at which the speaker moves through the lines and to enhance the rhythm by forci
ng pauses (long or short) at particular words. The punctuation thus helps to set
what I like to call the momentum of the verse, the accumulating energy which a
sentence may or may not develop, depending upon how the pauses control the speak
ing rate. And by controlling the emphasis on certain words or patterns of words,
the punctuation helps to establish sound patterns and emotional reverberations
which are essential to understanding the speaker's feelings.
Here's a very obvious point, but one worth paying attention to. A punctuation ma
rk which forces a major pause (i.e., a full stop or a semi-colon) very frequentl
y (e.g., at the end of every line or every other line) will effectively prevent
the momentum of the verse from gathering energy. The emotional power of the utte
rance will be kept firmly under control with a standard stop/start rhythm. This
is an important feature of much eighteenth-century verse (the heroic couplet sty
le, very frequent in Alexander Pope's poetry), where dispensing with the excessi
vely emotional power of poetry is an important artistic principle. On the other
hand, a punctuation which allows the sentence to uncoil over many lines can rele
ase certain energy which accumulates as the sentence progresses (a very common f
eature of Milton's and Wordsworth's best poetry).
Let us consider some particular examples. Here's a case in which a heavy punctua
tion, combined with certain patterns of words expressing strong feelings, can cr
eate a sense of extremely intense emotion:
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
 Is lust in action, and till action, lust
Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust. . . . (Sonnet 129)
The power of the feelings expressed in the third and fourth lines here comes, no
t simply from the meaning and sound of the words (important as those are), but a
lso from the way in which the punctuation forces the reader to slow down and dwe
ll on each one individually. But there is no complete pause, and so one has to k
eep moving (in fact the first twelve lines of this sonnet form a single unrollin
g sentence). To read these lines out loud, paying attention to the strong rhythm
s and the punctuation, is to get a sense of the powerful self-hatred which the s
peaker of the poem is expressing about his own desires. What matters here is not
the translated meaning ("Lust is a bad thing") but the range of emotional respo
nses to his own lust which the speaker's patterning of the language evokes.
Here's another example of how the punctuation, in combination with the sentence
structure, helps to create a very particular and powerful effect:
Then everything includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat up himself. (Troilus and Cressida 1.3)
Here the single sentence is quite frequently but lightly punctuated in a way tha
t emphasizes the repetition (power,/Power . . . will, will . . .appetite;/ And a
ppetite), so that the feeling of a slowly developing but inexorably powerful pro
cess builds up. Here again, the denoted meaning of the passage is simple enough
("The quest for power leads to self-destruction"), but the quality of the uttera
nce comes from the way the structure of the lines brings with it an emotional se
nse of irresistible momentum, coming to rest only on the key point, "eat up hims
elf." Notice here how the rhythm (especially that established by the repetition
of words) is emphasized by the punctuation.
Learning to read with a careful attention to the combined effects of the rhythm
(especially the variations in the rhythm) and the punctuation, especially as the
se contribute to the characteristic momentum of a speech takes a good deal of pr
actice. And we do not expect all students to be experts. But it is important tha
t one begins to get a sense of how the formal arrangement of words in dramatic p
oetry contributes to an understanding of its emotional content. That point becom
es increasingly important, as Shakespeare masters the medium and develops it to
its fullest potential, because patterns of speech become indicators of emotional
qualities in the character (a key point in Richard II and many other plays).
To repeat a point made earlier, one can quickly sense that much of the dramatic
verse in Richard III is fairly conventional and uninspired. With the exceptions
of the speeches of Richard himself and some other instances (like Clarence's dre
am and the seduction of Lady Anne), there is nothing in this play to suggest the
sort of quality we witness in Macbeth. More about this later.
A Note on Shakespeare's Imagery
The same point stressed above, about the astonishing improvement in the quality
of the verse as one moves from Richard III to Macbeth, applies also to the image
ry and the use of figures of speech (similes and metaphors). These, of course, a
re a crucial element in all poetry, since pictures and comparisons are essential
in any communication which seeks to illuminate a state of feeling. The comparis
ons people use to express how they feel about themselves or other people reveal
important things about their own sensibilities, emotional states, and intelligen
ce. Hence, interpreting dramatic verse requires some attention to imagery and fi
gures of speech.
Now, images and figures of speech, like blank verse rhythms, can be used convent
ionally and predictably or intelligently and with original significance. And, as
a general observation, we can note that in his early plays Shakespeare relies v
ery heavily on imagery and comparisons which are very conventional, that is, the
y are part of the stock in trade of being a poet and there is nothing particular
ly remarkable about them (as in much conventional popular song writing today).
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York;
And all the clouds that loured upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,
Our bruisèd arms hung up for monuments,
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front,
And now--instead of mounting barbèd steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries--
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasings of a lute.
For all the interesting poetic quality in the language here, there is nothing ve
ry remarkable about the imagery, the opening comparison of the son of York to th
e arrival of the summer sun or the personification of war capering about to the
sound of a lute. The images are familiar and expressed expansively, that is, the
re is nothing compressed or surprising about them. They are developed over a few
lines each and are easy enough to follow. Compare these images with the followi
ng:
Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,
Till thou applaud the deed.--Come seeling night,
Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day,
And with thy bloody and invisible hand
Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
Which keeps me pale. Light thickens, and the crow
Makes wing to th' rooky wood.
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
Whiles night's black agents to their preys do rouse.
The first thing one notices about the imagery here is the compression. There is
nothing expansive or loose about the image of night as a monster which blinds th
e light of the world so that evil may initiate its destructive course of mutilat
ion. And the extraordinarily compressed metaphor in the phrase "Light thickens,"
together with the vision of the "good things of day" slowly falling asleep as t
he agents of evil set about their work, is anything but conventional or unexpect
ed or easy to pass by. The emotional pressure of Macbeth's fully conscious commi
tment to evil is here evoked unforgettably. This is a single example, and the co
mparison is perhaps not entirely fair, but the contrast between the imagery in t
he two passages is stark.
Following the development of Shakespeare's use of imagery and figures of speech
is a complex and very detailed business. But there are some general trends worth
remarking upon. In his very early style, Shakespeare, as one might expect from
a poet still learning his craft, relies heavily on the conventions which he inhe
rits (and which his listeners are used to). There are many classical references,
the majority of them taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses or from handbooks advising
poets of appropriate comparisons (as sly as Ulysses, as talkative as Nestor, as
 tearful as Niobe, as beautiful as Helen of Troy, and so on). Often there is a s
ense that they have been included merely to display the poet's ability to write
the same sorts of metaphors as his colleagues. There is often little sense of em
otional pressure or compression behind the imagery.
This style quickly matures into something far more interesting, so that, by the
time we read, say, Richard II, the importance of particular images and their emo
tional impact is becoming much more important. When we read Macbeth or the fines
t poems in the sequence of sonnets, we see, among other things, the culmination
of Shakespeare's ability to communicate emotions with extraordinary power in app
arently simple language. Gone is the reliance on relatively stale inherited conv
entions of imagery and metaphor. In their place appears a greater proportion of
images from nature but present in newly evocative ways. Many of the images may b
e drawn from common traditional sources, but the treatment of them (as is that e
xample from Macbeth) is startlingly original and evocative.
The most distinctive pattern of images in Richard III concerns the various anima
ls with which Richard is associated by his enemies. For the most part these are
relatively unsubtle and repetitive and make more or less the same point, that Ri
chard is a destructive beast lacking essential human qualities. There is very li
ttle of the later complexity we find in Shakespeare's finest style. Notice the t
wo examples below, which both express the same general sense in the hero of the
destructive futility of his actions:
Richard: I must be married to my brother's daughter,
Or else my kingdom stands on brittle glass.
Murder her brothers, and then marry her?
Uncertain way of gain, but I am in
So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin. (Richard III 4.2.62-66)
Macbeth: I am in blood
Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er. (Macbeth 3.4.135-7)
The image in the second passage, in which Macbeth envisions himself wading throu
gh a river of blood so far that he might as well keep going as stop and return c
onfronts us with a much more complex and disturbing emotional sense than Richard
's similar but unevocative picture of himself so far in blood that the sins will
prompt more sins. Notice, too, the economy of the language in the Macbeth quota
tion, two and a half lines summoning up a complex and unforgettable image of Mac
beth pushing himself through the river of his own murders. Macbeth's sense of fr
ustration and boredom with what his commitment to evil has turned his life into
is here made emotionally explicit.
As I have mentioned before, interpreting the quality of images and metaphors is
not always easy, and it tends to require considerable practice, so that one can
distinguish more readily the conventional image from the more effective figures
of speech. But it is important to start to pay attention to such figures of spee
ch, especially when they reveal a pattern in the utterances of a particular char
acter or even in an entire play. In Shakespeare's maturing and mature style, par
ticular characters often have favorite patterns of imagery, and understanding th
eir characters fully requires some attention to these patterns (e.g., Richard II
's "conceited" style, Hamlet's constant use of images of disease and death, Othe
llo's love of lofty poetical language, Hotspur's "blood and honour" rhetoric, an
d so on).
Shakespeare's Poetic Vocabulary
However, the single most remarkable feature about Shakespeare's poetic language
is his extraordinary vocabulary, his choice of particular words to convey partic
ular emotional attitudes. Earlier I have had occasion to note that Shakespeare's
working vocabulary is enormous (about 25,000 words, more than twice as many as
his nearest rival, John Milton). More important than that, however, is the way i
n which the particular words he chooses evoke, through their sound and their mea
ning, very specific and often complex associations.
One feature, for example, which makes Richard far more interesting than any othe
r character in Richard III (a characteristic which strongly suggests that Shakes
peare's imagination was fired up by this character) is the energy in his languag
e. Much of the poetry Richard speaks may have relatively conventional imagery, b
ut his vocabulary has a robust energy which makes the other characters sound fla
t by comparison.
In the opening speech of the play (to which I have already referred), the imager
y may be relatively conventional, but what commands our attention immediately is
Richard's vocabulary, full of emotional energy in his language: "capers nimbly,
" "To strut before a wanton, ambling nymph," "Cheated of feature by dissembling
nature,/ Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time/ Into this breathing world sc
arce half made up--" and so on. Throughout the play (with some exceptions), Rich
ard sustains this quality in his language, in a way that sets him apart from the
other characters.
This feature of the play is particularly obvious in a comparison between Richmon
d's address to his soldiers before the final battle and Richard's speech in the
next scene:
Richmond: Then if you fight against God's enemy,
God will, in justice ward you as his soldiers.
If you do sweat to put a tyrant down,
You sleep in peace, the tyrant being slain.
If you do fight against your country's foes,
Your country's foison pays your pains the hire.
If you do fight in safeguard of your wives,
Your wives shall welcome home the conquerors.
If you do free your children from the sword,
Your children's children quites it in your age. (5.5.207-216)
Richard: Let's whip these stragglers o'er the seas again,
Lash hence these overweening rags of France,
These famished beggars, weary of their lives,
Who--but for dreaming on this fond exploit--
For want of means, poor rats, had hanged themselves.
If we be conquered, let men conquer us,
And not these bastard Bretons, whom our fathers
Have in their own land beaten, bobbed, and thumped,
And in record left them the heirs of shame. (5.7.57-65)
No one would pretend that Richard's speech here is truly moving poetry, but it h
as an energy characteristic of Richard, and that energy comes very largely from
the force of his vocabulary, especially verbs like "whip," "lash," "beaten, bobb
ed, and thumped," all short, common words with sounds which enhance the energy i
n the lines. The same point can be made about words like "rags," " rats," "basta
rd Bretons." Notice, too, the way the punctuation lets the momentum of Richard's
language gather strength (as does the rhythm)--especially in the last four line
s.
Richmond's speech, by contrast, seems deflated, a limp necessary gesture. The ve
rse is regular, the tone unvaryingly formal, and the sentences are structured in
a repetitive pattern. Richmond's vocabulary is generally quite inert and marked
by rather odd words like "quites" and "foison." What we lack is any sense of a
particular emotional personality speaking lines appropriate to a moment of high
drama.
I don't want to belabour this comparison, because, as I say, neither passage, is
particularly outstanding. But I do want to offer again the observation that Sha
kespeare's vocabulary, his choice of particular words and word patterns, is almo
st always worth attending to. He has an uncanny knack, as his style develops, of
choosing simple words which bring with them strong connotations of particular e
motional attitudes. And, generally speaking, the more his style matures, the mor
e apparently simple the vocabulary. This point is particularly true of the sonne
ts, as well.
There is no time to go into a series of examples, but consider this selection fr
om one of the very greatest of all Shakespeare's plays:
Out, out, brief candle.
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Nothing could be apparently more simple than the choice of language here. This i
s a key moment in the play, Macbeth's response to the news that his wife is dead
. And yet there is no high rhetoric, no lofty declamation. But notice the enormo
us emotional power of this utterance, an expression of Macbeth's sense of the to
tal emptiness and uselessness of life. The emotional power is conveyed in a numb
er of ways, particularly in words like "struts and frets," and "idiot." If you r
ead this passage aloud, attending to the rhythm, you observe how these words (an
d their sounds) are emphasized. And the punctuation forces one to keep moving be
yond the end of the lines, coming to rest on "no more" and "nothing." The key im
age at work here is a very conventional one, life as a staged drama, but there's
nothing conventional about this use of it to convey an unforgettable expression
of an emotional state.
The Courtly and the Plain Style
By way of bring all these points together into some more or less coherent framew
ork, I'd like to focus for a while on a very important and common distinction be
tween poetic styles generally. This is the well known difference between what ha
ve come to be called the Courtly (or sometimes the Petrarchan) Style and the Pla
in Style. These terms refer specifically to sixteenth century poetry, but I'd li
ke to begin by placing them in a much wider context.
All artistic expression (and perhaps all human activity of any value) is a compl
ex compound of two essential features: passion and skill. By passion I mean imag
inative excitement--the source of whatever it is that the artist has to express,
his or her sincerely felt insights into a particular subject matter like love,
hate, despair, anger, joy, melancholy, and so on, the very basis of the emotiona
l understanding of life which prompts artistic expression of value. But such ima
ginative passion is clearly not enough; the artist also requires skill to shape
the medium in order to construct an adequate symbolic equivalent of this emotion
al understanding. In a poet, such skill will obviously require a high level of a
bility to pattern language in evocative ways, so that the reader or listener res
ponds to the creation (the poem) with a heightened understanding of the feelings
the poet is exploring.
All poetic art thus has at its heart a creative tension between, on the one hand
, the emotional and imaginative intensity and intelligence which prompt the work
and, on the other hand, the formal patterns of the language (the shaping of the
 medium of expression). And the success of the work will depend upon an appropri
ate synthesis between them. It is clear that there are and have always been very
imaginatively gifted writers who lack writing skill, whose abilities to shape l
anguage do not match the profundity of their insights. Alternatively, it is equa
lly clear that there are writers who have an enormous skill with language but wh
o have little of interest to say--their imaginative resources are not a match fo
r their sophisticated command of the medium.
This distinction should not be difficult to grasp, for it is commonly observed i
n many areas of popular culture. In a good deal of popular music and jazz for ex
ample, one can make distinctions between very gifted musicians who are worth lis
tening to for their skill but whose work does not seem to take one anywhere beyo
nd that style (they lack, as the saying has it, "soul") and other musicians who
are passionately sincere about what they play or sing but whose music is often e
xcessively simple and unsophisticated (and therefore often boring).
Anyone who makes a decision to become an artist spends a great deal of time lear
ning the various skills associated with expressing insights into human feeling i
n the particular medium of that art. Schools and teachers often have trouble pro
viding inspiration ready made; that quality must come from the individual's inne
r self (although inspired teaching can often nurture such natural gifts). Much o
f this technical training can be very repetitive (like learning musical scales o
r writing practice poems), but the purpose of it is obvious: it is designed to m
ake sure the would-be artist has the right tools and facility in using them, so
that when inspiration strikes he or she will have the immediate means to shape t
hat inspiration in a skillful manner. To dedicate oneself to being a creative ar
tist is, in most cases, to commit oneself to a life of constant practice in the
medium, so that one is ready when inspiration comes. An artist who writes only w
hen inspired will probably never use the medium enough to develop the technical
skill necessary to the finest expressions in the art form. This point is as true
of the art of teaching as of everything else.
Now, I mention these points in order to stress a point about Elizabethan poetry
(in sonnets and drama). It was a highly sophisticated technical art form. No one
is born with the ability to dash off iambic pentameters and compose complex poe
tic images in poems with fixed rhyme schemes. Mastering this art form takes a lo
t of practice, and one cannot wait for inspiration to strike before setting down
to compose. The result is that a great deal of Elizabethan poetry is an exercis
e in developing and displaying technical skill, the ability of the poet to do cl
ever things with words, to manipulate them in new ways (e.g., with startling new
images or the skillful use of multiple meanings). To these sorts of stylistic t
echniques, the Elizabethans gave the general all-purpose term "wit," and display
s of wit in poetry became an important quality if one was interested in showing
off one's poetic skill.
Out of this tendency arose what has come to be called the Courtly Style. This ra
ther general label refers to a popular form of poetry which stressed witty love
poems answering to aristocratic ideals. The basic experiential requirements set
out in the poem were generally quite simple: a declaration of love to a noble an
d generally unattainable (and often cruel) lady. The challenge was to frame one'
s tribute in language which displayed one's cleverness (one's wit) as a poet. In
other words, this style tended to encourage a preponderance of wit over substan
ce, or, alternatively put, it invited the poet to sacrifice sincerity for techni
cal ingenuity.
This point may become clearer if we think about certain forms of music. There ar
e styles of jazz, for example, where the primary purpose is to show off one's te
chnical versatility (e.g., be-bop), and an important element in any jazz solo im
provisation is clearly to show off the technical skill of the player. In many ca
ses, that is much more important than anything else. And most of us can think of
 musical artists who really impress us with their technical ability but who do n
ot challenge us emotionally.
So it is in some forms of Elizabethan poetry. Here is a particularly famous exam
ple of Shakespeare's wit employed in such a style:
Why all delights are vain, but that most vain
Which, with pain purchased, doth inherit pain;
As painfully to pour upon a book
To seek the light of truth while truth the while
Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look.
Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile. (Love's Labour's Lost 1.1
.72-77)
The extraordinary technical complexity of the last line, where the word "light"
is used four times to refer to four different things, is an example of Elizabeth
an "wit" at its most complex. It has the effect of calling attention to the intr
icacy of the language and the multiple meanings cleverly invoked rather than to
any significant sense of inner feeling.
This technique of sophisticated wit is common also in many of early sonnets, as
well:
When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
For all the day they view things unrespected;
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
And, darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.
Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,
How would thy shadow's form form happy show
To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!
Here again, there is a clear sense of the great sophistication in the skillful u
se of the medium, but there's a sense that the poet's display of his own wit is
more important to him than any sincerely passionate communication about his feel
ings. The same point holds for Sonnet 135, which is constructed around the vario
us meanings of Will.
The point I wish to stress here (and it's a vitally important interpretative pri
nciple) is that a skillful style can at times get in the way of the poem's achie
ving any deeper insights into the feelings about the experience being evoked. On
e leaves such a poem with great admiration for the technical skill on display bu
t without any sense of having been moved by an insight into something important.
As I say, if you pause to reflect for a moment, you can probably think of a numb
er of similar examples from popular music or jazz (especially the latter), where
the great technical skill of the artist is the most memorable feature of a part
icular work. The pleasure one derives come from the medium itself, not from any
message. Clearly, it is not easy to write poetry or music like this, but one oft
en senses that there's something essential missing, some deeper imaginative pres
sure to put all this skill in the service of something insightful.
At the extreme opposite the wit of the Courtly Style is what has come to be call
ed the Plain Style. This (again very general) label refers to a style in which t
he emotional insights are expressed in a plain and unvarnished language, where t
he wit is kept firmly in check, so that the language does not call attention to
itself. In the Plain Style, the full resources of the medium are not on ostentat
ious display. A particularly obvious example is Shakespeare's Sonnet 66:
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry:
 As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill.
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that to die I leave my love alone.
This poem has a traditional sonnet structure and a series of poetic images and m
etaphors. But the language is very simple (perhaps excessively so), with a repet
itive structure to the lines and no attempt to startle the reader with some dari
ngly witty double or triple meanings. In this poem, by contrast with the selecti
ons quoted earlier, the speaker's mood of despondency at the world's unfairness
prevails over the skill in the language (although the poem clearly is not so pla
in as it might appear, since it still has the form of a conventional sonnet).
Now, this poem should suggest to a number of readers both the strength and the p
otential weakness of the Plain Style. It puts the reader immediately in touch wi
th something that really matters--the sincerely felt emotional response of the s
peaker to a living situation. But at the same time there's a repetitive simplici
ty in the language and structure which (for some readers) may run out of steam b
efore the end. That is to say, the Plain Style runs the risk of becoming predict
able and inert, in a word, too plain. I'm not saying that this poem necessarily
suffers from these qualities, but one can see the possibility (especially if thi
s poem were to go on for much longer).
The greatest single example of the sustained Plain Style in English is the trans
lation of the King James Bible, which deliberately eschewed any attempt at rheto
rical excess or wit (although it was produced in an age in which such excess was
a marked feature of a great deal of writing in poetry and prose). The translato
rs established and maintained throughout a direct plainness in the style (short,
plain sentences, a familiar common vocabulary, direct and relatively simple ima
gery), sacrificing any chances to embellish the sacred text with linguistic inve
ntiveness. And the enduring preference English speakers for the Plain Style owes
more to the King James Version than to anything else.
The Plain Style, it should be clear, seeks to harness language in such a way tha
t it does not preempt our sense that there is something important being communic
ated here. The Courtly Style, by contrast, tends to celebrate the possibilities
of language over and above anything the language might be communicating. Both st
yles (in their extreme versions) can produce unsatisfactory works: the Plain Sty
le poem can be too plain, repetitive, rhetorically uninventive, and, well, borin
g, so that, for all the sincerity in the speaker, we turn set the book down; the
Courtly Style can so insist on the preeminence of wit in the language over anyt
hing else that we turn away seeking something with more content.
The best poetry (to come to the main point of these remarks) is obviously a comb
ination of both passion and skill. The work conveys a sense of sincerity and a c
ommitment to the feelings being explored and yet, at the same time, is sufficien
tly sophisticated that the style hold our attention (without calling attention t
o itself in a manner which makes us doubt the writer's intention). This point ap
plies to more than just Elizabethan poetry, of course. We can apply it to the us
e of language generally (including lectures posted on the Internet): it should b
e prompted by a genuine and sincere imaginative desire to communicate something
and also be sufficiently skillful so that we continue to be interested.
Students of English literature may be already familiar with some well-known writ
ers who are more celebrated for their stylistic accomplishments than for having
anything to say. It is not uncommon to see, say, Spenser or Ezra Pound so descri
bed, writers who had a truly inventive command of the medium but who had little
to communicate (a more controversial name here might also be James Joyce in his
later works). These writers are often called poets' poets, a term which calls at
tention to their value for those who wish to learn about the full range of resou
rces in that medium. Over against these we can set someone like, say, John Bunya
n, who was passionately committed to communicating insights of central importanc
e and who did so often in a style which does not sustain interest.
A good deal of modern poetry (and jazz and painting) is dominated by people with
much skill but little vision (perhaps that comes about because it's much easier
to acquire skill in a poetic medium than to acquire imaginative insight into so
mething important). This gave rise to a famous indictment of some modern poets:
"They've got the bridle and the bit all right/ But where's the bloody horse?" A
rider may have much skill for us to admire, but if she has no large powerful bea
st to carry her forward, the attractions of her art are somewhat limited.
Let me end this section with what I hope will be a contemporary illustration, if
people still remember the Beatles. Their extraordinarily popular style at their
best was clearly a synthesis of two very different approaches to music and song
, Paul McCartney's wit, sophistication, and inventive musicality and John Lennon
's passionate sincerity. When these two worked together, the results were often
truly memorable songs, sophisticated and passionate, witty and sincere. When the
y broke up, McCartney's music lost much of its emotional interest, but retained
its skillful musicality; Lennon's music lost its inventiveness and became so pla
in that at times his songs are hard to distinguish from prose. I could extend th
is comparison, but I fear it may be badly outdated (as would a similar analytic
reference to another great popular artist whose work exhibits the same polarity
and synthesis, Bob Dylan).
Back to Shakespeare
These remarks about the different styles in poetry are directly relevant to Shak
espeare's work for two reasons: first, his own style shows a marked development
away from the Courtly Style in some of the earliest plays and poems towards an i
ncreasing plainness (especially in the vocabulary and imagery), and, second, an
exploration of the uses and abuses of language in the expression of feeling is a
key feature of some of the plays.
Shakespeare's earlier work is often mark by an abundance of witty, sophisticated
, courtly poetical moments. This is particularly true of some of the early sonne
ts (which are dated early largely on the basis of that characteristic), some pla
ys (especially Love's Labour's Lost, which may have been written for a private a
udience of young urban "wits"), and some of the early poems (Venus and Adonis).
As his style matures, such moments become less and less frequent, and he tends t
o subordinate his desire for displays of stylistic sophistication to the demands
of the emotional moment (although the excess often remains in the prose humour,
much to the disgust of some later critics).
However, it's not a case that an extreme Plain Style takes over. The style still
demonstrates a complex skill at work, but the skill rarely calls attention to i
tself. One will search, say, Macbeth in vain to find a passage of complex verse
which is not first and foremost concerned with an expression of the feeling of a
particular character. In fact, if one wants to sum up Shakespeare's preeminent
genius in a single observations one might observe that no other writer has ever
managed such a synthesis of skill and imaginative power. His formidable powers o
f language are put into the service of a profound vision of human life.
What I have been discussing is an important element in many plays, where one of
the major points is either a contrast between characters based, in part, on the
language they use to express themselves (e.g., Richard II and Bolingbroke or Oth
ello and Iago) or, beyond that, the need for someone to learn to use the right s
ort of language in order to understand what emotional honesty is all about. In S
hakespearean comedy for example (especially in As You Like It) one of the centra
l issues which must be taken care of before the lovers can move to their final u
nion is that the hero must learn to correct the errors of poetical attitudinizin
g, that is, using language in false ways to communicate a sentimentalized vision
of love. This invariably means learning to drop a courtly style and take up a m
uch plainer and more directly sincere way of expressing one's own feelings. One
of the most delightful things about Rosalind in As You Like It is her attitude t
o language and the zest with which she sets out to correct Orlando's false notio
ns of the language most appropriate to love. There is an important idea at work
in the comic business: that until one learns to express oneself in the most appr
opriate language one cannot truly understand one's own feelings of love.
The same thing happens in Romeo and Juliet. At the start of the play, Romeo is a
moon-struck lover fond of composing elaborate images to express his sense of hi
s powerful love (which is not, of course, for Juliet at this point). By the end
of the play, he has dropped that style of expressing himself and substituted som
ething much plainer ("Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee tonight").
We see this theme taken up in the very famous Sonnet 130:
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red.
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. . . .
Here the plain style comes out in a direct repudiation of the conventional image
s associated with the Courtly Style in love poetry. And the point which emerges
is, among other things, that really passionate love does not require the convent
ional wit. What matters is a language more appropriate to the urgent sincerity o
f feeling for the experience (as opposed to the conventional linguistic attitudi
nizing, however cleverly carried out).
And this point, we might add, is central to understanding why Shakespeare's best
sonnets are among the most eloquent, evocative, and moving poems every written.
They explore a conventional subject, the speaker's feelings about love. But Sha
kespeare's commitment to the sincere passion of the Plain Style transforms a con
ventional situation (the speaker in despair at or in love with his lady) into so
mething uniquely felt, urgently experienced. Here the sophistication in the form
and the language is put fully into the service of an imaginative insight, so th
at we witness the extraordinary inventiveness in the poetic language and at the
same time explore the complexities of a vital and important experience--a perfec
t fusion of style and substance.

tempest
1)Today I wish to provide something of a short introduction to Shakespeare's Tem
pest, first, by acknowledging some of the interpretative richness of this play a
nd, second, by outlining two very different approaches. The contrast between the
m will serve as a final reminder of something we have (I hope) discovered many t
imes in this course, the interpretative fecundity of Shakespeare's work.
Let me begin by acknowledging an interesting point about this play: interpretati
ons of the Tempest tend to be shaped quite strongly by the particular background
 which the interpreter brings to it. This point sounds like a truism (and it is)
, but I simply want to point to the fact that this play, more so than many other
s, tends to bring out in interpreters what their particular interests are in a w
ay that other plays often do not (at least not to the same degree). At least tha
t has been my experience.
In part, this happens because this play puts a good deal of pressure on us to tr
eat it allegorically, that is, to find a conceptual framework which will coordin
ate our understanding of what goes on in the play. I think we feel this mainly b
ecause there is little complex characterization in the Tempest (except perhaps f
or the figure of Prospero himself) and there are many elements which we cannot s
imply account for by taking the action naturalistically. So we want to know what
they stand for: What exactly is Prospero's magic? What does Caliban represent?
Is the island a depiction of the new world or a world of the imagination or some
thing else? And so on. The answers to these questions, in my experience, tend of
ten to depend upon the major interests of the person seeking to understand the p
lay.
So, for example, those, like me, with a strong interest in reading Shakespeare,
a lively interest in theatrical productions of Shakespeare, and what many might
take to be an old-fashioned humanist perspective, tend to emphasize the extent t
o which the main focus in the Tempest is on the nature of art and illusion, espe
cially theatrical art. This tendency is powerfully reinforced by the fact that t
his play is almost certainly Shakespeare's last full work, so that the Tempest i
s, in effect, his farewell to the stage. No doubt there is a certain sentimental
ity in this view (certainly in my case there is).
People with a strong interest in politics, however, often take a different slant
, and see the play as having less to do with an exploration of theatre than with
a probing artistic analysis of important political issues, especially those rel
evant to the oppression of the inhabitants of the new world (that is, the issue
of colonialism) or to the relationship between the intellectual and the politica
l world. So, for example, the play has been presented as a statement about colon
ial attitudes in North or South America or as an exploration of the role of the
intellectual in post-glasnost Eastern Europe. Other interpreters dismiss those s
uggestions and see in the play a vital exploration of education (the nature vers
us nurture dispute) or theories of politics or knowledge or whatever. I hope to
touch on some of these possibilities (in addition to my own preferences) in the
remarks below).
The Tempest as an Exploration of the Nature of Art
By way of introducing the first popular interpretative approach to the Tempest,
I want to begin with a very obvious point. The Tempest is a very theatrical play
, that is, it is obviously a wonderful vehicle for displaying the full resources
of the theatre: dramatic action, special effects, music, magic, monsters, danci
ng, storms, drunken humour, and so on. Anyone who wants a Shakespearean play to
produce mainly as an extravagant theatrical tour de force (say, a rock and roll
extravaganza or an opera) would turn naturally to this play, which, among Shakes
peare's works, is rivaled only by Midsummer Night's Dream in this respect. And a
number of productions, past and modern, have stressed mainly that element, with
out bothering about anything else. Musical adaptations of The Tempest have a lon
g tradition.
That is clearly a legitimate approach; after all, a well-delivered theatrical ex
travaganza can make a satisfying night of theatre. And it is clear that The Temp
est does depend for much of its effectiveness on a wide range of special effects
--sound, lighting, fantastic visions, a whole realm of "magic" (it may well have
been written in response to the changing theatrical tastes of an audience that
was requiring more theatrical effects in the presentation of dramatic production
s). But I think there's more to the theatricality of the play than just its styl
e. In my view, a central issue of the Tempest is an exploration into the nature
of theatre itself.
For those who have read a certain amount of Shakespeare, the theatrical theme ge
ts considerable impetus from the fact that The Tempest seems, in some ways, to r
evisit many earlier Shakespearean themes and characters, so that at times it com
es across almost as a final summary look at some very familiar material, somethi
ng Stephen Greenblatt calls "a kind of echo chamber of Shakespearean motifs":
Its story of loss and recovery and its air of wonder link it closely to the
group of late plays that modern editors generally call "romances" (Pericles, The
Winter's Tale, Cymbeline), but it resonates as well with issues that haunted Sh
akespeare's imagination throughout his career: the painful necessity for a fathe
r to let his daughter go (Othello, King Lear); the treacherous betrayal of a leg
itimate ruler (Richard II, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth); the murderous hatred
of one brother for another (Richard III, As You Like It, Hamlet, King Lear); th
e passage from court society to the wilderness and the promise of a return (A Mi
dsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It); the wooing of a young heiress in ignoran
ce of her place in the social hierarchy (Twelfth Night, Pericles, The Winter's T
ale); the dream of manipulating others by means of art, especially by staging mi
niature plays-within-plays (1 Henry IV, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet); the thr
eat of a radical loss of identity (The Comedy of Errors, Richard II, King Lear);
the relation between nature and nurture (Pericles, The Winter's Tale); the harn
essing of magical powers (. . . [2 Henry VI], A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth
).
So, given this rich allusiveness to other plays, at the end of a course like thi
s there is a natural tendency to want to link the concerns of the play with a ce
lebration of the wonderful achievement we have been studying so far.
But there is more to this approach to the play than simply nostalgia. To give yo
u a sense of what I mean, let me mention two questions that puzzled me about thi
s play when I first read it. The first is this: If Prospero's power is so effect
ive against his opponents as it appears to be, then why didn't he use it back in
Milan to avoid having to be exiled in the first place? And the second one, whic
h arises naturally from that first one, is this: Given that Prospero is so keen
on his magic and takes such delight in it and that it gives him so much power, w
hy does he abandon it before returning to Milan?
I puzzled over these questions until I came to what seems to me the most satisfy
ing answer. It is a very obvious one: the magic does not work in Milan; it is ef
fective only on the island, away from the Machiavellian world of the court, wher
e plotting against each other, even against one's own family, for the sake of po
litical power is the order of the day and where, if you take your mind off the p
olitical realities for very long, you may find yourself in a boat with a load of
books heading to an unknown exile. Prospero's magic can only become effective i
n a special place, a world of spirits, of illusion, song, and enchantment, on a
magic island--in other words, in the theatre.
After all, look what happens in this play. A bunch of political types and all th
eir attendants (sailors, butlers, and so on) from the busy court of Naples and M
ilan are lured away from their power political business into a world of illusion
, where they are led around by strange powers (above all, music and apparitions)
they do not fully comprehend but whom they cannot resist until they all come to
gether inside Prospero's magic circle. Prospero controls the entire experiment t
hrough his ability to create and sustain illusions. He is throughout the master
of the action, and there is never any suspense (well, almost none), since he has
such absolute control of human beings through his control of what they see and
hear and experience.
[There's a similar sense in the recent film Shakespeare in Love, where daily lif
e in London is often a hard business, with arranged marriages to brutal men, hat
eful money lenders, and so on; all that changes in the theatre, where miraculous
ly things always come right, at least for a time, even money lenders become enth
usiastically cooperative and supportive and a love impossible in the world outsi
de can thrive]
If we accept this possibility as an interpretative metaphor, then we need to exp
lore how that might make sense of other elements in the play. Remember that in s
uch questions the Principle of Inclusiveness is an important guiding rule: the i
nterpretation should make sense of as much of the play as possible, and in any c
onflict between rival interpretative possibilities one important criterion for j
udgment is the adequacy of each interpretation at providing a coherent and consi
stent sense of as much of the play as possible.
In order to pursue this idea of the Tempest as an celebratory exploration of the
nature of theatrical art, I want to turn for a while to what happens in the pla
y.
Prospero's Experiment
The Tempest, it is clear, features an experiment by Prospero. He has not brought
the Europeans to the vicinity of the island, but when they do come close to it,
he has, through the power of illusion, lured them into his very special realm.
The experiment first of all breaks up their social solidarity, for they land in
different groups: Ferdinand by himself, the court group, Stephano and Trinculo b
y themselves, and the sailors remain asleep. The magic leads them by separate pa
ths until they all meet in the circle drawn by Prospero in front of his cave. Th
ere he removes the spell of the illusions; the human family recognizes each othe
r, and together they resolve to return to Italy, leaving behind the powers of th
e magic associated with the island.
Before considering the purpose of Prospero's experiment, we should note how cent
ral to all his magic Ariel is. And Ariel is not human but a magical spirit who h
as been released from natural bondage (being riven up in a tree) by Prospero's b
ook learning. The earlier inhabitants of the island, Sycorax and Caliban, had no
sense of how to use Ariel, and so they simply imprisoned him in the world which
governs them, raw nature. Prospero's power depends, in large part, on Ariel's r
elease and willing service. In that sense, Ariel can be seen as some imaginative
power which makes the effects of the theatre (like lightning in the masts of th
e boat) possible. One of the great attractions of this view of the play as a cel
ebration of the powers of theatre is that it makes the best sense of Ariel's cha
racter, something which, as we shall see, is not quite so straightforward in oth
er approaches.
What is the purpose of Prospero's experiment? He never gives us a clear statemen
t, but it seems clear that one important element in that purpose is Miranda. He
wants to arrange things on her behalf, and of all the people in the play, her si
tuation is the most transformed: she is going back to Europe a royal bride, fill
ed with a sense of enthusiasm and joy at the prospect of living among so many fi
ne people in a society that, quite literally, thrills her imagination. It seems
that Prospero's major intention includes a recommitment to civilized life in Mil
an, so that his daughter can take up her rightful place in society. As with As Y
ou Like It, there is no sense here that any appropriate life could be based on r
emaining on the island when they no longer have to.
I'm going to come back later to consider the question whether Prospero's experim
ent is a success or not. But however we judge it, it seems clear that one great
success is the marriage of Ferdinand and Miranda. The experiment brings them tog
ether, awakens their sense of wonder at the world and at each other, and is send
ing them back to Milan full of the finest hopes for the world. These two young p
eople carry with them the major weight of the optimistic comic hopes of the play
's resolution. Their love for each other, which is presented to us as a true lov
e firmly under the control of their moral feelings, will, in a sense, regenerate
Milan.
Another success in Prospero's experiment is the change of heart which takes plac
e in his earlier enemy Alonso. Prospero's actions bring Alonso face to face with
his past evil conduct and prompt him to repent and reconcile himself with Prosp
ero, even to the point of surrendering the political power he took away so long
ago. Moreover, we might want to argue that there's is the beginning of a similar
change in the animalistic Caliban, who at least comes to realize something of h
is own foolishness in resisting Prospero in favour of two drunken European low l
ifes.
The most complex change in the play, however, takes place within Prospero himsel
f. In considering his motives for undertaking the experiment, we cannot escape t
he sense that Prospero harbors a great deal of resentment about his treatment ba
ck in Milan and is never very far from wanting to exact a harsh revenge. After a
ll, he has it in his power significantly to injure the parties that treated him
so badly. What's very interesting about this is that Prospero learns that that i
s not the appropriate response. And he learns this central insight from Ariel, t
he very spirit of imaginative illusion, who is not even human. Speaking of the f
act that all of Prospero's enemies are now in his power and are painfully confus
ed, Ariel says: "if you beheld them now, your affections/ Would become tender."
Prospero replies: "Does thou think so spirit?" to which Ariel responds: "Mine wo
uld, sir, were I human." At this point Prospero delivers one of the most importa
nt speeches of the play:
And mine shall.
Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling
Of their afflictions, and shall not myself,
One of their kind, that relish all as sharply
Passion as they, be kindlier mov'd than thou art?
Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th' quick,
Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury
Do I take part. The rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance. (5.1. 18-28)
Here, the imaginative sympathy for the sufferings of others leads to an active i
ntervention based upon "virtue" rather than "vengeance." This is a key recogniti
on in the play: virtue expressed in forgiveness is a higher human attribute than
vengeance. And in the conclusion of the play, Prospero does not even mention th
e list of crimes against him. He simply offers to forgive and accept what has ha
ppened to him, in a spirit of reconciliation. Unlike earlier plays which feature
d family quarrels, the ending here requires neither the death nor the punishment
of any of the parties. Here that change is initiated by Ariel's remarks.
Prospero's Magic as the World of the Theatre
It makes sense to me to see in this Shakespeare's sense of his own art--both wha
t it can achieve and what it cannot. The theatre--that magical world of poetry,
song, illusion, pleasing and threatening apparitions--can, like Prospero's magic
, educate us into a better sense of ourselves, into a final acceptance of the wo
rld, a state in which we forgive and forget in the interests of the greater huma
n community. The theatre, that is, can reconcile us to the joys of the human com
munity so that we do not destroy our families in a search for righting past evil
s in a spirit of personal revenge or as crude assertions of our own egos. It can
, in a very real sense, help us fully to understand the central Christian commit
ment to charity, to loving our neighbour as ourselves. The magic here brings abo
ut a total reconciliation of all levels of society from sophisticated rulers to
semi-human brutes, momentarily holding off Machiavellian deceit, drunken foolish
ness, and animalistic rebellion--each person, no matter how he has lived, has a
place in the magic circle at the end. And no one is asking any awkward questions
.
In the same way, Prospero's world can awaken the young imagination to the wonder
and joy of the human community, can transform our perceptions of human beings i
nto a "brave new world," full of beauty, promise, and love, and excite our imagi
nations with the prospects of living life in the midst of our fellow human being
s.
In the world of the Tempest, we have moved beyond tragedy. In this world Hamlet
and Ophelia are happily united, the Ghost comes to life again and is reconciled
with his brother, the old antagonisms are healed. Lear learns to lessen his dema
nds on the world and to accept it with all its threats to his own ego. This is n
ot a sentimental vision, an easily achieved resolution. It takes time--in this c
ase sixteen years--and a measure of faith in the human community that one is pre
pared to hold onto in the face of urgent personal demands. This play seems to be
saying that theatrical art, the magic of Prospero, can achieve what is not poss
ible in the world of Milan, where everyone must always be on guard, because it's
a Machiavellian world ruled by the realities of power and injury and there is n
o Ariel to serve us with the power of illusions.
On this reading of the play, what would we make of Caliban, who stands in opposi
tion to Prospero's power and who is its most immediate victim? This reading woul
d probably stress (as many productions have always done) Caliban's dangerous, an
archic violence. He is an earth-animal (some intermediate form perhaps) who repr
esents a clear and present danger, because he is not capable of being educated o
ut of the state he was born into. Prospero's "civilizing" arts keep him in contr
ol, though with difficulty. Caliban is at times quite sensitive to the emotional
qualities of Prospero's magic, especially the wonderful music he hears, but is
too much in the grip of his raw instincts for rape and rebellion to respond with
anything other than anger to his condition.
Caliban might well be considered in some sense a natural slave (as D. H. Lawrenc
e pointed out) because his idea of freedom from Prospero seems to involve becomi
ng the slave of someone else, someone who will kill Prospero. So Caliban throws
in his lot with two drunken Europeans, not having the wit to see them for what t
hey are. Caliban is thus not so much interested in freedom as he is in rebellion
; his violence is natural to him and is not an outgrowth of the way he is treate
d. Hence, Prospero's control of him through his magic is not only justified but
necessary.
Does Caliban undergo any sort of significant change at the ending of the play? T
here's a suggestion that he has learned something from the mistakes he has made,
and his final comment ("I'll be wise hereafter,/ And seek for grace") may be a
cryptic acknowledgment of some restraint. But he doesn't go with the Europeans a
nd remains on his island. Caliban's future life has always sparked interest amon
g certain writers, for there is a tradition of sequels to the Tempest in which C
aliban is the central character (notably Browning's long dramatic monologue "Cal
iban on Setebos").
For all the potentially warm reconciliations at the end of the play, however, it
is not without its potentially sobering ironies. And there is a good deal of di
scussion of just how unequivocal the celebration is at the end. For Prospero is
no sentimentalist. He recognizes the silence of Sebastian and Antonio at the end
for what it is, an indication that they have not changed, that they are going t
o return to Naples and Milan the same people as left it, political double dealer
s, ambitious and potentially murderous power seekers, just as Stephano and Trinc
ulo are going back as stupid as when they left. Prospero's theatrical magic has
brought them together, has forced them to see themselves, but it has had no effe
ct on some characters (unless the staging of the end of the play conveys in non-
verbal ways that the two noble would-be killers are as contrite as Alonso appear
s to be).
If we see the irony here as present but not totally corrosive, then by bringing
us such a reconciliation, theatre (Prospero's experiment in the play and The Tem
pest itself) can help to maintain our best hopes for a meaningful life, faith th
at in time we will work things out, that, in spite of evil, the end of our story
will manifest a pattern of moral significance. Locked into the contingencies of
history in our political and business lives, where competition and deceitful se
lf-interest hold sway, we may easily lose this faith. The theatre is, in a sense
, a place which can restore us.
But that restoration is provisional and fragile, more of a hope than a robust ce
rtainty. That's why in acknowledging the most famous single line quotation from
the play, one needs also to examines the four words which immediately follow: Mi
randa, overwhelmed with the wonder and delight of seeing so many finely dressed
civilized Europeans cries out, "O brave new world/ That has such people in't!" t
o which the more sober minded and mature Prospero comments only, "'Tis new to th
ee." Those four words of Prospero are wonderfully pregnant. In them he acknowled
ges his earned awareness into the nature of human beings, into the complexity of
human life, which does not always (or usually) answer to Miranda's joyous affir
mation.
But he is not about to deliver Miranda another sermon, for he knows that the sen
se of joyful and optimistic wonder which she, as a young woman, is carrying back
to Italy is the world's best hope. It may be, as he well knows, naive, for Mira
nda has, as yet, no sense of the evils that lurk back in the political world of
the city. She sees only the attractive exterior of her human surroundings with n
o sense yet of the potential deceptions within. But she is as well equipped as h
e can make her, and it is not up to him to sour her youthful enthusiasm with a m
ore complex and less affirming mature reflection. That is something she will hav
e to discover in her turn.
One might argue that if Prospero's experiment is designed to make everyone bette
r, then it's a failure in large part. And it may be, as I mentioned above, that
Prospero recognizes that fact. It is not unusual to stage this play in such a wa
y that the conventional comic structure of the ending is seriously undercut by t
he sense of sadness in Prospero, who is returning to Milan to die. I'm not press
ing this interpretation. All I want to call attention to at this point is that t
he ending of this play may not be the unalloyed triumph of the comic spirit that
we are tempted to see there. Prospero's sober awareness of what the silence of
Sebastian and Antonio means qualifies our sense of joy by indicating that the et
ernal problem of human evil has not been solved or dismissed. One major interpre
tative decision any director of the play has to make concerns this ending. Just
how evident and serious should those ironies be: non-existent, a light shadow un
der the communal joy, or a heavy reminder of what is in store back in Italy?
The strength of this sobering irony at the end will determine the particular ton
e which governs the return. In some productions, the irony is hardly noticeable
and the celebration is thus dominant. In others, the irony is sufficiently stron
g to introduce an ominous note into the whole proceedings, even to the point of
suggesting that Prospero's experiment has, in a sense, failed. Yes, Miranda and
Ferdinand will be happily married, but the political world they are returning to
(where Prospero will soon die) is unchanged and will remain much the same.
Prospero's Farewell to the Stage
The theatre metaphor also helps to explain why, in the last analysis, Prospero h
as to surrender his magical powers. Life cannot be lived out in the world of ill
usions, delightful and educative as they can often be. Life must be lived in the
real world, in Milan or in Naples, and Miranda cannot thus entirely fulfill her
self on the island. The realities of life must be encountered and dealt with as
best we can. The world of the theatre can remind us of things we may too easily
forget; it can liberate and encourage youthful wonder and excitement at all the
diverse richness of life; it can, at times, even wake people up to more importan
t issues than their own Machiavellian urge to self-aggrandizement, and, most imp
ortant of all, it can educate us into forgiveness. But it can never finally solv
e the problem of evil, and it can never provide an acceptable environment for a
fully realized adult life.
Prospero, as I see it, doesn't start the play fully realizing all this. He launc
hes his experiment from a mixture of motives, perhaps not entirely sure what he
going to do (after all, one gets the sense that there's a good deal of improvisi
ng going on). But he learns in the play to avoid the twin dangers to his experim
ent, the two main threats to the value of his theatrical magic.
The first I have already alluded to, namely, the danger of using of his powers p
urely for vengeance. Prospero, like Shakespeare, is a master illusionist, and he
is tempted to channel his personal frustrations into his art, to exact vengeanc
e against wrongs done in Milan through the power of his art (perhaps, as some ha
ve argued, as Shakespeare is doing for unknown personal reasons against women in
Hamlet and Lear). But he learns from Ariel that to do this is to deny the moral
value of the art, whose major purpose is to reconcile us to ourselves and our c
ommunity, not to even a personal score.
The second great threat which we see in this play is that Prospero may get too i
nvolved in his own wonderful capabilities, he may become too much the showman, t
oo proud of showing off his skill to attend to the final purpose of what he is d
oing. We see this in the scene in which Prospero puts on a special display of hi
s theatrical powers for Ferdinand and Miranda--his desire to show off makes him
forget that he has more important issues to attend to, once again putting his ar
t in the service of the social experiment. And it's interesting to note that it
was his self-absorption in his own magic that got Prospero in trouble in the fir
st place in Milan (as he admits), when he neglected his responsibilities for the
self-absorbing pleasures of his books. There's a strong sense in this play that
, whatever the powers and wonders of the illusion, one has to maintain a firm se
nse of what it is for, what it can and cannot do, and where it is most appropria
te. It can never substitute for or conjure away the complexities of life in the
community.
This approach helps me to understand, too, the logic behind Prospero's surrender
of his magic. He has done all he can do. Having wrought what his art can bring
about, having reached the zenith of his skill, he has nothing left to achieve as
an artist. He is going home, back to the human community, perhaps to die, perha
ps to enjoy a different life, now able to appreciate more fully what he did not
understand so long ago, the proper relationship between the world governed by ma
gic and illusion and the world in which most of us have to live most of the time
--the compromised world of politics, alcohol, buying and selling, family strife.
So he releases Ariel; he has no more work for him to do, and Ariel does not bel
ong in Milan.
Of course, it is critically illegitimate and no doubt very sentimental to link P
rospero's giving up of his art with Shakespeare's decision to give up writing pl
ays and to return to Stratford to enjoy life with his grandchildren (in fact, he
did not give up the theatrical life immediately after writing this play). But i
t's a very tempting connection, especially in the light of the wonderful speech
in 4.1, one of the most frequently quoted passages in the play, a speech which h
as come to be called "Shakespeare's Farewell to the Stage."
I'd like to conclude this part of the lecture by reading this speech, urging you
to remember that Shakespeare's theatre, called the Globe, was destroyed by fire
very soon after the Tempest was first performed (a facsimile has just been reco
nstructed on the banks of the Thames very close to the original site and is now
open for business).
Be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a wrack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Dreams may be the stuff of life, they may energize us, delight us, educate us, a
nd reconcile us to each other, but we cannot live life as a dream. We may carry
what we learn in the world of illusion with us into life, and perhaps we may be
able, through art, to learn about how to deal with the evil in the world, includ
ing our own. But art is not a substitute for life, and it cannot alter the funda
mental conditions of the human community. The magic island is not Milan, and hum
an beings belong in Milan with all its dangers, if they are to be fully human. L
ife must be lived historically, not aesthetically.
The Tempest as a Study of Colonialism
For over a century, and particularly in the past twenty years, a number of inter
preters have taken a very different approach to this play, seeing in it the expl
oration of some particularly relevant political issues. The English critic, Will
iam Hazlitt, was the first to point out (in 1818) that Prospero had usurped Cali
ban from his rule of the island and was thus an agent of imperialism. Since then
such an approach to the play (with various modifications) has remained more or
less current, although only in recent decades has it become widespread in North
America.
Some of these arguments are quite simple and reductive; others are a good deal m
ore sophisticated. I cannot do full justice to these interpretations here, but I
would like to consider some of the main points in order to raise a few question
s in your minds.
[Those who would like to read a useful historical survey of these treatments of
the play should consult Vaughan, Alden T. and Virginia Mason Vaughan, Shakespear
e's Caliban: A Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991. I have taken his
torical information from this book]
This approach to The Tempest also begins with some obvious features of the play.
Prospero is a European who has taken charge of a remote island. He has been abl
e to do this because he brings with him special powers. With these he organizes
a life for himself, gets the local inhabitants (Ariel and Caliban) to work for h
im, and maintains his control by a combination of painful force or threats of fo
rce, wonderful spells, and promises of freedom some day. In taking charge of a p
lace which is not his and in exerting his European authority over the strange no
n-European creatures, compelling them to serve him and his values, Prospero, so
the argument runs, is obviously a symbol for European colonial power, with which
England was growing increasingly familiar during Shakespeare's lifetime (not ju
st in the New World but also in Ireland).
The key figure in this treatment of the play naturally is Caliban, the island na
tive who regards himself as the rightful owner of the place, who is forced again
st his will to serve Prospero and Miranda, and who constantly proclaims his unwi
llingness to do so. Initially, Prospero extends to Caliban his European hospital
ity, teaches him language, and, in return, is shown all the natural resources of
the island by Caliban, in an act of love. But Caliban refuses to live by Prospe
ro's rules, tries to rape Miranda (he still wants to), and their relationship ch
anges to one of master and slave. The gift of language, Caliban now says, is goo
d only because it enables him to curse. Prospero may control Caliban (with painf
ul torments), but he has not vanquished his resistance.
For Prospero, the main problem with Caliban is that he is incapable of being edu
cated (although Caliban's command of beautiful poetry might make us wonder about
that). He is thus (for Prospero) some lower life form (like a native of Ireland
, for example, many of whom were in Shakespeare's day not considered fully human
): deformed, evil smelling, treacherous, rapacious, and violent. Unlike Ferdinan
d, who is a suitable lover for Miranda because he can discipline himself to work
to earn her, Caliban has no restraint. Hence, Prospero feels himself morally en
titled to exercise his control over him; indeed, the safety and security of his
and Miranda's life depend upon such enforced obedience (as Prospero says, they n
eed Caliban's labour to survive).
There is obviously much here one might point to as an allegory on European colon
ial or capitalist practices. One might well argue that the presentation of Calib
an is itself a very European perception of alien New World cultures, and thus Pr
ospero's moral authority rests on a complete inability to see the natives as ful
ly cultured human beings, in other words, on his European mind set, which automa
tically labels those different from Europeans as ugly, uncivilized, and threaten
ing "others." The gift of language is not a gift but an imposition, a common mea
ns of enforcing colonial rule on recalcitrant subjects.
[In a well known production of this play in 1974 (in the National Theatre in Lon
don), the actor playing Caliban had the two halves of his face made up in differ
ent ways: one side was that of a noble-looking Native American; the other side w
as that of a grotesque ape-like man. Depending upon which way the actor turned,
the audience's perception of the character changed entirely. This theatrical dev
ice obviously invited the audience to consider the importance of cultural percep
tions in our evaluative judgments in dealing with people from "primitive" non-Eu
ropeanized societies].
If we pursue such a political basis for the allegory, can we come to any conclus
ions about Shakespeare's vision of colonial practices? What, if anything, is the
play offering as a vision of European imperialism? For me, the emotional logic
of the action suggests that Shakespeare is offering a defense of colonial practi
ces which he then undermines. Caliban may, indeed, offend every European moral p
rinciple, but in some ways he is more intelligent and more open than some of the
Europeans (like the drunken idiots Stephano and Trinculo and the deceitful murd
erous conspirators). He may resist Prospero's authority, but that authority is s
omething we can call into question, especially by looking closely at the way it
is enforced. In his renunciation of magic and return to Europe, Prospero would a
ppear to be finally conceding that continuing on the island is wrong. Significan
tly, among his last words is the potentially pregnant comment (about Caliban) "T
his thing of darkness I/ Acknowledge mine." If this means, as it might, some rec
ognition of a bond between Prospero and Caliban, then Prospero's leaving the isl
and to Caliban and renouncing his magic (the source of his power) would seem to
be a tacit apology for the master-slave basis for their earlier relationship whi
ch Prospero enforced.
That said, however, there are one or two interesting problems which such a polit
ical interpretation of the play (which I have not had time to present fairly) ge
nerally has some trouble with. In the first place, it requires us to see Caliban
as representative of an oppressed culture or class (either a Native American In
dian or an Irish peasant or a member of the proletariat). Yet he is the only one
of his kind (that is made very clear to us), and is a relatively recent arrival
there. He has no culture matrix, no family, and no cultural history. So I'm not
sure that the image of cultural oppression is particularly clear.
Consider, for example, the key issue of language. In this play, it's not the cas
e that the Europeans forced Caliban to forget his language and learn theirs. Bef
ore they came Caliban had no language at all. This is surely a key point. One ca
n imagine how very different the impact of this play would be if Caliban had som
e other island natives with him and if they shared their own language and custom
s, which Prospero then forcibly suppressed. Then the issues of cultural oppressi
on would be irresistibly there. As it stands, making Caliban the representative
of a native culture would seem to require putting in the play something that not
only is not there but which is expressly excluded.
So if I have to choose between a vision of Caliban which sees him as a semi-huma
n brute (pure nature with no nurture) and a vision which sees him as a misunders
tood and oppressed native person, then on the evidence of the play, I would tend
to favour the first (although I'm ready to be persuaded by a superb production
that the colonialist allegory can make effective dramatic sense of the play as w
ritten).
Significantly some of the earliest attempts to see The Tempest as a colonialist
allegory identified Caliban, not with the original inhabitants of the New World,
but with the European bosses left behind by the original explorers. This view w
as especially pronounced in South American countries which had a long and brutal
history of oppression by American capitalist companies, and Caliban, in some cr
itics' eyes, looked far more like a Yankee managing director than a noble savage
. This is an interesting possibility, but it does leave one wondering then about
the native inhabitants on the island, since they would not be present at all.
[In viewing Caliban as an oppressed person, one might mention a recent view that
he is a "reluctant student" in a play about education. I don't take this view p
articularly seriously, but it does remind us that ideological approaches to the
Prospero-Caliban interaction can often quite easily fit into the play a number o
f different views of various kinds of authority, just or otherwise]
The second problem the political interpretation faces is Ariel. What are we to m
ake of him? One production based on a colonialist theme (directed by Jonathan Mi
ller) made Ariel the "good" native, the intelligent servant of the European mast
ers (in contrast to Caliban the "bad" native). The contrast was heightened by ma
king Ariel an East Indian and Caliban an African (thus duplicating some of the r
acial realities in post-colonial African states). At the end of this production
Ariel picked up Prospero's abandoned instruments of magic and the curtain closed
with a sense of him now as the oppressing power over Caliban.
But such political approaches to the play all have trouble with the most obvious
element in Ariel's character, his non-human nature and his magical powers, whic
h contribute so massively to the play's action and its theatrical effects. After
all, if we are going to apply some allegory of colonialism to the play, then we
need to be able to account for such an important part of it (and for Prospero's
"release" of Ariel from imprisonment in nature). We cannot simply ignore such p
oints because they don't fit. For that reason, it may be significant that politi
cal treatments of the Tempest tend to give Caliban far more space than Ariel (wh
o often hardly gets mentioned).
One possible interpretation (which I have not come across, although I'm sure som
eone must have offered it somewhere) is to combine both the theatrical and the p
olitical approaches and explore the play as some vision of the theatrical basis
for political power, an issue that is currently very much alive in interpretatio
ns of Renaissance drama and politics. This approach would link The Tempest to ot
her plays we have read in which an essential element in maintaining power is the
development of politics as public theatre (obviously an important element in th
e education of Prince Hal in Henry IV). Seizing power and ruling (oppressing?) o
thers (whether New World natives or Irish peasants or naturally rebellious anima
listic human beings of the ur-proletariat) requires, more than anything else, co
ntrol over images which divert, punish, seduce, and, in general, confirm in peop
le's minds the absolute mastery of the power of the ruler. Governing the island
is thus a natural extension of governing Milan (or Henry V's England or Octavius
's empire), and the most obvious tool is public theatre. Thus, Shakespeare's far
ewell to the stage might be seen as an ironic deflation of or farewell to the ro
le of theatre and its power of seizing people's imaginations, not simply for ent
ertainment and moral enlightenment, but equally (or more importantly) for their
oppression through pleasing images of patriarchal colonialist or capitalist ideo
logy.
I'm not sure if one could sustain such an interpretation of the play, and I have
not thought it through sufficiently (particularly the ending where the illusion
-making power is discarded). So I tend to return to the first understanding of t
he play as a celebration of theatre (with a strong biographical link). But with
the Tempest, as with so many of Shakespeare's plays, other complex possibilities
will not leave my imagination alone.
Postscript on the Tempest
In the context of the other plays we have studied this semester (and the lecture
s on them), we might want to see the ending of this play as a movement beyond th
e tragic vision. I mentioned (following Stanley Cavell) in discussing Antony and
Cleopatra how Cleopatra's suicide is inherently theatrical, opposing the drama
of her personal commitment to Antony to Octavius's planned political theatre fea
turing her in his triumphal march through Rome. I mentioned at that time that if
this view has any merit, there is still a tragic sense in the end of that play
because such personal theatre is possible only in death.
We might want to see in The Tempest a gentler sense that the theatre of personal
fulfilment in human relationships is opened up to us a living possibility, not
simply a script for a final scene. If so, then the play might be offering a hope
that, even if there is no certain answer about life's most important questions
in the world of politics, there are important possibilities which can be realize
d (if only temporarily) in personal commitments to love and forgiveness (whether
fostered by theatrical art or not). The ambiguous ironies at the end of the pla
y suggest to me that, if such a vision is at work here, it is not given to us as
a robust affirmation, perhaps more as a fervent hope.
Afterword [added in December 2001]
In my remarks above I suggested that interpreting the Tempest as an allegory abo
ut art seems to make more sense of the play than approaching it as an allegory a
bout colonial powers, but that there might be an interesting possibility of comb
ining the two around the notion that artistic celebration and political practice
are not mutually exclusive (especially in Shakespeare, where dramatic depiction
s of royal power are an important political tool). I also (implicitly) suggeste
d that the most difficult interpretative problem facing someone who wishes to em
phasize the political dimensions of the play is Ariel, a non-human agent who pla
ys a major role in arranging and conducting the theatrical events we witness and
whose remarks to Prospero mark a decisive point in his life on the island. Any
decision to make Ariel merely human (in order to give him secular political wei
ght)--as in Jonathan Miller's production--obviously removes something central to
the text (and might well create something of a puzzle about Ariel's powers).
Recently (about two years ago) a student of mine, Ms Alison Miller, wrote an ext
remely interesting paper addressing this issue. She explored the notion that th
e Tempest is, indeed, dealing with colonial issues, but that the guiding spirit
of the experiment is not Prospero but Ariel, who is, in effect, a version of the
Trickster figure in First Nations mythology.
I don't want to rehearse her argument here (in any case, I no longer have the p
aper in front of me), but I call attention to this suggestion because it does br
idge very nicely the apparent gap between politics and art (and reminds us that
one should never rule out interpretative possibilities). In her interpretation
Ms. Miller argued that Ariel's function in the play is to emerge from captivity
(a common Trickster theme) and educate Prospero and Caliban (and others), throug
h his magical powers, into a new and better awareness of how to deal with each o
ther. Thanks to Ariel, Prospero decides to leave the island, and Caliban is lef
t (now in charge of Prospero's apparatus) to govern himself and the island with
his newly discovered sense of himself.
I'm not sure if such an approach to the play has ever been the basis for a drama
tic production, but, I must admit, the theatrical possibilities are very temptin
g, since this entry into the play seems to offer a complex and challenging synth
esis of both the political and the theatrical possibilities of the play, and it
certainly turns Ariel into an extraordinarily interesting figure, the guiding sp
irit of the encounter between European visitors and native owners.
troilus and cressida
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The Tragedy of Existence: Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida"
by Joyce Carol Oates Originally published as two separate essays, in Philologica
l Quarterly, Spring 1967, and Shakespeare Quarterly, Spring 1966.
Reprinted in The Edge of Impossibility.
Troilus and Cressida, that most vexing and ambiguous of Shakespeare's plays, str
ikes the modern reader as a contemporary document its investigation of numerous in
fidelities, its criticism of tragic pretensions, above all, its implicit debate
between what is essential in human life and what is only existential are themes
of the twentieth century. Philosophically, the play must be one of the earliest
expressions of what is now called the "existential" vision; psychologically, it
not only represents the puritanical mind in its anguished obsession with the fle
sh overwhelming the spirit, but it works to justify that vision. It is not only
the expense of spirit in a "waste of shame" that is catastrophic, but the expend
iture of all spirit for the object of spiritual adoration (even if, like Helen, it
is not unfaithful) can never be equivalent to the purity of energy wasted. Shak
espeare shows in this darkest and least satisfying of his tragedies the modern,
ironic, nihilistic spectacle of man diminished, not exalted. There is no questio
n of the play's being related to tragedy; calling it one of the "dark comedies"
is to distort it seriously. This is tragedy of a special sort the "tragedy" the ba
sis of which is the impossibility of conventional tragedy.
This special tragedy, then, will be seen to work within the usual framework of t
ragedy, using the materials and the structure demanded of an orthodox work. What
is withheld and deliberately withheld is "poetic justice." Elsewhere, Shakespeare d
estroys both good and evil together, but in Troilus and Cressida the "good" char
acters are destroyed or destroy themselves. The "evil" characters (Achilles, Cre
ssida) drop out of sight; their fates are irrelevant. Ultimately, everyone invol
ved in the Trojan War will die, except Ulysses and Aeneas, and it may be that Sh
akespeare holds up this knowledge as a kind of backdrop against which the play w
orks itself out, the audience's knowledge contributing toward a higher irony; bu
t this is probably unlikely. The play as it stands denies tragic devastation and
elevation. It follows other Shakespearean tragedies in showing the annihilation
of appearances by reality, but the "reality" achieved is a nihilistic vision. T
hus, Pandarus closes the story by assuming that many in his audience are "brethr
en and sisters of the hold-door trade" and by promising to bequeath them his "di
seases." The customary use of language to restore, with its magical eloquence, t
he lost humanity of the tragic figure is denied here. Othello is shown to us fir
st as an extraordinary man, then as a man, then as an animal, but finally and mo
st importantly as a man again, just before his death; this is the usual tragic c
urve, the testing and near-breaking and final restoration of a man. Through lang
uage Othello ascends the heights he has earlier relinquished to evil. But in Tro
ilus and Cressida Troilus ends with a declaration of hatred for Achilles and a p
romise to get his revenge upon him. He ends, as he has begun, in a frenzy. His a
dolescent frenzy of love for Cressida gives way to a cynical, reckless frenzy of
hatred for Achilles. Nowhere does he attain the harmonious equilibrium required
of the tragic hero or of the man we are to take as a spokesman for ourselves. E
ven his devastating scene of "recognition" is presented to the audience by a dev
ice that suggests comedy: Thersites watching Ulysses watching Troilus watching C
ressida with Diomed. Troilus is almost a tragic figure and it is not an error on S
hakespeare's part that he fails to attain this designation, for the very terms o
f Troilus' experience forbid elevation. He cannot be a tragic figure because his
world is not tragic but only pathetic. He cannot transcend the sordid banalitie
s of his world because he is proudly and totally of that world, and where everyt
hing is seen in terms of merchandise, diseases, food, cooking, and the "glory" o
f bloodshed, man's condition is never tragic. That this attitude is "modern" com
es as a greater surprise when one considers the strange, fairy-tale background o
f the play (a centaur fights on the Trojan side, for instance) and the ritualist
ic games of love and war played in the foreground.
Shakespeare's attempt here to pierce the conventions demanded by a typical audie
nce's will takes its most bitter image in the various expressions of infidelity.
Infidelity is the natural law of the play's world, and, by extension, of the gr
eater world: woman's infidelity to man, the body's infidelity to the soul, the i
nfidelity of the ideal to the real, and the larger infidelity of "time," that "g
reat-sized monster of ingratitudes." Here, man is trapped within a temporal, phy
sical world, and his rhetoric, his poetry, even his genius cannot free him. What
is so modern about the play is its existential insistence upon the complete ina
bility of man to transcend his fate. Other tragic actors may rise above their pr
edicaments, as if by magic, and equally magical is the promise of a rejuvenation
of their sick nations (Lear, Hamlet, etc.), but the actors of Troilus and Cress
ida, varied and human as they are, remain for us italicized against their shabby
, illusion-ridden world. Hector, who might have rejected a sordid end, in fact m
akes up his mind to degrade himself and is then killed like an animal. As soon a
s he relinquishes the "game" of chivalry, he relinquishes his own right to be tr
eated like a human being, and so his being dragged behind Achilles' horse is a c
ruel but appropriate fate, considering the violent climate of his world. One mis
take and man reverts to the animal, or becomes only flesh to be disposed of. As
for the spirit and its expectations they are demonstrated as hallucinatory. No da
rker commentary on the predicament of man has ever been written. If tragedy is a
critique of humanism from the inside,1 Troilus and Cressida is a tragedy that c
alls into question the very pretensions of tragedy itself.
In act 2, scene 2, the Trojans have a council of war, and Troilus and Hector deb
ate. What they say is much more important than why they say it, a distinction th
at is also true about Ulysses' speeches:
HECTOR
Brother, she is not worth what she cloth cost The holding.
TROILUS
What is aught but as 'tis valued?
HECTOR
But value dwells not in particular will;
It holds his estimate and dignity
As well wherein 'tis precious of itself
As in the prizer. (2.2.51-56)
Questions of "worth," "cost," and "value" permeate the play. Human relationships
are equated with business arrangements the consummated love of Troilus and Cressi
da, for instance, is a "bargain made," with Pandarus as legal witness. Here, it
is Helen who is held in question, but clearly she is incidental to this crisis:
Hector insists, along with most Western philosophers, that there is an essential
value in things or acts that exists prior to their temporal existence and their
temporal relationship to a "particular will." They are not created by man but e
xist independently of him. In other words, men do not determine values themselve
s, by will or desire or whim. Values exist a priori; they are based upon certain
natural laws, upon the hierarchy of degree that Ulysses speaks of in the first
act. Hector parallels Ulysses in his belief that "degree, priority, and place,/
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,/ Office, and custom" (1. 3. 86-88)
are observed not only by man but by the natural universe. What is strange is tha
t any personal guidance, any evidence of gods or God, is omitted; though the Oly
mpian gods are concerned with the Trojan War, and even though a centaur fights m
agnificently in the field, the gods ultimately have nothing to do with the fate
of the men involved. Like Greek tragedy, this play has certain "vertical" (or un
iversal) moments that coincide with but can sometimes be only weakly explained b
y their "horizontal" or narrative position. The speeches of Ulysses and Hector a
re set pieces of this vertical sort, since they explain and insist upon values t
hat must be understood so that the pathos to follow will be more clearly underst
ood; the speeches are always out of proportion and even out of focus, compared t
o the situations that give rise to them. At these points significantly, they come
early in the play there is a straining upward, an attempt on the part of the chara
cters to truly transcend their predicaments. The predicaments, however, cannot b
e transcended because man is locked in the historical and the immediate. Ulysses
' brilliance cannot trigger Achilles into action, and, when Achilles wakes to ac
tion, all semblance of an ordered universe is destroyed; Hector is destined to k
ill a man "for his hide" and then to die ignobly, and so his groping after absol
ute meaning in act z must be undercut by a complete turnabout of opinion, when h
e suddenly and inexplicably gives in to the arguments of Troilus and Paris.
Troilus, the "essentialist" in matters concerning his own love, the weakly roman
tic courtier who has been transformed simply by the anticipation of love, is in
this scene the more worldly and cynical of the two. Though he speaks of the "glo
ry" of the war and Helen as a "theme of honor and renown" who will instigate the
m to deeds that will "canonize" them, his conviction that man creates all values
out of his sense experiences is much more worldly than Hector's Platonic idea t
hat values exist prior to and perhaps independent of experience.2 Reason itself
is called into question: Helenus is accused by Troilus of "furring" his gloves w
ith reason, and reason is equated with fear (2. 2. 32); "Nay, if we talk of reas
on,/ Let's shut our gates, and sleep." This exchange is usually interpreted as p
ointing up Troilus' infatuation with honor as an extension of his infatuation wi
th Cressida, but this insistence upon the relativity of all values is much "hard
er" (to use William James's distinction between "hard" and "soft" thinkers) than
Hector's. What is most surprising is that this comes after Troilus' earlier con
demnation of Helen (she is "too starved a subject" for his sword). Hector, in hi
s reply, calls upon a supratemporal structure of value that is at all times rela
ted to the rather sordid doings of Greeks and Trojans: actions are "precious" in
themselves as well as in the "prizer." His argument, based upon the "moral laws
of nature" that demand a wife be returned to her husband, parallels Ulysses' pr
ophetic warnings concerning the unleashing of chaos that will result in a son's
striking a father dead. Hector says:
There is a law in each well-order'd nation
To curb those raging appetites that are
Most disobedient and refractory. (2.2.180-183)
In doing so, he has shifted his argument from the universal to the particular, s
peaking now of "law" within a nation and not "law" that exists prior to the esta
blishment of any human community. If this shift, subtle as it is, is appreciated
, then Hector's sudden decision a few lines below is not so surprising. He gives
so many excellent reasons for wanting to end the war, then says, "Yet, ne'erthe
less,/ My spritely brethren, I propend to you/ In resolution to keep Helen still
. . . ."
No doubt there is something wrong with the scene; no audience would ever be prep
ared for Hector's sudden change of mind. But it is necessary for the play's phil
osophic core that the greatest of the Trojans for some inexplicable reason will
turn his back on reason itself, aligning himself with those of "distempered bloo
d" though he seems to know much more than they. The scene makes sense if it is i
nterpreted as a demonstration of the ineffectuality of reason as reason, the rel
ativity of all values, and the existential cynicism that values are hallucinator
y in the sense that they are products of man's will. As Troilus says, "My will e
nkindled by mine eyes and ears,/ Two traded pilots 'twixt the dangerous shores/
Of will and judgment" (2. 2. 63-65). Must Troilus be seen as a "lecher," as one
critic calls him,3 because he does not recognize that only marriage is sanctione
d by heaven, not courtly love? On the contrary, it seems clear that Shakespeare
is pointing toward a criticism of all values in the light of what we know of the
ir origin through the senses and that Troilus' flaw is not his inability to understa
nd a moral code, but his humanity.
The limitations and obsessions of humanity define the real tragedy of this play
and perhaps of any play, but only in Troilus and Cressida does Shakespeare refus
e to lift man's spirit above them.4 And it is certainly no error on the playwrig
ht's part that the highly moral, highly chivalric Hector changes into quite anot
her kind of gallant soldier when he is alone. In act 5, scene 6, Hector fights w
ith Achilles and, when Achilles tires, allows him to escape; no more than a minu
te later he sees another Greek in "sumptuous" armor5 whom he wants to kill "for
his hide." Why the sudden change? It may well be that through allowing Achilles
freedom, Hector gains greater glory for himself, and so his "chivalric" gesture
is really an egoistic one. (Achilles has said earlier that he is overconfident a
nd a little proud, despite everyone's opinion of him 4. 5. 74-75.) His sudden meta
morphosis into a killer can be explained by the relativity of values in even the
most stable of men when he can act without witnesses. Though the mysterious Gre
ek runs away and really should not be chased, Hector does chase him and kill him
. He does this out of lust for the man's armor; he has refrained from killing Ac
hilles because of his egoistic desire to uphold his reputation. The scene is als
o an allegorical little piece (most of the scenes involving Hector have an obvio
usly symbolic, "vertical" thrust) that suggests that Death himself is present on
the battlefield, tempting everyone with an external show of sumptuousness. Shak
espeare, therefore, in two carefully executed though puzzling scenes, shows the
upholder of "essentialist" views to switch suddenly and inexplicably to the oppo
site. His psychological insight is extraordinary here, for though the narrative
inconsistency of Hector may baffle an audience, he shows that the will does inde
ed utilize knowledge for its own sake; "knowledge" may be in control but only be
cause the will at that moment allows it. Jaspers speaks of the desire of man to
subordinate himself to an "inconceivable supersensible" and to the "natural char
acter of impulses and passions, to the immediacy of what is now present,"6 and i
t is this tragic instability of man that Shakespeare demonstrates.
The debate between what is essential and what is existential is carried on in a
kind of running battle by Thersites, who speaks as a debased, maddened Fool lice
nsed to roam about the Greek field. An intolerable character, and not at all an
amusing one, he speaks with an intelligence equal to Ulysses' but without any of
Ulysses' control. He is "lost in the labyrinth of [his] fury," and we need not
ask what he is so furious about: it is the condition of life itself He counters
Ulysses' speech on degree by various parodies of degree, Ulysses' analytical mmd
transformed in Thersites into a savage talent for splitting distinctions:
Agamemnon is a fool to offer to command Achilles;
Achilles is a fool to be commanded of Agamemnon;
Thersites is a fool to serve such a fool; and
Patroclus is a fool positive. (2.3. 67-71)
His curses are a disharmonious music that balances the overly sweet music attend
ing Helen, and the result of his relentless cataloguing is certainly the calling
-down of all ideals as they have been expressed in the first two acts of the pla
y:
. . . Here's Agamemnon, an honest fellow enough, and one that loves quails,
but he has not so much brain as ear-wax and the goodly transformation of Jupiter
there, his brother the bull, the primitive statue, and oblique memorial of cuck
olds . . . to what form but that he is should wit larded with malice and malice
forced with wit turn him to? To an ass, were nothing: he is both ass and ox; to
an ox, were nothing: he is both ox and ass. To be a dog, a mule, a cat, a fitche
w, a toad, a lizard, an owl, a puttock, or a herring without a roe, I would not
care; but to be Menelaus! .... (5.1.56 ff.)
Thersites is to the Greeks and Trojans as the Fool is to Lear, except they learn
 nothing from him. While Ulysses in his famous speech on "degree" strains to lea
ve the earth and to call into authority the very planets themselves, Thersites g
rovels lower and lower, sinking into the earth and dragging with him all the "gl
ory" of this war: "Lechery, lechery! Still wars and lechery! Nothing else holds
fashion." He is almost ubiquitous, this maddened and tedious malcontent, and if
his cynicism is exaggerated in regard to what he has actually seen, so are the r
omantic and chivalric ideals of the first half of the play exaggerated in regard
to their objects. Thersites runs everywhere, from scene to scene, hating what h
e sees and yet obviously relishing it, for he is the very spirit of the play its
elf, a necessary balance to its fraudulent idealism. Significantly, he disappear
s just when the battle begins in earnest. He is last seen just after Patroclus i
s reported killed by Hector. After this, the action throws off all ceremonial pr
etensions, and men go out in the field to destroy, not to play a game. Once Achi
lles announces that he will kill Hector in "fellest manner," we have no need for
Thersites, who is of value only to negate pretensions. Perhaps he does return,
in the figure of Pandarus for the mocking, loathsome Pandarus who ends the play se
ems a new character altogether. He is really Thersites, but Pandarus is needed t
o unify the love plot: the play's final word is "diseases," a fitting one certai
nly, but one that makes more sense in Thersites' mouth than in Pandarus'. Thersi
tes' is the most base, the most existential vision in the play, and if we hesita
te to believe that it is also Shakespeare's vision, we must admit that he has sp
ent a great deal of time establishing it. His function is to call everything dow
n to earth and to trample it. In his discordant music he celebrates what Troilus
and others have been experiencing, and it is certainly Shakespeare's belief, al
ong with Thersites', that "all the argument is a cuckold and a whore."
The play's great theme is infidelity, and it is this that links together the var
ious separate actions. There are three stories here that of Troilus and Cressida,
that of the Greeks' quarrel with Achilles, and that of Hector's downfall and all t
hree pivot around a revelation or demonstration of infidelity. Casting its shado
w over the entire play, of course, is the infidelity of Helen. But it is not eve
n a serious matter, this "fair rape"; it is a subject for bawdy jests for all ex
cept Menelaus. "Helen must needs be fair,/ When with your blood you daily paint
her thus," (1. 1. 95-96) Troilus observes bitterly, but a reflection of this typ
e is little more than incidental. From time to time Greeks and Trojans register
consciousness of what they are doing, but in general the games of love and war a
re enjoyed for their own sakes. It is characteristic of men to give their lives
for such activities, Shakespeare suggests, not characteristic of just these men.
It is characteristic of all love to be subject to a will that seems to be not o
ur own, and, as Troilus says, "sometimes we are devils to ourselves" (4. 4. 95).
Cressida is not just Cressida but all women the other woman in the play, Helen, i
s no more than a mirror image of Cressida. When Troilus says that Cressida has d
epraved their mothers, he is not speaking wildly but speaking symbolically. Hect
or's sudden about-face is not freakish, but natural; Achilles brutality is not b
estial, but human. Above all, the play does not concern isolated human beings bu
t, like all Shakespeare's tragedies, it contains the whole world by implication.
Nowhere in the play is it suggested that there is a contrasting life somewhere
else. Pandarus' impudent address to the audience is intended to link his panderi
ng with that of the audience's generally, and to suggest that the play is a symb
olic piece, the meanings of which accord with the experiences of the audience. T
his should be understood if the play is to be recognized as a kind of faulty tra
gedy and not just a farce or satire.
The infidelity theme is illustrated on many levels, some of them ingenious. Shak
espeare's conception of his art as existing in a kind of multidimensional sphere h
is use, for instance, of structure to comment upon content is nowhere so brillian
t as in this play. It has been noted that Othello takes place in a double time,7
the foreground being the "timeless" time of the tragic narrative that is univer
sal and the background an attempt to set up a plausible chronological order; in
Troilus and Cressida Shakespeare uses structure to point up his irony, the discr
epancy between man's ideals and what he makes of them in reality. It is not "the
world" as such that violates man's ideals; it is man himself. The play begins w
ith symmetrically balanced scenes: Troilus and Pandarus, then Cressida and Panda
rus; the great Greek council of war, then the Trojan council; the central positi
on (act 3, scene 2) of Paris and Helen, the magnificent lovers and the cause of
the war, who are shown to be, unfortunately, insipid and vulgar. We move back an
d forth from Greek to Trojan worlds, and then, near the end of the play, the two
are brought together when Cressida gives herself to the Greek Diomed. After thi
s, the play seems to fall apart. Chaos threatens. The death of Hector is a butch
ery, and yet Hector has debased himself before his death. Troilus does not kill
Diomed or Achilles but simply vows revenge; this is the last we see of him. Pand
arus closes the play, not because what would seem to be a normal narrative has e
nded but because the play's points have been made. Characters act in order to il
lustrate meanings, and then they disappear; there is no reason even to punish th
em, for justice is clearly not the way of the world, and certainly the infidelit
y of Cressida is a "given" for the audience, not a surprise. Here, Shakespeare u
ses technique to illustrate theme. The almost geometric precision of the play's
beginning is matched by the chaos of its ending. Its fairy-tale plots give way t
o psychological reality, and men live in earnest, thus precipitating the chaos t
hat Othello envisioned as coming when love is destroyed. On a rather abstract le
vel, we have the "infidelity" of the play's unfolding as contrasted with its pro
mises as a seemingly conventional work dealing with a familiar story.
The more literal demonstrations of infidelity deal with the relationship between
man and woman, the relationship of man and time, the relationship of man with h
is ideals, and the relationship of the soul and the body. The most interesting o
f these is the last-mentioned, because in a sense it includes all the others.
Much, certainly, has been written on the theme of "time" in this play,8 and Ulys
ses' marvelous speech calls attention to itself as one of the important set-piec
es of the play. But the whole conception of "time" as having supplanted eternity
rests upon an existential basis the mortality of spirit and the corruptibility of
the flesh; that is, Ulysses in act 3 rejects philosophically what he has said i
n the "degree" speech in act 1. It is no matter that all Ulysses is trying to do
is to spur Achilles into action no desire in the play is ever equivalent to the
homage paid to it; what is important is the assumption behind each of his lines:
Time hash, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
A great-siz'd monster of ingratitudes:
Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour'd
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done: . . .
. . . . O! let not virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was;
For beauty, wit,
High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin, . . .
(3.3. 148-175)
"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin": a famous line rarely recognized
as the savage indictment of human destiny it is. Here, Ulysses quite deliberate
ly equates "high birth, vigor of bone, desert in service, love, friendship, and
charity" as victims of "time"; it is not suggested that any of these outweigh th
e others simply because they are more spiritual. "Vigor of bone" may be calmly e
quated with "love," for both are leveled by the passage of physical time: "The p
resent eye praises the present object." Man lives only in the present, a continu
ously changing present that consumes him and goes on to new flesh. This vision o
f life is possible only to someone who recognizes nothing beyond man as flesh.
So it is no surprise to Ulysses when Cressida behaves as she does. His language
loses its bombastic quality once the Greek council scene in act 1 is over and, a
s the play continues, becomes direct and objective: "All's done, my lord," he te
lls Troilus when Cressida has exhibited her unfaithfulness. If the "degree" spee
ch is compared with his later lines, it will seem to be pompous and excessively
rhetorical.9 His vision of chaos is a vision so terrifying that he tries to rest
rain it through the use of tightly controlled language and imagery; there is the
sense in this speech, with its interpretation of the cosmos in terms of man, an
d, most importantly, in terms of Achilles' disobedience, of something weak and f
alse, something wished for rather than believed. Ulysses leaps from the sight of
the "hollow" Grecian tents upon the plain to the "heavens themselves" and tries
to relate the two. His threat is that if degree is masked, everything will "inc
lude itself in power," power will be overcome by will, will by appetite, and app
etite will at last eat itself up, a universal wolf confronted with a universal p
rey. This is certainly ironic in that Ulysses is concerned specifically with pow
er and that his intelligence is of value only as it directs the power of Achille
s. While he seems to be speaking against raw power he is really speaking for it;
and the greatest chaos of all is to come when Achilles does indeed go into batt
le, just as everyone wishes. This famous speech, with its evocation of a marvelo
us, orderly universe threatened by man's willfulness, is, when examined, hardly
more than a sophistic facade of rhetoric intended to bring power, will, and appe
tite into being. It is directed toward the same ends but is never so honest as t
he speeches of Troilus and Paris defending Helen. Even if the speech is accepted
on its literal level, it is philosophically rejected by Ulysses' later speech.
Indeed, the tradition of considering Ulysses the wisest person in the play is su
spect; as George Meyer points out, his wisdom has clear limitations.10 He seems
to be an instrament rather than a fully realized person. Like a refined Thersite
s, he "sees" and "knows" things but he has little to do with what happens.
The infidelity of time is not the primary theme of the play, but is rather an il
lustration of the results of the tragic duality of man, his division into spirit
and flesh. If we are to take Troilus as the moral center of the play, then the
initiation into the discrepancy between the demands of the soul and those of the
body is the central tragic dilemma. His experience is a moving one, and the fac
t that he is surrounded, in his naivete, with various types of sexual and moral
degeneracy should not undercut his experience. Surely, the play is filled with "
derision of folly," and its relationship to the comical satires of Jonson and Ma
rston is carefully detailed by Campbell,11 but the experience of Troilus is not
a satirized experience; it is quite clear that Shakespeare is sympathetic with h
is hero and expects his audience to share this sympathy.
Let us examine Troilus' education in terms of his commitment to a sensualized Pl
atonism, a mystic adoration of a woman he hardly knows. He begins as a conventio
nal lover who fights "cruel battle" within and who leaps from extremes of sorrow
to extremes of mirth because he has become unbalanced by the violence of what h
e does not seem to know is lust. In the strange love scene of act 3, scene 2, wi
th its poetic heights and its bawdy depths, Troilus is giddy with expectation an
d his words are confused: does he really mean to say that he desires to "wallow"
in the lily beds of Cressida's love, or is this Shakespeare forcing him to reve
al himself? The scene immediately follows the "honey sweet" scene in which Panda
rus sings an obscene song to Paris and Helen and declares that love is a "genera
tion of vipers"; certainly Troilus' maddened sincerity is pathetic in this circu
mstance, since we have heard Cressida reveal herself earlier and give the lie to
Troilus' opinion of her: "she is stubborn-chaste against all suit" (1. 1. 101).
After Pandarus brings them together, Cressida says, "Will you walk in, my lord?
" ( 3. 2. 61). Troilus continues his rhetorical declaration of passion by lament
ing the fact that the "monstruosity in love" lies in the will being infinite and
the execution confined, and she says a second time in what is surely a blunt un
dercutting of his poetry, "Will you walk in, my lord?" Pandarus, meanwhile, bust
les around them and comments upon their progress. It seems clear that Troilus of
operating on a different level of understanding than are Cressida and Pandarus wh
at he takes quite seriously they take casually. It is part of the "game." Cressi
da has declared earlier that she lies "Upon my back, to defend my belly; upon my
wit, to defend my wiles" (1. 2. 282-283). She is content to think of herself as
a "thing" that is prized more before it is won (1. 2. 313), and how else can on
e explain her behavior with Diomed unless it is assumed that she is "impure" bef
ore becoming Troilus' mistress? It is incredible to think that Troilus has corru
pted her, that he has brought her to her degradation,12 if only for naturalistic
reasons; it is just as incredible as Desdemona's supposed adultery with Cassio.
On the contrary, Cressida must be seen as an experienced actress in the game of
love, just as everyone else in the play with the exception of Troilus is experi
enced at "acting" out roles without ever quite believing in them.13 Shakespeare
uses Calchas' abandonment of the Trojans to signal Cressida's coming infidelity.
Just as the father betrays his native city, so does Cressida betray Troilus. No
t much is made of Calchas in this play, perhaps because there are already so man
y characters, but Thersites does remark that he is a "traitor." In earlier treat
ments, Calchas, who was a Trojan bishop, is a guide and counselor for the Greeks
, a respected man; in later sources he is progressively downgraded.14 In this pl
ay he is nothing but a traitor whose flight to the Greeks brings about Cressida'
s actual infidelity. Not that his behavior has caused hers: Cressida could have
learned infidelity from any number of sources in her world.
Troilus' tragedy is his failure to distinguish between the impulses of the body
and those of the spirit. His "love" for Cressida, based upon a Platonic idea of
her fairness and chastity, is a ghostly love without an object; he does not see
that it would be really a lustful love based upon his desire for her body. Shake
speare is puritanical elsewhere, but I think in this play he reserves sympathy f
or the tragedy of the impermanence of love built upon lust; Troilus is a victim
not of cunning or selfishness but simply of his own body. He may be comic in his
earlier rhetorical excesses, and pathetic in his denial of Cressida's truly bei
ng Cressida (act 5, scene 2), but his predicament as a human being is certainly
sympathetic. In acadernic criticism there is often an intolerance for any love t
hat is not clearly spiritual, but this failure to observe the natural genesis an
d characteristics of love distorts the human perspective of the work of art alto
gether. Troilus' behavior and, indeed, his subsequent disillusionment are natura
l; he is not meant to be depraved, nor is his declaration of love in terms of se
nsual stimulation particularly the sense of taste meant to mark him as a hedonist an
d nothing more. It is Cressida, the calculating one who thinks of herself as a "
thing," and Diomed, so much more clever than Troilus, who are villainous. The fi
rst line of Sonnet 151 might apply to Troilus: "Love is too young to know what c
onscience is." Troilus' youthful lust is a lust of innocence that tries to defin
e itself in terms of the spiritual and the heavenly, just as Ulysses' speech on
degree tries to thrust the disorderly Greeks into a metaphysical relationship to
the universe and its "natural" laws. Both fail Troilus because he does not unders
tand his own feelings and Ulysses because there is, in fact, no relationship bet
ween man and the universe. In both failures there is the pathetic failure of man
to recognize the limitations of the self and its penchant for rationalizing its
desires. Nothing is ever equivalent to the energy or eloquence or love lavished
upon it. Man's goals are fated to be less than his ideals would have them, and
when he realizes this truth he is "enlightened" in the special sense in which tr
agedy enlightens men a flash of bitter knowledge that immediately precedes death.
It is difficult to believe, as Campbell argues, that the finale of Troilus and C
ressida should be regarded only as the "intelligent use of an accepted artistic
convention,''15 that is, as the ejection of derided characters in satire, and no
t as the expression of personal disillusionment of these characters. Troilus is
not a satisfactory tragic hero, but he is certainly a human being who has suffer
ed an education. The fact of his going off to die in what is left of the Trojan
War would seem to annul the parallel Campbell makes with the banished Malvolio o
f Twelfth Night.
The play, with its large number of characters, submits various interpretations o
f itself to the audience.16 The most strident of the points of view is Thersites
, who maintains one note and emerges as a kind of choral instrument to insist up
on the betrayal of the spirit by the body. The violent rhythms of the play its jag
ged transitions and contrasts between sweetness and bawdiness, pomposity and blu
nt physical action are most obviously represented by Thersites in his labyrinth of
fury. If he reminds us of anyone else in Shakespeare, it is Iago, who cannot lo
ve and who must therefore drag everyone down to his bestial level. But Thersites
is more mysterious a character than Iago because he figures not at all in the a
ction the play would be different without him, but not radically different. He com
es onto the stage and mocks the rituals that have characterized the first part o
f the play; we feel, after Troilus' inflamed words and the Greeks' pompous speec
hes, that this is a man who speaks the truth, who sees at once through all masks
. Because it is static, his nihilism soon becomes wearisome. But he is not inten
ded to be an entertaining character; he is little more than a voice that has att
ached itself to this war simply in order to interpret it.
Thersites makes his noisy entrance immediately after Ulysses explains his plot t
o get Achilles into action. He undercuts all pretensions of the council scene: i
f Agamemnon had boils, and the boils ran, then "would come some matter from him.
I see none now." And: "There's Ulysses and old Nestor, whose wit was mouldy ere
your grandsires had nails on their toes" (2. 1. 114-116). Patroclus, who is not
a particularly unsympathetic character, is recognized by Thersites as Achilles'
"brach," his "male varlet," and his "masculine whore." Thersites has the magica
l immunity and privilege of a court jester, and his fearlessness in speaking blu
ntly even to Achilles suggests that he is not to be explained in naturalistic te
rms so much as in symbolic terms. He calls for vengeance, the "Neapolitan bone-a
che" on the whole camp, for this is a fitting curse for those who "war for a pla
cket" (2. 3. 20-22) . Significantly, the other character who comes closest to Th
ersites' cynicism is Diomed, who promises to prize Cressida according to her "wo
rth" (4. 4. 133), and who speaks of Helen as "contaminated carrion." Because he
has no illusions at all, Diomed conquers Cressida at once. Thersites' rage, howe
ver, is impotent, a rage to which no one seems to listen. He calls down curses u
pon the heroes who surround him in an effort to deflate their fraudulent romanti
cism and to make them less than human. Man in Thersites' vision is a catalogue o
f parts; he is the maddened puritan who cannot endure the discrepancy between th
e ideals of man and the physical counterparts of these ideals, and who wants not
hing so much as to rip to shreds the pretensions of the heroes and to substitute
for their grandiose views of themselves a devastating image of man as a physica
l creature unable to transcend the meanness of his body. Here is Thersites in a
typical curse:
. . . Now the rotten diseases of the south, the guts-griping, ruptures, cata
rrhs, loads o' gravel i' the back, lethargies, cold palsies, raw eyes, dirt-rott
en livers, wheezing lungs, bladders full of imposthume, sciaticas, lime-kilns i'
the palm, incurable bone-ache, and the rivelled fee-simple of the tetter, take
and take again such preposterous discoveries! ( 5. 1. 20-28 )
The effect of all this is exactly the opposite of that of a magical incantation.
Thersites is used by Shakespeare to break illusions, to break the spells cast b
y the eloquent and self-deceived rhetoricians of the early scenes. He echoes Uly
sses' warning that appetite will devour itself when he says "lechery eats itself
" (5. 4. 37). In the scenes of battle between Troilus and Diomed, the relationsh
ip between the debased war and debased love is made clear. They take on the role
s, however diminished, of Menelaus and Paris, suggesting the endlessness of infi
delity. Last of all, Thersites is heard noisily excusing himself from battle:
I am a bastard too; I love bastards: I am bastard begot, bastard instructed,
 bastard in mind, bastard in velour, in everything illegitimate.... (5.7.17-20)
He reveals himself as a coward, just as eagerly debasing himself as he has debas
ed everyone else, and is driven offstage with a curse: "The Devil take thee, cow
ard!" As Tillyard remarks, the world of Troilus and Cressida is a world in which
things happen to men, rather than a world in which men commit actions.17 Only t
he evil have a positive capacity for action; the rest are powerless, and most po
werless of all is Thersites in his fury.
Unlike ideal and orthodox tragedy, this play leads to no implicit affirmation of
values. However, it is not necessary to say that the play gives us no ''conclus
ion,''18 or that it is only a "rich, varied, and interesting, indeed, heroic and
sensational spectacle" devoid of clear moral sinificance.19 The controversy ove
r the genre to which the play belongs is an important one, because it suggests t
he complexity of the work. That it can be a comical satire to one person, a dark
comedy to another, a tragedy to another, and a heroic farce to yet another make
s clear the fundamental ambiguity of the work. Arguments over class)fication may
seem superficial, but they are really concerned with the deeper, more important
task of understanding the play's meaning as it is qualified by the striking ext
remes of tone, mockery in both content and structure, and its placing of a heroi
c young man in a degenerate society that seems utterly aliens to him. Like Othel
lo, with whom Brian Morris compares him,20 Troilus is a man who is unaccountable
in terms of the world that has made him: he is a "given," an innocence that is
introduced only in order to be disillusioned and destroyed.
Above all, the play should be recognized as containing within itself a comment u
pon the "real" world and not as a satirical offshoot of the larger world, someho
w inferior to it. It does not point toward another, better, more perfect way of
living. This is important or we will interpret the play as satire against courtl
y love and chivalric ideals. It is certainly a satire against these codes of liv
ing, but it is also much more; like Gulliver's Travels, it works toward establis
hing all mankind as its satiric object. There has been much discussion about Sha
kespeare's reasons for choosing this familiar story, but I think it important to
insist that the play's world like the worlds of the tragedies is complete within it
self. It is a mythic or allegorical representation of a complete action that doe
s not demand outside knowledge to fufill it. R. A. Foakes suggests that we see o
r experience the play in a kind of "double time," seeing beyond the moment and k
nowing more than the characters do at any particular point:
. . . if [Shakespeare] reduces the accepted stature of the heroes . . . he d
oes it securely in the knowledge that we will have in mind the legend that has d
escended from Homer, via Virgil, with medieval accretions . . . and has survived
all additions and mod)fications to maintain still the ready image of Hector and
Achilles as types of great warriors, Helen as a type of beauty. This vision mod
)fies our attitude to the play. . . . 21
This idea, while imaginative and stimulating, is based upon an erroneous concept
ion of what drama is. We must remember that the play is meant to be played, show
n, demonstrated, and that while a work of art is unfolding, no observer, however
learned, can experience it with a "double awareness." This is certainly to atta
ch too great an agility to the mind. I believe that Shakespeare in this instance
seized upon a popular story in order to use it, simply, as a symbolic represent
ation of an idea that at this time of his life must have obsessed him, and that
the Troilus-Cressida story and the Trojan War story are not meant to be played o
ut against anyone's prior knowledge but are intended to transcend or negate this
prior knowledge, or simply to create another world altogether just as someone lik
e Faulkner is obsessed with a Christ-pattern in his works, not in order to deriv
e meaning from a comparison with the biblical Christ but rather to substitute fo
r that Christ a "real" Christ, a human being. This makes the difference between
merely clever art based upon cultural knowledge of earlier art (one certainly th
inks of T. S. Eliot in this respect) and art that is deadly serious and wants to
absolutely re-create and reinterpret the world. There can be nothing "left over
" in Troilus and Cressida, and Shakespeare works hard to establish our attitude
to his play through his relentless imagery and irony he would not be secure in the
knowledge that our attitudes were going to be modified by other versions of the
legend.
Laurence Michel, centering his analysis on Othello, sees Shakespearean tragedy a
s a "critique of humanism from the inside." 22 He studies the discrepancy betwee
n the pretensions of humanism and the stark reality of tragedy, which sees "ever
ything humanistically worthwhile . . . blighted, then irretrievably cracked; men
are made mad, and then destroyed...." Following Aristotle's insistence upon the
primacy of the plot, Michel suggests that the plot, as the soul of the action,
criticizes the humanistic ideals that the characters live by, and that this is t
herefore a critique from the "inside." Troilus and Cressida, so much more comple
x than Othello, suggests by its subject matter and its mockery of opposites (fla
wed "reason" vs. flawed "emotion") a criticism of the pretensions of tragedy its
elf whether it is redefined as "metatheater" or simply as flawed tragedy. The cons
tant ironic undercutting of appearances; the fragments of tragic action that nev
er quite achieve tragedy; above all, the essential philosophic split between the
realm of the etemal and that of the existential, the temporarily existing, make
it a comment on man's relationship to himself that is very nearly contemporary.
More than any other play of Shakespeare's, it is Troilus and Cressida about whi
ch Auerbach seems to be speaking when he discusses the radical differences betwe
en the tragedies of Shakespeare and those of antiquity.23
Notes
1 Laurence Michel, "Shakespearean Tragedy: Critique of Humanism from the Inside,
" Massachusetts Review, II (1961), pp. 633-650
2 For a wider application of Platonic ideas to Troilus and Cressida, see I. A. R
ichards, "Troilus and Cressida and Plato," Hudson Review, (1948) pp. 362-376
3 F. A. Foakes, "Troilus and Cressida Reconsidered," University of Toronto Quart
erly, XXXII (January, 1963),p. 146.
4 R. J. Kaufmann, in "Ceremonies for Chaos: The Status of Troilus and Cressida,"
ELH, XXXII (June 1965) sees the deep theme of the play to be the "self-consumin
g nature of all negotiable forms of vice and virtue (p. 142); the play itself is
a prolegomenon to tragedy, a "taxonomical prelude to Shakespeare's mature trage
dies" (p. 159). David Kaula in "Will and Reason in Troilus and Cressida," Shakes
peare Quarterly, XII (1961) sees the harmony necessary between self, society, an
d cosmos thwarted in the play, not clearly developed as it is in the more mature
tragedies (p. z83).
5 See S. L. Bethell, "Troilus and Cressida," in Shakespeare: Modem Essays in Cri
ticism, ed. Leonard F. Dean (New York, Peter Smith, 1957), p. 265.
6 Karl Jaspers, Reason and Existenz (New York, 1955), p. 20.
7 See M. R. Ridley's Introduction to his edition of Othello in the New Arden Sha
kespeaTe (London, 1958), pp. lxvii-lxx.
8 See Wilson Knight in Wheel of Fire (Oxford University Press, 1935); Harold E.
Toliver, "Shakespeare and the Abyss of Time," JEGP, LXIV (1965), pp. 243-246; an
d D. A. Traversi's chapter on the play in An Approach to Shakespeare (New York,
1956).
9 See A. S. Knowland, "Troilus and Cressida," Shakespeare Quarterly, X (1959), p
. 359; and F. QuinIand Daniels, "Order and Confusion in Troilus and Cressida," S
hakespeare Quarterly, XII (1961), p. 285. Professor Knowland also questions the
importance of "time" in the play.
10 George Wilbur Meyer, "Order Out of Chaos in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressid
a," Tulane Studies in English, IV (1954), pp. 55-56.
11 Oscar James Campbell, Comicall Satyre and Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida
" (Califomia, 1938).
12 Foakes, op. cit., pp. 146-147.
13 Achilles as the "courtly lover" obeying an oath to Polyxena not to fight is s
uddenly stirred to savagery when Patroclus, his "masculine whore," is killed, re
vealing his true love to be homosexual; Ajax, forced into a role by the cunning
of Ulysses, soon swells with pride and becomes more egotistical than Achilles; H
ector's change of mind has been discussed above; Pandarus seems to reveal a newe
r, more disgusting side of his "honey sweet" character at the end of the play.
14 See R. M. Lumiansky, "Calchas in the Early Versions of the Troilus Story," Tu
lane Studies in English, IV (1954), pp. 5-20.
15 Campbell, op. cit., p. z33.
16 See Rudolf Stamm, "The Glass of Pandar's Praise: The Word Scenery, Mirror Pas
sages, and Reported Scenes in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida," Essays and St
udies (1964), pp. 55-77, for a detailed analysis of the self-consciousness of th
e play and its visual perspectives.
17 E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare's Problem Plays (London, 1950), p.86.
18 T. W. Baldwin, "Troilus and Cressida Again," Scrutiny, XVIII (1955), p.145.
19 Hardin Craig, ed. The Complete Works of Shakespeare (New York, 1951), p. 863.
20 Brian Morris, "The Tragic Structure of Troilus and Cressida," Shakespeare Qua
rterly, X (1959), pp. 488, 491.
21 Foakes, op. cit., p. 153.
22 Michel, op. cit., pp. 633-650.
23 ". . . Shakespeare's ethical and intellectual world is much more agitated, mu
ltilayered, and, apart from any specific dramatic action, in itself more dramati
c than that of antiquity. The very ground on which men move and actions take the
ir course is more unsteady and seems shaken by inner disturbances. There is no s
table world as background, but a world which is perpetually re-engendering itsel
f out of the most varied forces.... In antique tragedy the philosophizing is gen
erally undramatic; it is sententious, aphoristic, is abstracted from the action
and generalized, is detached from the personage and his fate. In Shakespeare's p
lays it becomes personal; it grows directly out of the speaker's immediate situa
tion and remains connected with it.... It is dramatic self-scrutiny seeking the
right mode and moment for action or doubting the possibility of finding them." E
rich Auerbach, Mimesis (Princeton, 1953), p. 285.

twelfth night
1)"An Improbable Fiction":
Shakespeare's Twelfth Night
in Sources and Performance
by Joseph L. Lockett
for Dr. Meredith Skura

A final paper for

"Shakespeare's Sources"
September 12, 1991
Plays are one of the most subtle forms of literature: while a novel reveals
almost everything in its text and description, much of a play depends on the mat
ter between the lines, or the behavior and interpretation of the actors who play
the roles. And these influences are invisible, unless we examine the context of
the play: its sources, the circumstances of its composition and performance. Sh
akespeare's Twelfth Night is one such play: in examining the works Shakespeare d
rew on to write the play and evidence about his audience, we can reconstruct man
y of his intentions in this variegated comedy.
Shakespeare's main source, and certainly his most accessible, is the prose t
ale of "Apolonius and Silla" in Barnabe Riche's Riche his Farewell to Militarie
Profession (1581). Yet "Apolonius and Silla" itself has sources which Shakespear
e may have been able to peruse. The earliest (apart from the Plautine Menaechmi,
the origin of many a mistaken-identity plot, including Shakespeare's own Comedy
of Errors) is the Italian Gl'Ingannati ("The Deceived Ones"), written and perfo
rmed at Siena by the Academy of the Intronati in 1531. Shakespeare may well have
read that plot (he knew some Latin, after all, so Italian would not have been t
oo much of a stretch), or at least its French incarnation, in the author Pierre
de Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques (part IV, no. 59) (1570). (Henry V III.iv c
ertainly proves a passing acquaintance with French.) But Shakespeare's reading l
ist is far less important than what he did with his discoveries.
Gl'Ingannati is quite a different work from Twelfth Night: more Plautine far
ce than romantic comedy. But the similarities and differences between the two do
much to reveal the aims of Shakespeare's play. The siblings Fabrizio and Lelia
are separated during the sack of Rome in 1527, when Lelia is thirteen years old
(a likely source for Viola's father, who died "that day that made my sister thir
teen years" (T N V.i.240)). Three years later, when the play occurs, Lelia's father
Virginio confines her to a convent, and her beloved, Flaminio, shifts his affec
tions to the indifferent Isabella, daughter of Gherardo, the man whom Lelia's fa
ther intends her to marry. The love relationships are certainly a bit more compl
ex in this version than in Shakespeare's play!
Lelia, after escaping from the convent where her father has placed her, disg
uises herself as a boy, takes the name Fabio, and serves Flaminio, who sends him
/her to woo Isabella. Isabella falls in love with Fabio, who receives her affect
ion so long as she repulses Flaminio in return. When Fabrizio returns to town, t
he old men think he is the escaped Lelia and lock him in a room with the comely
Isabella. The inevitable occurs, and Fabrizio and Isabella are betrothed. Flamin
io, after being persuaded from revenge on "Fabio," marries Lelia. The basic love
-plot thus vaguely resembles Shakespeare's, though "much more of the play is tak
en up with the old men's folly, the nurse's resourcefulness [prime source materi
al for Romeo and Juliet], the servants' jealousy of their new fellow the page, t
he rivalry of two innkeepers for Fabrizio's custom, the mutual abuse of the Peda
nt and Fabrizio's servant, the comic greed of the latter, and the maidservant's
tricking of the Spaniard." (Lothian & Craik, pp. xxxvi-xxxvii) The whole treatme
nt is also much bawdier than Twelfth Night's.
Riche's "Apolonius and Silla" changes all of the names, and alters the plot
substantially as well. A noble duke of Constantinople, Apolonius, lays over on C
yprus while returning home from his wars against the Turk, and attracts the atte
ntions of Silla, daughter of the Duke of Cyprus. After Apolonius' departure, Sil
la pines so for him that she secretly boards ship with her trusty servant Pedro
(the two disguised as brother and sister) to visit him. The captain of the vesse
l threatens to rape Silla, she prays to God, and the ship is wrecked with all ha
nds lost but Silla, who floats to shore with a chest of the captain's clothes. S
illa dresses herself in male clothing, assumes the name of her brother Silvio (s
hades of Menaechmi again), and enters Apolonius' service. For him she woos the w
ealthy widow Julina who, as we would expect with this plot, falls in love with h
im/her. Silla suffers and does not requite Julina's affections.
At this point the real Silvio, travelling in search of his sister, arrives a
t Constantinople, where he encounters Julina in a park. She hails him by his pro
per name (mistaking him for the count's page) and invites him to supper. He and
Julina dine, and subsequently go to bed together, where Julina conceives a child
. Silvio, afraid he has been mistaken for someone else, leaves town in haste the
next morning. Julina, realizing her growing condition, goes to plead before Duk
e Apolonius, who has thrown his "Silvio" in prison after hearing from the gossip
of servants his page's greater success in love. A series of angry recrimination
s follows, until Apolonius draws his sword and threatens to kill "Silvio" unless
"he" marries Julina. Silla is forced to reveal herself, and Apolonius, taken wi
th her faithfulness, marries her. Silvio hears tales of these strange events, an
d eventually returns to Constantinople, where he marries the grieving Julina and
all, as the chroniclers say, ends happily ever after.
The most notable differences between these earlier versions of the tale and
Shakespeare's lie, obviously, in the Viola character. Shakespeare's heroine has
no previous relationship with her love Orsino; she has only "heard [her] father
name him" (I.ii.28). This lack of prior attachment certainly removes much of the
opportunity for bitterness that Lelia has in wooing the woman who has supplante
d her. And Lelia's political maneuvering, inappropriate for a romantic heroine,
vanishes too: she no longer bargains "Perhaps I may love you, if you dismiss Fla
minio" (Luce, p. 10), accepts, indeed returns, Isabella's kisses ("I am yours,"
Luce, p.19), and lies to Flaminio "I have delayed, because I waited to speak wit
h Isabella," (Luce, p.20) after kissing his beloved. Viola is much closer to Ric
he's Silla, who, "altogether desirous to please her master, cared nothing at all
to offend herself, [and] followed his business with so good a will as if it had
been in her own preferment" (Luce, p. 64). Those critics who paint Twelfth Nigh
t as a darker, almost "problem" play often question Viola's motives, pointing to
the theme of social advancement typified by Viola's marriage to Orsino, Sebasti
an's to Olivia, Maria's to Sir Toby Belch, and Malvolio's attempt at achieving a
"Lady of the Strachy" situation for himself. Yet Viola's spontaneous and selfle
ss love for Orsino, in marked contrast to Lelia's hidden maneuverings to get Fla
minio back, sets her firmly in the position of romantic heroine: the actress pla
ying Viola need have no fear of being a conniver in disguise.
Shakespeare cleans up Viola's character in other ways as well. Sebastian's s
udden appearance in Act V removes the need for Viola's unpleasantness in Riche's
story -- charges of "foolish indiscretion of a woman, that yieldeth herself to
her own desires... [to] the execution of her filthiness." (Luce, p. 77). The onl
y such hideous rejection Shakespeare shows is Sir Toby's spurning of "asshead, c
oxcomb, and knave" Sir Andrew. Moreover, as audience members we respect the inde
pendent Viola more than the disobedient Lelia or Silla. Lelia's father is admitt
edly horrid, as is old Gherardo, her intended match, but her escape from the con
vent her father placed her in still casts her in the role of rebellious daughter
. Riche's Silla leaves home and family with her trusty servant Pedro, causing th
em no little worry. Indeed, she does it for true love, but we still must look as
kance at her callousness to her unknowing father and brother. Shipwrecked Viola
has no father, and thinks she has lost her brother, so we must admire her brave
attempts to make her own way in the world.
 The infamous sexual ambiguity of Shakespeare's disguised heroines makes its
appearance in his sources as well. Rosalind is famous for her saucy mannerisms i
n courting Orlando, and Viola, though somewhat more romantic and melancholy, als
o is known as a "peevish messenger" and saucy youth. And indeed, once Silla take
s on her "Silvio" disguise in Riche's tale, she is ever after referred to as "he
," even when the pronoun produces such odd lines as "Hearing an oath sworn so di
vinely that he had gotten a woman with child, [Silvio] was like to believe that
it had been true in very deed; but remembering his own impediment, thought it im
possible that he should commit such an act...." (Luce, p.77). Only when Apoloniu
s discovers her true sex does Silvio-"he" return to Silla-"she": this is a pre-F
reudian world where gender is determined by clothing and attitudes. This easy sh
ifting of sex perhaps helps to explain the mysterious "Thou shalt present me as
an eunuch to him" passage (I.ii.56), argued over by critics as evidence of carel
essness or partial revision: as often in Shakespeare, gender boundaries are matt
ers of society and attitude, not inborn equipment.
Fabrizio and Silvio are both vaguely defined characters, but Shakespeare giv
es more detail to his Sebastian. Indeed, Viola and Sebastian only enhance the se
xual ambiguity, for each is a mix of traditional sex characteristics, part of th
e eerie mingling yet separation of twins that fascinated Shakespeare. We first s
ee Viola as a bedraggled shipwreck survivor, unsure of her location, let alone h
er place in the world ("What country, friends, is this...? And what should I do
in Illyria?" I.ii.1-3). Yet she soon establishes herself, gathers information, a
nd lays her plans, rapidly dispensing with her grief over her brother in what we
might describe as a brisk, business-like, "masculine" fashion. Sebastian, on th
e other hand, displays much of the feminine in his first appearance: he weeps ("
She is drowned already, sir, with salt water, though I seem to drown her remembr
ance again with more." (II.i.26-8)), describes himself as "near the manners of m
y mother" (II.i.36), and spends much of the scene bewailing his sister's fate. Y
et he proves a competent fighter -- "the very devil incardinate" (V.i.174) -- of
ten even quarrelsome, as when he threatens Feste ("If you tarry longer, I shall
give worse payment." (IV.i.18-9)) and lashes out at Andrew's incompetent attack.
The actors playing Viola and Sebastian need to imitate each other, obviously, a
nd their roles match this mingling of genders. The two go together, "an apple cl
eft in two" (V.i.215), shipwrecked together, unlike Silla in Cyprus and Silvio i
n Africa, or Lelia in Modena and Flaminio from out of town.
The character of Olivia, too, undergoes radical changes from source to Shake
speare. Gl'Ingannati has the young Isabella, a pretty daughter (probably of Leli
a's own age) of the old widower Gherardo (himself the intended husband of Lelia)
. She falls in love with Fabio, but gains the object of her affections only when
Lelia's father Virginio mistakenly locks Flaminio in her room (with consequence
s bawdily described by Cittina the maid). Riche's Julina is older, and a widow,
and it is this version of the character that Shakespeare adapts for his countess
. Yet once again Shakespeare paints a purer character: Olivia does not, like Jul
ina, invite Sebastian/Silvio to dinner, to an overnight stay, and then to amorou
s dalliance. Instead she marries him directly (a useful country household that c
ontains a priest on call!). Julina blurts out her love directly ("from hencefort
h either speak for yourself, or say nothing at all" (Luce, p.65) mirrors Olivia'
s "I bade you never speak again of him; But, would you undertake another suit...
." (III.i.104-5)), but Olivia begins more subtly, with the ring she sends via Ma
lvolio. The eventual impassioned pleas lead to another verbal echo, for "Seeing
my good will and friendly love hath been the only cause to make me so prodigal t
o offer that I see is so lightly rejected, it maketh me to think that men be of
this condition, rather to desire those things which they cannot come by, than to
esteem or value of that which both largely and liberally is offered to them." (
Luce, p. 66) leads to "I love thee so that, maugre all thy pride, / nor wit nor
reason can my passion hide. Do not extort thy reason from this clause, / For tha
t I woo, thou therefore hast no cause; / But rather reason thus with reason fett
er, / Love sought it good, but given unsought is better." (III.i.148-153) Shakes
peare's Olivia, too, is an idealized romantic heroine: perhaps young, though pro
bably older than Viola, and competent in managing her own affairs, though eventu
ally overcome by the power of love.
Duke Orsino remains fairly constant from source to stage, though Shakespeare
amplifies his love-sickness. Riche includes a fairly elaborate paragraphs descr
ibing Apolonius' new-found zeal in romance, but Shakespeare's moonish Duke, list
ening to sad music and "best when least in company," is a definite refinement of
the theme. Flaminio in Gl'Ingannati is love-sick but not as dangerous at the re
solution (no death-threats here), and possibly supplies the inspiration for some
of Orsino and Viola's debates with passages such as "You are a child, Fabio. Yo
u do not know the force of love. I cannot help myself. I must love and adore Isa
bella. I cannot, may not, will not think of any but her. Therefore, go to her ag
ain; speak with her; and try to draw dexterously from her what is the cause that
she will not see me." (Luce, p. 17) Shakespeare's Orsino, unlike Riche's Apolon
ius, does not need to hurl his offending page into prison, for Olivia's greater
care and Sebastian's hastier appearance allow a swifter denouement with fewer ha
rsh words on all sides.
Even Shakespeare's minor characters have their shadows in the sources. Lelia
's brother Fabrizio comes to town with his pedantic tutor Piero to see the "rema
rkable places," though this seems the only connection of the arrogant, avariciou
s teacher with generous, loving Antonio, the sort of man who can enhance the com
ic plot by running afoul of mistaken identities and getting involved in a duel.
Perhaps Piero's avarice, and scraps of his learning, found their way through Sha
kespeare's hands to Feste, helping to explain that Clown's habit of begging. Pie
ro may also supply some ideas for Malvolio, however, particularly in some of his
exchanges with the wastrel servant Stragualcia, "a knave, a rogue, a rascal, a
sluggard, a coward, a drunkard." (Luce, p. 22) The scene between the two of them
also contains the phrases "set his foot on every man's neck" (reminiscent of To
by's offer to Maria in II.v), "He has no more courage than a rabbit," (a common
enough image, but still suggestive of Toby's description of Cesario as "more a c
oward than a hare" (III.iv.365)) and "when I brave him, he is soon silenced" (a
possible echo of Fabian's "you should have banged the youth into dumbness" (III.
ii.21)).
Another of Riche's collected stories ("Of Two Brethren and their Wives," the
fifth in the volume) has a madhouse scene somewhat reminiscent of the gulling o
f Malvolio in III.iv and IV.ii. A man binds and dishevels his wife, ties her "in
a dark house," and pretends she is a lunatic. He and his friends gather and pra
y for her, much as Maria pleads for Malvolio, "Good neighbor, forget these idle
speeches, which do much distemper you, and call upon God, and he will surely hel
p you." (Luce, p. 85) The wife "showed herself in her conditions to be a right B
edlam: she used no other words but cursings and bannings, crying for the plague
and the pestilence, and that the devil would tear her husband in pieces" (ibid),
much unlike Malvolio. Very possibly we are meant to feel more pity for the poor
steward, who sounds more like an oppressed gentleman and Renaissance humanist p
hilosopher ("I think nobly of the soul") than the fierce housewife.
The older men of Gl'Ingannati -- Virginio, Gherardo, and the "fantastical Sp
aniard" Giglio -- may prefigure Toby and Sir Andrew Aguecheek. It is the old men
who shut Fabrizio in Isabella's room when they think "she" has run mad, and Ghe
rardo's attempt to marry Lelia supplies much of her motivation. Andrew could eas
ily be played as an old man: his concern for his hair (I.iii) could be fear of b
aldness, his forgetfulness and general bewilderment can be signs of senility, hi
s money can be the result of a lifetime's savings (and perhaps helped buy his kn
ighthood "with unhatched rapier on carpet consideration"). An older Sir Andrew a
lso fits well with Sir Toby, who must be one of Olivia's older relatives (an unc
le, the text implies, though that is a general term in the period). Perhaps the
traditional old man of Roman comedy -- drunk, riotous, searching for his lost yo
uth, and invariably pursuing the younger woman who will marry the hero -- has ma
de his way into Shakespeare's play under a new disguise.
Shakespeare's sources can do much to describe his intent in writing a play,
but knowledge of his intended audience would add all the more certainty. And, fo
r Twelfth Night, we seem to have that knowledge. Leslie Hotson, in his book The
First Night of "Twelfth Night", uncovers historical evidence that the play was c
ommissioned and first performed at court on Twelfth Night, January 6, 1600/1 (re
call that the medieval year began in March), a day when Queen Elizabeth entertai
ned a visiting Italian, the Duke of Bracciano, Don Virginio Orsino! Hotson occas
ionally waxes too enthusiastic in his theories, and some of his interpretations
of how the play first appeared seem to strain belief, but his book makes some re
asonable assertions, and aids in dramatic interpretation. For if the play was to
be performed before an Orsino, we cannot, like some modern critics, read him as
a ludicrous, self-inflated, overly sentimental lover, a vision of idle uselessn
ess and emotional ennui. Instead, Shakespeare's Duke Orsino is a Continental cou
rtier, the vision of courtly love.
Some critics scoff at the short time available between news of Don Orsino's
visit and his arrival -- some ten or eleven days -- but Shakespeare's company we
re, after all professional actors and, what is more, speaking in their contempor
ary language, not the four-hundred-year-old dialect we moderns struggle with. If
the Rice Players can cast, rehearse, and perform Twelfth Night in three weeks u
sing only evening rehearsals, assuredly Shakespeare could write it and the Lord
Chamberlain's men rehearse it for a performance at Queen Elizabeth's very court.
In further support, tradition has it that Shakespeare wrote The Merry Wives of
Windsor at Queen Elizabeth's request in the space of ten days.
Moreover, the performance date and Queen Elizabeth's request, "to make choys
e of the play that shalbe best furnished with rich apparell, have greate variety
and change of Musicke and daunces, and of a Subiect that may be most pleasing t
o her Maiestie," (Hotson, p. 15), illuminate Shakespeare's choice of title. For
Twelfth Night is the Roman Saturnalia, the feast of topsy-turveydom, when master
s become servants, servants masters, and dreams come true. And Twelfth Night is
a play of reversals and wish fulfillment. In the words of J.D. Salingar, this is
a play of "Sir Toby turning night into day... scenes of mock wooing, a mock swo
rd fight, and the gulling of an unpopular member of the household.... A girl and
a coward are given out to be ferocious duellists; a steward imagines that he ca
n marry his lady; and finally a fool pretends to assure a wise man that darkness
is light.... In the main plot, sister is mistaken for brother, and brother for
sister. Viola tells Olivia `That you do think you are not what you are' -- and a
dmits the same holds true of herself. The women take the initiative in wooing, b
oth in appearance, and in fact; the heroine performs love-service for the lover.
The Duke makes his servant `your master's mistress' and the lady who has withdr
awn from the sight of men embraces a stranger." (Salingar, p. 26) And wishes are
fulfilled, even in the most topsy-turvy fashion: Toby's "firago" duellist appea
rs in the person of Sebastian, and Feste, who "lives by the church" appears in t
he curate's gown of Sir Topas.
Hotson makes one additional suggestion of dubious truth but great interest:
that the character of Malvolio was based, at least in part, on Sir William Knoll
ys, Comptroller of Her Majesty's Household. Knollys came from Banbury, the home
of many Puritans, and strongly supported their sect -- and Banbury was famous fo
r its "cakes and ale." He had recently tried to dye his beard, but produced only
an odd striped effect: white at the roots, yellow in the middle, and black at t
he point, earning him the nickname of "Party Beard" and, perhaps, Maria's refere
nce to "the color of his beard." Moreover, Knollys lived very near the bear-bait
ing ring at the royal lodging at Whitehall, and might well have been annoyed at
such sport (shades of Fabian's disgrace?). And he had recently been "gulled" in
a farcical romantic relationship with one of Queen Elizabeth's Maids of Honour,
Mistress Mary "Mall" Fitton -- perhaps at last an explanation for Sir Toby's mys
tical "Are they like to take dust, like Mistress Mall's picture?" (I.iii.113)
Possibly Malvolio is the result of a sort of Elizabethan Press Club Roast, t
hough the barbs and hatred thrown his way seem overly harsh for a Twelfth Night
send-up of a member of the Queen's household. But the option reminds us that Mal
volio should not, perhaps, be merely a figure of ridicule: as more and more acto
rs have found, the "dark house" scene can be a turning point for the audience, c
reating pity for the haplessly deceived steward and growing resentment at the Si
r Toby who will repulse Sir Andrew so virulently in his last appearance.
The part of an actor is hard: to create a new person, fitting within both on
e's own capabilities and the play's demands. But that process of character const
ruction is made all the easier by accurate signposts as to the playwright's inte
ntions. And Shakespeare shows, perhaps most clearly of all English playwrights,
the directions he wishes his plays to take, through the alterations and enhancem
ents he makes to his sources. Research into the originals of the plot, or even t
o the intended audience, "the quality of persons, and the time" (III.i.61) can h
elp produce a fuller-flowering production. And with that aid, Twelfth Night can
more fully realize Feste's parting claim,
"And we'll strive to please you every day." (V.i.397)