UNIT 1 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE AND THE

ELIZABETHAN DRAMA

Structure

1.0 Objectives

1.2 Christopher Marlowe

.
1.3 Elizabethan Drama : Religious Beginnings

1.4 Miracle and Mystery Plays

1.5 Morality Plays

T .6 Rise of Elizabethan Coniedy and Tragedy

1.7 'The Growth of the Elizabethan Theatre

1.8 Elizabethan Comedy

1.9 Elizabethan Tragedy : the Senecan lnfli~ence

1.10 Greek Origins of Tragedy

1 .1 1 Aris~otle'sdefinition o f Tragedy

1.12 'I'he Elizabethan formulations of Tragedy

1.13 Summing U p : The Modernity of f5lizabethan Tragedy

1.14 References

1.15 Key Words

1.16 Questioiis

1.17 Suggested Readings

! 1.0 OBJECTIVES

This Unit helps you to understa?d the Elizabethan drama of which Christopher
Marlowe is one of the chief representatives. The focus iu this illlit is 011tlie
distinctive growth of Elizabethan coniedy and tragedy. An attenipt is made to show
bow tragedy effectively reflects the cultural aspirations and the keen intellectnal
sensitivity of tlw Elizabethans.

1.1 INTRODUCTION

Christopher Marlowe is the originator of the mature higlish tragedy. Between tlie
playwrights who preceded him like T h o ~ ~ iKyd
a s and those who succeeded hi111like
William Shakespeare and John Webster, Marlowe is tlie crucial nexus, in terms of
ideas and dramatic lor~ns.

C'hristoplie~.Marlowe ( 1 564-93) is the most i~ltellccti~al of the playwrights durillg the

Elizabethan age in E~iglishliterature. l'he periocl know11for unprecedented litcl-ary
activity in England, finds its genil~s,chiefly, in drama wliose most eloqueiit
spokesman was Willianl Sllal\espeare. Marlowc is, i~ndoi~btedly, tlie greatest of
Shakespeare's predecessors in drama. 'To him, goes the credit of heralding the
po\verfi~iEnglisli tragic drama that reniains. even today, as one of the chief
achievements of English literature. Marlowe died very young, before lie was thirty, in
si~spicioi~s circi~~nstaiices
but lefi about half a dozen tragedies all written in a period
of five years - Tun~bzrr*lail~e (1 587), Doclor F L ~ Z I S(1~ 586),
Z I S The .Jew of Malta
(1 589), Edward /I ( 1 591 ). and The hlnssocrr at Paris (1 592). Endowed ~ l i t hvast
biblical and classical scholarsliip, a rebellious spirit and poetic imagination, Marlowe
marks the end of an adolescent phase in English drama and begins its mature tragedy.
In effecting this transition. Marlowe liad to attempt to reconcile the traditions of
medieval Christianity with the rise of the Reformation, on tlie one hand, and reconcile
these two with the continental Renaissance humanisni and tlie revival of the
fzscinating classical learning and literature, on the other. Additionally, there was the
linguistic and lyrical L I ~ S L I of
I - ~the
~ blank verse and its liberating tone of freedom
from the rigors of metrical verse. Whatever Marlowe wrote was poignant, for lie
could never separate liis personal yearnings froni his dramatic reflections. A very
striking personality and a powerfill dramatist, lie is a significant part of a still greater
tradition of the Elizabetlian drama-tragedy in partici~lar,which was taking shape in
Iiis time. Marlowe is judged with a sense of regret that lie died young and that his
'talents lefi many a niasterpiece nnwritten, especially in view of tlie fact that
Shakespeare, similarly gifted coi~ldachieve greatness with longer years of life. On
Marlowe's fo~lrIiundredtli anniversary, I-Iarry Levin reassessed Marlowe's
importance thus:

Marlowe nu st abide the question of history, which Shakespeare-has all but

overflown. Yes, he is for all time, we must agree with Ben Johnson. And
Marlowe then, was lie primarily for his age? Certainly lie caught its
intensities, placed its rhythms, and dramatized its dilemmas as no Elizabethan
writer had previously done, and as all wonld be doing thereafter to some
extent.. .

Marlowe's output was meteoric in its development, and i n its expression as

well. In that sense, Iiis end was not untimely, and it is futile to sentimentalize
now over his fragments and unwritten master works. Shakespeare needed
maturity to express ripeness, although he could never have matured without
assi~mingfirst the youtliful stance that Marlowe liad made permanently his
own. Insofar as he must seem for ever y o ~ ~ n we
g , are inclined to feel old as
we belatedly reread him.'

An understanding of this emerging tradition is necessary for clearer perspectives on

Marlowe's dramatic endeavours and achievement!

1.3 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA: RELIGIOUS BKGINNINGS

One of the finest dramatic traditions in literature, the Elizabethan drama emerged in
the middle of the sixteenth century in England in response to the growing needs of
popular entertainment, national and cultural aspirations. To begin with, the
 Christopher Marlowc
Elizabethans had to reckon witli tlieatre as a vehicle for religious and rnoral
And The Elizabethan
instruction. After the decline of classical drama in Europe, the Middle ages
Drama
witnessed tlie use of tlieatre in tlie cliurcli for religious instruction. This has, in fact,
led to tlie rebirth of western drama after tlie Middle Ages. The antiphonal singing,
tlie essential part of a Rornan Catliolic prayer, in tlie church, displayed dramatic
possibilities that could be effectively used for instructional purposes. Further,
illustrations of the stories of tlie Old and New Testament, particularly during festivals
like Christmas and Easter, through dramatic presentation, became an integral part of
tlie Roman Catholic liturgy.

1.4 MIRACLE AND MYSTERY PLAYS

What began as a religious perfo~.manceby the clergy extended itself to include lay
performers. As the performances gradually became buoyant during tlie festivals, tlie
clergy came to be excluded from participating in such joyous celebrations. Tlie
exclusion of clergy entailed tlie relaxation of cht~rclicontrol over such performances,
leading to tlie secular growth of, what is essentially, a Christian drama. This religious
~raditionof tlieatre became popular in England by the fourteenth century as Mystery
and Miracle plays, tlie former dealing witli biblical stories and the' latter witli tlie lives
of tlie Cliristian saints. In course of time, cycles of plays evolved presenting various
stories but witli a singular theme. Tliougli cornposed by tlie clergy, witli a certain
secular clisposition, in iambic verse, the tlieatrical organization welit into tlie Iiands of
social and trade gililds associated with tow~islike York, Chester, Coventry,
Wakefield and Lincoln. These cycles, largely bereft of any lasting literary value,
facilitated the replacernelit of Latiri by the ver~iacularas tlie medii~~ii
of religion, tlie
shift of tlieatrical activity from cathedrals to open pi~blicplaces, arid in tlieatrical
experience, a change from a sense of religioi~ssole~nnityto the pursuit of popi~lar
taste. A sig~iificantdevelopment for tlie later Elizabethan drama wa:; the mixing up
of the solemn religious practices witli tlie co~iiicfrivolities inherent in day to clay life.

1.5 MORALITY PLAYS

T'hc later advances of Englisli religioi~sdrarna was in tlie form of a morality play
wliicli was, in turn, followed by interludes, tlie non-allegorical religious plays about
earthly characters witli a predominant satirical tone. Tlie morality tradition is
significant for tlie abstract characterization of several qualities, both good and
vicious. Tlie dramatic story is an allegory of tlie interplay of the forces of good and
evil. Tlie dramatic conflict, essentially between good and evil, leads to tlie inevitable
victory of tlie good over evil, the former characterized by tlie strength of religion and
tlic latter smarting under a comic impotence. Tlie morality plays have a long history
i in England beginning with tlie fifteenth century and lasting tlie wlkle of the sixteenth
century. The plays had to reckon with the growth of English nationalism, its political
I
and economic power. More importantly, they had to come to terms with tlie tides of
classical revival and the new humanist learning from Italy. Tlie representative
morality plays of the early Tudor period, like The Cnstle of Perscvercmce (1425), The
I
Pride o f Lye-(1425) and Eve~ytnnn( 1 500) (translated from Dutch, ilie authors
anonymous) survey Iii~nianlife from birth to death tlirougli tlie conflicts occi~rring
between one of tlie cardinal virtues and the seven deadly sins. Social reality of
human life was beneath the concern of tlie early morality play. Plays of tlie late
period like I~lip~itient Poverty (anonymous, 1 547-58), Lewis Wager's Moly
hlc~g~~delerie ( 1 490),Natlianiel Woodes' The Conflicls of Conscience (1 581 ), John
Rastell's Ttic ,Va/zrre of the Four Elements ( 1 5 17-27) largely dispense with tlie
allegorical forni, assume a protestant stance and deal witli tlie issues of tlie
ilpbringing ol'the yoi~tliand tlie evils of social corruption. Significantly, these
morality plays betray an awareness of tlie new age of Renaissance. its affluence and
Docfor firusfris lear~ii~ig,though the awareness particularizes the Christian for~nulationof the
esserltial fallibility of man. Tlie plays are substa~itiallydramatic unlike the early
morality plays and display, forcefully, the tenor of the English language.

--
1.6 RISE OF ELIZABETHAN
-
-
COMEDY AND TRAGEDY

The long years of the morality tradition, tlirougli the vicissit~~des of church doctrine
and the pressures of tlie new age, led to the evolution of tlie Elizabethan dramatic
genres of comedy and tragedy. Tliougli the biblical tradition presented dual
C

perspectives on the predicament of man, either of the comical insignificance or of

unmitigable suffering, parallelling the generic perspectives of the s~~bsequent comedy
and tragedy, tlie Elizabethan tragedy or comedy, in tlie making, ca~iieto increasingly
bear tlie secular burden of thc times. Tlie concern with human condition per se is the
chief characteristic of Elizabethan drama. The growth ofthe new classicism or
learning is definitely a major contributory factor but, more importantly, tlie socio-
economic and cultural growth of the nation made tlie focus on human material
possible. If we look at tlie earliest English comedy, Nicholas Udall's Ralph Roister
Doister (1 553) or tlie earliest tragedy written by Thomas Sackville and Thomas
Norton, Gor-hodz~c (1 561), tlie Tudor setting and ethos is particularly striking
notwithstanding the classical dramaturgy tlirougli wliicli tlie plays take shape. The
new blank verse, having i~nburdenedmetrical rigor generates a new literary freedom
hitherto i~nltnown.The new verse presents a heroic spirit in language, emotion and
action.

1.7 THE GROWTH OF THE ELIZABETHAN THEATRE

'
The early Elizabethan drama, before the regular playhouses were constructed,
permeated a broad galnut of the social life of tlie times. Nicholas Udall's plays were
school plays cnacted by the boys as part of tlie liberalized school ci~rriculum.In spite
oftheir amateur playing, tlie boys used to be reqi~isitio~ied to stage tlie plays before
royal dignitaries or in tlie court itself. Tlie early English tragedy had its advent at tlie
Inns of the Coi~rt.Gorbod~~c was written and produced by two lawyers at the Inner
Temple. Oxford and Cambridge becanie important centers for staging Latin drama.
so much so that even Queen Elizabeth used to visit tlie universities to witness tlie
performances. Later, tlie royal court, with the ostensible purpose of regulating
theatre, assumed tlie function of theatrical organization, providing grants and
costumes to several amateur boy groups. John Lyly staged several comedies for
Queen Elizabeth and established tlie gelire of Elizabethan comedy. Tragedy,
Iio\vever, could not find patronage either at the royal court or in London. It had to
await tlie advent of adult acting companies and tlie erection of Public theatres on the
outsl.iirts of Londo~i.It is in these theatres like the Curtain, tlie Rose, and the Globe,
that the Eliznbetlian stage came into being, a stage that introduced the plays of
Marlowe and Shakespeare.

While tlie growtli of Elizabethan drama as a nativc tradition was a steady one moving
self-assuredly without meeltly copying classical models, the same would not have
been possible without Elizabethan Drama registering itself as significant Europea~l
1.1ieatresince the Greelt drama of tlie fifth ceriti~ryB.C. In its European phase,
Elizabethan theatre not only integrated within itself various ele~nentsof classical
drama hilt also tlie Greek formulations about comedy and tragedy. Tlie task for the
Elizabethans was not only to be forcefi~llyEnglish but also tlioughtf~~lly European
10 il~l(lrlistinctively Elizabet1i:ln.
 Christopher
1.8 ELIZABETHAN COMEDY Marlowe And The
Elizabethan Drama

The Latin form, with its division into five acts, of tlie plays of Terence and Plautus
structured English romantic comedy right from Ralph Roister Doister. The plays
abounded in classical themes like love, intrigue and friendship and character types
like the braggart lover, the parasite servant, and tlie schelning old man. The comedy
developed into two distinct traditions of the romantic and the critical comedy.
Beginning with Udall's Ralph Roister Doister, the romantic comedy grows through
the court plays of Lyly like Conzpaspe (1 58 I), Mother Bombie (1 590) and Endimion
(1 583), George Peele's The Arraignment of Paris (1 584) and Robert Greene's Friar
Bacon and Friar Bungay (1 590) and culminates in Shakespeare's comedies like A
Midsun~nzerNight's Dreanz (1 595), As You Like It (1 600) and Twelfttlz Night (1601).
Primarily meant for aristocratic entertainment, romantic comedy pursues the theme of
love--love as a blend of sentiment, foible, eccentricity, artifice, dedication and self-
centeredness, Romantic love is more in tlie nature of tlie ludicrous rather than the
ridiculous. Melodramatic to the core and farcical in treatment, this comedy, set in a
pastoral or old world ambience, evokes a romantic mood and an atmosphere of
I
exhilaration, celebration, chivalry and enchantment. With song and imaginative
idealism, roniantic comedy provides an escape route into a world of fancy and
I
imagination fro111tlie grin1 realities of life.

The other ti-adition of comedy belongs to the redoubtable Ben Jonson who presented
what are called the comedies of humour like Every Man in His Humour (1 598),
Volpone (1 606) and The Alchemist (1610). Essentially city comedies, Jonson evolves
his plays as social purgatives to the prevalent moral degradation. Funny yet serious,
the laughter evoked is carefully controlled. Falling back on tlie tradilion of rogue
fiction, Jonson's protagonists are rogues who succeed until the end b,y their ability to
gull others for their avaricious needs. Their eventual failure is a moral corrective
driven home forcefully by the playwright.

1.9 ELIZABETHAN TRAGEDY : THE SENECAN

INFLUENCE

The earliest inspiration for tlie English tragedy were the Latin plays of Seneca. It was
the retributive revenge motive, belief in fortune or chance, stage declamation and
soliloquy of tlie Senecan plays that made the plays of 1-hornas Kyd, Pdarlowe and
Shakespeare extreliiely popular with tlie Elizabethan audiences. The appeal of the
blood letting Seneca to tlie Elizabethans, bred on tlie Cliristian morality tradition, is
apparently strange and curious. But the Elizabethans found a satisfying correlation
between the contradictory traditions. F.P. Wilson sums up the Senecan appeal to tlie
devout Elizabethans.

The extent of his influence on English tragedy, academic ancl popular, w o ~ ~ l d

have not been so great if tlie themes, tlie doctrine and tlie form have not
proved congenial. The Elizabethans would enjoy the impression which his
tragedies gave tliat crime meets its punisl~mentin this life. They had the
same appetite, or at least tlie same stomach, for sensational incident and
violent passion ... Also they shared with him a taste for moral statement, for
pity sentential and love of rhetoric. His doctrine, it might be thought w o ~ ~ l d
have repelled a Christian audielice but this was not so. The medieval
contemptus n~undihad held tliat we are born in sin linked to ~tbefore we are
.'
able to sin..
Doctor Ffu.~stus
1 . 1 GREEK ORIGINS OF TRAGEDY

However, Seneca did not exhaust the Elizabethan 'tragedy' which looks back to
ancient Greece for the spirit and theory of western tragedy. The Greek tragic theory
and vision helped Marlowe and Shakespeare enormously in achieving great
complexity and depth in their plays. The dramatic form of tragedy owes to a lyric
sung in honour of Dionysus, Greek God of vegetation and wine in the course of the
fertility feasts, made to commemorate the harvest and vintage. The original Greek
word, tragedia, comes from anotlier word meaning a goatsinger, possibly the ritual
song and dance known as dithyram, attended by the sacrifice of agoat. The dithyram
evoked ideas of death and renewal of life, a process evoked by harvest and vintage.
The point is that death is an inescapable positive fact of life preceding fresh lease or
renewal of life. In the hands of the Greek Dramatists like Aeschylus (525-426 BC),
Sophocles (996-406 BC) and Euripedes (485-406 BC), tragedy focused on the
aesthetic beauty though it varied in emphasis from dramatist to dramatist. Aeschylus
to whom tragedy as a dramatic form owes its existence strove to elevate tragedy to
the realm of fundamental truths, Sopliocles gave the concept of dramatic unities and
cherished tragedy as an art form unencumbered to achieve or present anything.
Euripedes (485-406 BC) used tragedy to reflect upon tlie darker aspects of life.

1.1 1 ARISTOTLE'S DEFINITION OF TRAGEDY

In tlie course of Greek drama, tragedy acquired a high serious~iessboth in its purpose
and treatment of materials and reckoned with the concerns of the whole community
and strove to raise fundamental questions about human existence and also to provide
deep psychological insight into the metaphysical and epistemological processes of the
world and Iii~manlife. Aristotle, tlie Greek philosopher in tlie fourth century B.C.
after examining Greek drama of liis time very minutely, offers a definition of tragedy
and its constituent elements in liis treatise on drama called Poetics. For him, "tragedy
is a representation of an action wliicli is important, complete and limited in length. It
uses langi~agemade beautifill in different ways and in different parts of the play. It is
enacted not recited and by arousing pity and fear, it gives an outlet to emotions of this
type.773

Aristotle uses the medical metaphor, namely, catharsis to describe the function of
tragedy which is to purge tlie emotions of pity and fear in tlie audience. On seeing a
tragedy the audience i~nburdenstlie constricting emotions that inhibit tlie
i~nderstanding of their own I ife.

Tlie elenients of tragedy, according to Aristotle, are plot, character, diction, ideas
music and spectacle. Tlie plot must have a beginning, middle and end. The moving
devices of plot are peripeteia and anagnorisis. Peripeteia entails an ironic frustration
of purpose on the part of tlie protagonist wlio is not only a Inan of noble birth but
obviously blessed with outstanding qualities, producing an opposite result from the
one intended. The increasing failure of tlie protagonist is on account of the tragic
error or harnartia. Essentially, tlie protagonist moves or is driven towards
anagnorisis, the discovery of the true situation. The progression of the plot displays
both verbal and dramatic irony. Verbal irony occurs when the actual intent of the
speaker or tlie writer is expressed in words that carry the opposite meaning. Dramatic
irony enables the spectator or reader of a play to know more than its character. The
irony is tragic since tlie audience or the reader understand the predicament of the
protagonist wlio indulges in self-delusory assertions.
 Chi islopher Marlo\\e
1.12 THE ELIZABETHAN FORNIULATION-oT Aud The Elizabethan
TRAGEDY Drama

While tlie significance of the Aristotelian formulation of tragedy is inimense for tlie
Elizabethans, the immediate fascination for the Elizabethans may have been the
Ronian niodels of tragedy like those of Ovid, Plutarcli and Seneca who gave a Roman
sense of virility, dignity and energy to the Greek tragic sense. The Elizabethan
fascination for the tragic form as it comes to them through the Greeks and Romans is
on account of their love for tlie regenerative force of life, coupled with a sense of
wonder and mystery at tlie forces inherent in the world and human life. The tragic
clilc~n~na as dra~natisedin the Greek plays came to characterize the new ambivalence
felt by tlie Elizabethans in the midst of individual and national prosperity and
achievement, on the one hand, and tlie need for a new definition of individual and
prrblic riiorality, on the otlier hand, for which the orthodox Christianity offered no
satisfying solutions. If we look at the dominant motifs of Elizabethan Drama, tlie
revenge motive, lnodelled after the Senecan plays, running through Thomas Kyd's
The Spcrnish Tragedy ( 1 589) Marlowe's The JEWofMalru (I 589) and The Massacre
oj ~nri.s( 1 592), Shakespeare's Humlet (160 l), Cyril Tourner's The Revenger's
Tragedy ( 1 606-7) and John Webster's The Dz~chessofMu@ (1 6 13-14) what is
accepted as a retributive j ~ ~ s t i cine Seneca for an order of justice and individual
morality becomes, unlike in Seneca, the essential question in Elizabetlian Drama
about tlie very stability of tlie societal moral system. The Elizabethans where
increasingly burdened with a Renaissance inspired man-centered world where Iii~man
possibilities assume tlie force of a moral axiom distorting the distinction:^ of good and
evil 01-right and wrong. The l i ~ ~ m apotelitialities
n flower in an inextricat)le admixt~~re
of good and evil. In a mature play of Sliakespeare like King Lear-(1605) the radical
q~testioningextends to the cosniic forces inherent i n nature, morality and justice. The
inevitable tragic assumption is a non-absolutist view of tlie world and an acceptance
of the dialectical functioning where in the good and evil interact in a ~nutually
supportive manner. T.S. To~nlinsonstuns up the moral vision of the Elizabethan
tragedy:

...the central paradox of Elizabethan tragedy in particular seems co be thjit it

sees the good and the val~~able as - at least in part - actually nourislied and
supported by chaos and evil . . . Nevertheless there is a sense ill' whicli tlie
Elizabethans generally, to experience tlie tragic and tlie chaotic, at tlie same
time experience energy and richness of life ... Shakespeare has seen in the
chaos and destruction of tragedy -even possibly in evil itself - a source of
energy and vitality greater than any found elsewhere. Less richly, and in
greatly varying emphases, tlie writing of other Elizabethan dramatists bears
out tlie truth of this central paradox. The deepest response to evil and good
or to the valuable and chaotic, sees them, as in tlie same sense, dependent on
each other for their form, substance and tlie very e ~ i s t e n c e . ~

The basic question Elizabetlian tragedy raises is a relational one - between man and
nature, nature in the larger sense of a cosmic force external to man, and nature
embedded in the human condition. The Renaissance whicli bro~~glit a keel1 awareness
of tlie infinite human potentialities ~iiakesthis question a very poignant one for tlie
Elizabethans. How does or should man relate himself to the forces witliin himself
and to those external to him in the environnient? 'I'lie orthodox Christianity skirted
the issue under the obligation in~posedon man to obey tlie moral laws stipi~latedby
it. Could tlie moral law be at variance with the natural law evolved by the same
author of moral law--God? Moral law s110~1ld sy~icliro~iize
with nat~~rallaw' in order
to avoid a disjuncture between man and his situation. However, the condition of
nature within man cannot be a law unto itself, as Marlowe was to dramatize in his
powerful Renaissance play of infinite hunian ambitions and adventure, Tanrhzrrlrine.
R L Iinoral
~ law, indepe~identof Iiuman nature, co~lldnot be the regulating factor. A
corelation within nature, between nature within man and tlie one external to him in
Doctor Ff~nsl~/s environment regulates Ii~lrna11condition. The corelation is of a very co~nplexnature
witl~outbeing restrictively adversarial or benevolent to man. It provides a fra~ilework
of mutual support and opposition, tlie only framework for Ii~lma11 growth. Writing
about Shakespeare's dran~aticworld. Tomlinson points out tlie essential dynamics in
Shakespeare's dramatic world that explains considerably the whole of the
Elizabetlian dramatic perception:

The point, rather, is that in the fabric of Shakespeare's verse, the world of
nature is given us as having an existence which, paradoxically, is at once
independent of, and intimately related to man's status and wortli. Any fill1
realization of nature, Shakespeare is saying, must ultimately be in terms of
man's consciousness; but the Shakespearean tragic paradox includes also a
demonstration that nature, so far from being a mere background or
illustration of a morality or goodness truly grounded in man alone, is in & &
f
an indispensable source of nourishment, the given body of experience and
substance sustaining and supporting human life. The tragic hero often fails to
see this, and sees it only imperfectly. But the plaqwright sees it.5

Tlie richness of Elizabetlian tragedy is not sirnply ideational. The tragic for111in the
Elizabetlian plays, liiore so in Sliakespeare's plays which present the apotheosis of
the growth of the colnplex and sophisticated Elizabethan world view, itself structures
the Elizabethan thought and speaks more eloquently tiIan what the characters
articulate. Tlie Greelts forniulated tlie tragic form tliro~lghtlieir experiences of life.
The discipline of the tragic form evolved by them is essentially an aesthetic value
deeply cherislied by them. The Elizabethans go a step further and make the dramatic
art of tragedy a key to understanding the rich complexity of tlie Elizabethan mind and
life. They elideavoured more in tlie direction of the evolution of tlie art of tragedy
that mirrors their c~lltilraland intellectual ambivalence than in tlie direction of the
intellectual exercise of tlieir minds. Tlie strength of the Elizabethan ~nindlay in an
intellectual ~lnderstatementand in finding metaphors of dramatic action wliich speak
out their 111ildseloquently.

The Elizabethans have imme~~sely enriched the Greek tragic form both in tlieir
adherence to dramatic form and 111 the liberties they have taken.from the rigoro~ls
discipline of tlie Greek draniatic art. The Elizabethan tragic protagonist is an
Aristotelian hero, usually of a noble birth, blessed with o~~tstanding qualities but
suffers from a serious tragic flaw or liamartia in Iiis character that sets the play i l l
motion. The Chorus plays the introd~~ctory and sutnmative function as in Greek
Drama. Plot is a niajor element as in a Greek Drama using the devices of peripeteia
and anagnorisis. The interest of the audience is sustained by tlie spectac~llaraction
and dramatic irony whereby the audience Ici~owsthe predicament of the protago~iist
that the latter fails to understand. Tlie plot leads the protagonist to a tragic
recognition of his weakness while tlie a~ldie~ice gains a cathartic experience of tlie
feelings evoked in the course of the play.

The Elizabetlian dralna abo~lndsin the number of dramatic characters in a play while
tlieir number was limited in tlie Greek Drama. The dramatic unities are followed
more i n their breach by tlie Elizabetha~iswho try to encompass a larger and larger
framework of time and place, for tlieir renaissance aspirations drive them to
boundless action. Similarly, a zest for a diversity of experiences always haunted the
Elizabethans making it i~lipossiblefor then1 to stick to the Greek dramatic distinctions
of tragedy and comedy. Consequently, Elizabethan dralna intermixed tragic and
comic experiences, a practices so abhorrent to the Greeks.

For the Elizabethans, Inore specifically for Marlowe and Shakespeare, tragedy is not
a restrictive view of human excellence or weakness as the Greelts are often inclined
to present but an affirmative view of human aspirations whose p~lrsuitbrings a glory
to the definition of man. Struggle, conflict, suffering and failure may be t l ~ e
inescapable attendants but the liu~nallspirit is not stifled in its pilrs~litsby what
attends to them. Tlie ability to withstand then1 is the tragic glory of man.
 Christopher Marlowe
1.13 SUMMING UP : THE MODERNITY OF And The Elizabethan
Drama
ELIZABETHAN TRAGEDY

What the Elizabethans have done in formulating a tragic method and vision is the
definition of a modern scientific temper and attitude to life that began with the
I Renaissance and extends itself to contemporary times. Hieronimo, Tamburlaine, Dr.
Faustus, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello and Macbetli, if we are to forget their
Elizabethan lineage, are striking dramatic approximations of the states ol'mind
niodern Inan struggles to cope with, as restlessly as the Elizabethan protagonists
attempted to do. In the age of nuclear technology, we are still beset with a
I
Ta~nburlaineand the Faustanian problem of reconciling infinite human potential with
situational possibilities. In the realm of personal relations, we err as tragically as
I
Lear, Hamlet or Othello. The story of ma11has remained unchanged for the last
several cenfuries. Man succeeds e~ninentlywith his given potentialities but fails far
more easily than he succeeds. The tragedy of the contemporary man is strikingly
Elizabethan and, particularly, Marlovian. As Harry Levin would say we "cannot but
I discern" our "culture hero in the ancient myth of Icarus (and) in Marlowe's tragedy of
the scientific libertine who gained control over nature while losing control of
li~tnself."~

1.14 REFERENCES
,
1. Harry Levin "Marlowe Today" Dratna Review 8,4, 1963-64, pp.22-23.
2. F.P. Wilson. The English Drama 148.5-1585. Oxford. Clarendon Press, 1969.
I Pp.126-127.

t
'
I
3.
4.
Aristotle quoted in translation from poetics in Collier's Encyclopaedia.
T.B. Tomlinson. A Studj) of Elizabethan and Jacobean Tragedy. Cambridge.
Cambridge University Press. 1964. pp.3-4.
I
5. Ibid., pp.11-12.
I
6. Harry Levin. The Overreacher: The Study of Chri~topherMarlowe. Boston:
1 Beacon Press 1952, p. 134.

1 1.15 KEYWORDS

Reformation A religious ~novementi n the sixteenth century Europe for

the reformation of the doctrines and institutions of the
Christian Church led by Martin Luther (1483- I 546). The
Reformation laid primacy on the individual faith to the
exclusion of sacramental action. It held that th~escripture,
the word of God, speaks directly to the conscience of the
Christian without the intermediary of the Church authority.

Renaissance
- A colnplex of literary and artistic lnove~nents:;timulated by
the study of classical literature and art during the fourteenth
and fifteenth century in Europe. Historical self-
consciousness, reform of Christian society through cla~sical
education, liberation of the lli~manmind from superstition
and error were some of the important features of the
Renaissance movement. The movement synchronizes with
the growing prosperity of the European nations. More than
anything else, Renaissance championed the worth df the
human individual. 15

-
Seven Deadly Sins Classification of sins found in the works of Christian
tlieologians since St. Thomas Acqi~inas:The sins are pride,
avarice, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth. These sins are
essentially viewed as acts of rebellion against God.

~ n r 8 i n aVirtues
l The principal moral qualities that determine man's goodness.
These are prudence, temperance, justice and fortitude. The
fourfold classification goes back to tlie classical pliilosophy.
St. Ambrove in the fifteenth century applied the term
cardinal to these virti~esof faith, hope and charity.

1.16 QUESTIONS

1. Trace the growth of English tragedy since the Mystery and Miracle plays.
2. Critically exaniine the role of the Renaissance in the growth of the
Elizabethan Drama.
3. Point out the elements of Aristotelian tragedy in Elizabethan drama. k
4. Discuss how Elizabethan tragedy departs from Aristotelian fornii~lationsof
tragedy. In what ways do these deviations enrich the Elizabethan drama. tJ
5. Discuss the salient features of the nlature Elizabethan tragedy.
1
6. Critically examine Christopher Marlowe's drariiatic endeavoi~rsthat make 1
Iiim an outstanding predecessor to William Shakespeare.
7. I n what ways is the Elizabethan tragedy close to us in the twentieth century?

1.17 SUGGESTED READINGS

i
1. Fredrick S. Boas. An Inlrodtlt,c/ionfo Tt~dorD ~ / I N ?Oxford,
cI. Clarendon Press.
1993. A survey of the growth of the English stage tllroi~ghthe schools,
- universities. inns of court and the royal court with a special focus on the
biographical plays and the poetic tragedies of Christopher Marlowe.

2. Tucker Brooke & Mathais A. Shabber. A Lilerury His/or.y c!f'/he

Renncrissance Volunze II. Albert C. Baugh ed. New York. Appleton Century
Crofts. 1967. Discusses Renaissance literatiwe in England, silrveys the
religioi~sprose, the Elizabethan lyric, verse and prose narratives of tlie time:
Elizabethan coniedy and tragedy, Edniund Spenser, Christoplier Marlowe,
William Shakespeare, Jacobean Drama, Caroline drania and the seventeenth
centilry poetry.

3. Harry Levin. "Marlowe Today," Druma Review, 8,4. 1963-64. An

assessment and a tribute to Marlowe on his 400"' anniversary.

4. T.B. To~nlinson.A Stzrdy of Elizubethun und Jncobeun Tragedy Cambridge:

Canibridge University Press. 1964. A critical discussion on the dominant
issi~esin Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy witli focus on the revenge theme.

5. F.P. Wilson. The English Drariza. 1485-1585. Oxford. Cla~endeonPress.

1969. A Historical Survey of the English drama throi~ghthe early and later
Tudor period witli a special foci~son tlie generic growth of comedy and
tragedy during the period.
 UNIT 2 THE TRAGIC DRAMA OF DOCTOR
FAUSTUS

Structure

2.0 Objectives

2.1 Introduction

2.2 Doctor Faustus as a tragedy

2.3 Doctor Faustus and the Christian Morality Tradition

2.4 The heroic character of Doctor Faustus

2.5 The tragic premise in Doctor Faustus

2.6 The strength of tragedy

2.7 Act I : Doctor Faustus: The Unscholarly attitude

2.8 Act I1 : The Unfolding of Faustus' tragedy

2.9 Acts 111 & IV : The Comic diversion of tragedy

2.10 Act V : The tragic denouement of Doctor Faustus

2.1 1 Marlowe's achievement in Doctor Faustus

2.12 Doctor Faustus : appeal to 20"' century

2.1 3 References

2.14 Key Words

2.1 5 Questions

2.. 16 Annotations

2.1 7 Suggested Readings

2.0 OBJECTIVES
I
This Unit discusses how Doctor Faustus emerges as a great tragedy. The focus is on
how it is modelled after a Christian morality play and how the play transcends the
morality ethos within its structure to become a great human tragedy.

Doctor Faustus was written for the Admiral's Men and was staged in 1588. It's first
Quarto edition was published in 1604. Several reprints of this Quarto appeared
subsequently with some interpolations. a ow ever,
in 1616, an enlarged edition of the
play was p~~blished containing many comic scenes absent in the 1604 ed~tion.
Contemporary editions of Doctor Fazfsfi~s
depend on both tlie 1604 and 1616
versions of the play.

2.2 DOCTOR FAUSTUS AS A TRAGEDY

One has to wade through several conflicting traditions to look at the dramatic core of
Doctor Faustus. The influence of the traditions of orthodox Christianity, of the
Reformation the Renaissance, of Paganism, of individualism and the incipient
scientific modernity is exhaustive in the play. One is lost in the pervasive or
conflicting claims of these traditions. However, the strength of the play lies in its
disturbing impact on the audience, whether Elizbethan or modern a fact that
vouchsafes that the play is not exhausted by the claims of a specific tradition but has
an esse~itialdrama and a tragic rhythm.

Undoubtedly, Doctor Fauslus explains a moment in history. Its tragedy is,

irreducibly, a national or cult~~ralpredicament. As a dramatic genre, it has all the
essentials that go with it. The play's power to disturb the audience is the power of its
specific genre. Consequently, one has to see. in the first instance, how tragedy is a
powerfill discipline in a particular point of time and place and, secondly, how Doctor
Fausfus comes to realize the power of tragedy.

2.3 DOCTOR FAUSTUS AND THE MORALITY

TRADITION

There is nothing new about tlie dramatic story of Doctor F~rustu.c,- the story of
human presumption, temptation, damnation and fall being the essential narrative of
the mystery, miracle and ~noralityplays. Doctor Fau,ctus does not deviate either from
the narrative or the thematic strain of the Christian drama preceding it. There is little
drama in the divinely ordered destiny of man excepting the allegorical i~lterplay
between tlie forces of good and evil. The h ~ ~ m asituation
n is a pathetic coniedy of
evil, the evil that man, at best, could be tenlpted to, that all that man is capable of in
his comic impotence is wrath and despair. The comic inibecility of man however, is
a part of the divine totality of purpose as reflected i n tlie world, the natural universe
and history. As such, evil is not an antagonist but simply a lack or deficiency of
being that is taken care of in the ultimate divine order where all being is ultimately
good. Douglas Cole sulns up the Christian draniatic tradition of Marlowe who
chooses to transform the German Faust legend into a tragedy:

The English n~oralityis staged as a homiletic allegory. Within its

transparently didactic framework, the personifications of abstract vices and
virtues contend for the allegiance of the central figure or figures that
represent man. The characteristic plot is a contest, and its characteristic
movement is from the seduction of mankind by vice to the salvation of
mankind by virtue and repentance. The fundamental issue of the morality
play is thus always the same, and it is by definition a serious one. The
fundamental evil involved, sin in one or another of its particular forms, is
always the same, and just as serious. But the dramaturgical expression of the
issue and the evil, drawing from the heritage of the mystery plays, combined
with moral gravity and comic effect; the comedy of evil persisted along with
the allegory of evil; like the allegory, it found its support and basis in the
doctrinal and ho~nileticformulation which was responsible for the morality
tradition.
 For liis tragedy, Marlowe had to conte~idwith a comedy and an allegory of evil, a The Tragic Drama of
didactic contest for dramatic conflict and liomiletics for dramatic resolution. The Doctor F(lrrstrrs
dramatic thrust of the morality play was towards a slapstick in order to demonstrate
human frivolity. Tlie human protagonist suffers immensely but tlie suffering is
retributive and axioriiatic rather than real. Tlie Fallst legend Marlowe uses in the play
eminently fits into the niorality comedy form, for the necroliiancer, Faust, wlio sells
liis soul to the devil for swinish pleasures, effectively illustrates the human
predicament in the morality plays.

1 2.1 THE HEROIC CHARACTER OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS

it
I P

Obviously, Marlowe had not chosen to write another morality play to de~iio~istrate the
all pervasive divine providence though lie sticks to its narrative andl, to an extent, to
its comedy. While being subordinate and adherent to doctrinal Christianity,
Marlowe's Elizabethan protagonist, Faustus, a representative morality figure, has
grown privy to tlie national and culti~ralself-assertiveness characteristic of tlie
Elizabethans and to their Renaissance inspired liunianistic aesthetics and
intellectuality. Tlie difference perhaps, lay more in Marlowe wlio, his tlieological
training and scliolarsliip notwithstanding, is a more aggressive representative of tlie
aspiring and critical humanism. The co~iiicimbecility of the representative human
figure as presented in the Christian drama was definitely an anathema to Marlowe. In
recasting the Faustus legend, Marlowe infused a heroic element in the Faustus
narrative. The forces of evil are internalized in the Iii~nianprotagonist to the extent
that man does not solely depend on the external temptation of evil. Similarly, the
forces of good or of Christianity are made a part of the internal being of the
protagonist. The earlier allegorical contest between the forces of good and evil in the
liuman space becomes a fact of an irresolute coexistence within man and tlieir
competing claims always running short of a convincing victory of one over the other.
Man is not a passive recipient of good and evil but can actively pul-sue them.
Apparently, the human protagonist exercises choice and assumes responsibility but
the choice does not negate the responsibility. The human consciousness which posits
a diversity of feelings and aspirations generates suffering. Suffering is inevitable to a
perceptive mind in a situation where cultural and intellectual aspiriations are keenly
felt. Tlie condition of a perceptive individual in an aspiring culture resists,
i~iipulsively,any diactically formulated definition of his being. Th~eresistance is
i~nsucceedingin tlie given totality of tlie human situation but the struggle, and even
the eventual failure, elevates man to a higher realm of heroic and critical activity.
Such a human condition is tragic, for the greater the human abilities and endeavours,
the greater is the self-lacerating human suffering and extent of failure.

2.5 THE TRAGIC PREMISE IN DOCTOR FAUSTUS

What Marlowe attempts in Doctor Faustus is a tragic vision of heroic human

possibilities. In the very tragic premise, Faustus is just the antithesis of the
protagonists of the morality plays. Where his predecessors were passionless, Faustus,
like Icarus, attempted, as the Chorus puts it, "to mount above liis reach". If Morality
heroes are self-effacing human beings, Faustus is superhuman in his ambitions.
Though the condition is human, man could be as omniscient as God by virtue of liis
learning and, reasonably, should be as omnipotent as God. Where: humanness does
not limit Faustus' achievement, why should lie be limited in power by the human
condition? "Yet art thou still but Faustus, and a man" whereas his power should
reach out "as far as doth the mind of mann2(Act 1, Scene i, 22 and 58). Faustus ainls
19
Doctor F(~ustlrs All things that move between the quiet poles
Shall be at lily command. Emperors and kings
Are but obey'd their several provinces.
Nor can they raise the wind or rend the clouds;..7
(Act I, Scene i, 55-56)

The gap between the power Faustus can reach out to by virtue of his learning and the
power of God could be filled by the "heavenly" necromancy, the black art opposed to
God and forbidden to man. fliere is a specific way to human learning even in the
much cherished new learning of the timcs. Necromancy is no tribute to human
excellence and if there are limits to human learning or excellence, it is no reflection
goals of the times. In his infinite ambition, Faustus
on tlie cherisl~edl~u~iia~iist
degrades the human condition and his religious sacrilege is an accentuation of his
human degradation.

2.6 THE
--
STRENGTH OF TRAGEDY

Tragedy is essentially an interrogative process. The dramatic fusion of ideas, and

action itself, presents a critical perspective of one on the other. Drama becomes
tragic when it fights a limiting or unliniiting structure or formulation. Tliough as a
dramatic narrative, Doctor Fnustu.~is a Christian ~noralityplay, the evolution of
Doctor Faustus as an intensely heroic protagonist begins the refashioning of the
morality play. The play is a human tragedy for not only is Faustus tragically
constituted in his boi~ndlessainbitio~isbut, at the saiiie time, tlie play questions the
effective~iessof the cultural aspirations that shape his ambitions. Resultingly, the
play provides a coniplex intel-actionbetween the human dimensions of tlie dramatic
character and tlie ambiguities and ambivalences of the c~~ltilral situation tlie character
is placed in.

2.7 UNSCHO
ACT I : DOCTOR F A U S T U S ~ T H E
ATTITUDE -

Much of the play is set in motion by tlie chorus itself - the dramatic premise and its
ensuing implications in the narrative that Faustus in his attitude to religious and
humanist learning, his twin acco~i~plisli~ne~~ts,lacks authenticity and has set on an
Icareseqi~ejourney of self-destruction. As he proceeds to dismiss all disciplines of
learning one after another i11 the beginning of the play, lie betrays, professedly,
ignorance rather than knowledge.

Bartlett Giamatti sums up Faustus' learning:

When he says Philosophy is limited, we see a man who confounds Aristotle

with Peter Ramus, a man who treats the deep questions of being and not
being and the technique of disputing well as if they were the same. When he .
says medicine is limited, we see a man who confuses gold and health,
alchemy and physic, and who finds medicine wanting because it is not
miracle, a lack he will remedy by turning to magic, miracle's parody. The
soaring language does not offer us an ennobling spectacle; rather the
opposite.4

Faustus' tragedy, Phoebe S. Spinard observes, is that of a "dilettante" who chooses

not to choose. Faustus is merely a "dabbler in books who thinks himself an expert in
all fields of knowledge", "a seeker after surface show who w ~ l lnot bestir himself to
20 look for the roots of things". He is not '2ust a bad Christian; he is a bad hu~nanist:.~
 r
Where I<nouledge slioi~ldbe strength it turns out to be a weakness in Doctor Fcrust~/,c. The Tragic Drama of
, K~lowledgeI S power but the desire for knowledge for the sake of power denicans Doctor F f ~ a t r r s
both I<nowledge and power. 111fact, the sixteentll century witnessed a certain conflict
between tlie contemplative and the utilitarian en+ of knowledge. The orthodox
Christian relig~ondefinitely erred in its absolutist approach to knowledge a s .
contemplation, driving niany a scliolar into the ways of the world. Fai~sti~s,like many
Renaissance inspired scholars, betrays a i~tilitarianweakncss for Icnowledge. This has
made the disintegration of liuman~srnfar Inore easy than that of ortliodox
Christianity. "Faustus' plenty makes lii~iipoor" - this is the tragedy of Doctor
Fc~ustusand of his age too.

I
The subversion of knowledge Faustus intends has serious personal ov~:rtones for Iiini.
The new aesthetic and intellecti~algallie plan entails reformillation of his identity by
13
tlie newly felt desires and ambitions, an identity culturally so well fixed by his
1eal.ning and vocation and constituting his very be~ng.His heterodoxy require a basic
1, transformation in his being and reformulation of liis thought processes and beliefs.
I
But Fai~sti~ssimply walks past Iiimself, a self so entrenched in orthodoxy, and is
I driven back continually to the untransformed self. Heterodoxy is easy to desire but
/ j
d~fficultyto cultivate and far more difficult to assimilate.
1 %

It is clear from the beginning of the play that Faustus is tragically deiicient or too
dist~actedfor the great act of transformation he sets up for himself a11d for which he
is otherwise well-equipped with his qualities of mind, temperament and training. The
profound scholar that he is, Fausti~sis scared that his scholarship, in its true
'-..
iniplications, niight thwart his desires. He si~bstitutes"conceit" for resolution and
fantasy for the hard facts of knowledge. F a i ~ s t has
~ ~ sno response to what tlie Good
Angel has to say but the words of the Evil Angel are always appetizing While lie
requires to "Read, read the scriptures" as the Good Angel points out to his
unscliolarly inclinations, lie is easily "glutted witli Conceit" witli tlie words of the
Evil Angel. Desire and Conceit do not generate determination. As Valdes tells hini
and as Faustus repeatedly tells himself, he has to be "resol~~te" but Faustus cannot
unlearn all his learning, though, at the same time, he is not able to r e a l i ~ ehis
learning. A victirn of the tragic division between the contemplative and fi~nctional
needs of learning i l l his time, Marlowe's Faustus has to begin his eclucation after liis
learning is over. Experience is a greater teacher than the book could ever be.
Curiously enough, Mepliostophilis, the great chan~pionof Christian Iieterodoxy,
begins to teach Fausti~s,not tlie virti~esof religious revolt but those of tlie orthodox
religion -that Lucifer preceded Faustus in his revolt of "pride and insolence" and
that hell is no land of freedom and aspirations but simply the agonizing "loss of the
enternal joys of heaven" and its "everlasting bliss".

Act 1 establishes Faustus' trag2dy. The subplot of Wagner, the scholars and the
clown dra~iiatizesFailstus's predicament in very crude ternis. The clown "would give
liis sot11to the devil for a shoulder of Mutton" and would raise the devils effortlessly.
What Fausti~saspires through liis studious revolt is farcical.

2.8 ACT IITHE

-
UNFOLDINGOF FAUSTUS'
TRAGEDY
--
C

Act 11 unfolds Faustus' tragedy in greater detail. The egocentric self-temptation of

Act 1 gives way to an agonizing conflict between the religiously constituted self and
the aberrations of its human impulses. In the opening soliloquy of Scene i, of Act 11,
Faustus defines liis ow11 tragedy

Now, Faustus, milst

Thou needs be darnn'd and canst thou not be sav'd.
.................... 21
Doctor Faustus Despair in God, and trust in Belzebub:
Now go not backward: no, Faustus, be resolute:
Why waver'st thou? 0, something soundeth in mine ears,
'Abjure this magic, turn to God again!'
Ay and Faustus will turn to God again.
To God? He loves thee not;
The god thou serv'st is thine own appetite.. .
Wherein is fix'd tlie love of Belzebub:
To him 1'11 build an altar and a chruch,
And offer lukewarm blood of new bor~ibabes"11, i, 1- 15)

Fausrus has damned himseyfhrotrgh his egocentricaindulgences und is be,vond

repair. The incorrigible state makes F a u s t ~ ~despair
s in God, a despair that maltes
liim continue his self-indulgence for wliich the king of devils provides the fascination
and the ineans. Obviously, despair is not totally the resulting state of liis self-
indulgences but has rather shaped his self pursuits. Faustus' state of ~nindtranscends
liis mental frame and is, possibly, rooted in his particular religious persuasion. The
new protestant faith of the Elizabethans experiences a cliasnl betwccn God and liis
worshippers, having repudiated the intermediary role of tlie Holy Roman Church and
its order of tlie saints, rituals and other processes of salvation. 111tlie sceptical mood
about tlic Catholic Church's religious practices, a faith in God and His Justrless came
to be interwined with a certain despair in God. Despair reflects a fear of God and the
want of a satisfying or self-fillfilling experie~lceof Him. Faustus's despair and his
refilsal to believe in his salvation, as tlie orthodox cliurcli would ordain him, leading
to the kind of blasphemy he makes, is closely associated, as critics like C. Lily, B.
Cambell and C.L. Barber view, with tlie protestant "cas~~istry".The protestants
looked upon conscience as a Inore effective way, than the prescribed rituals, of
reaching God. Marlowe does not champion tlie protestant's individual path to God,
but uses blaspl~emyin the Faust legend for dramatising heroic possibilities of tlie
Renaissance inspired aspirations. Significantly, Faustus does not express
faithlessness in Gob..He wants to be like Him, and, as despair sets in, he only feels
that God would not 1o~e"liimand wonders whether He could harm liim after he has
deserted Him for the company of Mephostophilis.

As despair leads to thc self-indulgent belief that divine providence as well as the
divine wrath cannot reach him, Faustus signs the pact with the devil giving away his
soul i n return for his services.

However, Faustus' pact with tlie devil is as self-indulgent as his rejection of divinity,
both being subject to human vacillation. As Faustus fluctilates between despair and
repentence, so does he flee from tlie devil, and surrender to the devil alternately
renewing his contact with tlie devil after every bout of repentance. The pattern of
self-willed despair and damnation becomes so intense and pervasive that in a given
moment, he feels despairingly damned 'and also, self-assuredly, defiant of divinity.
His "blood congeals" wlien lie signs t)'kpact and feels his arm inscribed with a divine
warning - "Homofuge", Man flee, but there is the self-assurance that his senses have
deceived him and, even if hc were not deceived, he would not flee from the pact.

If divinity is unsatisfying and, thus frustrating, so is the devil unable to answer or

give every thing lie asks for. If he could retain his faith in God in spite of despairing
and rejecting Him, lie would stick to tlie devil for whatever it could give him for there
is no alternative to God and the devil; he is born and bred in the realm of God but has
chosen to live defiantly and vol~~ptuously in the realm of the devil.

The morality structure of the play minus the morality kind of a subnlissive hero but
one with an individualistic conceit builds up the tragedy of Faustus. It is not totally
Faustus' sinful conceit that gives the particular kind of tragic agony to the play. In
his conceit, Faustus looks askance at God and convential Christianity as towhythey
seek the abject surrender of man and thus degrade him particularly when man is made
22 in the image of God and craves to be like Him on the earth: "Be thou on earth as Jove
 The Tragic Drarr~a
14 in tlie sky." Marlowe lends justification to this 11~11nan aspiration in the evolution
of Docfor F(~u.sfu.s
of the Fallstus character. Faustus' impulsiveness, conceding a certain measure of
Ih~~nian fallibility, is tlie intensity of the human bitterness - Marlowe hnlds out for a
dramatic statement. Marlowe's reported atheism has nowhere touched the point of
faithlessness in God but faith in God to Marlowe, as to Faustus as well, could'be born
of the excellent 11~11iian potentialities, that should, essentially, reflect divine
omnipotence. Nicholas Brooke writes:

The dramatic tension of the Faustus story as Marlowe presents it lies

primarily in the fact that Faustus is determined to satisfy the demands of his
nature as God had made him to be himself a deity and that is forbidden: and it
can only be achieved by a conscious rejection of the God who created him in

. .Faustus's self-damnation is wholly positive, achieved by an assertion not a

failure of Will ...Faustus's Hell is not a place of torture, it is Hell only in that
it is an absence of heaven. It is an extreme of anti-God whose nature is
deliberately opposed to the Angels' joyous submission to the service of
omnipotent Heaven is the subjection of self, Hell in this sense is the assertion
of self.. .Marlowe's philosophical position is that man has certain overriding
desires whose realization is denied by any form of servitude, and the order of
God is, as Milton's Satan observed, an order of s e r ~ i t u d e . ~

The tragedy in Doctor F~zustzisgains strength in this rigidity of protest. The protest is
made in the agonising awareness that it entails the deprivation of heavenly joys.
Faustus cries out in desperation:

When I behold the lieave~is,then I repent,

And curse thee, wicked Mephistophilis,
Because thou liast depriv'd me of those joys.9 (11, ii, 1-3)

Faustus's rebellion is a desperate one for it loses more than it gains. Elut Faustus "is
resolved" and shall "never repent". He sees no reason either to "die" or to "basely
clespair". For all its deprivation, his human condition has its own promise:

Have not I made blind Homer sing to me

Of Alexander's love, and Oenon's death?
And hath not he, that built the walls of Thebes,
W~rhravishing sound of his ~nelodiousharp,
Made music with my ~ e ~ h o s t o ~ h i (11,
l i s ii,
? ~25-30)
~

Even Christ cannot save Faustus, as Lucifer says, as His "justness" precludes those
like Faustus who are assertive of their worth. Faustus belongs to Lucifer who
championed a similar protest against God earlier and experiences heavenly
deprivation but purs~lesliis fr-bed om.

The dramatic causes provided through Faustus's ambitions and the temptations of the
devil do not stand out as significantly as contributory causes as does 1:austus's self-
. determination to protest against God.

2.9 ACTS I11 & IV : THE COMIC DIVERSION OF

TRAGEDY -
Act 11 unfolds the total tragedy of Dr. Faustus. Both Act I and 11 dramatize the rigour
and tenacity of Faustus's rebellion against his own rootedness in orthodox religion 23
 and against his deeply cherished heavenly joys and against his frustrating senie of
their deprivation. However, while Faustus's rebellion is heroic in its assertion of the
human spirit, the course of Faustus rebellion through the third and the fourth acts is
totally unheroic. Faustus seeks and Mephistiphilis plans, rather a series of comic
indulgences mainly to district the former's mind from the tormenting reli,'~ I O L I S
awareness. Fallstus has no choice but to delude and delight himself in trivial and
vicious pleasures. He tells Mephostophilis.

Sweet Mephistophilis, thou pleasest me; ,P

Whilst I arn here on earth, let me be cloyed
With all things that delight the heart of man,
My four and twenty years of liberty
I'll spend in pleasure and in dalliance" (Ill, 1 58-62)

"Pleasi~re"and "dalliance" become the course of Faustusian revolt - pomp and

display in the courts of Europe, vengef~ilI~ilmiliationof the papal co~lrtin Rome. As a
scholar set to question the divine omniscience, in the beginning of the play, Faustus
sought indulgent knowledge and half-truths. Now, a confirnied rebel, Faustus
remains a voluptuary. fiarlowe did not draw the rebellious Faustus heroically b ~ his ~ t
point was that his act of rebellion, whatever may be the course of it, against God is
immeasurably heroic, for few woilld dare such a rebellion. Greater rebels than
Faustus, as in Marlowe's other plays like Tan~burlainewas far more limiting in their
ambitions and tasks.

2.10 ACT V :THE TRAGIC DENOUEMENT OF DOCTOR

FA USTUS

Further, as Faustus reaches his rebellious or tragic death in Act V, the nature of his
death and the attendent torment bespeaks a magnificent tragedy, if not that of a
magnificent tragic Ilero:

But Faustus' offence can ne'er be pardoned: the serpent that tempted Eve
may be saved, but not Faustus ...Gush forth blood instead of tears!"
(V, ii, 4 1-42)

The tragic conflict does not abate ~lntilthe end. Failst~lsseeks an alternate heaven
through the devilish Helen:

Her lips suck forth my soul: See where it flies!

Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not ~ e l e n a . " (V, i, 102-105)

Faustus knew that his revolt against God does not go beyond afitile gesture of
d e j a n ~ but
e the gesture is not only characteristic but worthy ofMan given his
niagn~~cence. Faustus dies questioning the very validity of human existence:

Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?

Or why is this immortal that thou hast?
.........................
This soul should fly from me, and I be chang'd
Urlto some bri~tislibreast! all beasts are happy
.........................
0 soul, be chang'd into little water-drops,
24 And fall into the ocean, ne'er be found!I4 (V, iii, 175-190)
 The Tragic Drama
2.1 1 MARLOWE'S ACHIEVEMENT IN DOCTOR of Doctor F ( ~ ~ i s t ~ i . s
FA USTUS

Tlie inevitable question that arises at tlie end of tlie play is: Faustus's achievements
and failures notwitlistanding, what does Marlowe achieve in tlie play with its morality
structure and theme. tlie irrepressible and wayward hero and the farcical subplot. The
play itself is very weak in form, more a cluster of scenes with no intelligible act
division. The poetry and the elevated dratnatic style belongs inore to tlie individual
passages than to the play. There is no progressive dramatic action with tlie prologlie
enunciating tlie tragic fate that awaits Dr.Fnustz~sin the beginning itself and witli
Faustus himself presenting his tragic predicament from beginning to end.

Doctor Fnustus is essentially a static play of tragic irresoulutio~~. ln lact, the play
stagnates so ~ i ~ u cinl itlie middle sections of tlie third and fourth acts, which are meant
lo distract Faustus, that it distracts tlie audience as well.

Marlowe has a twofold aim in the play. He would write a morality play and hence
the substantial stasis and comedy and the ~~ndra~naticality of the play associated with
the niorality tradition. In writing the morality play, he would rewrite the li~~man story
which has become very thoughtful, spectacular and poignant. To tlie comedy of evil,
Marlowe adds a heroic tragedy. Tlie twofold play, as J.P. Brockbank observes. serves
a purpose for tlie audience:

In fear we acquiesce in the littleness and powerlessness of man, and in pity

we share his sufferings and endorse his protest.'5

Tliough loose in form and disjointed in its dramatic power, Doctor Faustus has
tre~nendousappeal to the audience. In fact, tlie play is nearer to the psychic
experience of the modern Inan who experiences a split personality and copes with it
through the strategems of neurosis a la Faustus. For Kenneth L. Golden,

Like modern man, Faustus is the victim of a

Splitting of the will. He rejects Christianity
Because it would hamper his boundless desires,
Yet lie also cannot escape Christianity, or at
Least certain aspects of it - especially guilt and
The sense of sin that leads to despair. The
Psycliological law embodied in tlie colnrnoll dictum
"Genius to madness is near allied", Jung found
occurring again and again in tlie sense that the
conscious and tlie unconscious elernents of the
psyche exist i n a compensatory relationship.. . .
Faustus' neurosis - the split, dissociated nature
of his psyche - is a match for any of the "double
Thinking of the modern Inass mind.I6

In evolving the emerging duality of tlie Elizabethan mind, Marlowe anticipates the
depth psychology of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung:

Both Freud and Jung see U~~conscious as a timeless realm or, to put it another
way, one containing the past, the present and tlie future. Further, even the so- .
called co~lsciousmind is not separated from the unconscious in any absolute
way and contains opposites existing side by side." 25
2.13 REFERENCES

I. Douglas Cole. Suffering and Evil in the pluys of Christopher Marlowe. New
Jersey, Princeton University. 1962. P.24.

2. Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus. Madras. Mac Millan, 1975, p.5.

3. Ibid., pp.5-6.

4. Bartlett Giamatti "Marlowe: The art of Illusion". The Yale Review 61 : 1971-
72, p.538.

5. Phoebe S. S~inard."The Dilettante's Lie in Doctor Fau.stus7' Texas Studies

in Literature & Language 24,3,1982. Pp.243-44.

6. Christopher Marlowe. Doctor Faustus, Act 11 Scene I 1- 15.

7. Nicholas Brooke. "The Moral tragedy of Dr. Faustus". Critics on Marlowe,

ed. Judith O'Neill London George Allen & Unwin, 1969, p.100.

8. I bid., p. 104.

Christopher Marlowe. Doclor Faustus, p.22.

Ibid., p.23.

Ibid. These lines are quoted by Leo Kirschbaum from 1616 version ofDoctor
Fnt~stusedited by W.W.Gred (Leo Kirschbaum "Doctor Faustus: A
Reconsideration" Critics on Marlowe Judith O'Neill ed. London. George
Allen Unwin. 1969.

Christopher Marlowe. Doctor Faustus, pp.48-49.

Ibid., p.47.

Ibid., p.51.

J.P. Brockbank. "The Da~nnationof Faustus" Marlowe: A Collection of

Critical Essays. Twentieth Century Views. ed. Clifford Leech New Jersy:
Prentice Hall 1964. P. 1 16.

Kenneth L. Golden "Myth, Psychology and Marlowe's Doctor Faustus ",

College Literature 12,3,1985, pp.203-4.

Ibid.

2.14 KEY WORDS

1. Casuistry: Derived from Latin casus meaning case, the word pertains to the
application of moral principles, largely in theology, to singular cases of
conscience. The protestant focus on individual conscience in deciding
religious matters as against the authority of the church in such matters has
brought the phrase, protestant casuistry into popular case. Since moral or
religious law is always abstract, hence the need for casuistry. Even early
 The Tragic Drama of
Christianity depended on casuistry for solving the individual religious
Doctor Faustus
problems ofthe people. St. Paul used casuistry at great length in his first
epistle to the Corinthians to define the moral law on the eating of sacrificial
meat, on work and virginity etc.

Farce: Latin Farsa from farcire, to stuff viands. Originally an interlude

+Letweenthe parts of a serious play, farceas a form of comedy presents a
boisterous action. Rarely an independent play, even a good comedy like
Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream or Twelfth Niphi are difficult to
imagine without the element of farce that abounds in these plays.

Icarus: Son of Daedalus in Greek mythology. Daedalus, along, with his son,
Icarus, having incurred the wrath of King Minos, for their cunning activities
flee by fastening wings to their bodies. Rather overambitious, Icarus flies
very near the sun. His waxen wings melt under the heat of the Sun and
lcari~sfalls into tlie sea. Since then, Icarus becomes a synonym for an
overreacher.

Necromancy: Derived from the Greek nekros, a dead body, 1ier;romancy is

the art of divining the future by consuming up the spirits of the dead and
questioning them. Though the practice had been in vogue right from the
times of ancient Greece, it was only in the middle ages, that it acquired an
anti-religious character and came to be viewed very seriously by the
Christian Church.

Neurosis: Dissociation of personality due to the existence of complexes.

When co~nplexesbecome incompatible with the conscious part of the
personality, the dissociation of personality takes place creating ii personality
split with the incompatible complexes seeking an indirect enpression. In the
modern world, one does not suffer froin a conflict of conscious compulsions
but from neurosis, the human personality seeking an indirect or vicarious
expression of multivalent feelings. Tlie term was made popular by Sigmund
Freud and Carl Jung, psychologists in tlie early part ofthe 20"' century who
are responsible for the science of mental health called psychoan.alysis.

Skepticism: A critical attitude in philosophy that ranges fro111refusing to

ad~nitthe possibility of knowledge to subjecting every claim of knowledge to
strict proof. The third century Greek philosopher, Sextus Empiricus, Rene
Descartes in the seventeenth century and Bertrand Russell in the 20'" century
championed skepticism. Over the centuries, skepticism or skeptical attitude
is instrumental in checking all extravagant claims to knowledge.

7. Slapstick: Knock about comedy. Slapdash methods. Originally a slapstick

iI was a wand made of two flat pieces of wood with a handle. It was used by
the harlequin in a pantomime. When he struck one of llis companions, the
I slapstick made a loud report.
I

I
i
Questions

I I. Discuss Doctor Fuzatus as a play in the English Morality Tradition.

I

I
2. Discilss Doctor Faustus as an Aristotelean tragedy.
1
3. Discuss how Doctor Fuus/us illustrates Englisli protestianism. 27
Doctor Fuustus 4. Critically examine how Doctor Faustus attempts to depart froni a comedy of
evil to become a tragedy of lii~rna~i
heroism.
5. Examine Marlowe's intellectual and dramatic ac hievemelit in Doctor
Faustus.
6. Exallline Doctor Faustus as a tragedy of Neurosis and relate it to the
predicament of conte~nporaryman.

2.16 ANNOTATIONS

Annotate the followi~igpassages with reference to the context.

Are not thy bills hung up as mo~~uments,

Whereby wliole cities have escap'd tlie Plague,
And thousand desperate maladies been eased?

Yet art ~ I I O L I still but Fai~stus,and a mall.

The Emperor shall not live but my leave,

Nor any potentate of Gerlnany

Away with such vain fancies, and despair:

Despair in God, and trust in Belzebi~b.

The god ~IIOLI serv'st is thine own appetite,

Wherein is fixed the love of Belzebub.

Homo, fi~ge:whitlier shoi~ldI fly?

If i~ntoGod, he'll throw me down to hell.

My senses are deceive'd here's nothing writ:-

'Tush, these are trifles and mere old wives tales.

Christ cannot save thy soul, for lie is just:

'There's none but I have interest in the salne

2.17 SUGGESTED READINGS

I. C.L. Barber. "The form of Faustus' fortunes good and bad" Drtrn~aRe~ielv,
8'4, 1963-64. Pp.92-100. Disct~ssionof Fai~stus'revolt in terms of Calvinist
protestianism.

2. Golden L,. Kenneth. "Myth, Psychology and Doctor F~~zatus" College

Lileralure 12,3, 1985, pp.202- 10. Discussion of Unconscious split
personality and Neurosis.

3. Clifrord, Leech. Marlowe: A Collection oj'Essays: T~ventienricthC'e17tz1r.y

\~ie~,.s.
New Jersy: Prentice Hall, 1964. Along with an introduction by
Clifford Leech, there are essays by T.S. Eliot, Una Ellis Fermor on Marlowe.
and essays by JP Brocltband and W.W. Grag on the damnation of Fai~stus.
besides the critical essays by the critics on tlie other plays of Marlowe.

4. Judity, O'Neill. ('rilics on M c s l o ~ ~ cLondon:

. George Allen & Unwin, 1969.
The book presents a survey of the significant criticism on Christopher
Marlowe ii.om the Elizabethan times to the contemporary times.
 AND
UNIT ~ ~ R O N Y THE TRAGIC DILEMMA IN
DOCTOR FA USTUS

Structure

Objectives

Introduction : Nature and Definition of irony

Marlowe: An ironist

Irony of Faustus aspirations

Faustus' trag~cdilemma

Self -~nultipl~cat~ve
Irony in Doctor Faustus

Summing Up rrag~cirony and dilemma in Doctor Fuu,\ttr~.

References

Keywords

Quest~ons

Annotations

Suggested Readings

-
3.0 OBJECTIVES

This unit helps you to understand irony as the distinguishing feature of Doctor
Faustus'tragedy and how the essence of irony and tragedy lies in a dilemma with
which Doctor Faustus dies without being able to resolve it.

- -
3.1 NATURE & DEFINITION OF IRONY

' I n the preceding unit, we discussed how Doctor Faustus h o , ~ 'a, sort of balance of
opposites between the morality and the heroic strains of traprdy This opposit~onal
1 balance is not s~mplythematic or intellectual but is the core of drama. and
pal-t~cularlythat of tragedy. defined as Irony. The subtlety of irony, in the for111of a
f l u x of opposite experiences distiiigu~shesa good play from an inferior one and, to an
extent, drama Itself, which attempts to real~zethe human paradoxes in the dramatic
actlon, and distinguishes itself from other genres of literature

! Dramatic irony is an intermediary between the subjectivelv felt ironles ot experience

on the part of the dramatist and the objectively found iron~esof the world
Understood textually, dramatic irony refers to the p o s \ ~ h ~ l ~ tae lriultivocal
jf ~ or a
pr~v~leged reading as against a popular read~ngof a pla! that 1 4 not ava~lableto the

I character and, at times, to the playwr~ghthimself. R e n a ~ \ r r ~ drama

~ c e favours Irony
Doctor Frrirstirs
or an ironic reading by virtue of its transitional experie~rcewherein the acceptance of
medieval values has become uncomfortable and, at the' same time, there is a
'
hesitation to accept the aspirations of the new age. Consequently, the transitional
experience of the times required a dralnatic strategy or trope that woi~ldplay an
uncharacteristic role of remaining subtly evasive instead of standardizing the
dramatic experience. The term irony was given literary sophistication by Friedrich
Schleger in the nineteenth century. He liberated the term from "simple verbal
raillery" to explain tlle paradoxes in Shakespeare and the ro~nariticpoets. I n
Schlegel's understanding, Bert 0. States writes:

Irony was the highest principle of art, and the poet stands iro~iicallyabove his
creation, as God does above his own; the creation is utterly objective in
character, and yet it reveals the subject~vewisdom, will and love of the
creator. Thus the author pervades his characters and their actions but he is
never subjectively identifiable with thenl. Like God, he always expresses
less than he thinks.'

Crediting irony with an infinitely variable strategy for encompassing nature's

possibilites and an ability to silmmon "vital ter~s~on-prodi~cingmechanism of
dramatic action", Bert 0. States attempts to define irony:

By irony, in its widest context, I do not refer to that negativity of attitude we

associate with common irony, but rather to the very principle of negation
itself. The difference between irony as dry mock or perverse negativity. and
irony as an i~nlimitedcapacity to negate, or oppose ideas, is not a difference
in the kind of operation the mind performs but rather a difference in the
mind's intentions towards the observed content. Hamlet is ironic in the first
sense. Shakespeare creating Hamlet is ironic in the second.. . Irony is the
dramatist's version of the negative proposition. It helps him to avoid error,
and by this I mean that it widens his vision, allows him to see more
circiiii~spectivelythe possibilities in his "argument": and in so doing it
ensures his not falling into the incomplete attitudes of naivete, sentimentality,
selfrighteousness, or unearned faith. lu short, the coinplete dramatist-- if
there is such a person -- is unironically ironic.'

3.2 MARLOWE: AN IRONIST

More than any dramatist of his time, Marlowe faced the task of intellectual and
artistic correction or reformulation. He had no more the world of established truths to
live in but rather one of half-truths, the age-old truths which have becorne half-truths
by his time and, further, the axioms of the new humanist learning which are limiting
in tl~emselves.The Christian faith i11 his time was at loggerheads with the new
humanist values of material prosperity and pagan aesthetics. There was also the
schism between the Catholics and the Protestants within the Christian faith. A
scholar of vast learning, unlike ~nanyof his contemporaries, Marlowe could not help
a critical and even a sceptical attitude towards both the dogmatic and the resurgent
ideas current in his time. Scepticism, undoubtedly, represented the intellectual
acumen and rigour of the Elizabethan mind. Marlowe's intellectual predecessors are
the Latinist Erasmus and the great Thomas More. In The Praises ofFolly, written in
England at Thomas More's house, Erasmus, formulating the concept of serio-ludure--
the serious or the great as inseparable from the weak or the frivolous-- sums up the
ironic perspective necessary for the cultural experience of the times. More wrote a
companion piece to The Praises of Folly in Latin called Utopia ( 1 5 15) presenting the
tragi-comicality of his times.

Irony as a self-defeating human presumption was the structure of medieval Miracle

and Morality plays. Marlowe follows the dramatic form octhqse plays but the point
 of Marlowe's iro~iyis a dilemma on the part of man whether there are infinite irony Anu I 1,-
pos,sibilities i l l him or all that lie confidently feels about himself is si~nplya Tragic Dilemma In
presumption. The essential irony implicit in the Miracle and Morality plays Doctor F(~ustus
precludes human tragedy while the Marlovian irony makes the human dilemma
poignantly tragic.

The nature of irony in Doctor Fclzistus is confounded by the fact that Marlowe
no\vhere articulated either his religioi~sconvictions or his humanist yearnings. It is
eqiially difficult to say whether Marlowe suffered a scliisni within his mind with
regard to the Catholic or the Protestant faith or with regard to tlie values of the
Christian faith as against the emergent humanist values.

Except stating that Marlowe was deeply sensitive to the raging intellectual and
religious co~itroversiesof his time. it is difficult to say what Marlowe's specific
persuasions were. Critical perception often centers around Marlowe as a cynical
Neitzsche bent on dislnalitling all orthodoxies. This view has its basis in Marlowe's
I "atheist lecture" which led to the charges of Richard Baines, an informer, and
Thomas Kyd, against Marlowe for blasphe~iiybefore the Lord Keeper. But this

I perception is very tentative, especially in view of Faustus' last soliloquy containing

the most passionate religious faith. Obvioilsly, Marlowe's atheism was polemical
against religious obscurantists; and tlie religious passions of the dying Faustus do
1 betray Marlowe's deep religiousity.

I With Marlowe's convictions eluding any definite critical point of view, Marlovian
irony has to be credited to his dramatic genius that could evalute all kinds of
experience with an unfailing objectivity. What Marlowe presents in Doctor Faustus
I are two distinct structures of irony, one based on the tlieological concepts of sin and
i darniiation and tlie other on the self4hiting structures of human possibilites.
i
Marlowe's specific dramatic achievement lies not only in making one irony
intelligible in terms of another but in fusing them in such a manner that one heightens
1 the other.

I
3.3 THE IRONY OF FAUSTUS' ASPIRATIONS

The original Faust Book on which Marlowe bases his play did not have serious
theological or human implications. Marlowe gives Faustus both a theological and
human motivation. Faustus experiences spiritual pain and intense suffering caused
by the nature of both his religious and human impulses. There is an irony implicit in
the very combination of religious and human impulses.

A doctor of divinity and a master of several human sciences like Medicine and Law,
Faustus is fully aware of the nature and indispensability of religious faith on the one
hand, and the nature and possibilites of human excellence and achievement on the
other. A religious faith i s a positive and humble acceptance of human possibilites
and the formulation of a concept of a power superior to man and omnipotent in itself.
Similarly, non-religious human learning is based on the concept of human reason as
the regulator of human affairs. Pride, both religious and secular, should adhere to the
formulations that shape religious faith and human learning. There is no scope for any
human achievement in religion and for godly power in human learning.

The basic irony of Faustus's aspirations is one of misplacement. He misplaces human

learning in the realm of religion and the power of religion in the realm of human
learning and achievement. He wishes to be "divine in show" and would "live and
die" in Aristotle's works. Logic has "ravished" him: The'divve show, Faustus wants,
I
is not of god but of man. Similarly, logic which has ravished'him by its analytics
should produce "miracles". Medicine, which has saved several cities from plague and
cured several maladies, should help him to "heap up" gold and should make Men
"live eternally" and also "raise tlie dead" to life. Law does not suit Iiuman excelle~ice
and only divinity comes nearest to it but divinity does not recognize human
excellence but presupposes lii~mansin:

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and there is no truth ill
US.
Why, tlien, belike we must sin, and so consequently die.
Ay, we must die an everlasting death.
- What doctrine call you this, Che sera, sera--
What will be, shall be. Divinity, adieu!3
( I ,i.42 -47)

The belief in religion is an admission of human sinfulness and religion must be

dispensed with but Faustus does not consider whether there is any human failure
outside the realm of religious formulations of sin and, fi~rther,as Douglas Cole points
out, Faustus
arrives at liis fatalistic conclusion by joining together two premises which
themselves are glaring half-truths for each of the propositions he cites from
the Bible is drawn fro111contexts and passages wliicli unite the helplessness
of the sinner with the redeeming grace of God.. ."For tlie wages of sinne is
death but the gifte of God is eternal 1 ife through Jesus Christ our Lord". .."If
we acknowledge our sinnes he is faithful and just to forgive our sinnes to
cleanse Us from all ~ n r i ~ h t e o i ~ s n e s s . ' ' ~

Phoebe S. Spinard observes that Faustus' translation of Clie sera, sera could just as
easily have been, "What sliall be will be". In tlie first, there is a rejection of will; in
the second, an affirmation at least of the "possibilites of the will". Faustus is indeed
refi~singto consider liis "being" in God, but by disposing of tlie question along with
the answer, lie is betraying the humanist goal of seeking the truth of "being" outside
of religious ~ y s t e m s . ~

3.4 FAUSTUS' TRAGIC DILEMMA

Faustus' dilemma is essentially that while religion precludes human possibilites other
than sin and repentance, the Hi~rnanistthouglit and learning gives him no solace
being in itself self-limiting. Faustus is frustrated by the divine li~nitationof the
human condition but the hurnan condition, left to itself is as frustrating as the divine
limitation. 'Yet, art Thou Faustus, and a man' and Faustus' dilemma is tragic for the
human aspirations are whetted by divine power but the divine power is not within the
human realm even if Iiuman capabilities are strained to the utmost. There is no
escape from a sense of limitation, either religiously felt or humanly realized. Hence
the need for religioi~sfaith, however constrictive it may be.

The human condition, at its best, is, thus, a delicately built irony of unrealizable
ambitions. The irony co~npou~lds itself when man does not contend with this irony.
Trangressing this irony is demeaning the human condition and subverting religious
faith. Faustus' adts of necromancy and the sale of his soul to the devil are diabolic.
The diabolic is the very antitliesis of tlie human as well as tlie divine.

3.5 SELF-MULTIPLICATIVE IRONY IN DOCTOR

FA USTUS

The play presents a cQurse of regenerative irony, for Faustus having strained the
delicate irony of liu~nancondition has set it on a course sui generis, The theological
 Irony And The Tragic
formulation of sin could never be farther than human truism. The greater the man
Dilemma In Doclor
tries to be, the less he becomes in fact. Douglas Cole writes: Fnuslus

Doctor Faustus is a man who of his own conscious wilfulness brings tragedy
and torment crashing down upon his head, the pitiful and fearful victim of his
own ambitions and desires. The irony with which Marlowe habitually
invests the downfalls of his protagonists is here wrought to its finest and
sharpest point; it is an irony based on theological concepts of sin and
damnation, and dramatically expressed in two major patterns of action: the
repetitive pattern of moral choice leading to the alternative of spiritual
destruction and the pattern of contrast between Faustus' grand imaginative
designs and the actual, vacuous accomplishments of his magical ~ a r e e r . ~

Faustus' achievements through his pact with the devil are in an inverse proportion to
the magnitude of his ambitions. Ironically, Faustus's fatalistic interpretation of the
scriptural assertion that what shall be will be becomes a matter of self-conscious
choice. Further, the choice becomes a repetitive pattern of continual wilfulness in the
face of an agonizing awareness that the God he rejects is the one he continues to
cherish. Necromantic books are "heavenly". The magician he wishes to be is a
"mighty God". He rebels against God but the divine consciousness characterizes
even his rebellion. God, always, continues to be the measure of all things for
Faustus.

The irony of Faustus' revolt does not end with its divine awareness. Lucifer and
Mepliostopliilis whom Faustus courts, share the ironic predicament of Faustus--
Rejecting the God but cherishing Him. Mephostophilis describes Lucifer's revolt
against God as not heroic but as one of "pride and insolence" and hell is the absence
of "heavenly joy and everlasting bliss". Faustus himself looks upon his own revolt of
"desperate thoughts" against God as securing "eternal death".

No dramatic character could be a creation of such an enduring irony as Faustux is.

His is the paradoxical case of a revolt against something that constitutes his very
being. Irony builds up the character of Faustus and the play so forcc:fully that the
greater the revolt of Fautus is against God, greater still is his divine awareness. Irony
builds up not merely the paradox of Faustus' revolt but, also through1 the paradox,
intensifies Faustus' self-awareness and his sense of the human condition.

Now, Faustus, must thou needs be damn'd?

And caiist thou not be sav'd. What boots it, then, to think of God or heaven?
Away with such fancies, and despair;
Despair in God, and trust in Beelzebub.. ...
Abjure this magic, turn to God again!
................
To God? He loves thee not.
The God thou serv'st is thine own appetite,
Wherein is fix'd the love of Belzebub.
To him, I'll build an altar and a church.'
(11, i 1-15)

The tragic dilemma in Faustus does not rest in his choice between Ciod and the devil
but in their inseparable coexistence within his human condition. Fear of God and
damnation and the trust of the devil emanate from the Ii~lmancoiidic ion. God is the
heavenly joy of human limitations and the devil is the appetitie of human aspirations.
The heavenly joy lies for man in a condition of human limitation and a tragic torment
awaits in the human state of promise and excellence. Both god and the devil define
man in a mutuality and confront him with an acute tragic dilemma as to whether he
be content with the humanly limiting bliss or contend tragically with the
magnificence of human promise and possibility. 33
Doctor Frrustus The tragic dilemma is all the more tormenting for there is no truly human resolution
of this dilemma. God calls upon him to return to Him but the devil manipulates him
to retain his contractual bond with him.

The parity of God and the devil in the centrality of man, however, is only a stage in
the Iiuman predicament of Faustus and does not last long. Faustus has not, in fact,
rejected one in favour of the other but has replaced God by the devil, with the divine
awareness constituting his being, remaining more or less intact.

The divine awareness is a sense of humility and veneration towards a superior being.
What Faustus gave as a devout soul to God, he woi~ldnow give to the devil raising an
altar and building a church. He woi~ldcomplete the bond with the devil using the
same words,"Consummatum est", Christ used in completing the "work of redenlption
on Calvary". However, the devil does not redeem Faustus from his divine awareness
but rather intensifies it and generates deep despair:

Home fi~ge:whither should I fly?

If unto God, he'll throw me down to hell.s
(11, i. 75-76)
The devil is no less despairing of Faustus' a~nbitio~is of divine power on eai-tli.
-
Neither could Faustus give wholehearted commitment to the devil nor could the devil
keep up the obligations of the contract. Both despair of god, reject Him and lead a
life of distraction as wounded rebels rather tlwn as defiant fighters. The analogy
between the man and the devil ends there for the loss is gruesome for Faustus who
can only fall back on his despair whereas the devil could live on the thoughts of
avenging their defeat as ineffectual angles.

The signing of the pact with the devil starts unfolding the&ndun?entaI irony of
Faustus' aspirations. Faustus signed the pact only to undo himself totally. The pact
signed to gain absolute power on earth only leads to Faustus' mental disintegration,for
what he gets through tlie pact is only an increased despair in God as well as in the
human condition. Mephostophilis would not answer Faustus' query about hell for it
reminded him of his own tortured state of being. He wouldn't answer Faustus'
question about tlie creation of tlie earth as well, for the creator is his bitter enemy nor
could he give Failstus a wife, for marriage is a divine sacrament. Ironically, the show
of the Seven Deadly Sins, he arranges is what he could give and what Faustus could
relish vicariously. The period of contract of twenty four years turns out to be not
only a denial of Faustus' aspirations but one of a progressive degradation of Faustus
as a man. Douglas Cole writes:

In not choosing the God in his desire to be as

God, Faustus has provided not only for his
destruction, but also for his degradation. Instead
of reaching the stature of demi-God or even
commander of the world, Faustus becomes an imperial
entertainer. The restless scholar hemmed in by the
limits of mortality gains his satisfaction by playing
the practical jokes on tlie papal court: the man
wlio looked forward to control ling the lives and the
power of all the earthly rulers now becomes the
magician of tlie emperor, building castles in the
air, and presenting spirits that resemble great men of the past.9

Further, the fascinating devil providing allurements turns out to be a tormentor

threatening punishment as Faustus attempts to seek divine grace which amounts to
disobedience to the devil.

The devil is temptation, distraction and soverign power but doesn't stand by the
34 contractual obligations. Faustus who aspired to rule the world cannot even insist on
the devil's obligations much less abrogate the contract for its breach but meekly Irony And The ,

Tragic Dilemma In
assures obedience without insisting on the same from the devil.
Doctor Fnustus
Thou traitor, Faustus, I arrest thy soul,
For disobedience to my soverign Lord."

Sweet Mephostophilis, entreat thy lord

To pardon my unjust presumptiori,
And with my blood again I will confirm
My former vow I made to Lucifer."
(V, i, 74-81)

Faustus asks Mephostophilis to torment the old man who agonizes him with
his advice. Mephostophilis' reply is significant.

His faith is great; I cannot touch his soul;

But what I may afflict his body with
I will attempt, which is but little worth."
(V, i, 85-90)

Implicitly, Faustus could be tormented, for his faith in God is so shaky, but not the
old man. Obedience to the devil and faithlessness to God bring the same fate. In
fact, the devil heaps degradation whereas God could only pose a seriou:; limitation on
his human condition. Further, faith in God could be such a terrifying human strength
that the devil would not dare to touch him. If the human condition is limiting, the
limitation is a virtue, and a divine blessing too. Faustus should not have despaired in
being Failstus and a man but should have felt supreme confidence in hi!^ human state.
This realization couldn't be farther from Faustus but the human will would rather
suffer its choice than retract meekly even if the choice is degrading and torturous.

At best, Faustus can distract himself from the gravity of wilful choice with whatever
appeals to the baser human instincts. He asks for Helen but Meptiistophilis can only
give him a devilish shadow of Helen in whom we can read his predicament.

Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.-

Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies!
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.,
....................
Brighter art thou than fla~tvingJupiter
When he appeared to hapless Semele:
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa's azur'd arms.13
(V i, 95- 100)
-
Imagery builds up the irony of Faustus' predicament. Douglas Cole sums up the
ironical thrust in Faustus' passions:
-
Helen, whose beauty caused Troy to burn, will do
the same for Faustus; the imlhortality offered by
the kisses of a demon lover is an eternity in hell;
the soul that is sucked forth cannot be given back
again; hell not heaven is in these lips; the flames of
Jupiter that destroyed admiring Semele are the
flames of this Helene's abode which will destroy
a hapless Faustus; wanton Faustus, like Arethusa,
will hold the burning sun in his arms but not
without fiery pain.'4
Doctor Faustus The apostrophe to the devil in Helen's form is a desperate attempt to heighten
his predicament and allow it to reach its logical end where the nature of his
undoing comes in full force to his realization.

But Faustus' offence can ne'er be pardoned; the

serpent that tempted Eve may be saved,but not ~austus"
(V, ii, 13-15)

3.6, SUMMING UP : TRAGIC IRONY AND DILEMMA IN

DOCTOR FA USTUS

Faustus comes to full repentance at the end of the play. The last soliloquy is an
admission of the possibility of divine grace and forgivenessT Ironically, the
realization comes at a time when the devil is around to torture him to death and if
only his doom could be'postponed, he would gain the divine forgiveness. Faustus
willed his destruction so long, now he craves for time to be able to gain his salvation.
But Faustus knew that the possibility of repentance and forgiveness waited on him
until he reached his end. As he dies with all the opportunities of repentance and
forgiveness thrown away wantonly, what remains is the burden of the human
condition that contained the germs of his degradation and destruction.

Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?

. . . This soul should fly from me, and I be chang'd
unto some brutish beast! All beasts are happy . . .16
(V, iii. 100-1 10)

The pain of devilish torture is so intense, Faustus cries to God to save him
from the tortures of the devil:
0 God,
If thou wilt not have mercy on my soul,
Yet, for Christ's sake, whose blood hath ransom'd me
Impose some end to my incessant pain.'7
(V. iii. 100-104)

Faustus who sought the devil to oppose God, seeks God's mercy and his innate
forgiveness to rescue hin?ffom the devil.Christian theology proves itself forcefully in
Faustus' predicament. However, its point is religious didacticism whereas Marlowe
brings out irony and a tragic dilemma. For Christian theology, Faustus' predicament
falls short of a tragedy for he was motivated by nothing but presumption which could
have been easily remedied by repentance and, co~isequentlyhe could have been
rescued by divine forgiveness. But for Marlow, the immensity of the human
condition forces desperate choices on man which could not justifiably be termed right
or wrong but which have to be understood in terms of reality that constitutes human
condition. What happened to Faustus may justify Christian theology but what it
explains are the irredeemable paradoxes of man. Hence the irony of Faustus' career
and his tragic dilemma. Douglas Cole sumsup the Marlovian irony:

For Marlowe, the tragedy lies, not in the inevitable

falling off of human achieve~nentfrom the
ideal, but in the travesty of the ideal that the
deeds of man so often represent, and in the
illusory aura of nobility with which man persist-
ently invests his base desires. It is the tragic
view of the ironist who sees in man the responsible
cause of his own undoing, who presents man as a
destructive agent who, by the abuse of freedom and - -
will, persistently, betrays others and inevitably
 Irony And The
5.7 REFERENCES Tragic Dilemma In
Doctor Fnustus

Bert 0. States. Irony and Drama: A Poetics Ithaca. Carnel l University

Press. 1 97 1 .p.3.

Marlowe. Doctor Faustus, p.5.

Douglas Cole. SufSering: Evil in the plays of Christopher Marlowe.

Princeton, Princeton UP. 1962,p.198.

Phoebe S. Spinard. "The Dilettante's Lie in Doctor Faustzcs". Texas Studies

in Language and Literature 24,2, 1982. pp.245 to 247.

Douglas Cole. Suflering and Evil in the plays of Christopher Marlowe, p.

Christopher Marlowe. Doctor Faustus,-pp. 16-17.

Dabglas Cole. SufSering and Evil in the Plays of Marlowe, p. 2 16.

10. Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus,- p. 46.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.,

13. Ibid., p.17.

14. Dougles Cole. Suflering and Evil in the plays of Marlowe p. 220.

15. Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus p. 46.

16. lbid.,p.57.

17. lbid.

18. Doi~glesCole. Suffering Evil and Evil and in the plays of Marlowe. p. 263.

3.8 KEY WORDS

Arethusa: A nymph in Greek mythology who was persued by

the river God, Alpheus. She flies to Sicily where she
takes the the form of a spring in Ortygia, an island
near Syracuse. Alpheus, flowing under the sea, was
there united with her.

Fredrick Schlegel(1772- 1829): German critic, aesthetician and writer of

romanticism, Schlegel formulates the aesthetic
theory of romantic poetry and also the notion of
romantic irony. 37
I
Doctor F ~ ~ u s t t l s Helen: Tlie most bea~~tifi~l
woman in Greek legend; married
to Menelaus, later the King of Sparta. She was
abducted by Paris the Prince of Troy. Aided by
many admirers of Helen's beauty, Menelaus wages a
war against Troy. When Paris dies, Helen marries
his brother Deipliobus whom she betrays to tlie
Greeks. Helen returns to Sparta with Menelaus after
the Fall of Troy.

Semele: Princess of Tliebes in Greek ~nythologywith whom

tlie Greek God Zeus falls in love. By Zeus, she
conceives, Dionysus. While Dionysus was still
unborn Semele gets consumed by the radiance of 1
Zeus Olympian splendour which Se~neleherself
entices him to wear, under tlie ~iialiciousprompting
of Zeus' wife, Hera.

1. Discuss how irony constitutes the chief element in the characterisatio~iof

Faustus.

2. Illustrate the use of dra~iiaticirony from the text of Doctor Fuustus.

3. Tlie essence of irony is dilemma: Discuss the statement with reference to

Doctor Fuusttcs.

4. Tragic irresolution is the dramatic strengtli of Doctor Fuustus.- Discuss.

Annotate the following passages with reference to the context.

A. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and there is no truth in

11s.

Why, then belike we must sin, and conseq~~ently

die?

b. What doctrine call you this, clie sera, sera - What will be, shall be? Divinity,
adieu!
4
c. Alas, poor slave! see how poverty jesteth in his nakedness! The villan is bare
and out of service, and so hungry, that I know woi~ldgive his soul to the
I
devil for a shoulder of mutton, though it were blood-raw. I

d. To him I'll build an altar and church, And offer Jukewarni blood of new-born
babes.

e. Hell liatli 110limits nor is circumscribed In one self place; for where we are is
hell, and where hell is. there we ever be:

f. 0 , no end is limited to da~iin'dsouls! why were thou not a creature wanting

soul?

38 This soul should fly fro111me, and 1 be chang'd unto some bri~tislibeast! I
 Irony And The Tragic
Dilemma in 1)ocfor'
I:~lu.slns

1. Cole, Douglas. Szflering and Evil in the Pluys of Chrislopher Marlowe.

Princeton, Princeton University Press. 1962. The book piresents an
exhaustive background to tlle Marlovian tragedy and disc~~sses the llature of
evil and tragic suffering in Tat~zburltrine,
The Jew oj'Multa and Doc'tol-
FLIUS~ZIS.

2. Hardin F. Richard. "Irony and Privilege in Marlowe" Centen~~iul Review

33,:. 1983. pp. 207-227. The article discusses Marlowe as an ironist and
looks into the possibility of two a ~ ~ d i e ~ ifor
c e sMarlowe's plays, one making
an ordinary reading or viewing, and the other, the privileged, who could see
L the irony implicit in the play.

b J . States. Bert 0. Irocv and Drarlza; A Poetics. Ithaca, Cornell University

rb Press, 197 1. The book analyses the concept of irony, its relation to dialectics.
besides discussing patterns of irony.
UNIT 4 THE RENAISSANCE AND
REFORMATION IN DOCTOR FAUSTUS

Structure

4.0 Objectives

4.1 Introduction : Transcending medieval Christianity

4.2 Renaissance aspirat ions

4.3 Renaissance scepticism

4.4 The Historical character of Doctor Faustus

4.5 ' Doctor Faustus: Catholic and Protestant schism

4.6 Doctor Faustus: The Renaissance aspirations & rhetoric

4.7 Doctor Faustus: Renaissance Tragedy

4.8 Doctor Faustus: Catholic faith and Protestant despair

4.9 Summing Up : Doctor Faustus: A tragedy of the Renaissance and

Reformation

4.10 References

4.1 1 Key words

4.12 Questions

4.1 3 Annotations

4.0 OBJECTIVES

This unit focuses on the content of the play. The interpretations of the play have
been, at times, diametrically opposed to each otller. Doctor Faustus is called
essentially a Christian play by virtue of its medieval form. On the other hand; it is
called inevitably a Renaissance play, for the aspirtions of Doctor Frrustus are those of
the Renaissance, The Christianity the play presents is that of the division between the
Catholics and the Protestants and the Renaissance the play illustrates is that of the
English mind divided between religion and secular ambitions. The tragic complexity
of Doctor Faustus has to be understood in terms of the interacting influences of these
divisions.

-
4.1 INTRODUCTION: TRANSCENDING MEDIEVAL
CHRISTIANITY -

The medieval morality form Doctor Faustus assumes is simply exhaustive for it
explains, minutely, the dramatic and thematic thrust of the play. As the morality
form exhausts the play, the question that inevitably arises is, where was the need for The Renaissance And
Reformation In Doctor
Marlowe to write about a dramatic tradition that was subject to so lnucli of repetition
Friustus
for more than a century. Obviously, Doctor Faustus is not the facile hero of tlie
morality play even if the play exhuasts him as such. The justification to interpret the
play in terms of medieval Christianity could be the dramatic existence of Doctor
Faustus at that level. The play is tlie thing, Leo Kirsclibaurn asserts:

What does matter is that in terms of the play, Faustus is a wretched creature
who for lower values gives up higher values. That the devil and Hell are
o~nnipresent~potent, and terrifying realities - these are the values which
govern the play. You must temporarily accept them wllile you watch the
play. You need not ultimately accept them. But you shoulcl not interpret the
play in the light of vour pl~ilosophy,or religion or absence of religion. You
cannot do so if you hear it properly as a play, as an entity, as a progressive
action, as a quasi morality in which the characters in the play accept, which
the playwright advances and accepts in his prologue and epvlogue and wliich
hence the audience must understand and accept.'

While 'the play is the thing' , it is not tlie total thing as well. Nicholas Brooke
argues:

the play is not just

putting the Faust book on the stage. . . Faustus is,
and is not in control of the events that destroy him;
but Marlowe does not clarify his thought on the matter,
and if at one moment lie seems to imply one attitude,
at another he equally clearly implies the opposite.'

4.2 RENAISSANCE ASPIRATIONS

At any rate, for Nicholas Brooke, a totally Cliristian conclusion of Doctor Faustus is
not convincing since he dies seeking not the mercy of God but the extinction of the
human state that has come to be invested with boundless aspirations and self-
awareness. What the play puts into dramatic action and predicament is the
Renaissance inspired idea of secular virtue which ultimately goes back to Aristotle.

The conception, for instance, of Tudor king or

Italian prince was compared to Aristotle's description
of tlie magnificent man, or even of the great
souled Man, he who excels in all worldly 'goods'
wealth, dignity, popularity and so on, who is a great
patron of the arts, and who is superior to all the
limitations of lesser men,. . . he must be wholly resolute
in his pursuit of greatness. . . he will tolerate no rival
within his sphere of influence. . . an understanding of
Aristotle greatly illuminates what it is that Faustus is
trying to achieve; the subjective aim of self expansion
is equated with the objective ideal of Aristotelian
greatness, and not only are Mephostopheles and Lucifer treated as rival
magnificos, but Faustus himself is aiming at that state.3

Marlowe brings in tlie Renaissance attitude into the Elizabethan world dominated by
the medieval values of Christianity. Whether Marlowe ascribed to this attitude or not
is a moot point, for he chose to be a dramatist.keen on enlarging the dramtic cosmos
by the tide of the new influences taking root in the Elizabethan wol-Id. Basically, it
M'US a confit of attitudes - the rigidly limited and defined world of medieval thinkers
and the Renaissance world oj'natural law and human ideas,based on demonstrable
Doctor Faustus truths. The change could be seen from the shift from the old scholastic studies of
logic, natural philosophy and medicine for jobs in Law, Medicine and Theology to
the Studia Humanitatis consisting of Grammar, Rhetoric, History and Ethics
focussing on human abilities required for several societal duties. The emphasis of the
new studies is mainly on the linguistic and rhetorical human skills rather than on the
unalterable divine truths. Many Renaissance thinkers, Erasmus being the forelnost
among them, soilglit tlie reawakening of human self-consciousness ad'liis awareness
of the universe around him. In the immediate context of the Elizabethan world, tlieir
concern is to stop the institutional decay of Christianity reeling under the burden of
outworn traditions and the despotic church power. Along with the revision of the
scholastic curriculum, they wanted to reform Christian society through a revival of
classical learning. In fact, for Erasmus, tlie revival of classical learning was a prelude
to the restoration of piety.

Based on an immense sense of human worth and possibility, the Renaissance milid
explored the cosmic reality beyond tlie factual terms. For them, the aesthetic
dimension is as central to man as tlie factual or the rational. In fact, the exclusion of
the aesthetic uiidercuts the basic being of man, and as, the search for truth is
invariably the search for beauty, the one cannot be divorced from the other. A sense
of enquiry towards everything that concerns man and a spirit of revolt against
anything that seeks to deny human reality characterizes the renaissance mind.

4.3 RENAISSANCE SCEPTICISM

Significantly, Renaissance presents also a countervailing sceptical attitude of mind

towards its own inclinations of intellectual and aesthetic curiosity and passion. As
described by Erasmus in his The Praises of Folly, the Renaissance cherished sceptical
perspectives as well on the boundless entliusiasln about human possibilites. In its
enthusiasm to strain its farthest limits, the human mind could undo itself instead of
realizing its potentialities.

The failure is tragic given tlie strong sense of human self-confidence and possibilites.
The Renaissa~icemakes the human tragedy possible for tlie first time as the medieval
Christain thought never admitted any human possibilites other than his total
insignificance and impotence.

4.4 THE HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF DOCTOR

FA USTUS

Doctor Faustus reflects the division in the English mind during the Elizabethan
period between the traditional religious ethos and the new ambience of critical and
aesthetic values. The religious providentialism the church presented was
ideologically acceptable to the Elizabethans but provided no practical guide in coping
with the desires of the emerging secular culture. Marlowe makes Faustus a product
of historically and culturally determined desires, and history, no matter what it might
portend for the intensely self conscious Renaissance man, is a part of Marlowe's
dramatic statement and tragedy of Doctor Faustus.

4.5 DOCTOR FAUSTUS: CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT

SCHISM

In fact, history for the Elizabethans did not simply entail a division of rtligious and
secular concerns for there is a greater schism within the Christian religion in
. Elizabethan England that Marlowe's play does not totally escape, though under the
 broader conflict of religious and secular values, the former does not gain serious The Renaissance And
Reformation In
dramatic congnizance. The ideological conflict between the Catholics and the
Doctor Frrustrrs
Protestants was a part of Marlowe's learning at Cambridge. Critical perception of
Doctor Fausrus-largely centered around the ideology of the medieval rnoral ity but the
possibility that Faustus's religious revolt could ideologically have been shaped by
English Protestantism, not merely by Renaissance aspirations, was not seriously
considered. The movement of the Reformation synchronized with the Renaissance in
opposing the dehumanization implicit in the ideological formulations of institutional
Christianity. English Protestantism, deriving inspiration from John Calvin, besides
opposing several religious practices of the orthodox church, propounded the
rebellious doctrine of justification by Faith or conscience as against the institutional
mediation or determination of the individual's faith. Further, Protestantism believed
in absolute predestination and in the notion of the elect. Though f he concept of
human sin, as a flight from God in exercise of choice, is the same to the Protestants as
it is to the orthodox Church, Calvinist Protestants and anti-Calvinist champions of the
Rornan church differed dialnetrically in the possibility of divine mercy for the sinner.
The orthodox Church presented the idea of an ever benevolent God waiting to save
the repentant at any time, Protestantism advocated the idea of a sinner as being a born
reprobate through predestination whose predicament is one of elltlless despair from
which there is no escape.

In his ruminations about the possibility of divine grace to him after he signs the pact
with the devil, Doctor Faustus reflects the divergent positions of the Catholic and the
Protestant positions. The religious controversy was so near Marlowe at Cambridge
where he was a student when the defenders and opponents of the Calvist faith like
William Parkins and his follower, William Barret, on the one hand, and opponents
like Peter Baro on the other, entered into endless polemics. Lily B. Campbell calls
Doctor Faustus' despair a case of a torturous Protestant conscience while the
possibility or impossibility of divine grace for Faustus holds the 'dramatic tension in
the play:

It is the continuing struggle of conscience, the

conflict between hope and despair, where hope would lead
him to God again and despair would keep him from salva-
tion, that makes the suspense of the play. The outcome
remaining in doubt till the eleventh hour, the tension
continues throughout the play and gives it its peculiar
dramatic compulsion. 4

In fact, Faustus' despair, either in itself or in juxtaposition with his religious hope or
Renaissance aspirations presents the rich complexity of the Elizabethan mind
fluctuaitng among several alternatives without being able to affirm or reject anything
decisively.

4.6 FAUSTUS: THE RENAISSANCE ASPIRATIONS AND

RHETORIC

From the beginning, Doctor Faustus explores religious and human dilemmas
. characterising the Elizabethan mind. Marlowe begins Faustus' story in a duality of
Renaissance ambitions and religious values. There is Faustus' craving for classical
learning, "Sweet Analytyics", "live and die in Aristotle's works" "who has ravished"
him and a craving for a "world of profit and delight, of power, of honour, of
omnipotence". The extent and depth of ambitions could only be expressed in
liturgical images like "heavenly" for the delights of necromancy and the reach out of
the worldly power could only be like "jove in the sky" and hence the dissatisfaction
with the human state, "Yet art thou still but Faustus, and a man". Though divine
power is the ultimate test of human achievements, pursuit of divinity, according to
 Faustus, is self-defeating, for Iiunian aspiration in a world of sin, and man cannot
deceive himself by denying sin or ambition "Why, then, belike we must sill and
consequently die". He would ignore tlie eternal possibility of divine grace that the
Catholic churcli promises and would rather go by tlie Calvinist argument that a
sinner, a man of a~nbitionslike him, is a born reprobate, his sin resulting from his
predestined state.

Fut~stu.~give., r?c?cromancythe thrust ulrdpo~lerof scientific method through which

the Herlaissa~lcescho1ar.s nttenipted to zinderstand nature's tre~rsureCIA well as the
aesthetics of hz~iilanbeaut-v.

Shall 1 make spirits fetch me what I please,

Resolve me of all ambiguities,
Perforni what desperate enterprise I wil I?
I'll have them to fly to India for Gold,
Ransacl~the ocean for orient pearl,
And search all corners of tlie new-found world
For pleasant fruits and princely delicates;
........ .
.. ..sometimes like wornen, or unwedded maids.
Shadowing Inore beauty in their airy brows
Than has the white breasts of the Queen of Love.
From Venice sliall they drag l i ~ ~ gargosics,
e
And from America the golden fleece
That yearly stuffs old Philip's treasury '. . . .. . . . .I, i 75- 130.

"Nature's treasure" is an obsession witli the Rena~ssancescholars since from nature

proceeds human nature and the diversity of its desires, and tastc for jewels, food.
gossip, fashion, etc. Along witli the glutto~iqof desires. tlierc is a rhetoric ofwords.
111fact, words play a greater role, for words have a tlin~stthat iriipel desires rather
than vice versa. Bartlett Giamatti writes:

Renaissance man felt he had the power to transform

himself because lie had the power of language. Words
were nits of energy. Through words Inan could assume
forms and aspire to shapes and states otherwise
beyond his reac11.~

With a Renaissance f o c ~ on
~ s linguistic and rhetorical skills, Marlowe "wrestled with
the multiform angel (or demon)of language".

. . . he expanded the limits of the stage by writing

n in its battle to surpass 11~1man
of h ~ ~ m amind
limitation. He used soaring words as symbols of
man's apiring mind. And he used the lurking dangers
in words to image the terrors of aspiring too far.'

In a cliaracteristically Renaissance attitude, Faustus chooses to be impulsively

rhetorical, driving himself into a state of aspiration beyond his abilities. Rhetoric
drives Renaissance man towards knowledge, beauty and material power. There is an
impatient blending of the intellectual, aesthetic and the material resulting in the
overturning and undoing of tlie inherent strength of all three urges. Thus, the
multivalent urges of tlie Renaissance display human magnificence as well as tlie
tragic entrapment of man i n his own self-exalted state of being. After rhetoricizing
the possibility of manifold human grandeur, Faust~lsbegins his tragic undoing with
"waxen wings" of words "mounting above his reach."

Wordsfly past ideas as Faustus dismisses one discipline aJer another to convince
himselfthat only necromancyfits his genius. What Faustus does not realize is that in
44 the very nanie of human excellence he is flying away from human excellence into

I
areas that have not done any credit to man. He signs a pact with tlile devil who is the The Renaissance And
Reformation In
very antithesis of the moral being of man. Ironically, lie is not frightened of
Doctor F(lustus
daiiination but would confound liell in Elysium and would allow liis ghost to rest witli
the old Greek philosophers forgetting that heaven and hell are human inventions
made to ennoble human life. The classical ~nythologyis used not to elevate himself
rntellectually but used self-deceptively for self aggrandisement. The rhetoric of
learning becomes a medium, not of self-elevation but of i~nlearningand degradation.
Tlie apostrophe to Helen in tlie final act is Faustus' finest rlietoric of learning and
taste but all that Faustus gains is a self-deluding exercise to overcollie the tormenting
fears of damnatiori.

4.7 FAUSTUS' RENAISSANCE TRAGEDY

Phoebe S. Spi~iardsums up Faustus' tragic i~ndoingas that of an acco~nplislied

scliolar choosing tlie ways of a "diletante" wlio uses learning superficially, and causes
a yawning gap between what he says and what lie is led to. Bartlett Giarnatti sums LIP
F ~ L I S ~Renaissance
LIS' tragedy

Where at tlie outset Faustus was a creator, at tlie end

lie is a creature; where before lie dreamed of u~iliniited
power ar-d glory now he is assured of limitless torment.
The words by which lie reshaped Iiirnself into a demigod
at tlie beginning have now exploded into a horror all
about him. What we see on stage are the contents of
his head - the Hell lie will possess forever, the heaven
he will shortly lose. He brought it on himself, this
deformed world, wlien lie converted, wlien lie turned to magic
from God, when he turned the power of words from God's
praise to his own.'

Faustus falls as he is simply carried away by tlie Renaissance aspirations instead of

understanding tlie spirit of these aspirations that looked forward to Iii~manexcellence
and splendour. W~thall his accomplishments, Faustus fails tragically as a
Renaissance hero, but the question arises as to whether Fausti~sdeserved the
torn~enti~ig suffering lie had to experience. What is the nature of Faustus' sin that
invites so much of divine wrath? The answer again lies in the liuunanist aspirations,
tlio~~ghof a different kind. If tlie Renaissance posited man at the center of a secular
world, the religious movement ofthe Reformation posited man in a direct relation
with God bypassing the institi~tionalauthority of the church and its liturgical
pract~ces.Faustus' inability or refusal to repelit may, in one sensr:, be liis Renaissance
pride but, in another sense, it is a protestant's admission of consc~~entious suffering
and a despairing awareness that he is not the elect of God and, is thus, a reprobate.

4.8 DOCTOR FAUSTUS: CATHOLIC FAITHAND

PROTESTANT DESPAIR

I n the dramatic conflict between faith and despair in Doctor Faustu.~,tlie possibility
of a strain of Protestant faith in Marlowe's making of Faustus, makes Fausti~s'despair
all the more acute. Tlie possibility of divine grace that Faustus is alternately hopefill
of, in tlie ini~nediatecontext of tlie scliism, in tlie Church be corn^:^ a Catholic
proposition but Faustus' despair tri~~mplis in tlie play ~iiakinghis hope of salvation
ineffectual and giving the protestant faith an edge over its Catholic rival.
45
Doctor Fl~ustus Marlowe gives Faustus, for his rejection of divinity, the initial motivation of
Renaissance aspirations. However, very soon Marlowe qualifies Faustus ' motivatim
by the latter's awareness of eternal danznation having already taken place by his
"desperate thoughts against Jove's deity" even before he sold his soul to the devil.
The Pact with the devil is yet to come, despair precedes it:

Now, Faustus, must thou need be damn'd?

And canst thou not be sav'd.
What boots it then to think on God or heaven?
Away with such vain fancies, arid despair
Despair in God, and trust in Belzebub.

However, Faustus has not removed all traces of hope

. ..O, something sounds in my ears,

Abjure this magic, turn to God again
Ay, and Faustus will turn to God again

The hope is ineffectual

To God? He loves thee not;

There is also the self-loving Renaissance man in the despairing Protestant.

The God thou serv'st is thine own appetite.

Wherein is fixed the love of Belzebub
(11, i I - 1 5 ) ~

Faustus' blood congeals as he signs the bond with the devil but his faith is not that
strong, the blood flows on just being warmed by fire. What is strong is his despair.

Homo fiige! Whither should I fly?

If i~ntoGod, he'll throw me down to hell. (11, i, 75-76)"

Repentance is an impossibility to Faustus the way he is made

My heart's so harden'd, I cannot repent;

Scarce can I name salvation, faith or heaven,
But fearful echoes thunder in mine ears
'Faustus thou art damn'd'
(11, ii, 1 8-20)"

Faustus does cry for God's mercy although he knows that it is impossible to get it.
Lucifer niakes the nature of Protestant faith clear to Faustus: He chooses people for
His Mercy, who would never sin in the first instance and only those outside his grace
would sin and, these are outside his justice too.

Christ cannot save thy soul, for he is just. (11, ii, 87)"

until the end, Marlowe dramatizes the ineffectual possibility of divine grace for
Faustus.

See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament!

One drop would save my soul, half a drop:Ah, my Christ.
(V, iii,77-78)"

But there is no escape from Faustus' predicament:

If thou wilt not have mercy on my soul,

46 Yet for Christ's sake whose blood hath ransom'd me,
 I~nposesome elid to my incessant pain. . .. The Renaissance And '
Reformation In Doctor
0. no end is limited to damned soi~ls!(V,i i i 100- 1 08)14
F(iustirs

Lily B. Ca~npbellliltens Faustus' predicament to that of Fancis Spira in Italy who out
of conviction professes the Protestant doctrines ofjustification by faith. F-Ie is
summoned to papal Legate at Venice for heresy and is forced to recant his utterances.
Under the threat of severe punishment, lie makes both a private and public
recantation. After the first recantation, Spira felt God's presence who tells him not to
abjure Him and at tlle same time, tells him not to recant. Having been convinced of
his >in of deserting god, Spira experiences an intense despair in God and would not
accept the advice of several learned people to seek divine mercy for he is convinced
that his sin has resulted from his not being the elect of god and that despair is his lot.
Finally, he dies unable to cope with liis despair.

For Campbell, Doctor Faustus is, basically, neither a tragedy of medieval

Christianity nor of the Renaissance but specifically tliat of the Protestant faith
up elniost in the sixteenth century Englisli mind.
-
We see Faustus confir~nedin sin more disastrously by
yielding to the counsels of despair urged by Mephisto-
pliilis and the Bad Angels than by yielding to the
enticements of pleasure. And we see him consequently
rejecting the mercy of God promised in the words of the
Good Angel and the old Man as he cast off faith and
Hope. The Faust Book certainly left open the way for
Marlowe's development of the story of Doctor Fuustus as
a case of Conscience. My contention is that the
"medieval" elements of Marlowe's play are not medieval
but of the Reformation and that they constitute the
essential dramatic unity of the play culminating in the
speech of Faustus as lie faces liis doom, so tliat theme
and plot and poetry come together in the diapason of that
final grandeur. 15

4.9 SUMMING UP :DOCTOR FAUSTUS: A TRAGEDY OF

THE RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION

The conjluence of the injluences of Renaissan~pand Reformation, the Reformation

particularly sought by English Protestantism of the times, immensely enhances and
sophisticates the dramatic cosmos of Doctor Faustus. Marlowe's use of Renaissance
and Reformation aspirations is neither axiomatic nor ideological but one of
perceptive intellectual sensitivity.. In the possibilities of Faustus' ~nultivalentconflict,
Marlowe makes Doctor Faustus-acquire a historical character without making the
play an interplay of historical forces. Without the Renaissance, and the Reformation,
Doctor Faustus would have remained a simple morality play. The Renaissance
makes it a human tragedy of Christian morality, the tragedy that was missing from
the morality dramatic tradition. The Reformation and English Protestantism make
the human tragedy of Doctor Faustus emanate from a deep sense of religious
conviction and conscience and from and individual's right to a particular kind of
religious experience which is vehemently and tragically asserted.

4.10 REFERENCES

I. Leo Kirschbaum. "Doctor Faustus: A Reconsideratidn" Critics on Marlowe

Judith O'Neill ed. George Allen and Unwin Ltd. 1969. pp. 80-1
Doctor F(rirstirs 2. Nicholas Brooke. "l'lie Moral Tragedy of Doctor Faustu~" "Critics on
M a ~ l o ~ ) pp.93-94.
e"

3. Ibid. p.105.

4. Lily B. Campbell. "Doctor F u z ~ ~ f uAs :Case of Conscience"PMLA 67.2

5. Christopher, Marlowe. Doctor Faustzrs. Madras, Macmillan. 1976. pp.6-8.

6. Bal-tlett, Giamatti. "Marlowe: The Arts of Illusion." Review pp.532.

7.

8.

9.
[bid. pp. 534.

Ibid., pp. 543-44.

Cliristoplier Marlowe. Doctor Fcrzrstus. pp. 16- 17.

I
10: Ibid. p. 19.

12.
Ibid.p.23.

Ibid. p.25.
1
13. Ibid. p. 50.

14. Ibid. p.51.

15. Lily B. Calnpbell. "Doctor Fatrstzrs: A case of Conscience."PMLA 1

4.11 KEY WORDS 1

Protestantism: Sixteenth century religious reformation movement consisting of

distinct mainstream strains like Lutheran (Martin Luther) Calvinsit (John Calvin) atid
tlie Anglican. Despite differences, the different strains of Protestantism believed in

~nainstreamProtestant niovements stress the supreme authority of The Bible and tlie
possibilites of salvation only to those who accept Christ and practice infant baptism.
Tlie radical groups like the Baptists, and the Quakers practice adult baptism limiting
faith to those who practise it and believe in a critical understanding of religious faith.

1. Discuss Doctor Fuustzis as essentially a Renaissance tragedy.

2. Examine Doctor Faustzis as a study in the duality of Christian faith.

3. Illustrate the ideas in Doctor Faustza that present a meeting point for the
movements of Renaissance and Reformation.
 The Renaissance And
4.13 ANNOTATIONS Reformation In
Doctor Frrustus

Annotate tlie following passages with reference to the context.

a) I'll have them fly them to India for gold Ranasack the ocean for orient pearl
and search all corners of the new fourid world. For pleasant fruits and
princely delicates.

b) So~neti~nes like women or unwedded maids, shadowing more beauty in their

airy brows than have the white breasts of tlie Queen of Love.

c) 'Twas made for man, therefore is mall more excellent

d) Christ cannot save thy soul, for he is just;

e) I do repent: and yet I do despair

4.14 SUGGESTED READINGS

1) Campbell B. Lily. "Doctor Faustus: A case of conscience." PMLA 67,2,

1952. pp. 2 19-239. Carnpbell discusses, Doctor Fuwtus as a Protestant play
illustratiiig Protesta~ltdoctrines ofjustification by faith, predestination and
election.

2 Giainatti, Barlette. "Marlowe: The Arts of Illusion." &Review

Gia~n~noUi, discusses the Renaissance inclination to rhetoric and how Doctor
Faustus becomes a victim of rhetoric.

3 . .
Pinciss G.M. "Marlowe's Cambridge years and the writing of Doctor
Faustus ." a ~ d i e 111
s En~lishliterature, 88, 1993. pp. 249-264. Pincess
traces the ambiguity of Faustus' hope and despair to Marlowe's sensitivity to
the polemical controversy between Calvinists and anti-Calvinists at
Canlbridge when Marlowe was a student there.
UNIT 5 DEXMATE
POETRY IN DO-
--
FA USTUS

Structure

5.0 Objectives

5.1 Introduction: Fusion of Drama and Poet~y

5.2 Marlowe's indifference to dramatic art

5.3 Doctor Fazrstzir: Dramatic rhetoric rather than art

Marlowe's 'Mighty Line'

Blank Verse Re~~aissance

rlietoric

Blank verse in England

The poetry of Doctor Fcrustzrs

Marlowe's poetry: an Estimate

Sulllming Up

References

Key words

Questions

Annotations

5.14 Suggested Readings

--
5.0 OBJECTIVES - -

This unit discusses the play, Doctor I;hustus as essentially poetic. The play gained
greater recognition as poetry than drama, ~nainlyon account of the use of blank verse
in place of the rhymed verse. Marlowe makes blank verse give greater freedom of
language and imaginatio~iand an ability to present diverse thoughts and feelings to
drama.

POETRY

Drama and Poetry are two distinctforms but when they arejused in a literary
endeavour, the power generated is greater than their individual strength. As we
read Doctor Faustus, what we get primarily is a feel of poetry though the impact of
the powerful tragic drama is never lost, In fact,poetry heightens the effect oftragedy
 Dramatic Poetry In
in Doctor Faustus. Great poetry and drama inescapably arrive at the same thing: a
Doctor Fnusrrts
perspective on human condition. The impact on the reader or the \/iewer, either
through the dramatic interplay of ideas or through the rhetoric of poetry, is far-
reaching. Doctor Faustus touches 11sdeeply. 111 doing so, the tormenting conflicts and
the irrepressible rhetoric of words merge indistinguishably.

5.2 MARLOWE'S INDIFFERENCE

-
TO
-
DRAMATIC
-- ART
-

In rewriting the Faust legend, Marlowe, possibly, experienced the want of a

progressive plot and action that would generate their own drama. Marlowe has in
Faustus an unprogressive state of mind or conflict to dramatize or to.rhetorise. There
is a justifiable criticism against Doctor Faustus as drama. The play lacks structure, it
is poorly organized presenting itself as a jumble of scenes rather than coherent drama.
There is reckless fluctuation, critics allege, from liigli thougl~tfulnessto sheer frivolity
and from magnificent poetry to insipid dialogue. Several critics found nothing in the
play otherthan a few magnificent lines.

-- --

5.3 DOCTOR FAUSTUS=DRAMATICRHETORIC

RATHER THAN ART

Nonetheless. Doctor Faustus emerges as powerfill tragic drama ~ ~ o t w i t l ~ s t a n d i ~ ~ g

Marlowe's indifference to dramatic craft. Marlowe simply centered dramatic thogght
and action in the conflictual core of human aspirations at a crucial transitional phase
of western history when religion, aesthetics and philosophy were poised to take a new
turn. This drama had no premise other than the advent of the self-consciousness of
Inan and the inescapable dialectics which history irnposes on the beginning ofevery
new era.

The apparent lack of an achievement in dramatic art is due to Marlowe's

preoccupation with the dramatic core of a n emerging man-centered world. The kind
of human experience Doctor Faustus presents does not require the ingenuity of
dramatic art so much as a rhetoric tliat aggressively fasliions out the new human
_ character. The rhetoric relies, not so much on dramatic devices but on laliguage, its
words, and their melody and poetry.

5.4 MARLOWE'S 'MIGHTY LINE'

In the very choice of Marlovian preoccupation in Doctor Faustus, dramatic art takes
a backseat, and the rhetoric of human concerns evokes poetry provoking critics to say
that Doctor Faustus in more poetry than drama. I n fact, since the time Marlowe wrote
the play, he faced criticism on several counts froin critics but no one grudged paying
a tribute to Malowe's poetic excellence in theater. Tributes to Marlowe began with
Ben Jonson who was impresed wit11 the poetry in Marlowe's drama and called it the
"mighty line". Robert Greeile finds a thunder in Marlowe's voice. For Leigh Hunt, "if
ever there was a born poet, Marlowe was one" and "Marlwoe and Spenser are the
first of our poets who perceived the beauty of words."'

The poet in Marlowe was obviously born in the Renaissance love of rhetoric.
Language was the weapon Renaissance chiefly used to explore human aspirations and
Doctor Faustus elevate man to a centrality in the cosmos. Barlett Giamatti notes Marlowe's
acliieveinent in Doclor Faustus.

. . . Marlowe's Doctor Faustus celebrates that God-like Power of Language and shows
us how words can soar, and tempts us to dizzying heiglits within our heads. But all
tlie time, Marlowe is in control. He knows too much about the shaping power of
words to be a ~austus.'

It is not Faustus aloiie who wanted to be a magician; Marlowe aimed at nothing short
of it. Faustus fails for he chose a black art for magic. Marlowe chooses poetry to
achieve the power of magic tlirougli tlie glory and power of language and its words.
However, the power to be achieved required a change in tlie structure of the verse that
is to be used. The earliest dramatic foriii of tlie Miracle plays use the intricate stanza
form but as tlie dramatic discipli~iestarted gaining maturity, the rigidity of the stanza
form was gradually given up in favour of the diversification of verse forms and their
total simplification to approximate, as nearly as possible, to tlie spoken speech.

- ---A-

5.6 BLANK VERSE IN ENGLAND

F.P. Wilso~idetails the course of versification in English drama. Speaking of John

Skelton's versification in Magr~zficenceWilso~isays:

Here then is a conscious attempt to introduce variety of verse aiid to fit the
verse to tlie character. It has been said that Chaucer proceeds from coinplex
inetre to simple, aiid froin simple metre to complex. Tlie drama, too, as it
moves from the simplicities of Magnzjicencc to the complexities of Hamlet,
proceeds from complex inetre to simple. Sltelton has abandoned tlie intricate
stanza forms of the Miracle play but he is still experi~nenti~ig witli a great
variety of verse. Later in tlie century, as we enter the great Age, even rhyme
tends to disappear and we are left with blank verse and prose.'

The move towards blank verse is desirable for rhetoric. The historical importance of
Skelton's MagniJicencc, Wilsoil says, is that "perhaps for the first time in English
drama, a work of conscio~isart, a laureate devising a long work i i i conscious
observance of rhetorical principle, the blank verse used by Marlowe and Shakespeare
owes its freedom to a series of efforts to shed the metrical burden for gaining the
rhetorical e f f e ~ t " . ~he freedom of the form also synchronizes witli the declining
popularity of the miracle and morality plays. Tucker Brooke & Matthias A Sliaaber
trace tlie growth of Blaiik verse in English up to Marlowe.

Unriining decasyllables Iiad been written before him by several sixteenth

ce~itiiryEnglishmen: by the Earl of Surrey and Nicholas Crimald, by
Sackvi lle and Norton in Gorboduc, by Gascoigne in The Steel Glass by
Turberville, by Peele i11 The Arraignment of Paris, by the youtliful Spenser,
and probably by Kyd. Vario~is,and yet similar, purposes seem to have
prompted these innovators; the desire to approximate the Virgilian hexameter
or the senarius of Seneca, the desire for a prose-like (Horatiay) vehicle of
contemporary satire i11 Guscoigne, the effort at Ciceronian eloquence in the
play of Peele. They were all exotic ambitions and, except in Peele's few
lines, they produced exotic effects. It was Marlowe who changed the sow's
ear into tlie silken purse. When lie employed it, blank verse became at once
what Shakespeare, Milton and so many others have sliown that it call hardly
cease to be the most expressive and the grandest of English metre^.^

Surrey used blank verse, perhaps for the first time to translate part of Virgil's Aeneid
into English. Since then, blank verse became the medium of dramatic poetry. If one
wanted to write serious kind of drama, it was felt, blank verse was the exalted
 Dramatic Poetry In
medium. Skelton, for example, used blank verse in Magmficence for describing
Doctor Fltust~is
virtues J~keMagnificence and used a light four stressed couplet or a two stressed line
for describing vices. Similarly, Sackville arid Norton in Gorboduc and Thomas Kyd
in The Spannish Tragedy used blank verse for the purposes of subtle characterization.

Basically. the term blank verse is used for an ~uirimediambic pentamet. An iamb is a
metrical foot of two syllables, tlie first unaccented and tlie other accented, the first
short and the other long as, for example, in to strive or to seek. A pentameter contains
five metr~calfeet or measures. The pentameter is a ten syllable line with five stresses
falling on the even syllables. A typical iambic pentameter reads like the following

In courts of kings, where the state is overturned. The foot or a measure in English
prosody contains two or three syllables, with o111yone of them bearing stress. While
in the iambic, tlie unaccented is followed by an accented syllable, in tlie other
metrical unit. trochee, the accented syllable is followed by an unaccented syllable.
Both tlie iambic and trochee differ from a spondee wliicli is a double stressed foot. 111
addition, there is a pyrrhic foot wliicli is totally unstressed. The variat~onof trochee,
iambic and spondee within the decasyllabic line gives, especially in Marlowe, utmost
melody. When it lacked this variation, as in Sackville and Norton or as in Thomas
Kyd, blank verse produced monotony. Their attempt was to produce an English
equivalent to the twelve syllable irnabic trimeter used by tlie Athenian dramatists.
The particular form suited Greek language in terms of its approximation to their
every day speech. But the rather slow moving English language, as compared to
Greek. required variation. Thus the five foot ten - syllable i~nabicpentameter with
continual variations of the iambic with trochee, spondee and pyrrhic came to
characterize the resurgent English dramatic verse.

5.7 THE POETRY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS

This variation for achieving a variety of rhythms was characteristic of Marlowe's

dramatic verse. Doctor Faustus begins with the Chorus saying:

Not marching in the fields of Thrasymene

Where Mars did mate tlie warlike Carthagens.
....................................

the first line begins with a trochee but has a pyrrhic ending with the last syllable
being i~nstressed.For the straightforward narration of the lines, there is a regular beat
trying to give the impression of dignified order where an effect is warranted.

Nor in the pomp of proud audacious deeds (chorus line 5)

......................................
Having commenced be a divine in show. (I, i, 3)

The iambic pentameter is falling on a trochee for a beginning and also for marking

Pause is an important element in blank verse providing a variety of rhythm. Surrey

and others have made the pause occur at the end of a line making tlie sense rather
coextensive with the line. Marlowe dispensed with the line as a unit of thought, and
made the sense run on from one line to the next making in the process, the paragraph
rather than single lines as units of ideas. This is a strategy of what is called run-on
lines, a strategy typically Marlovian.

Learned Faustus,
To find the secrets of astronomy, 53
Doctor F(1usrus Graven in the book of .love's high firmament,
Did mount him up to scale Olympus's top,
Wherc sitting in a chariot burning bright,
. ~ 1-6)
Drawn by the strength of yoked dragon's n e c k s ~ l i o r u s(111,

As I was sometime solitary set

Wit11i11 11iycloset, sundry thouglits arose
About the l i o n o ~ of
~ r mine ancestors,
How they had won by prowess sucli exploits,
Got such riches, subdu'd so may kingdoms,
As we that do succeed or they that sliall
Hereafter possess our throne, shall
(I fear me) ne'er attain to that dggree
Of high renown and great authority
Amongst which kings is Alexander the Great,
Chief spectacle of the world's pre-eminence,
The bright shining of whose glorious acts
Lightens the world with his reflectiiig beams,
As when 1 hear but motion rnade of him
It grieves my soul I never saw the man.' (111, iii 18-35)

I n tlie older rhymed verse, the tendency was for the couplet ~ ~ I i i cstood
li by itself. The
pause in the couplct was invariably at tlie end of the line after the fourth syllable and
the iambic beat was never varied. Mnrlowe varies the whole pattern of the regulated
metrical verse. For Marlowe, whatever was the ~netricalpattern, it had to follow the
overflowing idea and there is hardly any splitting of the idea for metrical regularity.

Tliougl~tlie run-on lines give the impression of for~nlessnessat times, there are single
lines that make a very compact and forceful expression of ideas. I n fact, Marlowe's
ideational and metrical mastery within a single line is remarkably exceptional. Docfo~.
Faustus abounds in several memorable lines.

Yet art thou still but Faustus, and a 1nan8(I, i. 23)

Homo, fuge, whither should I fly9(11, i, 75)
What art thou, Faustus but a man condemned to die?'' (IV, iv 37)
Damn'd art thou, Faustus, damn'd; despair and die?" (V, i, 48)
I do repent; and yet I do despair1' (11, ii. 6 3 )
Her lips suck forth my soul; see where it flies!" (V, ii, 95)
See, see where Christ's blood streams in tlie fir~narnent'~ (V, i i i , 78)

The sheer compressive force and summative brilliance of the ideas is strikingly clear
in these lines. Faustus' tragic impatience with human limitations comes out in a few
words of tlie first line. Similarly, the next three lines, individually present the
Protestant doctrine of predestination and Faustus, not being the elect of God is
condemned to despair. "1 do repent and I do despair." Marlowe sulns up the
conflicting notions of Catholics and Protestants about the possibility of eternal grace
and the irnpossibility of sucli grace to tlie sinner. Si~nilarlythe nature of the self-
willed damnation of Faustils is presented in the line on Helen. The supreme Christian
virtue comes out with utmost d e v o t i o ~in~ the line, See see.. . . ..

Brevity, ar7d conJurnmate lyricisn?for heightening mental and en~otion~rl

states murk
severnlpas~ogeswhich continzie to be nzenlomble even'cfter centziries.

Was this tlie face that launch'd a thousand ships,

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.I5 (V, ii, 90-94)
54
 Dramatic Poetry In
111 relatively
few words, Marlowe has written, perhaps, the most magnificent
Doctor Frrust~rs
apostrophe to Helen. Marlowe's greatness is that he could present with great ease the
most exquisitely ro~na~lticand also versify brilliantly the most pathetic and the
angnishing. Faustus' last soliloquy is deeply touching for its rhythmic expression of
the most tor~nenting11~1nianagonies.

Stand Still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,

That time may cease, and midnight never come,
Fair nature's eye, rise. rise again, and make
Perpet~~alday; or let this I I O L I ~ be but
A year, a month, a week a natural day,
That Fa~lstusnlay repent and save his sou I! (V, iii, 66-7 1 )

Let Faustus live in hell a tl~ousandyears,

A hundred thousand and at last be sav'd!
0, no end is limited to damned souls!
Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?
01-why is this immortal that thou l ~ a s t ?(V,
' ~ iii. 102-107)

In barely fifty four lines in the last soliloquy, Marlowe presents Faust~~s' arrival as a
visionary after having gone through, in the course of the play, ambition, pride,
insolence, impulse, passion and sheer frivolity besides the nagging .doubts about
divine mercy and wrath. In the last few minutes of his life, as charted in the soliloquy,
Faust~~s sets fort11 the se~norselesslogic of time, imnlense divine mercy which
oneth the less, is capable of ruthless wrath, and the futility of knowleclge, and ambition
and of the human life itself. A vehement protest against the denial of h ~ ~ m aworthn is
ironically presented tl~roughdespair in human condition. Sirnple words like "live,"
"see", "look", "ever", and "perpetually" are loaded with immense philosopl~ical
significance.

The primary focus on the idea rather than on the metrical line, as could be abundantly
seen in the last soliloq~~y,
is Marlowe's redefinition of the poetic by the dramatic. He
is credited for having begun a sentence period as against a line period for poetry. 'l'he
fusion of drama and poetry, or specifically of the dramatic conflict and poetic
rhapsody, perhaps, could never be as harmonious as in Doctor Fausr'us.

Marlowe's dramatic poetry, however, is not faultless. He is criticizetl for not .

maintaining poetic rhapsody for sustained effect. He is also criticized for alternating
magnificent lines with purely pedestrian ones and splendid monologues with
laboured verses. There is also an allegation that free movement of the verse is
impeded by coloured epithets and 'sonoro~~s phrases'.
k
Though not exactly careless artistically, Marlowe, as Harry Levin sa:ys, "is always
i himself' whereas Shakespeare is everybody. Further, the focus in the play had to be
I
on Faustus, that too on the Marlovain Faustus. Poetry came rather intermittently
C
waiting both for ideas and their conflicts to intensify and for Marlowe's imagination

/ to strike. Yet at times, there is a mismatch of content and poetry as could be seen in
Faustus' apostrophe to Helen. Helen, after all, as Faustus knows, is no Helen but a
devil in disguise. The distraction of Faustus from his despair, is too little cause for the
I magnificent poetry of the apostrophe.

3 5.8 MARLOWE'S POETRY: AN ESTIMATE

The nature of Marlowe's achievement lies primarily in the nature of dramatic or-
poetic endeavours in the play. Marlowe was basically searching for poetry and
drama in what for him is to be an intensely human situation rather than attempting a
work ofarr. Swinburne was nearer the truth ill his praise of Marlowe:
Doctor Frrustrls
He is the greatest discoverer, tlie most daring and inspired pioneer, in all
poetic literature. The place and value of Christopher Marlowe as a leader
arnoiig the poets would be almost i~npossiblefor historical criticism to
overestimate."

T.S. Eliot was far more thorough in his praise of Marlowe:

Tlie less questionablejudgement is that Marlowe exercised a strong influence

over later drama, though not himself as great a dramatist as Kyd: that he
introduced several new tones into blank verse and commenced the
dissociative process whicli drew it fi~rtherand farther away from the rhythnis
of rhymed verse; and that when Shakespeare borrowed from him, which was
pretty often at the beginning, Shakespeare made something inferior or
sometliing different.

. . . .. Marlowe's rhetoric is not, or not characteristically, Shakespeare's

rhetoric; ..... Shakespeare's is more exactly a vice of style, a tort~~red
perverse ingenuity of images which dissipates instead of co~icentratingthe
imagination, and which may be due in part to influences by which Marlowe
was i~ntouched.Next, we find that Marlowe's vice is one whicli he was
gradually attenuating, and even, what is more miraculous, turning into virtue.
And we find that this poet of torrential imagination recognized many of his
best bits (and those of one or two others). saved tliem, and reproduced tliem
more than once. almost invariably improving them in the process. ... Contrary
to usual opinion . . . . Marlowe was a deliberate and conscious workma~i.'~

Harry Levin loolts at Shakespeare's debt to Marlowe:

Shakespeare seems to have tilarked the passing of Malowe tlirougli his own
Richnrd III where he proved himself to be past master of tlie Marlovian
attitudes and tonalities, even while he was ranging on toward richer
complexities and subtler nuances of 11~11iian relationships. To be sure, Richard
I 1 would be unthinkable without tlie example of Edu~urdIIor The Merchant
of Venice witlioitt The .leu) of Mcrltu. Speaking liiore broadly Hntnlet owes a
certain amount to tlie precedent of Doctor Fnustt~s,and Coriolanus to
Tan~hurl~rine. I"

5.9 SUMMING UP

There stands Christopher Marlwe: a pioneering explorer of innovative poetry in

drama. Tlie poetry that is instantly dramatic and belongs essentially to the human
mind and so~tlpresenting their passionate ecstasies and tormenting conflicts and
agonies. If Marlowe was not a great dramatic poet like Shakespeare, he nonetheless,
is great in for~nulatingthe essentials of dra~iiaticpoetry in which Shakespeare and
others who followed him, found a model for their dramatic endeavours. If tlie
essentials of dramatic poetry Marlowe discovered and formilfated were not shaped
into an exquisite dramatic art of poetry, it was because, as Harry Levin says, Marlowe
chose to be himself and left it to others to see what .he could offer them.

5.10 REFERENCES

1. S. H. Leigh Hunt Critics on Marlowe. London: George Unwin. 1969. Pp. 18-
19.

2. Barlett Giamatti. "Marlowe: Th.e Arts of Illusion". Yale Review, p. 543

 7
J. F.P Wilson. The English Drama I 485-1 585 Clare~ido~i
Press, 1969, p. 14. Dramatic Poetry In
Doctor Ffzuuttu
I

1I
4. Ibid.

I 5. Tucker Brooke Matthias A. Shaaber. The Renaissance: A Lilerary History of

EnglandVolurne 11, New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts 1967, pp. 508-9.

6. Christopher Marlowe. Doctor Fazrsttrs. Macmillan's Annotated Classics,

~ a d r a s :P. 3 .

7. Ibid., p.37.

8. Ibid., p.28.

9. Ibid., p.37.

10. Ibid., p.5.

11. Ibid.,p.19

12. Ibid., p. 4 1.

13. Ibid., p. 95.

14. Ibid., p. 46.

15. Ibid.. p. 50.

16. Ibid

17. A. C.Swinburne Encyclopedia Britanica.

18. 7'. S. Eliot. M a r l o ~ ~Ac :Collcclion 9f'C'rilictrl Es.~uys.Clifford Leech ed.

Prentice I-lall, New Jersey 1964, pp. 12-13.

9 Harry Levin "Marlowe Today", Drtm~uRevielv 8, 4, p. 23.

5.11 KEY WORDS

1. Soliloquy: Coined from Greek solus (alone) and loqui (to speak). Speaking
one's thoughts aloud with none to hear, or regardless of the presence of
hearers. It is a declamation in this manner by the characters. Solilocli~iesare
popular in Marlowe's and Shakespeare's plays.

5.12 QUESTIONS

1. Examine Marlowe's use of blank verse in Doctor Fut~stus.

2. Give a critical appreciation of Doclor Fuz~sttrsas dramatic poetry.

-
I
J. Discuss Marlowe's contribution to the arowtli of dramatic uoetrv in English.
uocror I'(IILSCIIS
5.13 ANNOTATIONS

Annotate tlie following passages with reference to tlie context.

(a) Her lips s11clifort11 lily soill: see. where it flies!

(b) The stars lllove still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come. and Faustiis 111ustbe damn'd.

(c) Mountains and hills, colne. and fall ou me,

And hide fro111the heavy wrath of God!

(d) Let Faustiis live in hell a thousand years,

A hundred thousand, and at last be sav'd!

5.14 SUGGESTED READINGS

T.S. Eliot, Christopher M~rrlowe:A Collectiol~oJ Clditicul Es.sq.s. Clifford Leecli ed.
Prentice Hall, New Jersey 1964. Eliot estimates the qiiality of Marlovian Verse,
co~iiparesit with that of SIial<espeare and also Marlowe's contribution towards tlie
evolution of dra~iiaticpoetry in Engla~ld.
UNIT 6 THE PERFORMANCE OF DOCTOR
FA USTUS

Structure

6.0 Objectives

6.1 Introduction: Doctor Faustus and the Elizabethan Stage

6.2 Textual diversity of Doctor Faustus

6.3 Twentieth century productions of Doctor Faustus

6.4 William Poel and Nugent Monk

6.5 Post Second World War Productions

6.6 Nevill Coghill

6.7 Michael Benthall

6.8 John Barton

6.9 Christopher Fettes

6.10 Production of Specific scenes in Doctor Faustus

Problems of producing Doctor Faustus

American productions of Doctor Faustus

Doctor Faustus and the Postmodern Theatre

Jerzy Grotowski

Summing Up

References

Keywords

Questions

Suggested Readings

6.0
-
OBJECTIVES

This unit looks at Doctor Faustus as theatre. Very few plays present such diverse
elements that lend themselves to such diverse interpretations as Doctor Faustus does.
We can see the sensitive spiritual drama and also the spectacular action with
exhilarating audio-visual effects. There is a high trdgedy and also a grotesque
comedy. It is viewed as essentially a morality play, and also a preeminently
 Docfor Frrusf~~s Renaissance and Reformation play. It is also viewed as a psycliological play and
magical extravaganza. The charuc/er of Doclor Fn~utz~s itse,lfi.c subject to varied
focus- thot1g11tJillscholur. u devout Christian, rrtugic~rltrickster and LI seeker aj/er
egoistic trijles or nflcr silnyle sensuota plemure,~.The theater history of Doctor
F~rtl.rtusillustrates the diversity of focus in staglng the play.

6.1 INTRODUC?~%~N:DOCTOR FAUSTUS AND THE

I ELIZABETHAN
-
STAGE - -

Doctor fi~wttr,swas primarily written as a playscript for the Elizabethan audiences.

'The standardization of the play as text entailed several attempts, following the initial
~ I-ecorded perforlnalice of the play was on September 30, 1594 at
production. 'The f i st
Rose Theater by the Admiral's men wit11 Edward Alleyn playing the lead role of
Faustus. There are possibilities, William Tyde~nannotes, that the piece was sold to
the Earl of Pembroke's Men, one of the many professional acting companies of
London. It might have also been acted by them at the Coi~rt.However, tlie script
passed into the hands of Lord Admiral's Men. possibly t h r o ~ ~ gpurcilase
h by Lord
Howard of Eiffingham. It was also staged at the Theatre in Shoreditch any time
between 1588 and 1593, either by Pembroke's Men or by Lord Admiral's Men. The
morality framework and the intensely Christian theme notwithstanding, in writing
Doctor F~~u.ctus, Marlowe had in mind the predominant purpose of entertaining the
Elizabethan audiences who would care more for a spectacle than for a moral story.
William Tydeman records an early i~iipressionof tlie play as noted in Sir John
Melton's Astrologasler of the Fiqzrre Ccr,~/er of 1620.

shagge-hayr'd Devills runne roaring over the stage with Squibs in their
moutlies. while drummers make thunder in the tyring-house, and the twelve-
penny FIirelings (i.e. stage-hands) make artificial Liglirening in their
~eavens.'

The state of tlie popular Elizabethan mind was such. Tyrdeman notes tliat there was
even a rumour among the credulous tliat the actual demons participated in the stage
action. Edward Allyen, who also played TamburIBine and the Jew of Malta. evoked
instant identification from tlie audience with his "barnstorming" acting. Obvioi~sly,
Faustils was lost i n Allyen and it was Allyen who mattered to everyone. His
popularity was such that lie had to be recalled from his retirement on account of
Queen Elizabeth's admiration for him. 'fliomas Heyhood found him to be "peerless"
and 'rhomas Naslie found him making good any shortcoming in tlie text. However. in
tlie succeeding years, his acting was condemned as unreal though lie was recognized
for his essential theatrical hold on the audience. The essential intellectuality of tlie
play might not have been totally lost on the Elizabetlian audience, though they were
largely atlunecl to the popular taste for spectacle and high I-hetoric.The Elizabetlian
stage conventions and practices. largely developed in terms of the audience's
proclivities. Even before the Elizabethan stage conventions coi~ldrender the pay
striliingly physical, Marlowe himself initiates a visual thrust in the malting of
F a ~ l s t ~character.
~s' Phoebe S. Spinard observes:

. .... F a u s t ~ ~issnot a visionary but a vis~~alizer. Most of his accomplisliments

are described i n terms of seeing, whether in reading books or in viewing the
geography of the earth and sky from Mephostopilis' dragon drawn chariot.
His plans, too, are foci~sedvisually on concrete objects the projects he will
accomplish with his magical powers, the gifts he will obtain from the spirits
even his possible r ~ ~ f i ~ from g e s the devils in his final soliloquy.'

Further, Spinard observes, Faustus calls for a visual response from the audierlce as
when the devil in Helen's disguise is presented to him and when he finds Christ's
blood streaining in the firmament. 011botli the occasions, Marlowe seeks to put tlie
 'The Performance o f
audience on a visual track through Faustus' words. Faustus "ca~inc~t grasp what he
Doctor. Ffuistus
cannot see" and uses "outward shows as a substitute for thought." Marlowe's
Elizcrbelhtm Faz~stz~s is dej7nitely a correlutive effort for the Elizabethan audience's
~7roclivities.M u r l o ~ ~was as nluch as drums in Doctor Fuustus.
e ~ ~ r t i itheat~e
lg

However the tendency to be theatrical, is partly correlated with tlie dramatic and
rlietorical strain in Doctor Fatatt~s,and, at times, it is simply let loose as in tlie
middle sections of tlie play. Tlie fact is that the dramatic word andl its rhetorical force
and tlie visual spectacle stand on the sanie footing in Marlowe's play. 'The same is
true of the Elizabethan theatre in general. The visual dominates the verbal but tlie
rhetorical draniatic w o ~ dis tlie organizing principle. This is tlie Renaissance element
characterizing the Elizabetlian drama. Writing of themes and conventions of
Elizabethan tragedy, M. C. Bradbrook asserts that tlie "essential structure of
Elitabetlian,drania lies not in tlie narrative or the characters but in words". Through
"word play" and "word patterns", tlie Elizabethans build their drama on words.
Faustus witli all liis human learning, wanted to be divine in sliow and asks
Mepliostopliilis "what means this sliow" for all tliat lie presents. For Russell,
Marlowe's play is "visual as well as intellectual, physical and metaphysical,
responsible and popular". Russell writes:

For Marlowe both words and actions are important. He was sonieti~nes
content witli action and no words as crucial niolnents of liis drama. Helen
wlio ravishes Faustus and "sucks forth" liis soul only passes over tlie stage in
silence . ... Marlowe was not fond of tlie rhetorical elaboration of Seneca,
Kyd or early Shakespeare . .. . Marlowe did not pursue co~nparisonsso
nimbly, and seldom developed an intricate argument, lie preferred to build to
progress, retaining each element within the final large imI~ression."

He fi~rtlierwrites:

Reliance on visual effect is perhaps niost impressive in elation to individual

cliaracterisation, for besides maintaining a typically Renaissance
co~iiplicationof ~iieaningand situation, a sliow implied a kind of density in
character portrayal. It was not accidentally tliat Alley11was framed for
majestic parts .... The actor of Tamburlaine, Faustus and Barbara had to be
\
able to hold the center of large stage pictures and make a clear pli sical
statement; nervous subleties or minute physical realism were required for
neither words nor gestures.4

Visual explicitness underwritten by a clear thematic perspective was required of

Doctor Faustus or of a typical Marlovian play on the stage. Perhaps, t!ie resources of
Elizabethan theatrical organization or abilities were inadequate for Marlowe's theatre.
The Victorians wlio revived interest in Marlowe who was almost forgotten for nearly
200 years after the closi~reof theatres in London in tlie niiddle of tlie seventeentli
century, cared more for Marlowe's poetry than for his drama or theatre.

6.2 TEXTUAL DIVERSITY OF DOCTOR FA USTUS

In staging Doctor F ~ r t ~ s ttlie

~ a ,initial problem is the Itind of Faustus to be chosen.
The teslual diversity and even Marlowe's a~itliorsliipof certain scenes has never been
convincingly settled. Tlie play exists in two texts belonging to 1604 and 1616 wliicli
have come to be known as A and B texts. Tydeman presents the problem as to which
of tlie texts is to bg considered more authentic:

...it is now clear tliat the A text oniits or corrupts ~iiucliof what was
originally presented on stage, while the B text altliougli Inore faithful to tlie
 -
Doctor F(iirstirs early script, includes a good deal of material added after Marlowe's death in

The A Text was a shorter one meant mainly for tlie t o ~ ~ r i ncompanies
g witli a greater
focus on the tragic scenes than the comic ones. Tlie B Text includes, in detail, the
comic scenes of tlie middle section of tlie play tliat were briefly sketched in the first
one. Many critics and producers have made a rather eclectic use of both the texts
using what suited their point of view for tlie purpose of textual edition and
production.

6.3 TWENTIETH CENTURY PRODUCTIONS OF

DOCTOR FAUSTUS

Tlie upsurge of interest in Marlowe in the twentieth century both for the dramatic
insights and for the theatrical possibilities of his plays raises tlie question whether
Marlowe does not justifiably belong more to tlie twentieth century for liis critical
temper and tlieatrical exploration.

Tlie twentieth century revival of interest in Doctor Faustus mainly centers on the play
as a neglected classic. Tlie neglect of tlie play was on account of the constrictive
morality framework and also because of too many comic scenes considered
unMarlovian. Further, Marlowe was overshadowed by Shakespeare whose
dominence led to a view tliat other than Shakespeare, liis contemporaries are not
stage worthy. Theatre everywhere has come to be so attuned to Sliakespeare that for
staging Marlowe, one may have to unlearn or forget Shakespeare. John Russell
Brown writes:

Marlowe wrote liis plays before Sliakespeare's masterpiece had been

conceived; but we read him afterwards and in his successor's light . . . We
stage Marlowe in a theatre accustomed to Sliakespeare, witli actors, directors
and designers wlio have all had experience of his plays: talents have been
developed and techniques evolved for Shakespeare's dialogues in all
revolutionary sublety, for Sliakespeare's kind of dramatic action and
characterisation.... Marlowe has no Lear or Hamlet or Prospero whose
passage through a play involves a deepening or chastening of tlie character's
thought and feeling. His plays are more centered on their heroes than most of
Sliakespeare's as far as plot and tlieatrical focus are concerned; but the
audience, even of Faustus, is not fi~llyinvolved witli the progress of tlie
hero's conscious~iess.~

6.4 WILLIAM POEL & NUGENT MONK

Tlie pioneering spirit behind tlie revival of Doctor Faustus in the 20"' century was
William Poel wlio passionately advocated a return to Elizabethan style auditoria and
production methods for staging Marlowe. Poel presented tlie play at St. George's Hall
in London first in July 1896 and then in 1904. Poel's attempt was to create a stage
which would approximate, in as many details as possible, the Fortune Playhouse of
1600. Poel mainly relied on tlie A text of 1.604 focusing on Faustus as a restless
scholar after knowledge. For Poel, tlie play is essentially a tragedy and lie cut down
many comic scenes that would have reduced tlie tragic grandeur of the play. Faustus
was played by a seventeen year old D.L. Manliering. rather a little unassertively and
adolescently. Tlie stage divided by tlie front cul-tain and a principal curtain presented
the comic scenes near tlie front curtain and the serious scenes near the main curtain.
Though there is considerable focus on tlie visual element i n costu~iiingand stage
 effects, Poel's was a simpler production compared to tlie highly scenic Shakespeare The Performance of
Doctor F(lustus
revivals. Bernard Shaw praised Poel's production for his attempts to achieve almost
an i~iipossiblestage verisimilitude and found Manliering's acting sober and
conscientious. However, what began as a modern revival of Doctor Faustus did not
go beyond Poel. Marlowe did not appeal to commercial playhouses. The next
significant production of Faustus was for the first Canterbury festival in August 1929
by Nuge~jtMonk as a part of tlie double bill with Everymun. The coupling indicated
tlie approach to Faustus. Where Poel tried to recreate an Elizabethan ambience for
Faustiis, Monk's production made it a medieval piece along with Everyman,
obliterating tlie essential irony of the play to render it a Christian discourse on the
wages of sin.

6.5 POST SECOND WORLD WAR PRODUCTIONS

?

Lloctor Fnz~stusdid not receive any significant attention after the Canterbury Festival
i~ntiltlie end of the Second World War. Three productions of Docror Fausttrs in tlie
b
decade following the war are significant: the first. tlie Old Vic Company's production
at tlie Liverpool Playhouse in May 1944, Walter Hud's production of Doctor Fuustus
using tlie 'B' text for the first time with miniinurn cuts, at the Shakespeare Memorial
theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon, with Robert Harris as Failstus and Hugh Griftith as
Mephostophilis and ?lie revival of Old Vic production at New Theatre in October
1948 by John Burrell, witli Sir Cedric Hardwick as Faustus and Rc~bertEddison as
Mephostopliilis. Significant in these productions was tlie fact that Mephostopliilis
played by a student Andreas Tenber dominated Fausti~s.

6.6 NEVILL COGHILL

I
One of the very important productions of Doctor Faustus during tlie century was
Nevill Cogliill' for the Oxford University Dramatic Society in 1957. Coghill revived
I the play in 1966 with Richard Burton as Faustiis and Elizabeth Ta:ylor as Helen.
I These two repeated tlie same roles in tlie later film version ofthe play. Coghill's
f o c ~ was
~ s on tlie paradoxes in Failstus' character. Bu~ton'sperformance was found
, to be unromantic and disappointing. as in the productions of the fcbrties by a student,
Andreas Teuber. Burton's performance came in for a lot of adverse comment.
William Tydenian writes:

. . . Richard Burton in Nevill Cogliill's 1966 production was guilty of

overeniphasising a neurotic vulnerability. Deliberately eschewing tlie
anticipated romantic interpretation, Burton portrayed the Doctor as an
i~nprepossessing,rather pathetic pedant employing diabolic powers to obtain
satisfactions, his physical inadequacies and chosen vocation denied him: . ..
this presentation of a sedentry bespectacled, provincial dominie, celebrating a
windfall of premium bonds with a jaunt round the tourist traps of Elizabethan
Europe (Sunday Telegraph, 20 February, 1966) though an enterprising
reading, not only reduced Faustus' stature and ruled out any laudable aspect
to his ambitions, but also introduced a false incongruity into tlie play, witli
exalted sentiments and thrilling language emanating from a totally ~~nlieroic
figure. The encounter witli Helen of Troy became ridiculous and the final
shattering soliloquy lacked the full sense of human waste.'

6.7 MICHAEL BENTHALL

The Old Vic Company restaged the play in Ailgust 1961 at the Assembly Hall,
Edinburgh under the direction of Michael Benthall. Paul Dineman played Faustus,
1)oclor I;ir~r.s/~r.s
Micheal Goodliffe played Mephostopilis and Robert Eddisson played Lucifer.
Benthall made an eclectic use of the A & B texts cutting down much what he t l i o ~ ~ g l ~ t
was the superfluous comedy and also some of the dialogues that show Faustus too
assertive in defying damnation. Dineman was "attractive and convival" but was
,found unable to bring to focus the ambition which was tlie ~ ~ n d o i nofg Faustus so
much so that his damnation appeared theatrically unconvincing. Bentliall's
productio~ireceived enco~iii~ims for the visual spectacle of the middle scenes.
Willia~iiTydeman sums LIPhis own and other responses to the theatrical spectacle:

In 1961 at the Assembly Hall, Edinburgh, Michael Bentliall was able to

achieve more or less this effect, assisting audiences to participate in the
spectacle rather than nierely to lose themselves in an illusion. By appearing
on a bright lit platform with spectators to three sides of them and by using tlie
gangways of the hall for exits and entries, the players made immediate
contact witli their patrons, while the director allowed his telling visual effects
to impinge on the auditorium itself, notably with the eri~ptionof the
emperor's court and Pope's guests on to the dark platform stage which
"suddenly (sprang) into blazing colour" (Philip Hope Wallace, Guardian 23,
August). Benthall's accent on 'multiple comings and goings (Punch) was
able to invest tlie play witli tlie trappings of a 'brilliant pageant' (Tatler)
whose excitements the Szlnday Telegr.cp11for 17 September vividly
conveyed: 'smoke SLIIPIILI~ and incense about one;. .. .'8

6.8 JOHN BARTON

The performance that evoked a lot of critical comment during tlie seventies was tlie
one directed by John Barton at Edinburgh's Lyceum Theatre in August 1974. Relying
mainly on the A text and fi~rthersubjecting it to several cuts. Barton interpolated
extracts fro111the original Faust legend translated into English. I-le avoided ambiguity
as far as Faustus's tragic predicament and comic proclivities are concerned. The
interpolations from the Faustus legend provided a framework of comment with the
devils delivering much of the narrative including the choruses. Barton's aim was to
give a sort of Breclitian detachment to the audience to enable them to comment on the
play. He used puppets for the angles to show the illusory nature of Faustus' world.
Ian Mckellan who played Faustiis evokes two types of responses. On the one Iiand,
there is tlie picture of Faustus displaying a conip~~lsivene~~rosis. Milton Sh~~lrnan
writes for the Evening Standcrrd 6 September 1974:

. . . ... the good doctor isn't leaping about for a precious book, nudging the
servants of Lucifer for some reaction to his activities, gleefi~llyhugging
himself at his own cleverness or thrashing about in fearful agony as he
prepares to meet his doom. A little more repose might make a more
convincing pl~ilosopliical~austus."

Michael Billington writes for The Gz~urdian:

The strength of Ian Mckellen's performance is that it supplies an internal

dialectic.. ... he is a bushy haired peasant scholar whose arching catlike body
is fill1 of yearning lusts; on the other hand, he is a tormented overeacher
sudderlly prey to fits of rational s a d n e ~ s . ' ~

Barton's aim is to avoid textual ambiguity and to build LIPa flux of psychological
states in Faustus and bring him nearer to the quality of ~iiodernlife.

6.9 CHRISTOPHER FETTES

The focus in the eighties production of Fausti~s,especially in the one at Lyric Studio.
64 Hammersmith in February 1980 and later at Fortune l'l~eatre in March 1980, was on
tlic sensous rather than tlie intellectual Faustus. Under tlie direction of Christopher The Perforrl~anceof
Doctor Frrustus
I'ettes. the youtlifi~lJo111iAubrey played Fai~stilsin the all male cast. Tlie sensuous
re\~zrberationsof Aubrey's acting did not escape l~omosesualovertones.

6.10 PRODUCTION OF SPECIFIC SCENES IN DOCTOR

FAUSTUS

In all productions of Faustus beginning with Poel's at the turn of t l ~ ecentury,

producing the play is one attempt and tlie treatment of specific scenes for the purpose
of visi~alspectacle is altogetlier another thing. The presentation of the devils posed a
problem i n that they had to resemble tlie devils of tlie popular imagination. Poel's
devils resembled the devils of the popular paintings of the fifteentli century and
Mephostophilis resembled a demon "from tlie roof of Notre Dame". Benthall
presents tlie devils in colour and style so as to make them unrepulsive as they were
supposed to be to Faustiis. Barton clothed them as blackrobed mol-~ksoperating the
puppets. For liim tlie devils had no reality other than as figments of Fai~stus'
imagination.

Tlie presentation of tlie Seven Deadly Sins posed another problem. Bernard Shaw
l'ound them in Poel's presentation so i~ncharactericallyattractive that it \bas not only
F a ~ ~ s t who
u s was delighted but the audience also applauded the Sins on tlicir
appearance. Nevill Coglii l l created a "beautfi~ln~osque"which. Iiowevcr carried an
i~n~iiistakable sense of menace and violence behind their surface eilega~icc.Barton
presents them as puppets making clear that whatever attraction they possess is purely
superficial. Both Coghill and Barton tried to corelate the visual aspect ofthe show
n it11 the tragic dilemma of Faustus.

rile presentation of Helen was another subtle theatrical problem for the pjoductions
of Faustus. Many productions tended to present Helen purely in aesthetic terms
keeping in view Faustus' apostrophe to lier. 'The play required an ;lwareness of the
clclnonic nature of Helen on the part oftke audience. However, the audiences at
several prodi~ctions,Tydeman notes. were persuaded to sit thruugr the middle
sections simply to witness Helen and her mythical beauty. Clifford Wil.liams presents
Helen in the nude in a production at Shakespeare's Memorial Theatre in 1968. The
point of nudity was her desirability for Fai~sti~sbut it is extremely doubtful whether it
strengthened the cause of lier liellinic beauty and llie attendant desirability either for
I:austus or to tlie audieace. It was John Barton, William Tydeman notes, who
presented Helen aptly:

Helen was nothing more than a blonde wig, a mask and a wisp of chiffon
carried about by Faustus, lovingly caressed, and linally taken to bed with
him. Tlie loss of living, breathing sexuality was great, yet the possible
disappointment attendent on discovering Helen to be less perfect than one's
image was dispelled, while Faustus's own degradation i n the search for
physical satisfaction could hardly have been Inore tellingly conveyed."

Faustus' apostrophe to Helen marks the zenith of an aesthetic and sensuous

transcendence while the same words have to carry the burden of the religious
degradation of cou~tingthe devil in the disguise of Helen. Obviously, the presentation
of Helen is bound to be a very difficult theatrical feat that should present
simultaneously an apotlieosis and mockery.

6.11 PROBLEMS OF PRODUCING DOCTOR FAUSTUS

In a way, the problem of presenting Helen is cliaracteristic of the difficulties inherent

in producing Doctor Faustz~s.Mutually antagonistic elements'have to be delicately
poiscd without allowing one strain to i~ndercutthe other - the Christian versus tlie
Doctor F~ustcrs Renaissance or the medieval versus the modern. It was a challenge to modern theatre,
specifically for tlie Modern British theatre to stage the ambivalence constituting
Faustus' tragedy -the ambivalence extending to the dilemma as to whether Faustus is
to be only tragic or comic as well. William Tydeman sums up the endeavour of
Modern British theatre to stage Doctor Faustus:

Productions of the play have come far since The Times a i d of Poe4's 1896 version,
that Doctor Faustzcs seems scarcely fitted for representation on the modem stage.
Few would take so gloomy a view today. Even if they have rarely been content to
takes the text on trust, directors can scarcely be blamed for their vigorous weilding of
the scissors or the felt pen. Nor must the problems of creating a coherent Faustus, of
making the notions of Hell and damnation meaningful h a modern audience, of
spanning the presumed gulf between the peaks be minimised. A conflation of the best
-
features of all productions reviewed here Benthall spectacle, Williams consistent
concept of complex Faustus, Barton's puppetry, ~ e & ' s economy (and his
Mephostophilis) might prove rewarding, but they illustrate the obvious truth that no
single production~ofDoctor Faustus in recent times can be truly satisfactory. Yet the
play has inspired s m e exciting theatrical moments, arrd much of its power is still
untapped, particularly its contemporary releva~ice.'~

6.12 AMERICAN PRODUCTIONS OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS

Outside England, the productions of Doctor Faustus are far fewer and less
convincing too. Two notable productions were in America. One was by Oscar
Welles, a Broadway production for the Federal theatre project at Maxine Eloit theater
in 1937. This was a popi~larproduction for the American stage in the thirties with
more than a hundred performances, but tlie staging had little to recommend other than
what the New York Herald Tribune for January 9, 1937 had to report.

The action takes place against a black background and the players are
brilliantly spotlighted against it. . . .. Isolated from their surroundings and
appearing for most of the time on the stage apron that extends for beyond the
procenium, the effectively costumed actors of Smoke screens.. . .. many
shrewd eclectical contraptions and all the devices of modern stage art but the
final effect is of a true and simple translation of the Elizabethan stage into
contemporary theatrical terms. 13

Another notable American production was by The Phoenix theatre under the
directions by Word Baker in 1964 to commeniorate the 400"' anniversary of
Marlowe. It was a poor tribute to Marlowe on the anniversary. Time for October 16,
1964 reports:

Mounting a lavish display of props, costumes, and lighting effects, the phoenix
~~roduction
camouflages the metaphysical tragedy and smothers the t e ~ ~ s i oin
~ls
Marlowe's imagination.. ... Marlowe's mighty line is reduced to a polysyllabic
moi~tliwash.'~

6.13 DOCTOR FAUSTUS: THE POSTMODERN THEATRE

Modern theatre, both in England and America, attached to theatrical naturalism and
audience reception could not have done justice to the intellectually elusive
Christopher Marlowe. It is interesting to see how Doctor Faustus lends itself to the
critically explorative post~nodernexperimental theatre that began in America and on
the continent in the nineteen sixties. The postmodern experimental theatre mainly
66 opposed the logocentric drama that has come to characterize the western theatre since
 The Performance o f
Aristotle. The logos or the text is not simply the dramatic text but the cultural logos
as well, promoting the dominant values of the time through mimesis and Docror Fnusrus
representation. Theatre, over the centuries in the experimentalists' view, has not only
made theatrical element like plot, character and mise en scene, subserve the dominant
cultliral logos but also came to thwart the free flow of human ideas and feelings that
the theatre originally aimed at presenting. The playwright as the author of the
dramatic and cultural logos appropriated the whole domain of theatrical art thereby
denying theatre its legitimate function of generating or regenerating human reality on
the stage. The experi~nentalistsattempted to restore to theatre a certain autono~nyof
creative art independent of the playwright or at least, concomitant to his act of
dramatic creation. In ihe early part of the twentieth century, Antonin Artaud called
for a triumph of pure Mise en Sceve as against the tyrany of the text. The Mise-en-
scene is capable of organsing the theatrical text, after the play text is introduced,
through actors, stage, objective, dkcor, lighting, costumes, movement, sound etc.
Antaud's was truly a revolution in theatre which received support from the new
formulations in critical theory like Poststructuralism and Deconstruction. The
poststructuralists disbelieved in the role of the subject author as the repository of
artistic impulses and believed that if the subject or the author were to claim an
existence in a work of art, it is in a state of continual dispersal. Similarly, the
erstwhile stable relationship between the representer and the represented or the
signifier and the signified is a continually fluctuating one. The theory of
Deconstruction as formulated by Jaques Derrida believed in the systematic play of
differences in language causing a never-ending activity and productivity. Artaud's
endeavour to disrupt the logocentric mediation of theatre through the primacy of mise
en scene appealed to Derrida immensely. The experilnentalists in theatre, pursuaded
by the formulations of the poststructuralists and Derridean Deconstructionists were
looking forward to multiple readings of the dramatic texts, through ,mise en scene.

6.14 GROTOWSKI'S DOCTOR FAUSTUS

hifurlowe's intellectual anibiguity and the textual diversity of Doctor Faustus

provided an ideal ground for theatre experznzentalists to indulge their critical
irnaginaliorr. Jerzy Grotowski's production of Doctor Faustus at his theatre
1- laboratory in Opole, Poland in 1963 is an attempt to make the play intelligible to the
I conten~porarypostmodern temper and sensibility.
I

Drawing from several quartos of Doctor Faustus, Grotowski begirls his production
with scene Three of Act Five where Faustus is arguing with his scholars. Rearranged
ill twenty two scenes.Grotowski tur~isMarlowe's ambivalznt defiance of the
established religion into a postmodern cognitive mapping of a dispersed religion. He
writes:

This is a play based on a religious theme. God and the Devil intrigue with
the protagonists -that is why the play is set in a monastery. There is a
dialectic between mocl<ery and apotheosis. Fausti~sis a saint and his
saintliness shows itself as an absolute desire for pure truth If the saint is to
become one with his sainthood, he must rebel against God - Creator of the
world, because the laws of the world are traps contradicting niorality and
truth .. . Whatever we do good or bad - we are damned. The saint is not able
to accept as his model this God who a~nbushesrnan . . . But what must the
saint care for? His soul, of course . . . . . . his own self-consciousness.. ... In
fact, Faustus is not only a saint but a martyr - even Inore so than the
Christian saints and martyrs because he expccts no reward. On the contrary,
he knows that his due will be eternal danination .. .. The dialectic of mockery
and apotheosis consists then of a conflict between lay sainthood and religious
Doctor fiustus The dialectic between apotlieosis and mockery dibests the soliloq~~ies of their
rhetoric and, in its place the trained Grotowskian actor vocalises and gesturalizes tlie
postmodern resolution of an irresolute Eli7abethai1 dilemma. Grotowshi describes
how theatre can present Fatistus independent of Marlowe. his dramatic text and its
constrictive dilemmas and conflicts.

The sky then resonates with the word and in all the corners of the room the hidden
actors, reciting lilie monl\s. chant prayers like Ave Maria and the Pater Noster.
Midnight sounds, Fai~stt~s' ecstasy is transformed into his passion. The moment has
come when the saint.. ..is ready for his martyrdom: eternal damnation. He is in
rapture, his body is slialcen by spasms. The ecstatic failure of his voicc becomes at the
moment of his passion a series of inarticulate cries - tlie piercing, pitiable shrieks of
a!i animal caught in a trap. His body shudders and all is silence.'"
-- --
6.15 SUMMING UP- -- -
Grotowski's rather deconstructive approach is one attitude of colitemporary critical
theory towards theatre performance. The postmodern rendering of the play by
Grotowslci reflects the new historicist approach dialectically opposed to artistic
deconstruction. The new histor-icist approach renders a work of art equally
independent of the a ~ t i s but
t makes it predominantly a product of the historical
moment of its PI-oduction.Art, in new llistoricist erideavours locates itself in
coiltemporary history rather than emerge through any process of imagination. The
earlier historicist appl.oac11 as against the new historicist one, made ai-t a product of its
liistorical moment, regarclless of its ability to reconstruct another period. Perhaps,
Poel's production comes nearer to the historicist approach.

Since tlle 16"' century, the performance of Doctor Fau.rtus surveys a long theatrical
history medieval nrorality play drama of emerging Kenaissance aspirations and the
self-generative postmodem theatre. Play, drama, and theater-Marlowe visi~alizedthe
complex growth of dramatic and theatrical art.

- -
6.16 REFERENCES

1. Quoted by Wi l lia~nTydeman, Doctor Fawtu.~:Text cmd Perfornlaizce 1984,

McMillan London, p. 24.

2. Phoebe Spinard. "The dilettante's lie in Doctor Faz~stus",Texas Studies in

Language B Literature 24,3, 1982, p. 244.

3. John Russell Brown, "Marlowe and the actors" Dratna Review 8, 4, 1964, pp.
164 & 1 58-9.

4. Ibid., pp. 166-67.

5. Willian~Tydeman, Doctor Faustus : Text a ~ Performance,

d p. 15.

6. John Russell Brown "Marlowe and the actors" Drama Review, 8,4, 1964, pp.
155-168.

7. William Tydeman. Doctor Faustus: Text and Performance. p. 60.

8. Ibid., p. 70.

9. Quotatiori from William Tydeman: Doctor Faustus: Text & Performance,

p.62.
 10. Ibid., p.63 The Performance ot'
Doctor Fr~ustus
II. William Tydeman. Doctor Fauslza: Texr and Perjormaizce, pp.77-78.
I

I I?. Ibid., pp.82-83.

I

13. Quotation from William Tydeman. Doctor Fazrstus: Text & Perfornzance.
I P.69.
I
I

I 14. Time, October 16, 1964, p.77.

I

I
15. Jerzy Grotowski, "Doctor Faustus in Poland" Dran~aRwiew 8, 4 1964,
I trans. Richard Schechner, p. 12 1 .
I
16. Ibid., pp.132-33

-- - --
6.17 KEY WORDS
--

I. ~t.constructioi:A mode of reading first defined by Jacques Derrida based on

the principle that linguistic signs cannot be linked to ex1:ra-linguistic reality
but are, instead components of the self-contradictory structure of language. A
deconstructive reading of a text is, tlien, a search for concealed contradictions
within a text that undercut its apparent unity.
I
2. iWise-en-scene (French) Scenery and properties of an acted play; stage
setting, and the surroudings of an event.
I

Modern theatre: Essentially a theatre of protest that began with the plays of
the Norwegian playwright, Henrilc Ibsen in the latter part of the nineteenth
century, like A Doll's House (1 879) and G'l~nsl~ (1 881 ) The other charnpions
of modern theatre during the 19"' and 20"' centuries are the Swedish
dramatist, August Strindberg, Russian playwright, Anton Chekov, Italian
playwright, 1,uigi Pilandello, the Englisli playwright Bernard Shaw and tlie
American playwright, Eugene O'Neill, and the Germall playwright, Bel-talt
Brecht. Two concepts characterize modern theatre: one is the notion of
modernism based on the self-conscioi~snessof the artist and objectively
verifiable reality of the world. Secondly in terms of theatrical 'production, it
clepencls on realism and naturalism whose main function is ti5 foster an
illusion of reality on the stage and to transmit the theatrical illusion to the
audience.

iVe\v historicism^: It is a critical approach to literature cvitli the belif that the
meaning and vali~eof a piece of literature resides i n 1ii:jtory and that the
history can be reconstri~cted.The new Historicism, as championed by
Stephen Greenblt ancl Micliel Foucault emphasises the diversity of social
currents in any given period and the inescapable colouring of the
understanding of the past by the modes of thouglit of the present. ~ u r t h e rfor ,
the new historicists society is essentially a political str~.~cture of power that
always seeks to contain challenges to its power.

There are no verified set of beliefs and attitudes in any given period of time
but rather tensions and struggles for power within a culture. Originally New
Historicism arose in tlie field of Renaissance studies and extended itself to
the study of other literary periods.

Postinoderrrisn~:a broad term to explain the intellectual temper in the West

since the Second World War. On the one hand, postmlsdernism reflects
Doctor Fnustus disillusionment with modernist self-consciousness and its realistfnaturalist
perspectives and, on the other hand, it runs through several contemporary
ideas like post-structuralism, Deconstruction, reader-response studies and
new Historicis~netc.

6. Post,structuralisnz: Rejecting the supremacy of the authorial voice and

interpretative human experience, structtlralists like Ferdinand Saussure and
Levi-Strauss and post-structuralists like Ronald Bartlies and Jaqites Derrida,
make literature a linguistic nod el in whicli signs are related to one another
not tlirougli logical co~i~iectio~i
but through a process, a differentiation.
While structuralists explore a structure of functional relatiohships within
linguistic structures, Post-structuralists, focusing on the possibilities of reader
response, are engaged in decentering even the functional relationships
between tlie signified and the signifying structures to discerri the points of
rupture or fission in them. From the traditional liberal humanist approach to
the post-structuralist approach, which is essentially, deconstructionist, the
shift tliat has taken place is from the predomi~ienceof the author, through that
of tlie underlying linguistic structures to tlie possibilities of the response of
tlie reader.

7. Thecrtrzcai natz~mlism:Theatrical naturalism was propounded by Elnile Zola

who believed that art and literature are 011 tlie same scale of gradation like
chemistry and physiology etc. Central to naturalism is the idea of stage
environment whicli has to be illusionistically realised for tlie actor treating
the stage geograpliically and psycliolgically distinct from the area occupicd
by tlie audience through what is called tlie fourtli wall convention i.e., tlie
actor imagines tliat the stage is circled not only by three walls but by a fourtli
wall, one in front of tlie audience too. He has to be totally unaware of tlie
audience in front of him for liis awareness of their presence would destroy
tlie tJieatrical illusion of reality on tlie stage. This sort of naturalistn on tlie
stage is evolved by theatre tibre in Paris, Otto Bralim ill Berlin, David
Balasccl in New York and Constantin Stanislavsky in Moscow.

1. Mar1ow.e wrote as much theatre as dra~iiain Doctor Faustus. Discuss.

9
& . Discuss the textual diversity of Doctor Fcrz~stzrswith reference to its
productions during the Elizabethan period.
?
J. Examine the merits and demerits of modern productions of doc to^. F ~ I I I . v / ~ I . v .

3. Exaniine Grotowski's production of Doctor Fc~u.c.tinand comment on the

suitability of tlie play for a postmodern perfor-~iiance.

6.19 SUGGESTED READINGS

1. W illia~iiTydeman. Doctor Fuustt~,~; Texf ctt Pel-fonlroncc. 1984. McM i l Ian

London. Tydetnan disct~ssestlie productions of Doctor FULIS~LI.Y since tlie
Elizabethan tinies to the 1980,s and focuses on tlie problems of acting
involved in specific roles and scenes and of staging the play.

2. John Russell Brown, "Marlowe and the Actors" Drama Revieli) 8. 4, 1964.
Russell discusses the challenges Marlowe i~nposeson the actors for Iiis plays.

3. Jerzy Grotowski, "Doctor Fnzrstus in Poland" D r a n z ~Review

~ 8,4 194,
pp. 12 1-133. Richard Scelieclier, Grotowski presents liis theatre script of
Doctor Fczt~stu.~and discusses tlie critical perspectives of his production.
UNIT 1 BACKGROUND :PERFORMANCE

Structure

1.0 Objectives

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Dating the First Performance

1.3 Conditions of Performance

1.4 Reading and Performance Texts

1.5 Let Us Sum Up

1.6 Questions

1.0 OBJECTIVES

We have called Unit 2 "Background" because it is the word used fc~rinformation that
does not seem to have direct relevance to the text being studied. From the Block
Introduction, you will know that such information helps us to appre:ciate the text
better, so it is less background than the stuff of the play.

We have concentrated on three points:

The time when A Mihummer Night's Dream was written because a writer
knowingly or unknowingly includes contemporary ideas an~devents in his
writing.

The constraints under which the plays were written and performed, or
"conditions of performance."

The difference between performance and reading texts. Shakespeare's plays

were meant to be acted but for a long time they have been treated as plays to
be read. This has affected the interpretation of the plays.

1 . INTRODUCTION

Shakespeare lived 400 years ago in England. Elizabeth I was then the queen of
England. The conditions he lived in, what interested him and his audience, and even
the language were different to what they are now. So different, in fact, that even the
ordinary English man or woman finds him "strange." Shakespeare's audience,
however, would not have found him strange. It shared his interest in current affairs
such as the food riots of 1595-96, the power of Queen Elizabeth I over the kinds of
plays that were to be performed, and that boys took women's roles (see 1.4). The
difference between reading and performance texts will be discussecl in 1.5.
 A Midsummer After reading this unit, you will know
Night's Dream
The bases of the arguments among Shakespeare scholars about when the
play was written and performed

The difference in meaning when a play is performed and when it is read

The playhouse culture of Shakespeare's time

1.2 DATING THE FIRST PERFORMANCE

Why should the date of the first performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream
concern us? Largely because the time and occasion tell us what Shakespeare's
audience would have found interesting in the play. We will discover the real
emphases or important ideas in it rather than inventing our own.

Most Shakespeare scholars agree that A Midsummer Night's Dream was performed
in the second half of the 1590s, but the exact year is debated. The four questions we
will try and answer about the first performance are:

What time of year was it performed?

What was the occasion for which it was performed?
Was Elizabeth I present at this performance?
Which year was it first performed?

What time of year was A Midsummer Night's Dream performed?

The only certainty about the date of this play is that it was entered in the Stationer's
Register in September 1598 as having been performed, but it may have been
performed earlier than 1598. Scholars have used different data to determine the date
of its first performance. For example, because of "midsummer" in its title, it is
possible that the play was performed in summer, perhaps on a special occasion such
as the eve of Mayday (Walpurgisnacht) or Midsummer Eve when young men and
women would find their life partners and which is therefore associated with
eroticism.

What was the occasion for the performance?

For a long time it was accepted that A Midsummer Night's Dream was an
"occasional" play, that is, it was written for a special occasion. Harold Brooks is
among those who are convinced that it was performed for an important aristocratic
wedding. This explains why the play begins and ends with the wedding of Duke
Theseus and Queen Hippolyta while the main action is about the rest of the
characters. It would seem, then, that Theseus and Hippolyta are not really important
to the action of play.

The importance of a character, however, does not depend on the length of the role.
Sometimes a writer emphasises characters' importance by placing them in
significant scenes, such as the first and last scenes. Theseus and Hippolyta appear irr
the first and last scenes, both of which focus on their wedding. Shakespeare shows us
other similarities between these two and the audience that was supposedly gathered
for the aristocratic wedding. Like the audience at the first performance, Theseus and
Hippolyta are powerful aristocrats. Theseus is Duke of Athens and Hippolyta has
been queen of the Amazons. In a further parallel with whatever wedding A
8
 Background:
Midsumnzer Niglzt S Dream is supposed to have been performed for, a play is to be Performance
performed to celebrate Theseus' and Hippolyta's wedding.

Many modem critics do not agree that A Midsummer Night S Dream was first
performed for an aristocratic wedding because there is no record of such a wedding
in the second half of the 1590s.

Was Queen Elizabeth I present at the first performance?

If A Midsummer Night's Dream was indeed performed for an aristocratic wedding, it

is likely that Elizabeth I was present. This is generally the explanation for the
compliments to Titania, queen of the fairies, and Diana, the virgin goddess of the
moon. Elizabeth I was called the Virgin Queen and compared with Diana and
Titania.

The argument against this view is that these compliments are not proof that Elizabeth
I was present at the first performance. They are routine compliments to the very
powerful queen who liked to be admired in this way.

In 1.4 you will see why Shakespeare would compliment Elizabeth X in a play that had
nothing to do with her and who was probably not even present at its first
performance.

When was the play first performed?

Critics have suggested two seasons: 1594-95 and 1595-96. A current view is that it
was most definitely performed in 1596 (see Patterson, New Casebooks p. 176).

Before going on to the topicality of the play, a brief mention about who comprised
the audience for Shakespeare's plays.

It used to be believed that the largest group in the audience was made up of
aristocrats and courtiers. Recent research suggests that although special
performances were held for the Court, the biggest audiences were of people like the
Mechanicals Erom the poorer strata of society. Shakespeare tried to please both kinds
of audience. [See 2.5 for further reading on play going in Shakespeare's time.]

Why should the year of its first performance concern us in the late twentieth century?
The information influences our understanding of the play and helps us to see A
Midsummer Night S Dream as Shakespeare's audience might have seen it.

In Act I1 of A Midsummer Night 3 Dream, Oberon and Titania have had a serious
quarrel, which, Titania says, has upset the normal workings of nature. There has been
unusually heavy rain and the crops have been ruined:

. . .with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport.

Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge have suck'd up from the sea
Cogtagious fogs; which, falling in the land,
Hath every pelting river made proud
That they have overborne their continents.
The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard;
The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;
The nine-men's-moms is fill'd up wi$ mud,
A Midsumnzer Night's And the quaint mazes in the wanton green
Drenm For lack of tread are undistinguishable,
The human mortals want their winter cheer;
No night is now with hymn or carol blest.
Therefore the moon, the governess of the floods,
Pale in her anger, washes the air
That rheumatic diseases do abound.
And thorough this distemperature we see
The season alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose;
And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown,
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, in mockery, set; the spnng, the summer,
The chiding autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which.
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are the parents and original. (I1 i 87-1 17).

Titania's speech is derived from Seneca, Ovid, and Spenser, but it also had topical
interest. England had bad weather from March 1594, which was followed by wet
summers in 1595 and 1596 (see Brooks xxxvii, and Patterson New Casebooks 176).
Grain was scarce, prices rose sharply, and there were food riots. Titania's mention of
wet weather and rotting grain would have interested the poorer majority of the
audience which was directly affected by rising prices and hunger.

Shakespeare achieved two contradictory goals through the dialogue about bad
harvests. First, Titania says that 05eron's rage is responsible for the bad weather, an
accusation that seems ridiculous until we realise that Oberon is a fairy king with
supernatural powers. Shakespeare's audience would have seen a parallel with their
own situation. Unlike Oberon, the mortal Elizabeth I could not be responsible for the
bad weather, but she was partially responsible for good government. An uprising in
1596 against bad governance showed that there was indeed dissatisfaction against
those in power. The topicality in Titania's speech probably enhanced the play's
popularity.

Elizabeth I, however, did not like criticism and had her critics imprisoned or killed.
Could Shakespeare, a mere playwright, have dared to criticise her? If he did dare, he
yras careful to make a fairy king rather than a mortal queen responsible for the bad
harvests. There was thus only a hint that he might have had Elizabeth in mind when
he wrote this passage. He did not take any chances, however, and had Puck apologise
profusely in the Epilogue for any offence the play may have given.

Keeping the majority of the audience and the queen happy may not seem important
to us, but in 1.4, you will see how important it was for Shakespeare.

1.3 CONDITIONS OF PERFORMANCE

Historical critics' discoveries about the theatre culture in Shakespeare's time have
enriched the plays for us. Here is some information relevant to A Midsummer Night's
Dream.

Plays were written and performed by groups of actors known by the names
of their patrons, e.g., the Chamberlain's Men (Shakespeare's company) and
 Background:
the Admiral's Men (Christopher Marlowe's company). The names usually Performance
changed when the patron changed. Patrons did not fund the companies nor
protect them in any way. Players and owners were therefore careful not to
upset powerful officials and courtiers.

The government strictly controlled theatres (playhouses) because they were

said to cause iiots, traffic jams, and plague. Municipal authorities licensed
playhouses within the city limits, while the scripts of all plays had to be
passed by the Master of Revels, an officer of the royal Court. (philostrate is
Master of Revels in A ~ i d i u m m e Night's
r Dream.) Strict censorship is
partly why a number of Shakespeare's plays are set in Athens, Venice,
Rome, or other places far from England in place and time.

If a company displeased the authorities, its licence could be revoked and the
actors would be without a livelihood. Players therefore tried to keep the
authorities happy. We notice this in the Mechanicals' conversation about
their play which they are to perform for powerful Athenian aristocrats who
are very like Elizabethan courtiers. The Mechanicals are at pains to explain
to this audience that their play should not be mistaken for reality:

There are things in this comedy of Pyramus and Thisbe that will
never please. First, Pyramus must draw a sword to kill himself;
which the ladies cannot abide. How answer you that?

Byrlakin, a parlous fear.

Starveling: I believe we must leave the killing out, when all is done.

Not a whit; I have a device to make all well. Write me a prologue,

and let the prologueseem to say we will do no harnl.with our
swords, and that Pyramus is not killed indeed; and that I, Pyramus,
am not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver. This will put them out of

Well, we will have such a prologue; and it shall be written in eight

and six. [i.e., as a Petrarchan sonnet.]

No, make it two more; let it be written in eight and eight.

Will not the ladies be afeard of the'lion?

Masters, you ought to consider with yourself; to bring in (God shield

us!) a lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing; for there is not a
more fearful wild-fowl than your lion living; and we ought to look

Therefore another prologue must tell he is not a lion.

Nay, you must name his name,.and half his face must be seen
through the lion's neck; and he himself must speak through, saying
thus, or to the same defect: ' Ladies,' or 'Fair Ladies, 1 would wish
you,' or 'I would request you,' or 'I would entreat you, not to fear,
nor to tremble: my life for yours! If you think I come hither as a
lion, it were pity of my life. No, I am no such thing; I am a man, as
other men are': and there, indeed, let him name his name, and tell
them plainly he is Snug the joiner. (I11 i 8-44).
. I
A Midsummer Night's There is a strong parallel with Elizabethan players' worry that the least offence
Dream would mean a cancelled licence.

The Chamberlain's Men were well off and owned an octagonal, wooden
playhouse called the Globe. Its central portion was without a roof so that
natural light could be used for daytime and summer performances. Artificial
lighting was used for winter evening performances. The detailed description
of moonlight in A Midsummer Night's Dream were meant to help the
audience imagine moonlight while sitting in the bright light of long English
summer evenings that last beyond nine o'clock.

[The Globe burnt down early in the early 1600s when its thatched roof caught fire
during a performance of Henry VIII. A reconstructed Globe with a fireproof thatched
roof has been built recently at almost the same place and on the same design.]

Acting companies had male actors only. Boys acted women's roles. In A
Mirisummer Night's Dream, Francis Flute is an amateur actor and therefore
upset that he is to act as a woman:

Quince: Flute, you must take Thisbe on you.

Flute: What is Thisbe? A wandering knight?
Quince: It is a lady that Pyramus must love.
Flute: Nay, faith, let me not play a woman: I have a beard coming.
(I ii 40-46).

Wealthier members of the audience paid extra to sit on the stage and
'
converse with the actors. The script would be ignored as actors ad libbed in
response to the audience, as happens during the Mechanicals' play.

1.4 READING AND PERFORMANCE TEXTS

A major change in interpreting Shakespeare's plays has been from treating them as
meant for the stage to seeing them as solely to be read to treating both performance
and reading as significant.

Shakespeare was an actor as well as part owner of a drama company. Play writing
and acting was how he earned his living. The plays had to be good enough to attract
large audiences otherwise Shakespeare and his fellow actors would have starved.
From extant (surviving) texts of his plays, we learn that an actor or prompter or
manager, to suit a change in actor or audience often changed the plays. In other
words, there was no "fixed" or absolutely authentic text.

About 200 years ago, Coleridge suagested that Shakespeare was a poet rather than a
dramatist. This was an influential idea. Shakespeare's plays continued to be acted,
but a huge number of people simply read them. The plays were taught in schools
and universities as poetry and details of the language were analysed. Discussions
about how appropriate a word was for a character or situation did not take into
consideration that Shakespeare may have changed that word if, for example, the
actor could not pronounce it.

In the middle of the twentieth century, departments of Theatre Studies were

established in western universities. Here Shakespeare's drama was taught as plays to
be performed. Students learned how a director could change the meaning by simply
making two actors frown at each other across the stage during a dialogue instead of
standing next to each other and smiling while saying exactly the same thing. Philip .
I C.McGuire has demonstrated this effectively in his essay, "Hippolyta's Silence and
the Poet's Pen." You will find it in the New Casebooks on A Mihummer Night's
Background:
Performance

Dream. [See 2.5 for details].

From relevant "background" information in this unit, you have learnt

i
1 * Why it is useful to know when A Midsummer Night's Dream was first

performed

Whether Elizabeth I was present at the first performance, and

How uncertain the relationships between characters and the emphases of the

2. What was Shakespeare's playhouse called?

I
3. What are the three significant points about Theseus and Hippolyta in the opening
scene of the play?

4. What does Titania's speech in Act 11, scene i, 87-1 17 have to do with England in
the 1590s?
I

t 5. Which two non-human characters mentioned in the play was Elizabeth I

compared to?

6. What part of the play tells you about the censorship of drama in Shakespeare's
time?

7. Why are the descriptions of moonlight so detailed in this play?

8. What are the occasions that A Midsummer Night S Dream might have been
performed at?

9. What is are performance and reading texts?

10. Who said that Shakespeare was a poet rather than a dramatist?

1 1. What was the hnction of a Master of the Revels in the time of Elizabeth I?

12. Which two authorities controlled plays and theatres in Elizabethan England?
 UNIT 2 ROMANTIC COMEDY AND THE
LANGUAGE OF THE PLAY

Structure

2.0 Objectives

2.1 Introduction

2.2 Romantic Comedy And Shakespeare's Innovations

2.3 Language Varieties

2.4 Bibliography

2.5 Let Us Sum Up

2.6 Questions

2.0 OBJECTIVES

The issues elaborated in this unit are

a The Romantic Comedy formula and how Shakespeare's altered it

The language of the play, its many varieties, and how to use it for dating the play

We have also given you a list ofbooks and journals you may wish to read on this
play and on Shakespeare's stage. Most importantly, we have given details of the text
of A Midsummer Night S Dream that you should try and use.

2.1 INTRODUCTION

Generic criticism looks at the form or genre in which a piece of literature is wntten.
A Midsummer Night S Dream is a Romantic Comedy, and in 2.2 we will tell you
about the rules of such comedy and how much Shakespeare followed them.

In 2.3, you will first learn of the poetry in the play and how Shakespeare varied lt.
Then, from the myriad interesting studies of language in Shakespeare's drama, we
have chosen the business of dating A Midsummer Night S Dream by analysing its
language.

The second part may seem like an obscure and irrelevant exercise to you but some of
you may wish to go on to research or teaching and it will help you to know how
meticulously scholars have worked to make the texts of Shakespeare's plays as
authentic as possible. Remember, the plays were initially written a5 performance
texts. Prompters, actors, copiers all added and subtracted from them. This is why
14 scholars have tried to discover what they were originally like.
 Romantic Comedy And
The Language of the
2.2
-
ROMANTIC COMEDY Play

Romantic Comedy is one of the many kinds of comedy performed on the 16thcentury
stage in England, and it has an identifiable formula which is similar to popular Hindi
films. In the second half of 2.2 we will consider some of Shakespeare's alterations of
the formula.

The Romantic Comedy Formula:

I

Romantic Comedy has a main plot and a subplot. In the main plot an eligible
aristocratic man and woman fall in love with each other but cannot rnarry for some
reason. They may be socially incompatible or their families may have a long-
standing quarrel or it could be that the man or the woman do not even realise they
are in love, as is the case with Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing.
Then some external agency like the disclosure of a secret or a trick by others brings .
the lovers together. Their marriage or intention to marry is celebrated with a dance
and/or a feast in which all disharmonious elements are eliminated or made to fit in
with the general joy. The presiding deity is Hymen, the God of mamiage. In short,
although the action focuses on courtship, the play ends in marriage.

The characters of t4e subplot are from the lower strata of society (servants,
constable, Mechanicals) or behave as if they were (Sir Toby Belch in Tweljih Night).
The two major functions of the subplot are to parody the main plot and wittingly or
unwittingly sort out the problems of the characters in the main plot. In short, there
are points where the main plot and the subplot interact, and at the end, everyone,
whether they are aristocrats or not, joins in the celebrations.

The setting for Shakespeare's Romantic Comedy is some place remote and distant
from England, such as Messina, Padua, or Athens. This remoteness adds to the fairy-
tale quality of the comedy. The action begins in the court but since it is in the court
that the lovers' marriage is obstructed, they leave for some place that is close to
nature, such as a forest or village or some ideal pastoral setting that encourages love
and fertility. Having found fulfilment, they return to the court or city, which is
transformed by their joy into a healthier place that no longer stands in the way of
love.

The purpose of Romantic Comedy is to emphasise accepted social values. Thus love,
which ends in mamage, is allowed, but adulterous or obsessive love is not. Anything
that threatens the harmonious functioning of society is gently but i>rmlyeliminated
or corrected. But the chief function of Romantic Comedy is to entertain, not correct.

I In Shakespeare's use of the Romantic Comedy formula in A Midsummer Night S

Dream, we will consider three of his adaptations of the formula.

1 First, the forest obviously represents the pastoral world which the aristocratic
Athenians, Lysander and Hermia, run away to when their love is prevented by
Hermia's father and Duke Theseus. But even though Oberon would like to see the
right men and women paired together, so much unhappiness occurs in the forest that
I
the Athenians long for Athens. As soon as they return to the court and city, their
I marriages are fixed as they desire and not as the father or Duke desire. The play ends
with a celebration.

Secondly, Shakespeare has not one but two subplots instead of turosets of characters,
one aristocratic and the other plebeian, he has three sets of characters. The Fairies are
A Midsummer Night's the additional group but its aristocrats, King Oberon and Queen Titania, seem to defy
Dream every value of Romantic Comedy. They quarrel and threaten to live apart even
though they are married. Titania quite enjoys her extra-marital affair with Bottom,
and she falls in love with an animal headed mortal who is quite below her in status
and not even a fairy. Oberon uses deceit to get the Indian boy they are quarrelling
over.

And then there is Puck who is not ruled by either Oberon's values or Athenian ones.
He simply wants to laugh at everyone's expense and arranges events for his own
amusement however much it hurts others. Some critics feel that Puck is like a
playwright who can make a tragedy or a comedy out of a situation but remains
unmoved himself. They have a point. Had Oberon not been firm with Puck, the play
may have ended in sorrow. It is, after all, very much like Romeo and Juliet in which
the lovers cannot marry because their families have quarrelled. A friar tries to help
them come together but, as with Oberon's efforts to help Lysander and Hermia,
things go wrong and Romeo and Juliet die. At this point, their Prince orders the two
families to make up but the lovers are not alive to see this.

Experiments like this made Shakespeare different to other playwrights of the time.
More than that, the serious and comic plays comment on each other, forming a sort
of balance between idealism and grim reality.

Finally, we have a false ending on A Midsumtner Night 3 Dreatn. Oberon and Titania
end their quarrel and the three marriages occur in Act IV, not the last Act. Act V is
reserved for the Mechanicals' play, and it is here that all three sets of characters are
together on the stage. Yet harmony eludes them as the Fairy and Mortal aristocrats
comment, sometimes very rudely, on the play, and finally walk away, leaving the
Mechanicals behind. It is as if Shakespeare kept some disharmony in as a reminder
that real life is not like Romantic Comedy.

2.3 LANGUAGE

The two aspects of the language of A Midsummer Night's Dream you will find useful
to know more about are its variety of styles and dating the play by using its language
as evidence

The variety of styles:

In Shakespeare's time and for a long time after that, drama was called "dramatic
poesie" because it was classified as poetry and was written in verse. Like many of
his contemporaries, Shakespeare used blank verse which is supposed to be closest to
spoken English.

Blank verse is unrhymed verse in iambic pentametre. Poetic lines have a regular
rhythm. Each rhphmic unit is called a foot. A rhythmic foot has a fixed number of
syllables (and not necessarily whole words). Rhythms vary, and each has a name. An
iamb is a rhythmic unit or foot made up of two syllables. The first syllable is
unstressed, the second stressed. E.g., "the cow" is an iamb because we emphasise
"cow" but not "the" when we speak. A pentametre means that there are five feet of a
particular metre to the line. Here is an example of iambic pentametre from A
Midsummer Night's Dream. We have divided it into feet:

"0 why / rebuke / you him / that loves / you so?" (11 ii 43)

Shakespeare varied theblank verse in this play by:

 Romantic Comedy And
Changing the length of lines: Shakespeare increased or reduced the number of The Language of the
syllables in a line, Sometimes he used short sentences for speakers at some Play
points, as in the famous quarrel between Hermia and Helena in 111 ii:
*

Hennia. You juggler! You canker-blossom!

You thief of love! What, have you come by night

And stol'n my love's heart from him?
Helena. Fine, i' faith!
Have you no modesty, no maiden shame,
No touch of bashhlness? What, will you tear
Impatient answers fiom my gentle tongue?
Fie, fie, you counterfeit! You puppet you! (111 ii 282-288; see also Ii 194-
201).

At other times, Shakespeare shifted fiom direct information to long,

romantic, lyrical passages, as in Act I, sc.i,lines157-179. Lysander provides
information, Hermia is lyrical:

Lysander. I have a widow aunt, a dowager

Of great revenue, and she hath no child-
From Athens is her house remote seven leagues-
And she respects me as her only son.
There, gentle Hermia, m a y I marry thee,
And to that place the sharp Athenian law
Cannot pursue us. If thou lov'st me then,
Steal forth thy father's house tomorrow night;
And in the wood, a league without town
...
There will I stay for thee.
H e m ia . My good Lysander,
I swear to thee by Cupid's strongest bow,
By his arrow with the golden head,
By the simplicity of Venus' doves,
By that which lcnitteth souls and prospers loves,
And by that fire which burn'd the Carthage queen
When the false Trojan under sail was seen;
By all the vows that men have broke
(In number more than ever women spoke),
In that same place thou hast appointed me,
Tomorrow truly will I meet with thee.

Using rhetorical sets: Rhetoric is the theory and practice of spoken or written
eloquence, and the art of literary expression. Different kinds of rhetoric are
called "sets." Antithesis, for example, is a familiar rhetorical set much used in
courtly love sonnets in which lovers repeatedly "burn and freeze." The young
lovers' in A Midsummer Night's Dream seem to have read so much of this love
poetry that their speeches have been described as being "pestered with
antithesis" (Brooks xlii; see also xlv-1 for more on rhetorical sets in the play).

Using internal pauses or caesurae: That is, the pause does not come at the end of
the line only but also in the middle of a line.

By using prose: It used to be said that Shakespeare used prose for his "low"
characters and poetry for the rest. This is noticeable in Titania's conversation
with Bottom in I11 i, but it is not always the case. During the Mechanicals' play,
A itfidsunlmer Night's the aristocrats' comments are in prose. This is partly because of rhetorical
Dream courtesy (see the section on sestets below). We find a similar exchange in Much
Ado About Nothing when Leonato answers Dogbeny using the same confused
numbering of points as Dogbeny has used.

Using rhymed lines: A Midsummer Nigltt 's Dream has over four hundred rhymed
lines, the most of any of Shakespeare's plays. These include couplets, variations
on the sonnet, doggerel, and songs.

Couplets are used chiefly, but not solely, by the fairies, so much so that it has even
been called "fairy language" in some essays on the play. The two variations on the
sonnet are the quatrain or four lines rhyming alternately, and the sestet or six lines
rhyming ababcc. In 111 ii 122-133, Lysander addresses Helena in such a sestet, and in
the manner of learned courtesy, she replies in the same form:

Lysander. Why should you think that I woo in scorn?

Scorn and derision never came in tears.
Look when I vow, I weep; and vows so born,
In their nativity all truth appears.
How can these things in me seem scorn to you,
Bearing the badge of faith to prove them true?

Helena. You do advance your cunning more and more.

When truth kills truth, 0 devilish-holy fiay!
These vows are Hermia's: will you give her o'er?
Weigh oath with oath, and you will nothing weigh:
Your vows to her and me, put in two scales,
Will even weigh; and both as light as tales.

Notice that both speeches rhyme ababcc. Rhetorical courtesy requires a speaker to
reply in the speech style used by the person he or she is responding to.

The Mechanicals' play has a crudely jogging sort of verse called doggerel. Low
characters unwittingly parody the use of verse in drama because they do not have the
same educational resources as those above them in society. Finally, there are songs
in varied verse forms and dance rhythms. In fact, this plays' lyricism is probably
why it was set to music by the composer Mendelsohn, and some its most famous
productions have emphasised the ballet element at the expense of the dramatic, as,
for instance, in the black and white film mentioned in Unit 5.

Dating the play:

Here is a very brief overview of some of Brooks' arguments on how we can date the
play through its language.

The great variety of styles in A Midsummer Night's Dream led the critic John Dover
Wilson to argue that it was written at three different times, the earliest being 1592.
Brooks, however, says that it was written between 1594 and 1598.

Brooks says that the language serves a dramatic function and is varied to suit the
occasion. After Lysander and Hermia have been ordered to separate, one would
expect them to be emotionally direct in their speeches, but they speak as if they only
know love through what they have read. They are especially funny in Act I, part of
which we have already quoted to show how they speak in partial sonnets. Consider
this:

Lysander. How now my love? Why is your cheek so pale?

 Romantic Comedy And
How chance the roses there do fade so fast? The Language of the
Play
Hermia . Belike for want of rain, which I could well
Beteem them from the tempest of my eyes.

Lys. Ay me! For aught that 1 could ever read,

Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smootl~;
But either it was different in the blood--

Her. 0 cross! Too high to be enthrall'd to low.

Lys. Or else misgraffed in respect of years-

Her. 0 spite! too old to be engaged to young. (I i 122 f).

And so on. But when Hermia and Helena quarrel later in the play, they insult each
other convincingly because their language is as direct as their emotions (see I11 ii
282-344). In any case, Brooks says, when we compare A Midsummer. Night S Dream
with Shakespeare other plays of 1594-98, especially Richard II (history play), Romeo
a i d Juliet (tragedy), and Loves Labours Lost (Romantic Comedy), we notice that
whether it was a history, a tragedy, or a comedy, Shakespeare did not restrict himself
to any single style of language. Richard II, for example, has several long lyrical
passages. As in Richard 11, the rhetoric of A Midsuinmer Night S Drcam is displayed
rather than hidden. In short, it has similarities with the other plays of the same
period.

The difference is that A Midsummer Night's Dream has many more passages of
passionate lyricism, not becau'se it is an early play (and) Shakespeare's stylistic
immaturity made him overdo the lyricism, but because the decorum of the play
permitted it. Stylistic decorum is the fairly strict rule of the kind of language a writer
could use for a specific theme, occasion, or character. For example, lhe high
seriousness of tragedy could not be expressed in doggerel, nor could the bawdy
language of the Mechanicals' play (see V i 174-175, 186-1 89,198) be used by the
chief lovers. But exaggerated lyricism was perfectly acceptable in a romantic dra 3 ,a
with fairies in it.

2.5 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Literature of the past, like history, is interpreted according to the interests and values
of successive generations. Shakespeare has probably received more critical attention
than any other writer anywhere in the world. As a result, there are many ways of
reading his drama. You do not have to know all of these but it is important to know
the main ways in which A Midsu~n~ner Night S Dream has been interpreted. We have
given you a three-part list of books and journals that will help you with this.

1.. The text:

The most widely used and reliable edition of A Midsummer Night S Dream is edited
by Harold F.Brooks and is in the Arden Edition of the Works of William
Shakespeare (1979; rpt. London: Routledge, 1989). Its excellent Introduction has
information on different texts of the play, its dates, comments on its design,
characters, setting, music, and themes. It also has very useful footnotes that elucidate
A Midsunrmer Night's 2. Criticism:
Drenm
The list is not in alphabetic order but in descending order of usefulness.

Dutton, Richard. Ed. A lviidsummer Night's Dream in New Casebooks.

Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996

[These essays bring you up-to-date with criticism on A Midsummer Night's Dream.
They cover historicist, psychoanalytical, feminist, and Marxist criticism. Dutton's
lucid introductory remarks on the essays are further clarified by his explanations of
the place of the critics in current schools of criticism at the end of each essay. His
annotated list of books for firther reading is very good but it does not carry
information on older basic critical reading.]

Barber, C.L. Shakespeare's Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and its
Relation to Social Custont. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1959

[A seminal work. It is now fashionable to use Bakhtin's ideas to analyse the

"carnivalesque" in comedy, but Barber was the earliest critic to see the comedies in
terms of festivals. Most modem Shakespeare scholars begin their stlldy of
Shakespeare's comedies with Barber's book.1

Shakespearean and Jacobean Comedy. Stratford-upon-A; "11 series.

[This has essays on Kempe and Armin, comic players in Shakespeare's company
who succeeded each other. Shakespeare wrote his comedies with their talents in
mind. Critics say this explains why the early comedies differ from the later ones.]

Andrew Gurr's two books (1970s' 1990s) on the theatre in Shakespeare's time
are outstanding.

3. Journals:

Academic journals carry the results of the newest research and are therefore
necessary to read. The ones in our list are reliable and relatively easy to get kecause
good libraries have them.

Shakespeare Survey

[This is published once every year. Sometimes an issue is on a single play or an

aspect of drama. It also carries reports on performances of Shakespeare's plays
during the year.]

Shakespeare Quarterly

ELH

[ELH is not exclusively a Shakespeareanjournal but often has excellent articles on

Shakespeare's plays.]

2.6 LET US SUM UP

You have learnt about Romantic Comedy and how Shakespeare altered it in this play
by making the forest less than ideal, and by continuing the disharmony at the end.
You have also seen how he used the same plot in Romeo and Juliet and A
I
I M~a'suirzmerNight's Dream, turning it into a tragedy and a cometly, so that it seems Romantic Comedy And
I
The Language of the
that he deliberately kept in the darker elements of the latter.
i Play

i
You now h o w about the variety of language styles used and hour we can date the
play using the evidence of the language. You have seen how Shakespeare varied the
' blank verse by changing the lengths of lines and by using the caesura and rhyme.
You have learnt about other rhymes in the play as well as who uses prose and why.
You have also learnt how the language delineates character. For example, although
Theseus uses poetry as well as prose, he maintains his status of Duke by using a
dignified style and never descends to doggerel. In another instance, Shakespeare
emphasises the fairies' non-human status by making them speak nlostly in couplets
or dance rhythms which are furthest from ordinary human speech.

You have also seen that this play has more passionately lyrical passages than
Shakespeare is other plays of 1594-98. This is because of stylistic decorum which
permits lyricism in a romantic drama with fairies in it.

2.7 QUESTIONS

I . What is blank verse and why has Shakespeare used it for his drama?

2. How has he varied the blank verse?

1
I 3. What rhyme forms did Shakespeare use in A Midsummer Night2 Dream other
than blank verse?

4. Which set of characters speaks mostly in couplets?

5. What is rhetoric and what are rhetorical sets?

8 I
! 6. Pick out six rhetorical sets in the play. Try and identify them.
I Ti 7. Shakespeare used two aspects of sonnets in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Name
them. Give examples.
II -
I 8. Based on the vanety of language styles in the play, what did Dover Wilson infer
i about the dating of A Midsummer Night's Dream?

9. What three arguments does Harold Brooks give to counter Dover Wilson?

10. What is stylistic decorum? What does it have to do with the extensive lyncism of
A Midsummer Night's Dream?

1 1. How is the lovers' speech different in the grand quarrel scene to what it was
earlier in the play?

12. What is the basic plot of Romantic Comedy? Why does it end in feasting or
dancing?

13. How did Shakespeare alter the Romantic Comedy formula in A Midsummer
Night s Dream?

14. Which of Shakespeare's plays is a tragic version of A Midsummer Night's

ream'
UNIT 3 A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM : I

Structure

3.0 Objectives

3.1 Introduction

3.2 The Athenian Aristocrats

3.3 The Lovers Or Court and Country

3.4 Let Us Sum Up

3.5 Questions

3.0 OBJECTIVES

In this unit, we will concentrate on three readings of A Midsummer Night's Dream:

How stage representations of the opening scene can influence our reading of the rest
of the play
The criticism of power and authority in the play
Patterns of contrast and repetition

3.1 INTRODUCTION

The division headings of this unit are misleading. No sensible person today reads
drama by breaking it up in to "plot," "theme," or "character." On the other hand,
effective learning travels from the known to the unknown, and since many of you
have probably been taught to divide characters up for study, we thought we would
start with that. Our intention, however, is to see the place of characters in the whole
drama.

Any reading of a literary text simply interprets it in a particular way. In other units
you have seen historical, linguistic, and generic interpretations, and one introducing
you to the festive or celebratory nature of this comedy.

3.2 THE ATHENIAN ARISTOCRATS

We concentrate here on stage representations of the opening scene and their

influence on our attitude to the rest of the play.

A Midstlmtner Night's Drearlz starts and virtually ends with the aristocrats. To be
exact, it starts with Theseus. How we interpret his relationship with Hippolyta in this
scene decides how we will view the relationships of the other lovers. For example,
most readers feel that Theseus represents authority, especially patriarchal authority.
 A Midsummer Night's
We come to this conclusion largely because of what happens in the opening scene
Dream: I
which has two episodes: Theseus' announcement of his coming marriage to
Hippolyta, and Egeus' demand that his daughter marry Demetrius.

: Theseus' announcement of his marriage:

Theseus has just defeated Hippolyta in battle. She was queen of the Amazons, an all-
female community. Theseus' conquest of the Amazon queen has been seen by many
as an assertion of male authority. He is now to marry her "with pomp, with triumph"
(I 1 19). He is cheerfully excited, she remains silent. He calls her '"my Hippolyta."
She does not call him "my Theseus" until Act V when the play is nearly over and
harmony has been firmly established.

From Philip C.McGuire's account of five different stage versions of this episode, we
summarise two opposing stage versions of the opening scene ("Hippolyta's Silence
and the Poet's Pen" in New Casebooks 139-160).

If Hippolyta remains next to Theseus and smiles through his speeches, then she
appears to share his enthusiasm for their impending mamage. Since the play is about
love ending in harmonious mamage, the relationship of Theseus and Hippolyta in
the opening episode becomes the ideal to be learned by the other couples. The
audience would have appreciated this. The strongest message in Elizabethan
Romantic 'Comedy was that social hierarchies should be maintained. It was
considered natural and proper that a woman should be subordinate to her husband,
just as it was natural and proper for a state to be ruled by a male. So, Theseus'
subduing Hippolyta first in battle and then in marriage would have seemed proper to
Shakespeare's audience.

The opposite interpretation depends on Hippolyta staying grimly apart from Theseus
on the stage. If she does, then she obviously does not share his enthusiasm for their
marriage. Her lack of enthusiasm is reinforced in I11 i 102 ff., when they are on a
hunt. Theseus wants to show off his hounds. Hippolyta says that she has seen
Hercules' hounds, implying that Theseus' hunt cannot match Hercules'. Since the
ruler and his bride-to-be have a disharmonious relationship, it follows that their
subjects, the young lovers, will imitate them. Only supernatural power like the magic
of Oberon is able to bring harmony to Athens, as it does to his ovvn mamage.

In the second interpretation, Oberon is the arbiter of marital happiness. This has
exasperated feminists who say that it is unimportant whether Theseus or Oberon is
ultimately in charge because both enforce order. After all, even though
Oberon is not mortal, he is a male and an aristocrat.

The more relevant point is that Oberon wants the Athenian couples to be happy and
instructs Puck to ensure this by pouring magic juice into Demetrius' eyes. Puck
mistakes Lysander for Demetrius, pours the juice into his eyes, and he, seeing
Helena instead of Hermia when he awakens, falls in love with her. Meanwhile, Puck
has also poured the juice into Demetrius' eyes who also sees Helena when he
awakens, and, if we may use the expression, all hell breaks loose. Eventually the
magic is reversed in all but Demetrius who remains in love with Helena which was
Oberon's intention all along.

In short, disharmony stems from Theseus, spills over into the forest and, in spite of
Oberon's excellent intentions, continues for quite some time.

Let us now turn to the second episode of the opening scene. Immediately after
Theseus announces his marriage, Egeus bursts in demanding that Theseus enforce
Athenian law according to which a daughter is her father's property and she must 23
A Midsummer obey him. Hermia must marry Demetrius, failing which Theseus must ensure that
Night's Dream she dies. Theseus says he cannot change the law, so Hernia must school herself to
obey her father. (In the second stage version, Hippolyta has been reading the law
book that Egeus brings with him and when Theseus says that he cannot change the
law she snaps it shut in anger, making it clear that she respects neither Theseus nor
the law of his land.)

Theseus' response is curious on two counts.

First, he offers Hennia two alternatives and not just one as Egeus does. If she
disobeys her father, he says, she must either die or join a nunnery. Why does he
suggest a nunnery? It may be that ligeus has not revealed the whole law because
after his demand that Hermia must obey him or die as per Athenian law, she asks
Theseus what is "The worst that may befall me in this case, 1 If I refuse to wed
Demetrius" (I i 63-64). Theseus replies that it is death or a nunnery for her. But there
is a strong suggestion that Theseus has invented the nunnery option on the spot, and
that the repeated rebellion against the harshest aspects of the law in this play starts
with Theseus. Of course, some may say that being in a nunnery would be a living
death, but Herrnia herself says that if she cannot marry Lysander, she will not marry
anyone. So Theseus' ruling fits in G t h part of her wishes. Egeus and the law demand
death, Theseus encourages life.

After this, Theseus walks out of the room accompanied by everyone except Lysander
and Hennia who are free to plan their elopement to a place where Athenian law does
not operate. Theseus is either a very absent minded ruler or he is more on the lovers'
side than Egeus'. Had he sided with Egeus, he would have seen to it that these two
lovers are not left alone. Once more, we get the feeling that the Duke himself has
rebelled against the law, this time to allow love to flourish.

Remember, Romantic Comedy celebrates life, love, and fruitfulness. Theseus'

response to Egeus foreshadows the end of the play when the lovers will return to
weddings and laughter in a rejuvenated Athens which blesses their love.

Having shown us the law as well Athens' potential for rejuvenation, Shakespeare
shifts the action to the forest outside the city where Athenian law does not apply. The
focus is now on the lovers rather than on Theseus.

3.3 THE LOVERS, OR TOWN AND COUNTRY

Later editors of Shakespeare's drama made the five Act division in modern editions
of the play. Shakespeare did not divide his play into Acts, nor did he mark the
beginning and end of a scene. A scene ended when there were no more actors on the
stage, then a new set of players entered and the next scene began.

We can analyse A Midsummer Night's Dream sequentially, that is, as one scene
follows another. The sequence of action in Romantic Comedy is fiom the court or
city to a pastoral setting (forest, countiy) and back to the court or city. The court
obstructs true love which flowers in a pastoral ambience. The impediments to love
are meanwhile removed and the lovers return to a kinder, more humane court where
weddings, feasts, and dances, symbolising harmony, conclude the action. You have
learnt about this in Unit 2.

A Midsummer Night's Dream follows this sequence but in the next part of this unit
we will analyse a pattern of the play, not its sequential action. Unlike a sequence, a
pattern is static; it extends over the entire play. For instance, in this play, dramatic
 A Midsummer Night's
elements seem to come in sets of two. There are two sets of lovers, two rulers, and
Dream: I
two men who fall in love with the wrong woman. Patterns impose o~deron chaos,
they order disorder. The rigid patterns of A Midsummer Night's Dream control the
wildly changing relationships between the characters. The result is lvke a dance. In a
dance, too, the movements are energetic and constant but they are controlled by the
discipline of the dance.

We have to decide which pattern we wish to analyse. For this, we will follow the
method of structuralism. Structural critics emphasise the binaries in a text. For a
structural analysis, we must isolate two opposite ideas or images and group dramatic
elements under these. Among the many noticeable binaries in A Midsummer Night's
Dream are light and dark, daylight and moonlight, humans and faines, aristocrats
and artisans.

- In order to link together the different kinds of critical readings of A Midsummer

Night's Dream we have shown you, we have selected the binary of Athens and the
forest which is so strong a pattern that it can be represented in two columns, as we
have shown. This binary fits in with generic criticism: some characters appear in the
court but not in the forest (pastoral area), others in the forest and not in the court,
while some bridge the court and pasture. You will see how details of gender and
power relations also emerge, and you can imagine that any stage production could
use a structural analysis to emphasise relationships between settings and characters.

After reading this section, you should be able to list dramatic elements of A
Midsummer Night's Dream according to some other binary classification. For
example, you could divide the play according to poetry and prose, or quarrels and
dances. Each such exercise will tell you more about the play as well as about
Shakespeare's skill in organising his dramatic material.

Athens 6. In Athens, women are not allowed

1. Dramatic actlon in Athens takes
place in the Court.
2. Theseus, a mortal, rules.
3. Athenian law is harsh and used to
maintain order in society.
4. Lovers are unhappy here.
Lysander and Hernia are
separated because of a law that
Theseus says he cannot alter;
Helena is rejected by Demetrius
who once made love to her as
Lysander reports and Theseus
endorses. Theseus says he has
wanted to speak to Demetrius
about this but it slipped his mind.
5. Athens has a hierarchical,
patriarchal social order. The Duke
is head of the state, the father of
the family, and women are
expected to obey them.
to choose their husbands and they
must submit to the men.
7. The Duke endorses couplings at
the end of the play. Earlier,
though he seems to encourage the
Hernia-Lysander relationship, he
is not very open about his support,
if it is indeed support. Helena's
unhappiness is completely
ignored by the Athenian court.
8. When Theseus 1s appealed to as
ruler of Athens, he responds as a
dignified if slightly absent-
minded ruler should. His ducal
activities are conducted in public
and except for the vagueness of
his support for Hermia, nothing is
hidden or secret.
9. There seem to be no "natural"
families. There are no mothers.
The practical reason for this may
have been that with only male
players, it was easier to have men
A Midsummer Night's according to Athenian law, fathers
Dream are more important than mothers.
Hermia has a father and no
mother; Helena has a parent but
we do not know whether this is
her mother or father; the men
have no parents apparently.
10. Friendships are important and
remembered in a crisis. Hermia
and Helena are childhood friends,
Lysander and Demetrius are
friends. '
11. The action takes place in the day.
Indian boy; lovers literally lose
each other in the forest; lovers fall
out of love; the Athenian men fall
in love with the same woman; the
Mechanicals lose their star actor.
6 . In the forest, Helena and Hermia
fight to keep the men they have
chosen to love even when these
men do not reciprocate their love.
7. Unhappy lovers do not appeal to
King Oberon but he notices
Helena's unhappiness straight
away and sets about arranging the
right pairings.

8. Oberon does not even make a

1. The forest represents the pastoral
or natural world.
2. Oberon, the fairy king rules.
3. Practical jokes, songs, and
quarrels occur but there is no
evident law.
4. Oberon wants the human lovers to
be happy.
5. The forest seems to be a place of
disorder. The king and queen of
fairies are married but have
quarrelled; while Athenian
women must obey their men,
queen Titania defies her husband
and asserts her right to keep the
pretence of asserting his a&hority.
He achieves his desire -
especially of getting the Indian
boy from Titania - by deceit and
magic. i.e., in both Athens and the
forest, the ruler eventually
controls his consort
9, There are no families at all but
Titania is foster mother to the
Indian boy. Athens has no
mothers.
10. There are no friendships between
the forest dwellers.
11. The action takes place in the
moonlight or in darkness.

The bridges between Athens and the forest are

The Mechanicals who go fiom Athens to the forest to rehearse their play; lose
Bottom who has a dalliance with a queen, thus bridging a vast social gap; and
then return to perform their play in Athens

Lysander and Hermia who escape from Athens where they are deeply unhappy
but the forest makes them unhappy as well. As the horrible night proceeds, they
long for daylight and Athens to which they return with relief.

Theseus and Oberon both eventually control their consorts and events in general.

You will notice, however, that the difference between the binaries is not as absolute
as it seems at first glance but that there are more common points than the ones we
have listed. For example, the unhappiness of the lovers increases in the forest where
Lysander falls out of love with Hermia and although Demetrius falls in love with
Helena, she suspects that he is insincere and out to hurt her by declaring he loves her
 A Midsummer Night's
Dream: I
3.4 LET US SUM UP

i If you know the play as well as you should, these analyses of the play will have been
fun to read.

You should now be familiar with some important contemporary ways of reading
literature. We have discussed the power structures, gender relation:;, two stage
interpretations, and a binary structure of the play. We hope we have convinced you
that no analysis of the play will make much sense if you separate a character or
group of characters from the rest of the play.
r'

,t 3.5 QUESTIONS

r 1. What two interpretations are possible of the opening episode in Act I, sc.i?

2. What is a structural reading of a play?

3. What is the relationship of a father and daughter under Athenian law? Do you
think Egeus gives us all the legal information in this matter? VIThat are the two
pieces of evidence we have that there may be more to the law?
I

4. Think about the gender issues in the play. List the many instances of
Shakespeare's sympathy for women in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

5 . Look up the passages that describe the forest. Is there anything in them to
suggest that the forest is not entirely beautiful?

6. What, according to Hermia, is the insult Helena repeats again and again during
the grand quarrel scene?

7. What is generic criticism?

-
UNIT 4 A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM: I1

Structure

4.0 Objectives and Introduction

4.1 The Fairies

4.2 Dreams

4.3 The Women

4.4 Let Us Sum Up

4.5 Questions

4.0 OBJECTIVES AND INTRODUCTION

The chief difficulty in reading A Mihummer Night's Dream or even watching it

performed is that it seems in the end to be not one play but several separate strands
very tentatively looped together. So in this unit we will take up and study three chief
areas of interest:

The Fairies who live in the forest and interact with the mortals

The Dreams or visions which take up so much of the enactment time of the play

The Female Characters, both human and non-human, who give the play much
of its ultimately serious tone

In 4.4 we will consider whether these separate strands mesh into a satisfying whole
or not.

4.1 THE FAIRIES

The fairies are the unusual characters in the play, forming one of the two subplots. In
this section we will look at

their role in the play

Puck's characterisation and function

The role of the Fairies:

You might think that a grown and serious writer like Shakespeare must have been
slightly mad to write a play with fairies in it for an adult audience. But then in his
time nearly everyone believed in the existence of supernatural creatures like fairies,
witches, goblins. The three witches of Macbeth have been interpreted as symbols.
 A Midsummer Night's
but Shakespeare's audience must have accepted them as real creatures who predict
Dream: I1
the future and intensify Macbeth's latent ambition.

Like the witches in Macbeth, the fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream are linked
with .the world of men. For example, when Oberon accuses Titania of having an
affair with the mortal Theseus, we realise that mortals and fairies do not remain
strictly separate from each other.

In some respects, the fairies are very much like the Athenians. They have a similar
social hierarchy. A King and Queen mle them, while some fairies simply fetch and
carry for the others and could be seen as the counterparts of the Athenian
Mechanicals. In general, however, the fairies fit in with the celebratory air of this
play and of the midsummer festival which was supposed to bring visions to young
people.

Puck:

Puck is the odd creature. He has abilities that the rest do not have. His special gifts
are that he can fly around the earth at great speed and he can execute mischief. And
it is for these that he is summoned by Oberon to help him steal the Indian boy from
Titania and in the process make a mockery of her for withdrawing her attention and
favour from him.

Puck's name is of special interest. For one thing, it sets him apart from Oberon and
I Titania who have classical names, as well as from the other fairies who are called by
I the names from nature such as Mustardseed, Peasblossom, and quit e delighthlly,
Cobweb.
He is sometimes called by other names, particularly Robin Goodfellow. Robin
Goodfellow is an English folk character who is a genuinely good fellow. He helps
hard worked housewives complete their tasks, he helps butter set and so on.
1
But he is also, without warning for no reason that human beings can understand,
I maliciously mischievous. For example, when an old woman prepares to settle down
on a stool, he pushes the stool away so that she falls down and hurts her rear end. He
can also make milk turn sour and prevent the butter from setting. And he does so for
' ?
no very sinister reason. He is not instructed by the devil or some evil spirit but does
these nasty things for his own amusement. Here is what we learn from a conversation
between Puck and a Fairy:
I

Fairy, Either I mistake your shape and making quite,

Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call'd Robin Goodfellow. Are you not he
That frights the maids out of their villagery,
Skim milk, and sometimes 1abour I n the quern,
And bootless make the housewife churn,
And sometimes make the drink to bear no barrn,
Mislead night-wnaderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they have good luck.
Are you not he?

Puck. Thou speak'st aright;

I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon, and make him smile
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal;
And sometimes lurk I in a gossip's bowl
A Midsummer Night's In very likeness of a roasted crab,
Dream And when she drinks, against her lips I bob,
And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometimes for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And 'tailor' cries, and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quire hold their hi p s and loffe
And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there. (11 i 32-57).

Shakespeare used both the good and the bad aspects of the Robin Goodfellow folk
tales in his dramatisation of Puck. We can see this in the havoc Puck creates among
the young Athenian aristocrats with the love potion.

When Oberon tells Puck to put the love juice in the eyes of Demetrius so that he may
fall in love with the unhappy Helena, Puck makes a genuine mistake and pours the
juice into Lysander's eyes. Having done so and seen the resultant confusion, Puck
simply laughs. The unhappiness of the two Athenian women does not move him to
correct his mistake. Yet when Oberon scolds him, he does make the correction,
ensuring at the same time that corrective juice is poured into Lysander's eyes but
not into Demetrius' so that the right couples are married in the end. And he explains
to Oberon that he did not plan the mischief but mistook Lysander for Demetrius
because they were dressed alike. The entire sequence shows his malicious as well as
good side.

But the important and revealing aspect of the fairies' attitude towards the Athenians
is that Puck cannot distinguish one Athenian from the other. They all appear to him
much alike. One of the "truths" Shakespeare sekms to be hinting at is that lovers
think their individuality is important while the reader 1 audience can see that there is
in fact very little to distinguish them, to show the difference between them.

But before we look at Puck's view of the other characters, we need to ;understand
Puck's own place in the hierarchy of the forest. Puck's relationship with Oberon
provides the tension between the fun-filled, mischievous side of the fairy world and
its darker, more threatening aspect.
#

In the lighter vein, of course, Puck is Oberon's court jester who changes shape and
mimics sounds to make Oberon laugh. But Puck's ability to change shape, and to
make others (notably Nick Bottom) change shape has a potential for unpleasant,
darker mischief. He confesses that his purpose is to frighten people by creating
illusions in the forest, and to drive Lysander and Demetrius "astray."

Oberon represents the happier side 9f the fairy world, and does his best to hold Puck
in check. For instance, he seriously rebukes Puck when he finds that the latter has
mistakenly (though we suspect it is not really a mistake) applied the love juice to the
wrong persons.

4.2 THE DREAMS

There is much play on "dream" in this drama. To begin with, we have "dream" in the
title. It is not just any dream that is mentioned here but a midsummer night's dream.
Midsummer was a festive time with many associated pre-Christian ceremonies. One
of these was a belief that if a young virgin spent the night in the forest, she would
have a vision or dream of the man she would marry. Of course, it was also a time
when sexual games between young men and women occurred in the forests without A Midsummer Nightbs
Dream: I1
any social censure being attached. The title of the play would have led the audience
to anticipate some its action. Shakespeare in fact draws attention to the connection
between dreams and his play:

. . .as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's peti
Turns them to shapes, and gives to aery nothing
A local habitation and name. (V i 14-17).

Dreams occur at significant moments of the play. We will consider two of its
dreams.

First, there is Hermia's dream that a serpent is eating her heart, and she calls to
Lysander for help. When she wakes up, Lysander is no! there at all, and she
convinces herself that she was dreaming that she dreamt any such dream. None of
this multiple illusion hides the fact that Lysander has abandoned her for Helena. The
dream is like the forest which intensifies horrid things that otherwise hover in the air.

For instance, Helena and Hermia have been friends since they were children and
there is no hint of a rupture in their friendship. Of course, Hermia':; father wants
Demetrius to many Hermia whereas Helena is in love with Demetrius, but even this
does not strain their friendship. It is only in the forest that they quarrel and come
close to blows, the only time in any Shakespeare play that women come so close to
physical violence against each other. In something similar, Hermia's dream presages
the separation between her and Lysander. She is as frightened by the serpent as she is
by Lysander's betrayal.

The other dream is Bottom's dream, one he claims to have had when Puck's spell is
lifted from him. In fact, of course, he remembers actual events as a dream, and it in
this supposed dream that he sees the possibility of cutting across social barriers and
having a relationship with a queen, but he decides not to tell it to anyone. After all,
Romantic Comedy never rocks the social boat but maintains social hierarchies.

Both dreams have been much commented on by critics, as you willl see when you
read the New Casebook essays on A Mihummer Night's Dream. These dreams have
been especially tempting for psychoanalytical critics. For example, some of them
claim that the serpent in Hernia's dream represents the male genital organ and
Hermia expres'ses fear of sexuality when she is frightened by it. (See Holland New
Casebooks 61-83).

Psychoanalysis is a form of mental theppy that investigates the interplay between

the conscious and the unconscious mind. Psychoanalyhcal criticism uses the
methods of psychoanalysis and applies them to literature. Its aim is to uncover the
unconscious motivations of the author as well as of the characters. Its assumption is
that the covert meaning is what the work is really "about" and shoilld be
distinguished from the overt content. Lastly, psychoanalytical critics believe that the
area of drama or interplay or action is at the individual psychological level, and that
the social aspects such as class conflicts are of comparatively less importance. They
"privilege" or highlight individual subjectivity.

We will now consider a small part of a Freudian interpretation. Freud is considered

to be the man who began psychoanalysis. He argued that sometimes a wish that is
frustrated in real life can be satisfied by an imaginary wish-hlfilment. According to
him, all dreams, even frightening nightmares are the hlfilment of such wishes, but in
disguise. The reason for the need for disguise is that desires sometimes come face to
A Midsummer face with social prohibitions, with things that society does not permit, and in dreams
Night's Dream there is a veil over their real meaning. They defy logic.

The dreams we witness in the play operate cathartically upon the characters,
providing a form of therapy whereby each one can discard his or her obsession. If
this interpretation seems to follow the work of the psychoanalyst Freud it is because
the moonlit forest seems an obvious and fitting symbol for the creative unconscious.
And keeping with the Freudian view of dreams, once the dream vision is over, it
leaves each character with a greater perception of others and a greater insight into
themselves.

For the Athenian lovers, the journey into the forest takes them into a world that is
part dream and part reality. Reality itself is continually questioned in that a character
such as Oberon can be seen by the audience but not by the Athenian lovers, whereas
Bottom as an ass appears very clearly to the audience as something quite different to
Titania's vision of him.

4.3 THE WOMEN

A Midsummer Night's Dream is full of confusion as it hovers between sleep and

dreaming, and characters change their minds for no known reason. The women in the
play are the still centre of the storm; they provide stability. This is evident in all the
sets of lovers: the young Athenians, Titania and Oberon, and Theseus and Hippolyta.

Hermia and Helena never waver in their commitments to the men they love even as
they try and cope with the devastating changes of heart in these men. In contrast,
Lysander and Demetrius respond to Puck's mistaken application of the love juice by
switching from rivalry over one girl to rivalry over the other girl. Nothing essential
changes in their attitude of confrontation towards each other, making the objects of
their love almost irrelevant. Meanwhile, Oberon and Titania too are locked in rivalry
over yet another love-object, in this case, the young Indian changeling child in
Titania's charge. Finally, we have Hippolyta and Theseus, once rivals and warrior
enemies but who have now put their quarrel behind them. This gives Hippolyta, the
more introspective and far-sighted partner, the ability to find "music" even in
"discord" (IV i 114-18).

The relationship between Helena and Hermia is characterised by sisterhood, to the

extent that the9 see themselves as a "double-cherry." A similar relationship existed
between Titania and the mother of the 1ndian boy, vividly described in I1 i 123-37:

His mother was a votress of my order;

And in the spiced Indian air, by night,
Full often hath she gossip'd by my side;
And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands,
Marking th'embarked traders on the flood:
When we have laugh'd to see the sails conceive
And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;
Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait
Following (her womb then rich with my young squire),
Would imitate, and sail upon the land
To fetch me trifle, and return again
As from a voyage rich with merchandise.
But she, being mortal, of that boy;
And for her sake do I rear up her boy;
And for her sake I will no part with him. (I1 i 123-137).
 This is the reason she has taken him over as her own child, and is emphatic that "the A Midsummer Night's
Dream: I1
fairy land buys not the child of me." Oberon, however, feeling that in this new-found
love she has deserted him, decides he too will now desert her.

4.4 LET US SUM UP

We see that wisdom emerges out of the folly and mockery that prevails at every level
of A Mibummer Night's Dream. Lysander and Demetrius learn to distinguish
between infatuation and true love, and Titania learns to relinquish what she loves
I (the Indian boy) to elicit once again tenderness and love from her husband. This
I wisdom expresses itself as the rejoicing at the end of the play. The 'Yuleses"
of
Romantic comedy demand such ideals be celebrated at the end of the play.
f

4.5 QUESTIONS

1. What is the significance of "dream" in the title of the play?

2. What is the common factor between Hernia's dream and the forest? '

3, In what ways can the women in the play be seen as a group with common
qualities? Why do you think did Shakespeare make them like tbis?

4. What do dreams and the play have in common?

UNIT 5 THE MECHANICALS
II

Structure

5.0 Objective(;

5.1 Identities Of The Mechanicals

5.2 The Mechanicals And The Forest

5.3 The Play-Within-The-Play

5.4 Let Us Sum Up

5.5 Questions

5.0 OBJECTXVES

The question "Who are the Mechanicals?" raises two questions:

Why did Shakespeare include the Mechanicals in A Midsummer Night's Dream?

Does the Mechanicals play increase our understanding of A Mihummer Night 's
Dream or Shakespeare's England?

We will break up answers to these questions into the Mechanicals' many identities,
why they are in the forest, and their play about Pyramus and Thisbe.

5.1 IDENTITIES OF THE MECHANICALS

The Mechanicals appear in Act I, sc.ii when they discuss the play they will perform
at Theseus' wedding. The first Act of a play introduces important characters and
their relationships. By introducing the Mechanicals after the Aristocrats,
Shakespeare dramatises the social hierarchy in Athens. The Mechanicals are inferior
so they appear last. They rehearse their play in Act 111, 5c.i. during which Bottom
vanishes and Titania falls in love with him. This is the first interaction between two
social strata. Bottom returns to his friends in Act IV, sc.ii. They are relieved that ,
their play can take place now. This is one of the many moments when harmony
returns to the play. The Mechanicals finally enact their play in Act V after the triple
wedding of the aristocrats.

A Romantic Comedy usually ends with weddings of the lord's and ladies. In A
Midsummer Night S Dream the lords and ladies are married in Act IV. Shakespea~e's
play and the Mechanicals' play end almost simultaneously in Act V, as if
Shakespeare were respecting them for being fellow theatre people. After Theseus'
discourteous comments on their play, Shakespeare is very courteous towards the
Mechanicals. In short, though they are often comic, Shakespeare sympathises with
them.
 The Mechanicals
The Mechanicals comprise the fourth group of characters in A Midsummer Night's
Dream. Their difference from the rest of the mortals in the play is marked in the
following ways:

The Mechanicals are at the bottom of the social ladder.

Some of their names suggest theirpoor economic condition, e.g., "Starveling."

According to Brooks' footnote to the Dramatis Personae, tailors were
proverbially weak and thin. Another critic adds that Starveling's name is an
almost literal description of someone suffering from acute hunger. In 1596, the
time this play is said to have been first performed, this hunger was compounded
by shortage of food and high prices.

The Mechanicals are the only characters who have dual roles. They are defined
by their professionsas well as by their roles in the Pyramus-Thisbe play. (Brooks
points out that their names are suited to their professions.)
a The Mechanicals are the only characters with distinctly English names. One
could say that this is their national identity. We have seen that Shakespeare's
audience was largely from the same class as the Mechanicals and would have
identified more readily with English names and professiqns than with Athenian
ones. It is possible that Shakespeare included the Mechanicals to appeal to this
largest section of his audience.

The Mechanicals as amateur actors are also more English than Athenian, In
Elizabethan England, actors often travelled from village to village performing on
makeshift stages. We notice a reference to this in Puck's description of the
players in as "rude mechanicals, 1That work for 'bread upon Athenian stalls" (I1
ii 9-10). Athenian drama, in contrast, was enacted in amphitheatres that still exist
because they were so well made.
a Bottom the weaver is the most outstanding Mechanical. He is chosen to be
Pyramus; an ass's head is magically placed on his head; queen Titania falls in
love with him; he is the most talkative of the Mechanicals who advises Quince
the director on the script and performance; he wants to act every part in their

9
play (see ct I sc.i); he is loved by all the Mechanicals who feel they cannot
enact thei play if he is absent; his speech is richest in absurd language; he is
never embarrassed even when he is with Dukes and queens; and he is the only
Mechanical to soliloquise, that is, to talk when he is alone on the stage (IV i 199-
2 17). The most valid reason given by scholars for why Bottom is made more
important than the other Mechanicals is that the part was written specially for
William Kempe an outstanding comic actor. Many in the audience came
especially to see Kernpe. There is no equivalent role for a particular actor among
the other characters.

Another interesting possibility is that apart from the food riots in 1596, there was
an uprising of artisans against misgovernance. Weavers were prominent among
them. Though the uprising was harshly suppressed, it did challenge government
authority. In a mild parallel, when queen Titania falls in love with a weaver
(Bottom) she ignores her husband the fairy king. Thus the weaver, however
unwittingly, challenges the authority of the king, whereas the aristocrats uphold
the law.

5.2 THE MECHANICALS AND THE FOREST

Why arc the Mcchanicals in the forest? H e n an three reasons in ascending ordm of
imporbme.
A Midsummer Night's Disorder as well as magical things are possible in the forest. Most of these
Dream magical happenings create comic confusion. For instance, mixing of socially.
unequal groups is not possible in Athens but does take place in the forest. One
result is that Titania falls in love with a Mechanical. The ass's head on Bottom is
simply Puck's mad addition to Oberon's basic plot which is to make Titania in
love with a socially unsuitable person. This is meant to be comic.

The forest trees, bushes and undergrowth contribute to the confusion, especially
at night. People get lost in them and separated from their friends and loved ones.
Bottom's separation from the other Mechanicals is a major confusion of the play.
It also makes possible the comedy of a queen falling in love with a weaver.

Chiefly, the Mechanicals are in the forest so that they can rehearse their play
without fear of anyone stealing their ideas, or so says Quince. The play is so
absurd that no one is likely to want to steal it. Nevertheless, Quince's comment
reminds us that there was a lot of competition among playwrights for ideas for
new plays. Playwnghts, Shakespeare among them, cheerfully stole ideas from all
sorts of places - ancient literature, folk tales, and each other.

The two issues here are

What is the Mechanicals' play about?

Why did Shakespeare use the play-uiithin-the-play?

What is the Mechanicals' play about?

The Mechanicals want to perform a play at Theseus' wedding but they are uncertain
what it should be about. Bottom suggests that it should be about a tyrant, about
"Ercles," (his mispronunciation of "Hercules"). Quince is determined that it should
be "'The most lamentable comedy, and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe"' (I
ii 11-12). A romantic story is appropriate for a wedding but the Pyrarnus-Thisbe
story ends in disaster. Mistakenly thinking that a lion has eaten Thisbe, Pyramus kills
himself; Thisbe finds him dead and kills herself.

A Romantic comedy ends with weddings, dances, and feasts, all of which represent
harmony and fruitfulness. The tragic ending of the Pyramus-Thisbe play contrasts
with that of A Mihummer Night's .%earn. If there is any comparison between
Quince and Shakespeare, it is that Shakespeare is aware of the Romantic Comedy
formula, Quince is not.

Though the Pyramus-Thisbe story ends tragically, the Mechanicals' stage

representation of it is ludicrous. The Mechanicals act so badly and their verse is so
ridiculous that the audience can only laugh. In short, any tragic effect is dispersed in
laughter.

In the next section we will see why Shakespeare had his Mechanicals enact a tragic
love story.

Why did Shakespeare include a play-within-the-play?

!
 The play-within-the-play was quite common in Elizabethan drama. Shakespeare used The Mechanicals
it in Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Ben
Jonson used it in Bartholomew Fair and John Webster in The Duclzess ofMalfi.
Playwrights used it to comment on the main action and theatre culture.

I A play-within-the-play underlined the most important ideas of the main play. For
I
1 most of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the couples are not happily in love. They
I either actually quarrel or are on the verge of quarrelling. By making his fairies use
I magic, Shakespeare has all the right couples suddenly and contentedly in love.
*
The Mechanicals' play is both similar and different to this. Pyramus and Thisbe are
in love and wantto marry but their families have quarrelled and will not permit it. At
the end, they are separated forever by death. The story reminds one of Romeo and
Juliet which some critics think Shakespeare parodied in the Mechanicals' play. The
more likely explanation is that the Mechanicals' "lamentable comedy" dramatises
the tragic outcome of a parental injunction against love, which is how the Lysander-
Hermia story may have ended, while comedy, lamentable or not, fits in with the
marriage celebration.

Elizabethan dramatists often used the play-within-the-play to satirlse aspects of

theatre culture. Among Shakespeare's satiric targets in the Pyramus-Thisbe play are:

Bad plays and playwrights: The script of the Pyramus-Thisbe play is ridiculously
brief; it is ad hoc, as if being made up on the spot; tragedy and comedy are
jumbled together; it has a lot of action but no character development; its verse is
poor (doggerel is evident in, e.g., V i 214-221). The playwright wants to show
off his classical knowledge but his script shows his ignorance of classical
literature (see, e.g., the classical names in V i 194-197). His knowledge of
English 1s equally amusing ("Sweet moon, I thank thee for thy beams" in
V i 261). He thinks the audience will not understand the dramatic devices, so
detailed comic explanations are included: the lantern is the homed moon, Snout
is the wall, the lion introduces himself in a long speech and says the ladies must
not be scared of him.

Bad actors: The Mechanicals mispronounce words; they repeat lines if they think
the audience has not heard them the first time (see V i 23 1-236); they deliver
lines incomprehensibly out of nervousness (this is especially true of the
Rologue); they converse with the audience.

Undisciplined audiences: Loud comments from the audience disturb the actors.
Audience and actors begin a dialogue (V i 246-249; 335-341'). In Unit 1, we saw
that this actually used to happen in Elizabethan theatres. Theseus sits through
most of the play but begins to walk out before it ends. The players are desperate
to keep their audience and suggest that they could perform a dance (Bergomask)
instead of the Epilogue. All this was based on what actually happened in
theatres.

[The rudeness of the Athenian aristocrats was emphasised in an old black and white
film of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The Mechanicals leave the stage to prepare for
the Bergomask. While they are changing, the aristocrats walk out of the room. The
Mechanicals emerge excitedly from the Green Room (actors' changing room) only
to see the backs of tlieir audience. Their faces fall. They exit from the opposite side

37
6
A Midsummer Night's
Drenm 5.4 LET US SUM UP

Of the three groups of characters in A Midsummer Night's Dream, the aristocrats and
fairies have more in common with each other than with the Mechanicals. They are
mortals and the fairies are not, but their social leaders are rulers (Duke Theseus,
King Oberon). Oberon, in fact, tells us how Titania is almost in love with love with
Theseus, making it clear that there is social interaction between the aristocrats and
the fairies.

But the Mechanicals are a separate group. Shakespeare used them for practical
reasons (most of the audience would have identified with them; Bottom was a good
41
part for Kempe); for professional reasons (he satirises the worst of Theatre culture
through them); and for comic reasons (their language, ignorance of the new learning,
and innocence creates much of the comic confusion).

Shakespeare presents them as comic but loveable.

' 5.5 QUESTIONS

1. How do we know that the Mechanicals are more English than any other set of
characters in A Midsummer Night's Dream?

2. What social strata do they belotlg to?

3. What does the name "Starveling" have to do with the harvests of 1595-96?

4. For whom did Shakespeare create the role of Bottom?

5. In what ways is Bottom the most outstanding Mechanical?

1

6. What use did Elizabethan playwrights make of the play-within-the-play?

7. In which of his other plays did Shakespeare use the play-within-the-play?

8. What are the common points between the main play and the Mechanicals' play?

9. What aspects of Elizabethan theatre culture are satirised in the Mechanicals'

I
play?
1
10. Why do the Mechanicals rehearse in the forest? 1
 UNIT 1 BACKGROUND

Structure

1.0 Objectives

1.1 Introduction

1.2 The date of the first performance of Hamlet

1.3 The sources of the Hamlet story.

1 4. The text of the play.

I

1.5. Tools of scholarship: textual criticism; emendation; historical criticism; new

criticism; others.

1.6 Let us sum up

1.7 Questions

1.0 OBJECTIVES

The aim of this unit is to provide background information which will be useful for a
better understanding of the play. After, reading this unit you will be able to

appreciate why background information is relevant to the study of a text;

acquire an understanding of the text of the play.

1 . INTRODUCTION

Hamlet has inspired more critical speculation and comment from critics and
scholars than any other play by any dramatist in English Literature, including
Shakespeare himself. The character of Hamlet has inspired even more varied,
complex, and intense reaction among its audience as well critics and scholars, actors
I
and directors. So much so that Hamlet has often found to have acquired a life of its
own, a life outside the cbntext of the play. And the play has become a cultural icon
1 of our times. No other text commands instant recognition of such a large number of
moments, images, lines and words as Hamlet does.

A work of such value, meaning, and complexity as Hamlet must, therefore, be

studied in the context of professional knowledge that scholarship of several centuries
has provided for us. Before we can go on to understanding the complex issues of
meaning and interpretations of the play and the symbolic value of the vision
embodied in it, we must understand how literary scholarship determines a number of
related, subsidiary issues and how the tools of scholarship are used before we can
learn to appreciate those issues: the issues such as when the play was published,
 Hamlet written or performed; the sources that Shakespeare drew upon to construct his plays;
Shakespeare is notoriously known to have almost always borrowed his stories from
outside sources rather than invent them himself. Shakespeare's plays have come
down to us in many versions and the most authentic and reliable texts of his plays
almost always need to be determined or reconstructed by scholars. We have to learn
to understand how this determination is achieved.

-
1.2 THE DATE OF THE FIRST PERFORMANCE OF
HAMLET.

There is general agreement that the date of the first performance of Hamlet falls in
all probability within 1601-1602. There are two reasons offered by scholars who
believe that the play was not written before 1598. One, Francis Mere's (1565- 1647)
list of plays in his Palladis Tanzia published in this year makes no mention of
Hamlet. Second, a children's company, the Children of the Chapel Royal--began
acting at the Blackfriars theatre in London and Shakespeare and other playwrights of
the time treated them with some hostility as they were considered to be a threat to
the popularity of the Chamberlain's men, the group to which Shakespeare belonged
and for which he wrote plays as well as acted in them. Hamlet contains a slurring
reference to the child actors-an "aery of children" (11. ii. 354-355)--which could
have been made only a year or two after they were in business long enough to cause
professional discomfort to Shakespeare and other playwrights of the times. The
speculative date of such a reference, thus, appears to be between 1598 and 1601.
'There is yet another piece of evidence to help determine the date of the play. In an
edition of Chaucer's works published in 1598, there is a marginal note by the
, I , ti bridge scholar and a friend of Edmund Spenser, Gabriel Harvey (1 545?- 1630),

11ch states:

The Earl of Essex much commends Albion England. . . .The younger sort takes much
lelight in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis: but his Lucrece, and his tragedy of
,Icrrnlet, Prince of Denmurk, have it in them, to please the wiser sort.

,>exwas executed in 1601. Harvey refers to him in thepresent tense in the same
paragraph in which he refers to Hamlet, clearly establishing that the play must have
been performed before 1601. It is not, then, without a certain knack for detective
work that we are able to answer some of the ticklish questions for which we
otherwise do not have definite answers.

1.3 THE SOURCES OF THE HAMLET STORY

Shakespeare appears to have used an earlier play which told the story of Hamlet.
Many references to this lost play have been traced and this play, much to the
convenience of all, is referred to as Ur-Hamlet (the "origilial" Hamlet). Thomas
Nashe (1567-1601) makes an indirect reference to it in his h j ~ ~ \ l to
l r the G~ntlemen
Students of Both Universities, prefixed to Menaphon, a novel by Robert Greene
(1 558-1592), which was published in 1589. Nashe writes. yet English S e n u ~ a
read by Candle light yields many good sentences, as Blood w u beggar, and so forth,
and if you entreat him faire in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole II~rrnlets.I
should say handfuls of tragical speeches." Ur-Hamlet must have been very well
known, indeed, in London in the 1590s. Philip Henslowe (d. 1616), the manager nt'
Admiral's Company, a theatrical group, records a performance of a Hamlet on .lunt
6 11, 1594 at the theatre at Newington Butts, when it was jointly occupied by
 Admiral's Men and Chamberlain's Men (the latter being the theatrical group to Background
which Shakespeare belonged, wrote plays for and also acted). The fact that a mere
eight shillings was the cost of the ticket suggests that the play was on the boards for
some time and was not exactly sought after by the London theatre-goers. Thomas
Lodge (1557J8-1625) in his Wits Miserie, and The Worlds Madness (1596) vividly
describes a devil looking as pale as "the wizard of the ghost which cried so
miserably at the theatre, like an oyster wife, Hamlet, revenge." As the theatre up to
1596 was occupied by Shakespeare's company, the Chamberlain's Men, Hamlet
obviously belonged to it. Thomas Dekker's (c. 1572- 1632) play Satiromastix (160 1)
contains a reference which is generally regarded as an allusion to Ur-Hamlet rather
than to Shakespeare's play as the phrase "Hamlet revenge" does not occur in
Shakespeare's play: "my name's Hamlet revenge: thou hast been at Parris garden,
have you not?" (IV. I. 150)

Scholars have relied upon a German play, Der Bestrafte Bruder-,Word (Fratricide
Punished) to gain an idea of what Ur-Hamlet was like. Ur-Hamlet itself owes its
origins to the early Scandinavian folk tales focusing on the essential Hamlet story
which acquired a literary form in the hands of the Danish historian Saxo
Grammaticus (1 150?-1206). A version of the Hamlet story appears in Histoires
Tragique by Francoise de Belleforest (1 530-1 583) which he found in Saxo. The
author of Ur-Hamlet owed much, it seems, to both de Belleforest as well as Saxo for
constructing his tale.

Shakespeare put together the story of Hamlet thus on the basis of his familiarity of
Ur-Hamlet, which in turn was based on an account of Hamlet in Belleforest and
Saxo. There are many elements of the story of Hamlet that Shakespeare took from
the earlier sources: fratricide, incest, antic disoposition and the shape and form of
Hamlet's relationship with the other characters in the play. But then there is much
that Shakespeare adds to the Hamlet-story on his own. The dou'bt regarding the
certainty of the crime as well as the criminal is planted in the play by Shakespeare
himself. Many elements of Hamlet's character, such as his melancholic
temperament, owes itself to Timothy Bright's (c. 1551-1615) Treatise of Melancholy
(1586). Nashe provided a precedent for Hamlet's comments on the bibulous Danes.
Some of the details of Ghost as well as Ophelia's burial have came from the Catholic
practices in these matters. A sceptical frame of mind that Shakespeare gave to
Hamlet may have owed itself to Montaigne's (1533-1 592) Essais (1580; 1588;
1595) which had been widely known since their first publicatioin in 1580. In the
Saxo's version there are no mad songs of Ophelia, nor her suicide, nor the character
of her brother. There is no Osric, nor the grave-diggers, or the lplay and the players.
And finally there is good reason to believe the real life and career of the Earl of
Essex may have provided a real-life model for Shakespeare to fiame the Bard's most
popular creation. Shakespeare's own stamp on the character of Hamlet is revealed in
the play in the intensity of the impact on Hamlet of his encounter with the ghost, the
ambiguity of Hamlet donning a mask of madness, his ambivalent attitude towards
t Ophelia, his peculiarly cold and insensitive response to the death of Polonius, his
I development as an unconventional avenger, his obsessive interest in suicide,

I
elements of ambition and a sense of insecurity in his character--all these are the
result of Shakespeare developing his tale in myriad directions for which sometimes
there is no suggestion in any of the earlier sources, and sometimes earlier elements
are put to a different use. An element of ambiguity, in a sense, thus, dominates the
I play and adds a degree of depth and mystery to the mind and character of Hamlet's
, character. With the result we have a profounder work of imaginative creativity than
I
any of the earlier versions of the Hamlet story.

Shakespeare, it would appear, did much to distance himself from his original sources
and make his own play essentially distinct: his use of long soliloquy points to his
--
Hamlet emphasis on Hamlet's inner life, which makes his treatment of Hamlet singularly
different from the handling of the character of Hamlet done before or after
Shakespeare created his Hamlet. Shakespeare's interest in the inner life of Hamlet
fascinated his readers long after the play was first written. Both Goethe (1 749- 1832)
and Coleridge (1 772- 1834), for instance, were fascinated by inner spiritual depths of
his character.

1.4 THE TEXT OF THE PLAY

But what exactly do we mean when we talk about the "play"? Contrary to our
expectations, Shakespeare's Hamlet does not exist in an authentic manuscript-a
text that we could claim Shakespeare wrote and left for us to read, study, examine
and interpret. If you look around you might find that the text of Hamlet is available
in a number of editions-all quotations for example from the present lesson are
taken from the New Cambridge Shakespeare (second edition 1936; reprinted 1971)
edited by John Dover Wilson. Many other readers, scholars or students use different
editions, such as the Oxford Shakespeare, the Arden edition or the Riverside
~ h a k e s ~ e aor
r e the editions prepared by scholars in earlier centuries, such as by Pope
(1 723), Theobald (1733 ) and Rowe (1 709) in the eighteenth century, and by Clark
and Wright (1872) and Dowden (1 899) in the nineteenth century. Different editions
of the same play tend to be in some sense different from each other. And these
differences are the result of thoughtful analysis rather than personal whims or fancies
or mere individualistic preferences of the editors of these editions.

The answer to the question with which we began this section is that there are so
many editions because there is no standard text of the play-the play as it was
written by Shakespeare and performed by his theatrical group to which he belonged.
Unfortunately there is no such thing as a finite, fixed object called Shakespeare's
Hamlet. When we look around we find that there are at least three versions of the
play which can claim to be the authentic Shakespearean text.

As was the custom, a Hamlet was entered in the Stationers' Register ("the official
organisations of the Elizabethan printers and publishers") on July 26, 1602 as " A
book called the Revenge of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark." And there are three
different texts of the play: thefirst quarto edition which appeared in 1603, the
second quarto edition which was published in the following year, in 1604, and the
first folio edition which was published in 1623. (The quarto editions were so called
on account of the size of the publication (approximately the size of an ordinary book
today) while folio editions were larger in size, almost double the size of quarto
editions.) The first quarto is generally believed o be the worst of all the texts, a "bad
quarto" (bad quartos is a label attached to early corrupt quarto editions which are full
of omissions and interpolations and garbled passages), perhaps a pirated edition as
its text "distorts the meaning and mutilates the verse" (as Campbell and Quinn have
remarked in The Readers ' Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare; p. 284), and this was the
result, it is believed, of "memorial reconstruction" : either actors or the printers'
agents who sat among the audience later tried to recollect the play from memory to
pblish unauthorised editions. When the memory failed the "writer" filled in lines
from other sources, perhaps from the Ur-Hamlet, or lines from other parts spoken by
other characters.

The second quarto was published as "The Tragical Histoly of Hamlet, Prince of
Denmark. By William Shakespeare. Newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as
much again as it was, according to the true and perfect copy. At London, Printed by
I.R. for N. L. and are to be sold at his shop under Saint Dunston's Church in Fleet-
8 street. 1604." First folio edition is believed to be the transcript of a "prompt b o o k
(that is how the copies of the plays for use on the stage were referred to) made by a Background
careful, even a professional scribe. It is shorter than the second quarto edition by
about two hundred lines and leaves out many passages full of philosophical and or
moral elements. For instance, it leaves out the last long soliloquy ('"How all
occasions . . .") (IV. iv. 32-66).

Of all the three versions the second quarto is the longc it-about 4000 lines, and
appears to have been printed from a corrected copy of the first quarto and partly
fiom Shakespeare's "foul papersv--an author's original but uncom:cted draft of a
play, marked with deletions, interlineations and corrections, before it was finalised
and copied on clean sheets and became a "fair copy," suitable for submission to a an
acting company. Shakespeare is also thought to have generally worked only on foul
papers as his drafts of plays needed little revision and corrections. Any changes
needed were worked into the drafts only. The second quarto contains many new
scenes, some of the characters have been given new names (Corambis becomes
Polonius, and Rosencraft, Rosencrantz) and some of the important passages are truly
recast and enriched. The following lines from the first quarto

To be, or not to be, I there's the point,

To Die, to sleepe, is that all? I all . . .

are transformed to

To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take up arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep-
No more . . .
(III.i.57-62)

The first folio leaves out some well known lines such as ("How all occasions do
inform against me") - and it is shorter by a total of 222 lines but contains eighty-
three new lines.

1.5 TOOLS OF SCHOLARSHIP

What, then, we have is three versions of the printed text of Hamlet. But which one of
these is the text of the play?--the authentic, correct, true, original, real text of the
poet-playwright? And can we ever hope to find out which of these could possibly
have been the text that Shakespeare either wrote, or approved for performance or
publication? The answer to all these question is: perhaps not. On top of it, to bring
in the question of performance is to make matters even more complicated. Why
must we think of a play in terms of its manuscripts; what about the performance of
the play; could one not claim that the first, original, first night performance was the
performance of the play. But performance of a play is never the same night after
night. So which one is the authorial, authentic text--on stage or page?

Scholars down the centuries have dealt with this problem by using their judgements
on a variety of issues and have given us critical editions of the play that in their view
represent the authorial intentions the most-most faithfully reflect the contemporary
tastes and circumstances, the level and the kind of authorial skill that we have come
to expect as the targeted audience, or the moral and intellectual Cramework within
which a playwright writing in the Elizabethan times functioned. Many indeed are
Hamlet the scholarly tools, methodologies, analytical skills and arguments employed to
recreate an authentic text of the play in the form of a critical edition of the play.
essential!^ what an editor seeks to achieve is coherence, impart an architectonic
quality to the form of the play so that the play can be made to embody, and then
impart, a similarly coherent meaning-a coherent vision of man's predicament in the
universe and meaningful insights into the value if any in human existence.

But before interpretation can be achieved scholarship employs tools to arrive at

meanings in the parts before the whole can be imparted meaning. In other words,
once the larger question of the text of the play has been established, scholarship gets
to work on the subtler issues. "Textual critics," for instance, use "emendation" to
free the text of errors due to careless printing. W. W. Greg has explained .
"emendation" thus: ". . . A conjectural correction inserted in a Shakespeareantext
by an editor in an attempt to restore the original meaning." He goes on to define an
acceptable "emendation" as "one that strikes a trained intelligence as supplying
exactly the sense required by the context, and which at the same time reveals to the
critic the manner in which the corruption arose." One of the finest example of
"emendation" in Hamlet was the one proposed by John Dover Wilson to correct a
first folio reading of Hamlet's first soliloquy in line 129 of act one, scene two,
which reads: "0 that this too too solid flesh would melt . . ." while both the first as
well as the second quarto read this as "sallied" flesh. No emendation was
traditionally felt necessary until John Dover Wilson pointed out that "sallied" should
be treated as misprint for "sullied" as in Elizabethan handwriting "a" and "u" could
be easily confused. Also, Wilson points out,

"sullied flesh" is the key to the soliloquy and tells us that Hamlet is thinking of
"kindless" incestuous marriage as personal defilement. Further, "sullied" fits the
immediate context as : "solid" does not. There is something absurd in associating
"solid flesh" with "meltyyand "thaw"; whereas Shakespeare always uses "sully" or
"sullied" elsewhere with the image . . . of dirt upon a surface of pure white; and the
surface Hamlet obviously has in mind is snow, symbolically of the nature he shares
with his mother, once pure but now befouled.[Hamlet. The New Shakespeare. John
Dover Wilson, ed. (1971)' p. 151-2.1

Historical Criticism, heavily relying on scholarly research, similarly seeks to place

Shakespeare in his own times and to study his plays in the light of Elizabethan
philosophical, moral and dramatic traditions and beliefs and prepare a Shakespearean
text for us to understand and appreciate it better. Historical critics study the
contemporary language, social and philosophical concepts and the political stmctures
and relate them to the study of Shakespeare. New Criticism brought to bear upon the
text of the play their finer insights and consolidated the meaning behind the authorial
intentions through a focus on the texture of the play.

A great deal of scholarship focuses on the detail rather on the larger issues.

Some of the more stimulating and, in fact, provocative insights into the challenge
that a scholar faces in interacting with Hamlet frequently take the form of brief notes
and short comments. Journals such as The Explicator, Notes & Queries and The
Shakespeare Newsletter provide much needed opportunities for the scholars to share
such insights with their peers. In a short note, Dominick I. Bongiomo
["Shakespeare's Hamlet, 1.5.23," The Explicator, 54(2) (Winter 1996):67.] points
out how there is more to a distraught Hamlet's visit to Ophelia's chamber in Act 2,
scene 1 than suggested in the theories generally held by scholars, such as Hamlet is
pretending insanity or that he is mentally disordered. Bongiorno seeks to establish
that Hamlet's visit to Ophelia is exploited by the playwright to establish "the identity
between the King's ghost and the son" through "the grammatical similitude intrinsic
to their frightening entrances as also by establishing that Hamlet is driven, much like
 the ghost, by a need to find someone compassionate, as Ophelia puts it, "To speak Background
of horrors."

Describing Hamlet's visit to her chamber, Ophelia tells Polonius that Hamlet looked
"Pale as shirt, his knees knocking each other, / And with a look so piteous in purport
/ As if he had been loosed out of hell 1 To speak of horrors - he comes before me."
The use of the third person singular pronoun, "he", followed by "comes" occurs
before Hamlet's visit to Ophelia only with reference to the dreadful coming of the
ghost. Bernardo, in Act one, scene one, is interrupted by an excited Marcellus :
"Peace ! break thee off! Look where it comes again!" Ninety lines later Horatio
speaks: "But soft! Behold! Lo, where it comes again!" ;and then, late, again, "Look,
my lord, it comes." In all the four instances grammar is combined with the a mood
of dismay to create resemblance between Hamlet and the ghost. Also, Ophelia's later
description of Hamlet's facial expression as similar to the ghost's establishes "an
additional, shared identity, one of mood". In lines such as "Ghost: List, list, 0 list!"
"list" is generally glossed as "listen" or "hear" as in OED, v2, 1. But it should be
obvious. Christopher Baker ["Why Did Hamlet Enter Ophelia's Closet?," The
Shakespeare Newsletter (Summer 1996): 32. maintains, that ghost does not want
Hamlet merely to receive the information passively but more in the sense of "to
desire, like, wish to do something" as in OED vl, 2. It is for example in this sense
that this word is used in Wyatt's poem "Whoso list to hunt." Hanllet thus is
commanded not only to "Hear of this murder!" but "Desire this revenge." The
modem remnants of this sense of this word exist in, for example, "listlessness"
which 'OED, b, defines as "characterised by unwillingness to move, act or make any
exertion."

r Lisa Hopkins draws attention ["Hell in Hamlet and 'Tis Pity She b a Whore,"Notes
and Queries (March 1997): 102-31 to echoes from Hamlet in 'Ti,sPity She 's A
Whore (c. 1626) by John Ford (1586-post 6 140): "But soft, methinks I see
I repentance work" appears to echo "But soft, methinks I scent the morning's air."
But this apparently minor verbal parallel serves to point up "both a larger similarity
I between the two plays as well as some fundamental difference between them." The
I
two plays define the horrors of the Hell in similar terms to point to what awaits
, mankind after death. Both Hamlet and Vasques are very anxious for their victims to
be killed while in the act of committing habitual crimes so that their souls may go
straight to hell. Both the plays make an issue of Catholicism. Hopkins maintains:
"In the case of Hamlet, it is worryingly noticeable that the Protestant prince, hailing
from the heartland of Lutheranism and educated at Wittenberg, ii university famous
in England chiefly through its association with Luther and the Pope-baiting Faustus
himself, nevertheless has a father whose ghost is in Purgatory, a location in which
only Catholics believe." In 'Tis Pity She's a Whore Ford presents two faces of
Catholicism in the virtuous and conscientious Friar and the venal cardinal. Ford's
invoking the earlier play is used to draw attention to the role purgatory plays in
avoiding damnation.
1
James Persoon, in a provocative short note in The Explicator, ["Shakespeare's
Hamlet," The Explicator, 55 ( 2 ) (Winter 1997): 70-711 focuses on Ophelia's words:
"There's rosemary, thatfs for remembrance; / pray you, love remember. And there is
/ / pansies, that's for thoughts." Persoon wants us to ark what is Iaertes to remember
and what are to be his thoughts. A meaningful interpretation of the symbolic function
of the flowers can be arrived at, he suggests, by focusing on the "inner resonance"
within the play. While conventionally flowers signify funerals, courtship or
marriages, and pansies specifically suggests love's wounds or an Ophelia bruised in
love, a useful way of looking at this context will be to look at the two conventional
, meanings Ophelia assigns to flowers. Remembrances echo throughout the play-
such as when Ghost seeks to goad Hamlet to avenge his death, "Remember me!"; or,
Hamlet "do not forget", when in his mother's closet Hamlet seems to forget his darker
purpose. Similarly "thoughts" too resonate throughout the play. Hamlet's thoughts
are directed towards revenge: he blames them for impeding his immediate purpose
in almost every soliloquy. Persoon concludes: "Ophelia's flowers are thus not so
much funereal and memorialising, . . . ,as they are epiphanies focusing the earlier
energies of revenge into a camera-like close-up evoking the causes, meanings, and
results of the revenges that are blossoming in the second half of the play."

David Thatcher points out how names for Shakespeare "confer status, reputation,
lineage, legitimacy" ["Shakespeare's Hamlet," The Explicator, 54 (3) (Spring 1996):
134-363. And yet Claudius remains a nameless king. In Hamlet "The erasure of the
pejorative Claudius seems complete. . . ." Only at one juncture the king's name
makes its presence felt, paradoxically in the form of an elision. In the quatrain

For thou dost know, 0 Damon dear,

This realm dismantled was
Of Jove himself: and now reigns here
A very, very-pajock

editors have sought to emend "pajock" as "peacock" (as Pope felt it should be
emended), "patchcock" ,apart from arguing for emended spelling for "pajock" itself.
It has been suggested that a clue to a meaningful emendation lies in Horatio's reply
to this quatrain: " You might have rhymed" and a widespread view maintains that
Hamlet was about to finish with the word "assyy-a suggestion that Theobald first
made. Thatcher proposes: 'Wot just "ass," . . . which is metrically deficient, but the
word Hamlet cannot bring himself to utter: Claudius, that is, Claudi-ass. Claudius as
the end word for this line was first proposed by Appleton Morgan a hundred years
ago but has remained ignored even though it fits rhyme, meter, and context. Thatcher
offers three additional arguments in its favour. Throughout the play Hamlet is
extremely partial to the word "ass"; he is addicted to word-play, especially to
quibble; and the practice of punning on names rhyming or near-rhyming with ass
was common in Shakespeare's time. Hamlet thus "took advantage of the latter end
of his uncle's name to share a victor's witticism with comprehending confidant."

A valuable source of insights into the complexities of Hamlet is comparative

studies that seek to examine Hamlet in the light of insights gained from one's study
of literary texts from other cultures and languages. Over the last few decades the
work of the Greek-Egyptian poet C. P. Cavafy (1 863- 1933) has received a great deal
of international attention and acclaim. The impact on the life and times of the poet of
the culture and empire of Great Britain has been much analysed. Martin McKinsey
has translated some of Cavafy's original Greek material into English and has added
valuable commentaries ["C. P. Cavafy on Shakespeare: 'King Claudius' and Two
Early Essays," In-between: Essays & Studies in Literary Criticism, 6 (i), No. 11
(March 1997):3-181.

This includes Cavafy's refashioning of the events of a literary text in "King

Claudius," and two of his early essays, "Shakespeare on Life" and "Greek Traces in
Shakespeare." In its eleven syllable blank verse the poem, "King Claudius" narrates:

In all the houses of the poor

they wept for him-secretly,
for fear of Fortinbras.

Claudius is portrayed as

A mild and peace-loving monarch

(the land had suffered much
Background
UNIT 2 INTERPRETATIONS

Structure

2.0 Objectives

2.1 Introduction

2.2 Hamlet as a revenge play

2 3. Theatre as a theme in Hamlet

2.4 Hamlet as a Tragedy

2.5 Hamlet as a Religious Play

2.6 Let Us Sum Up

2.7 Questions

2.0 OBJECTIVES

After a careful reading of this unit you will be able to understand

what Hamlet is about

what it seeks to talk to us about
how it is a revenge play and
how it can be variously interpreted.

2.1 INTRODUCTION

Once the text of a literary work has been established to our satisfaction--or we have,
at least, decided to accept a certain version, pending final judgement--on the basis
of the principles of authenticating a text, the more complex part of the critical
endeavour begins to seize out mind and thought.

A work of art is an organic whole. It is one work. It has one voice and that voice
must speak for the whole work. It must speak collectively for every part that makes
up the whole that the work of art before us is. It is not the same thing as suggesting
that a work of art must or can have only one meaning. Great books have a tendency
to speak to each reader in a different mood and meaning and impart a different
significance. In fact, each reader finds himself responding to a different significance
each time he reads a great work of art. But that one meaning must answer every
question that that text must raise, and justify all that happens, for instance, in a play,
in its every word, gesture and action. In other words, all interpretations proffered as
meaning of a play must derive validity from the text of the play itself.
 What we are not looking for is the most authentic meaning -how are we to arrive at Interpretations
its authenticity?--or the meaning that the author may have had in niind when he
wrote-we have no access to the mind of William Shakespeare. One way of
looking at this issue is to remember that once a work of art is written the author is
merely a reader of this work; one more reader of this work. Maybe a principal, even
the principal reader of this work, but merely a reader nonetheless. Once a text sees
the light of the d a y - o r the darkness of the print, if you like-it becomes an angle in
the triangle with the author and a common reader or a professional scholar as the
other two angles. The interaction between these three angles offers endless
possibilities of intellectual pleasure and profit. But our ultimate focus is the work of
art that is before us. The meaning that we are looking for is the one that satisfies a
reader the most and explains in every way the complex entity that the work of art in
question is.

There is thus a great deal of freedom for the professional student of literature to
apply his mind and look at the text of the play in any way his personal predilection,
L sensitivity to life and letters and professional training lead him to. A work such as
Hamlet with its endless diversity and richness, is likely to provoke myriad responses
compared to, say, an average play by minor playwright. Yet, one must contend that
certain interpretations of the play might appear to do greater justice to the readers'
expectations from the playwright; or even respond to the expectation of the times in
which the play is being read, the mood, the pressures and knowledge that is brought
to bear upon the play by a reader.

After such a heavily qualified caveat, how does one look at Hamlt!t? What is Hamlet
about; what does it seek to talk to us about; what does it mean-the meaning, the
voice that will acquaint us most meaningfully and profitably with the heart and soul
of the play?

2.2 HAMLET AS A REVENGE PLAY

Revenge is an important part of the plot structure of a large number of Renaissance

tragedies. Thomas Kyd's (1558-15-94) The Spanish Tragedy (published perhaps in
1589) was perhaps the first Elizabethan play in which revenge is the primary
motivating force both for the protagonist as well as the plot. The tragic denouement
of the play shows the murderers as well as the avengers alike being killed. Kyd
introduced many elements in his play which became standard conventions for the
revenge plays that followed: the ghost, intrigue, betrayal, a hesitant, unsure hero,
and his inaction chiefly based on moral scruple, madness, and melancholia, the
black dress, the reading of a book and philosophical musings and a gradual
deterioration of the hero's moral stature which alienates the audience's sympathy for
the hero. Many more plays followed Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy: John Marston's
Antonio's Revenge, Tourner's The Revenger's Tragedy, Chapmarl's The Revenge of
Bussy D 'Ambois and John Fletcher's Valentinian are some of the plays that belong to
the literary tradition that Kyd appears to have initiated. Marlowe's Jew of Malta and
Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus were great crowd pullers. A major influence on the
1 development of the Elizabethan revenge play was that of Seneca, the Roman
dramatist and essayist who died in A.D. 65. He was translated in the sixteenth
century and was much admired for his revenge tragedies that had many of the
I
features that Kyd made popul? through his play, The Spanish Tragedy. Other
sources of influence include Italian nouvelle and the works of wrxters such as
Hamlet Even though revenge-focused literature during the Renaissance was very popular, the
general attitude to revenge was one of disapproval, even revulsion. Christian ethics
disapproved vengeance as personal principle --

Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

Thou God, to whom vengeanth belongeth, show thyself.

Be ye angry and sin not: let no the sun go down upon your wrath: neither give place
to the devil. St Paul

Father forgive them; for they know not what they do.

-- and the law of the land made personal revenge anti-social and punishable. The
moral preachers and church fathers characterise it as immoral and constantly spoke
against it from the pulpit. Much debate was carried out in public to condemn
revenge as morally and legally totally indefensible. Revenge fostered anti-social
behaviour, made men self-centred as they set themselves up as judges of their own
cause, leading to an exaggerated rather than a fair view of the injuries suffered, and
discourages forgiveness and a charitable temper. Yet it is clear that there was
understanding shown-if full approval was not accorded--for certain kinds of acts of
revenge. The Elizabethans believed, despite legal and religious disapproval, that
personal honour had to be defended. Murder had to be avenged. A son had a sacred
duty to avenge the murder of his father. The sixteenth century civil law could deny
the heir of a murdered father his inheritance unless he avenged the unnaturhl death of
the victim. For the Elizabethans, there existed a well known work which defined the
properties for honourable revenge: The Courtiers Academie by Count Remei which
became ayailable in an English translation around 1598. Francis Bacon wrote in
1625:

Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man's nature run to, the more
ought law to weed it out. For as for the first wrong, it doth but offend the law; but the
revenge of the wrong putteth the law out of office. Certainly, in taking revenge, a
man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior. . . .

The most tolerable sort of revenge is for those wrongs for which there is no law to
remedy, but then let a man take heed the revenge be such as there is no law to
punish; or else a man's enemy is still beforehand, and it is two for one. Some when
they take revenge, are desirous the party should know whence it cometh. This is the
most generous. For the delight seemeth to be not so much in doing the hurt as in
making the party repent. . . .

This is certain, that a man that studieslthe revenge keeps his own wounds green,
which otherwise would heal and do well. Public revenges for the most part are
fortunate, as that for the death of Caesar. But in private revenges it is not so. Nay
rather, vindictive persons live the life of witches, who, as they are mischievous, so
end they unfortunate.

The public sentiment thus acknowledged the official and religious disapproval of the
acts of revenge but showed understanding for the avenger's passion.

It is against this background that we should attempt to appreciate Shakespeare's

Hamlet.

Revenge as an aspect of the plot structure of the plays appears in many plays of
Shakespeare. It appears in varying degrees of importance in Richard 1 1as well as in
Tempest. As a minor motif it appears several other plays such as Othello, Macbeth,
 Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar and Richard III. Hamlet it is which embodies Interpretations
Shakespeare's most significant handling of the revenge theme.

Hamlet has not one but four revenge plots. Hamlet commits himself to avenge his
father's death at the hands of Claudius, his uncle, who also marries his mother and
usurps the throne of Denmark. Another son, Laertes, vows to take revenge for the
killing of his father by Hamlet. Fortinbras invades the kingdom of Ilenrnark to
I
avenge his father's death at the hands of old King Hamlet. And there is yet another
son who wows "revenge" in Hamlet: Pyrrhus slaughters Priam, whose son had killed
Pyrrhus's father.
I
A typical structure of a revenge play can be viewed in five parts. The first part of the
structure of a revenge play was an "expositiony'usually by a ghost but in some plays
I
exposition is carried out by other characters, even victims in the moments of their
death. The exposition is followed by "anticipation" in which an elaborate plan for
carrying out the revenge is prepared. A central and most dramatic part of the
L
I structure of the revenge play used to be the "confrontation" in which the avenger and
the intended victim come face to face, so to say, though some time the confrontation
takes a different form as it does in Hamlet in the prayer scene. "Delay" is a major
structural device which allows the revenger to deliberately keep postponing taking
action on account of moral scruples, a feeling of inadequacy to the intended task that
lies ahead of him, or for other reasons. The "fulfilment" or "completion" of revenge
takes the form normally in which both the victim and the avenger me destroyed
along many other innocent bystanders.

Hamlet opens with the off~cersguarding the royal palace who are terrified by the
appearance of the ghost who would not speak to them. Nor will the ghost confide
the reason for his appearance in Horatio who joins the guards on the third night. But
he speaks to Hamlet:

List, list, 0 list!

If thou didst ever thy dear father love-- . . .
Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder. . . .

1 Murder most foul, as in the best it is,

1 But this most foul, strange and unnatural. . . .

'
I
I
0,horrible! 0, horrible! Most horrible!
If thou hast nature in thee bear it not,
Let not the royal bed of ~ e n m k bell.
k
Adieu, adieu, adieu, remember me.
[Act 1, SC.V,11. 24, 26,27-8, 80-83 and 911

Hamlet is horrified to learn that the murderer is Claudius who had seduced his wife
and poured poison in his ears as he slept. Hamlet promises to cany out his obligation
as a son and avenge his father's death. But many weeks pass and no action is taken.
Hamlet suspects that the ghost may have been an evil spirit. But chiefly he does not
relish the role of a an avenger. He needs to make sure that the ghost did give him
facts. To ascertain the truth he feigns madness which confounds his enemies but
brings him no closer to the certainty of truth.

A group of actors comes to castle and Hamlet decides to have them act out a tragedy
which contains an incident much like the murder of Old King Hamlet: Hamlet hopes
to determine Claudius's guilt by the latter's reaction to the play. If he reacts guiltily,
the ghost was not an evil spirit. Claudius suspects the truth is out and plans to send
Hamlet to England. When the players present the enactment of the murder of the Old
King aml let,' Claudius leaves the royal court in terror of retribution at the hands of
Hamlet Hamlet. He ordeis Rosencrantz and Guilderstern to take Hamlet to England and
plans to have him killed.

Alone, Claudius tries to pray:

0 , my offence is rank, it smells to heaven,

It had the primal eldest curse upon't,
A brother's murder! Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will.
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent,
And like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. . . .

Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens

To wash [this cursed hand] white as snow? . . .

0 bosom black as death!

0 limed soul, that struggling to be free,

Art more engaged; . . .

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.

Words without never to heaven go.
[Act 111, sc. iii, 11. 36-43; 45-46; 67-69; 97-98.]

Hamlet find Claudius "a-praying"-

And now I'll do't. ...

. . .and am I then revenged
To take him in the purging of his soul
When he is fit and seasoned for his passage?
[Act 111, sc. iii, 11. 74; 84-86]

--and decides not to avenge his father's murder.

On the one hand Hamlet vacillates between his belief that the ghost was actually his
father's spirit and had just cause to approach his son, and his apprehension that it
was an evil spirit and meant to cause trouble. Hamlet's ambivalent thinking reflects
the confused thinking of his times. Unlike the other pagan heroes of the Icelandic
sagas Hamlet is burdened with the value-system of his faith-the Protestants had no
faith in ghosts which came to haunt the earth on account of their unfulfilled desires.

What makes Shakespeare's Hamlet a different and superior work is not its faithful
adherence to the conventions of revenge plays which dominated Elizabethan stage
and drew admiring crowds for many decades in the Elizabethan age. Even though
Hamlet is a revenge play, the focus of the play is on higher principles of life and
living. Hamlet is shocked as much by his father's murder as by his mother's
unfeeling haste with which she marries another man. He finds Ophelia collaborating
with her father against him totally repugnant. Polonius's lack of loyalty to the old
King Hamlet, his friends' attempt to allow themselves to be used by the King for his
own nefarious purposes are acts which violate the social laws, moral order and
religious sanctity. Shakespeare endows Hamlet with finer characteristics which
raises him above level of the stock protagonist of the revenge play. Hamlet's
sensitivity to the values of personal relationships is another characteristics that
enriches his character. The crudity of violence gives place to intellectual reflection
that dominates a major part of the play.
The psychological emphasis placed upon plays characters makes it a finer work of Interpretations
art than any other revenge play produced during the Elizabethan ciramatic tradition.
Hamlet procrastinates; but he thinks. He finds himself unable to stoop to revenge;
but he knows and ruminates upon a myriad issues that are issues of pivotal
significance to man's life. Above all the great poetic richness of the play raises it to
a higher plane of enriched creativity and distances it away from the average revenge
play and their insistent focus on blood, violence and amoral and villainous un-
thinKing protagonists.

But there are other view-points. There are readers of the play who consider any
attempt to read Hamlet as a tale of vengeance a great disservice to the memory of the
great poet and a denigration of the play. In their recent book, Hamlet, Thompson and
Taylor maintain that the treatment of the play by scholars such as John Dover
Wilson, Eleanor Prosser and Fredson Bowers, among others, who focus on the
revenge theme their respecive studies of the play. Such studies with their focus on
the revenge'theme, Thompson and Taylor remark:

. . . while illuminating many aspects of the play, set it it1 a relatively remote
historical and literary context by putting stress on such things as the ethics of
revenge and the Elizabethan belief in ghosts. Thus Hamlet may have begun
to seem in the mid-twentieth century primitive and quaint, an appropriate
subject for academic and antiquarian investigation but not very relevant to
the modem world. . . . [p. 51

But the study of the revenge theme in a Shakespearean play has some justification:
The Elizabethan revenge play has a long generic tradition. Moreover, revenge had
and continues to have, one might say a social and psychological reality. pur own
sense of legal subtleties,,Francis Bacon notwithstanding, recognises consolatory
justice as a necessary part of a civilised society.

Despite the overwhelming support that the play extends to those who wish to read
Hamlet as written in the Elizabethan tradition of revenge theatre, the play can be
read in many more ways. There is a sense in which Hamlet is less of a revenge play
than a play about revenge. Shakespeare subjects the human compulsion to seek
revenge under a philosophical enquiry to show all facets of this human compulsion
and its impact on man. As we have already seen, Francis Bacon maintains:

This is certain, that a man that studies the revenge keeps his own wounds
green, which otherwise would heal and do well. Public revenges for the
most part are fortunate, as that for the death of Caesar. But in private
revenges it is not so. Nay rather, vindictive persons live the life of witches,
who, as they are mischievous, so end they unfortunate.

The desire for revenge and its influence on an avenger find an elaborate analytic
expression in the narrative of the play.

But Hamlet can be studied many more vastly different ways.

2.3 THEATRE AS A THEME IN HAMLET

(I

In no other play does Shakespeare subject to intense and detailed scrutiny the art of
theatre itself. Shakespeare's belief in the importance of theatre led him to focus on
theatre as one of the social institutions. He universalises the concept of character as
Hamlet role and stage as universe by showing all of life in Elsinore as play-acting. So much
so that the submerged theatre within the play, as if, takes over and, we have in
Hamlet, reality looking like theatrical activity. Life in Elsinore becomes full of
theatrical activity. Plays are staged, role-playing is resorted to, false, metaphorical,
as well as real, masks are put on-as Claudius does--to deceive others. The power of
art to change the world is put under a question mark. Shakespeare apparently makes
enormous claims behalf of the craft that he practices. But in the end his scepticism
regarding theatre as an infallible weapon to perceive and discover the truth prevails.
Characters are actors in the hands of forces which pull their strings and that is how
the meaning of life is achieved.

Shakespeare is expansive with fulsome praise when he dwells upon actors: a

magnanimous tongue it is that he puts into the mouth of Polonius when Shakespeare
seeks to compliment them:

The best actors in the world, either of tragedy , comedy, history, pastoral,
historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral,
scene individable or poem unlimited. . . .

. . . what a treasure hadst thou!

He gives them most generous praise when he wants pay them a tribute:

They are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you
were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.

A reference in Hamlet to a group of boy-players who had been enjoying a great deal
of success in London provokes an outburst (not of anxiety about a threatened
livelihood) but of professional jealousy:

Rosencrantz. . . . but there is, sir, an aery of children, little eyases, 11that cry
out on the top of question, and are most tyran-Ilnically clapped for't: these
are now the fashion, and so It berattle the common stages (so they call them)
that many 11wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills, and dare scarce come
thither. [III. ii. 342-471

Hamlet. . . . What, are they children? Who maintains 'ern?// . :. Will they
pursue the quality no N longer than they can sing? DII. ii. 348-501

Bad acting is strongly castigated:

0 there be playes that I have seen play-and heard others praise, and that
highly-not to speak of profanely, that neither having thyaccentof
Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor ,an, have so strutted and
bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had men. And
not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably. [III. ii. 28-34]

Among any audience there are "the judicious" as well as "the unskilful" and "barren"
theatre-goers: Hamlet would want actors to never play to the gallery but only to
judicious, discriminating audience.

After Hamlet hears one of the actors deliver a speech, he reflects:

Is it not monstrous that this player here

But in fiction, in a dream of passion;
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wanned
 Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect, Interpretations

A broken voice . ..
. . . and all for nothing! . . .
. . what he would do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have ? He would drown the stage with tears.
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears; . . .
@. ii. 554-559; 560; 563-5691
The play within the play is the central action of the play and is the key to the very
mystery of the plot. "The play is the thing," says Hamlet, "wherein I'll catch the
conscience of the king." And he succeeds. Simulation, dissimulation, acting, role-.
playing are the weapons that he resorts to throughout the play to achieve his

Hamlet is full of references to the language of theatre. Words like "play,"

"perform," "applaud," "prologue," "part," etc. The ppyers are "the abstract and
brief chronicles of the time," and the purpose of the theatrical art is

at the first, and now, was and is, to hold as t'were, the I/ mirror upto nature,
to show virtue her own feature, I1 scorn her own image, and the very age and
body of the /I time his form and pressure. . . . [III. ii. 21-24.]

The play contains numerous private jokes, as if, shared between the actors of the
play, such as the comment in act I11 by the actor playing Polonius: "I did enact Julius
Caesar"; or in act 11, " . . . thy face is valanced since I saw thee last . . . Pray God
your voice . . . be not cracked."

'All the characters in the play have an obsessive compulsion to act a role. Frequently,
characters seek to "By indirections find directions out," [II. i. 66:(and role-playing
is the method used. In the play, no opportunity is missed to exploit the potential of a
theatrical situation: eight deaths, high-pitched rhetorical speeches, the play-within-
play, the fencing match, the grave-yard scene, the duel between Laertes and Hamlet
and numerous rhetorical speeches including Hamlet's own soliloquies: The
humanity's histrionic predilection has never before or since and nowhere else been
put on show in such exciting terms.

2.4 HAMLET AS A TRAGEDY

As we have remarked earlier, Hamlet rises above the average revenge play and
answers to subtler demands of a great tragedy. In the end Hamlet turns out to be a
great tragedy rather a mere revenge play.

In his Poetics, Aristotle defines tragedy as:

The imitation of action that is serious and also, as having magnitude,

complete in itselc in language with pleasurable accessories, each kind
brought in separately in the parts of the work; in a dramatic, not in a 21
 Hamlet narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to
accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.

Later he defines the tragic hero:

There remains, then, the intermediate kind of personage, a man not pre-
eminently virtuous and just, whose misfortune, however, is brought upon
him not by vice and depravity but by some error of judgement, . . . The
perfect Plot, accordingly, must have a single, and not (as some tell us) a
double issue; the change in the hero's fortune must be not from misery to
happiness but on the contrary from happiness to misery; and the cause of it
must lie not in any depravity, but in some great error on his part.

Hamlet responds to the definition of an Arhtotelian tragedy in more ways than one
though there are elements which are typically Shakespearean. In a Shakespearean
tragedy the accent is on human responsibility rather on supernatural intervention,
chance , fate or any other extra-human factor. The fate, destiny, the "written," too,
plays a role but in the ultimate analysis it is the protagonist's own actions that bring
about his tragic fall. In Hamlet the extra-human agency takes the form of the Ghost
but the tragic disaster occurs on account of Hamlet's acts of commission or
omission. Hamlet 's tragic flaw that brings about the tragic end to the total human
endeavour is his failure to act; or act fast enough; or act as a result of premeditation
and reflection rather impulsive aggression. As Coleridge remarked:

Hamlet's character is the prevalence of the abstracting and generalizing habit

over the practical, He does not want courage, skill, will or opportunity, but
every incident sets him thinking, and it is curious and at the same time
strictly natural that Hamlet, who all the play seems reason itself, should be
impelled at last by mere accident to effect his object. I have a smack of
Hamlet, if I may say so. . . . [from Table Talk, 18271

A thinking Hamlet with his compulsive reflective habit remained a skindard view of
Hamlet for a long time in the history of Hamlet criticism. That his failure to act is
not the result of any other factor is easy to establish. That he is not a coward the play
gives us many opportunities to establish. He is a thinking man, given to retrospection
and self-analysis. That he hesitates and is often irresolute is provable, too. But what
he is not is a coward, incapable of decisive action. His tragic flaw, as Coleridge saw
it, is that he thinks too much.

2.5 HAMILET AS A RELIGIOUS PLAY

The Christian element so predominates the play that Hamlet comes across as
concerning itself with the theological questions of sin, damnation and salvation.
Elizabethans had an obsessive concern with after-life and believed in heaven, hell
and purgatory. Hamlet is obsessed with the thoughts of after-life--

0,that this too too sullied flesh would melt,

Thaw and resolve itself into a dew,
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter. . . . [I. ii.129-321

--and longs for the peace that the end of life alone can bring, regretting that suicide is
forbidden. In his famous soliloquy, "To be, or not to be," he reflects upon the
22 uncertainty of what follows death:
 To die, to sleep; Interpretations
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there is the rub.
'
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
i When we have shuffled of this mortal coil.
Must give us pause. . .

The undiscovered country from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills that we have
Than fly to others we know not of?

The ghost describes his experience of the purgatory where he had to go as he died
I
1 without an opportunity to confess his sins. Ophelia is denied a Christian burial as
she was considered to have committed suicide. The question whether the ghost is "a
[ spirit of health, or goblin damned" resounds through the whole play. Hamlet's
refusal to take advantage of the opportunity to avenge his father's death when he
comes upon Claudius in prayer, is the result of his belief in sin and salvation.

; 2.6 LETUSSUMUP
I
I
There other themes and other foci with reference to which. too. Hamlet can be

1 studied for a meaningfully enriched understanding of the text. Hamlet has been
treated as a studv in melancholia and madness. as a studv in ambition and ~olitical

I '
manipulation, as a philosophical enquiry into a number of issues that feature in the
writings of Montaigne, or even as a study in the art of characterisation.

2.7 QUESTIONS

1. Do you think that the primary focus of the play's thematic burden lies on
interpreting Hamlet as a revenge play?

I 2. Comment on the nature and significance of the ethics of revenge in Hamlet.

How do various cHaracters in the play respond to the issue of revenge?

3. How does the preponderance of the metaphors of theatre, acting, stage etc. in
Hamlet condition our response to the play?

4. Does your own reading of the play suggest to you that one could profitably
read and enjoy the play without paying attention to the issue of "theme" and
cc
meaning. "?
1
UNIT 3 LANGUAGE OF LITERATURE

Structure

3.0 Objectives

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Words

3.3 Rhetorical Devices

3.4 Imagery

3.5 Let Us Sum Up

3.6 Questions

3.0 OBJECTIVES

The aim of this unit is to acquaint you with Shakespeare's use of language in Hamlet
and how words have been used to convey the meaning of what is being said. At the
end of this unit you will understand the use of rhetorical devices as well as the
imagery employed in Hamlet.

3.1 INTRODUCTION

When we, along with Hamlet, finally arrive at the end of the play and gain our share
of the wisdom, "The rest is silence!"-we suddenly realise that in one sense Hamlet
progresses through a whole series of events, actions and ruminations to grapple with
the significance of the absence of silence. Language seeks to make possible
apparently hhat is not possible through silenc~ommunication.And in Hamlet
characters constantly question the wisdom of relying upon words. Words fascinate
them, and there is an ongoing debate in the play about the use, abuse and futility of
resorting or not resorting to the medium of words.

One of the major issues in Hamlet appears to be: Does language stand in polar
opposition to action? Is it irreconcilable to action? Can it, or can it not, further or
motivate action? Can language be considered a valid tool to evaluate actions, their '
validity, morality and justness. The philosophical relationship between thoughts,
words and deeds, thus, turns out to be a major issue in the play.

3.2 WORDS

Words stand out in our recollection of Hamlet as much as vivid visual images. One
of the intriguing things about Hamlet is the fact that everybody remembers words
from Hamlet -more than any other play by Shakespeare or any one else. Everyone Language of
can recollect, quote, or recognise quotations from Hamlet; Lkrature

To be, or not to be, that is the question . . .

There is divinity that shapes our end . . .

What a piece of work is man ...

The time is out ofjoint . . .

The undiscovered country from whose bourn

No traveller returns . . .

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy . . .

If almost all these words that linger in our mind long afier we finish reading the play
belong to Hamlet, it is also because the prince who speaks these words is much
better with words than with actions. To justify his procrastinating taking action he
plays with words, argues with them, through them, for and against them--of course
in words. Hamlet is full of long conversations with Polonius, Claudius, Gertrude,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and just about every other major or minor character.
He talks too much. He repeats. Repetition of words and phrases occurs so
frequently in the speeches of Hamlet as also in those of other characters that one
suspects that an ongoing march of words is used to reflect one of the major themes of
the play, procrastination. Expressions such as "This too too sullied flesh," abound
in the play. Horatio's language is full of a different kind of repetitive effect: "law
and heraldry," "hot and full," "here and there," "food and diet," "strong hand and
terms compulsatory." Hamlet has a knack for deliberately "misunderstanding" other
people's words and indulge in puns.

King. How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

Hamlet. Not so, my lord, I am too much in the "son." [I. ii. 66-67]

Polonius . . . What do you read, my lord?

Hamlet. Words, words, words.
Polonius. What is the matter, my lord?
Hamlet. Between who?
Polonius. I mean the matter that you read, my lord?
[II. ii. 192-1961

And so does one of the grave-diggers:

Hamlet: Whose grave's this sirrah?

I Clown. Mine sir-- . . .
Hamlet. What man dost thou dig it for?
1 Clown. For no man, sir.
Hamlet. What woman then?
I Clown. For none neither.
Hamlet. Who is to be buried in't?
I Clown. One that was a woman, sir, but rest her soul she's dead.
[V. i. 126-1321

Characters are sensitive to words and their implications: Claudius in the prayer scene
Hamlet My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
[III. iii. 971

Speech is important; understanding what one may hear is important:

Horatio, the scholar, is asked to make sense of what the Ghost says--"Thou art a
scholar, speak to it Horatio" [I. i. 421-and at the end of the play he is requested by
Hamlet to "tell my story" [V. iii. 349.1 whose "mouth" Horatio offers to become to
tell Fortinbras the story of the prince. Ophelia's language of madness draws a
response:

Her speech is nothing.

Yet the unshaped use of it doth move

The hearers to collection; they yawn at it,
And botch the words up to fit their own thoughts,
Which as her winks and nods and gestures yield them,
Indeed would make one think there might,be thought,
Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.
[IV. V. 7- 131

Polonius, whose verbosity provokes Claudius to demand "More matter with less art"
[II. ii. 951 himself objects to the speech by the First Player as "This is too long." [II.
ii. 498.1 As he reads Hamlet's letter to Ophelia, he comments: "That's an ill phrase,
a vile phrase, 'beautified' is a vile phrase." [II. ii. 11 1-12]

They all play with words. Hamlet indulges in a quibble in responding to Claudius:
"A little more than kin, and less than kind." [I. ii. 651 "Suit the action to the word,
the word to the action" [II. ii. 17- 181, he later tells the players. "Is thy union here? /
Follow my mother" [V. ii. 326-271, Hamlet tells Claudius after he forces the king to
drink the poison. But Hamlet is not the only who indulges in puns and quibbles.
Claudius describes Laertes as one who "wants not buzzers to infect his earlWith
pestilent speeches of his father's death." [IV. V. 90-911 Polonius quibbles with
words in his advise to Ophelia:

Think yourself a baby

That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay

,
Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly,
Or-not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,
Running it thus-you'll tender me a fool.
[I. iii. 105-91

All the characters resort to language to communicate with each other, but in the
process they reveal a great deal of their inner selves to us. Shakespeare chooses his
words carefully and gives them to his characters in subtler combinations of
syntactical complexity and semantic choice. Claudius's speech in ACT I [I. ii. 1-
16.]is a case in point:

1. Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death

2. The memory be green, and that is us befitted
3. To bear our hearts in grief, and our'whole kingdom
4. To be contracted in one brow of woe,
5. Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
6. That we with wisest sorrow think on him
7. ,Together with remembrance of ourselves.
\
 Therefore our sometime sister,now our Queen, Language of
9. Thyimperial jointress of this warlike state,. Literature
10. Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy,
1 1. With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
12. With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
13. . In equal scale weighing delight and dole,.

14. Takentowife

Claudius the political manipulator has mastered the art of manipulation through
speech and language. It is in his interest that he in his first royal address to the court
keeps the focus of attention on matters other than himself. And if he can keep the
focus on something that is dear to the heart of people at large, and can practice a
degree of self-effacement, even better. He after all had taken over the kingdom of his
own brother and married his brother's wife. The people had old King Hamlet. In the
whole speech, you would notice, the major part [lines 1-51 is focused on matters
away from himself.

And finally he allows the speech to change its course and the focus finally rests on
him: ". . . we with wisest sorrow think on him / Together with remembrance of
ourselves." But reference to himself, despite the royal plural personal pronoun, is not
assertive, but an understatement tagged to the "wisest sorrow."

The second section [lines 8-17] seeks to assert that he has possessed his brother's
wife but the assertion emerges at the end, after a long and meandering passage
through the mixed emotions of sorrow over his brother's death and the happiness of
having married her.

The political upheaval that has preceded his ascending the throne has to be given a
direction. The subjects' minds have to be made to rest upon, not the usurper's
violent wresting of the throne from its lawful possessors, but away fiom it. The
whole speech is an exercise in political rhetoric that seeks to manipulate people to
respond to the new king in a certain way. And to begin with, Claudius succeeds.

Through the play one would notice, characters are forever asking questions. Hamlet
is forever inquisitive about something or the other. "Why may not that be the skull
of a lawyer?" "Is not parchment made of sheep-skin?'The questioning frame of
mind of Hamlet questions, above all, his own self, his own actions, words, and
gestures. The play opens with a question, "Who is there?', and, as if, sets the tone
for the whole play.

3.3 RHETORICAL DEVICES

Language plays a major role in the definition of a character's trait in conditioning

our response to him. We must appreciate that great popularity that Shakespeare and
his characters have enjoyed over the last four centuries owes itse:lf in a major way to
the language of his plays. What the characters say is important, because they linger
in our minds for what they say as much as for what they do or feel or suffer. But the
way they say what they say is of paramount importance. The manner and method of
a speaker affects the response of the audience to what they hear. Theatre-goers
respond not merely to the meaning of words, but also how the words are conveyed
to them. Shakespeare's choice of metre, rhythm, imagery and, of course, diction,
determines how we respond to what the characters say, and to the characters
themselves. Ultimately this affects-enriches--the total experience of interacting
with a play on stage or on page. The meaning of the word is important but attention 27
 Hamlet should be paid to what goes into making the meaning of words effktive
communication and manipulation of audience response.
,
An interesting aspect of Shakespeare's use of language is the fact that certain
linguistic features are meant to be appreciated as rhetorical devices for their own
sake and not merely as starting points for generalisations for the larger context of tlle
text. Rhetorical devices and figures of speech such as chiasmus ("His time a
moment, and a point his space9'-Pope; "Love's fire heats water, water cools not
love7'4hakespeare) or anaphora ("This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, /
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, / This other Eden . . ."--Shakespeare) are
considered of little importance on a closer examination of the text today. Thompson
and Taylor have drawn attention to George T. Wright's analysis of Shakespeare's
use of hendiadys, a rhetorical figure which Shakespeare uses over 300 times and
there are sixty-six examples of it in Hamlet alone. J. A. Cuddon defines a hendiadys
as "a figure of speech in which one idea is expressed by two substantives, as in
"gloom and despondency", or "darkness and the shadow of death": but as Thompson
and Taylor elaborate, there is more to it:

It is necessary that two entities being joined should be related but not in
exact parallel: there is something odd, unexpected, even uneasy about
hendiadys, as if the relationship between the two terms does not quite fit.
But this can make the resulting expression more intense, as in Edmund's
"nothing like the image and horror of it" [King Lear, I. ii. 1751 as compared
with "nothing like the horrible image of it", or Macbeth's "full of sound and
fury (Macbeth, V. v. 271, as compared with "full of furious sound."

In the examples quoted from Cuddon, it is not the same thing if "darkness and the
shadow of death" is reduced to the "dark shadow of death," or "we drink from cups
and from gold" [pateris libamus et auro is the original Latin sentence from Vergil]
is reduced to "we drink from golden cups."

Hamlet provides many exciting examples of hendiadys:

The very age and body of the time. [III. ii. 23-41
So far from cheer and your former state. [II. ii. 1641
Out of the shot and danger of desire. [I. iii. 351
Divided from herself and her fair judgement. [IV. V. 861

Wrights points out how different characters in the play use hendiadys on different
occasions and for different purposes. Laertes's use of hendiadys in his advice to
Ophelia reveals his uncertain and divided sensibility while Polonius;'~use of
hendiadys in his instruction to Reynaldo reveals his devious nature. If "misleading
dualism and false parallels" is one of the obsessive concerns of Hamlet, hendiadys
draw our attention to it in vivid detail.

3.4 IMAGERY

Hamlet is rich with imagery. Vivid descriptions, carefully chosen words and
phrases and used with deliberate effort and intention provoke us to see imaginative
reconstruction of what is otherwise mere communication through words on a page-
They add to the pleasure of interacting with a text. Shakespeare appears to have
loved imagery. Dr Samuel Johnson remarks:

A quibble is to Shakespeare what luminous vapours are to the traveller; he

28 follows it at all adventures; it is sure to lead him out of his way and sure to

I
 engulf him in the mire. . . . its fascinations are irresistible. . . . A quibble, Language of
poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight that he was content to Literature
purchase it by the sacrifice of reason, propriety, and truth. A quibble was to
him fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world and was content to lose it.

[Preface to Johnson's edition]

But Dryden was exasperated by the bard's habit of saying "nothing without a
metaphor, a simile, an image, or description" [Preface to Troilus and Cressida] and
he decided to improve Shakespeare by removing as many embell~shmentsfrom the
text as possible. It was later that imagery was found to work by spreading its wings
through the whole fabric of a piay. Imagery enriches specific moments-

There's such divinity doth hedge a king,

That can but peep to what it would.
[IV. V. 1231

But, look, the morn in russet mantle clad

Walks ov'r the dew of yon high eastern hill.
[I. i.166-71

For 'tis sport to have the enginer

Hoist with his own petar.
1111. iv. 206-71

--and gains a sharper focus of our attention.

All major plays by Shakespeare have been found to have clusters of images
that centre around certain concepts and colour our understanding of the play.
The image clusters that dominate a play help us arrive at the "symbolic"
vision of the play. Spread through the whole, imagery mfluences the way we
respond to the play and its major issues. That is one ofmany ways a
playwright determines the direction he wants us to take in appreciating his
view point as expressed in a work of art.

Caroline Spurgeon who did pioneering work in this are drew attention to the
fact that:

recurrent images play a part in raising, developing, sustaining, and

repeating emotion in the tragedies, which is somewhat analogous to
the action of a recurrent theme of "motif' in a musical fugue or
sonata, or in one of Wagner's operas. . . .

. . . as the leaping tongues of flame which illuminate the pages of

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell show the visual form which
Blake's thought evoked in his mind, and sy~rtbolisefor us the purity,
the beauty, and the two edged quality of life and danger in his words,
so the recurrent images in Macbeth and Hamlet reveal the dominant
picture or sensation-in terms of which [Shakespeare] sees and feels
the main problem or theme of the play, thus giving us an unerring
clue to the way he looked at it . . . .

When Spurgeon closely looks at Hamlet she finds images of sickness, disease, or
blemish of the body and "we discover that the idea of an ulcer or tumour, as
descriptive of the unwholesome condition of Denmark morally, is, on the whole, the
dominating one. Hamlet finds in her mother "rank corruption, mining all within, /
Infects all unseen." Later he compares the fight between Norway and Poland as a
kind of tumour. When he comes upon Claudius in the prayer scene, he exclaims:
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days." Claudius later says: "diseases desperate
grown I By desperate appliance are relieved, 1 Or not at all." He begs the ~ n g l i s h
king to help him get rid of Hamlet: "For like the hectic in my blood he rages, I And
thou must cure me." He tells Laertes: "Goodness, growing to a plurisy, I Dies in his
won too much." And he describes Hamlet's arrival as: "But to the w i c k o' the ulcer:
I Hamlet comes back." The dominating thought in Hamlet is not even sickness but,
Spurgeon points out, "rottenness, disease, corruption, the result of dirt."

3.5 LET US SUM UP

The raw material that goes into the making of works of literature is nothing but
words. A close attention to how the words are used and controlled--rhetorical
devices, meter, rhythm, intonation, syntax-is of great importance before a
meaningful appreciation of the text itself can take place.

- - -

3.6 QUESTIONS

1. Hamlet is full of comments and observations made by various characters on

the failure and success of words as a means of communication. Comment.

2. Write a short note on the use Shakespeare makes of hendiadys to enrich

verbal exchanges between various characters. Illustrate and analyse.

3. Comment on Shakespeare's use of recurrent cluster images. What use does

Shakespeare make of them to further his major thematic concern in the
play?.

4. Comment on the use of words by Claudius to manipulate his audience on

many occasions in the play.

5. Analyse Claudius' first court speech in act one scene two for what it seeks to
communicate as well as hide.
 UNIT 4 HAMLET : OTHER DIMENSIONS
*
Structure

4.0 Objectives

4.1 Introduction

4.2 Hamlet's Soliloquies

4.3 The question of subjectivity

t'
4.4 Osric
t 4.5 Claudius

4.6 Horatio

4.7 LetUsSumUp

4.8 Questions

The aim of this Unit is to acquaint you with the soliloquy as an important dramatic
convention, as well as focus on the many soliloquies present in Hamlet. By the end
of this Unit you will also be made familiar with the various characters present in the
play Hamlet.

4.1 INTRODUCTION
i
A linguistic phenomenon has been described as " the outcome (ofnatural situations
i
and the state of character's emotions" [Liisa Dahl, Nominal Style in Shakespearean
Soliloquy with Reference to Early English Drama. . . ,(sic.) 19691. Charles Lamb,
r
therefore, thought of the dramatic language as imperfect means of communicating
"the inner structure and workings of mind in a character." Characters do, and at
b some length, what perqons never do-speak alone for a considerable length of time,
and in verse, too. But the soliloquy, as we shall see, hasjhis unique ability to
suggest the subtleties of the hidden self of the speaker. In the Elizabethan dramatic
tradition soliloquy became widely used as a vehicle for subjective utterance and
became an important dramatic convention. Hamlet, Othello, biacbeth,Dr Eaustus,
all contain impodant examples. In the Elizabethan and Jacobean period the
playwrights made extensive use of the soliloquy in their plays and the soliloquy, in

I
turn, opened up many dramatic opportunities for the development oftheatre. In the
process of developing the soliloquy, the Elizabethan verse found an opportunity to
attain superior levels of achievement.
Hamlet Much like a monologue a soliloquy implies a single speaker. It also implies a .
listener. In the imaginative space of a soliloquy, a speaker as well as a listener
become legitimate dramatis personae. Frequently, the listeners are the audience. The
6 dramatists, thus, were able to convey a great deal of information about characters-
their innermost thoughts, feelings, passions and motives--directly to the audience.

One must add that in Hamlet what Richard Hillman describes as "fictional
interiority" is created and communicated not only through soliloquies but also
"various kinds of monologues, asides and even silences" [SelfSpeaking in Medieval
and Early Modern Drama: Subjectivity, Discourse and the Stage, 19971. Other
mechanisms by which the illusion of interiority is maintained include Hamlet's
book in act 11: reading can be considered as "one way of presenting intreriority , or at
least contemplation, on stage," Edward Bums [Character: Acting and Being on the
Pre-Modern Stage, 19901 maintains.

The development of the villain as an important ingredient in the dramatic tradition of

this period hrther contributed to the refinement of the soliloquy. Much like the
Devil in the Morality plays, the villains, too, comment on other characters and action
of the play, manipulate the plot and reveal their own mind and thoughts to the I

audience. For instance. Iago's soliloquy in Othello.

Soliloquies often tend to be interior debates -that is what Hamlet's soliloquies are--
as much as direct addresses, such as the one Falstaff makes on honour while
speaking directly to the audience.

4.2 HAMLET'S SOLILOQUIES

Two of the seven soliloquies in Hamlet occur in act I [scene ii, lines 129-159 and
scene v, lines 92-1 111, and one in act I1 [scene ii, lines 553-5851. There are three
soliloquies in act 111, one each in scene one [lines 56-88], scene two [lines371-3821
and scene three [lines 73-95].' The last soliloquy occurs in act IV, scene iv [lines 32-
661:

1. that this too too, sullied flesh would melt, . . . I.ii. 129-159
2. 0 all you host of heaven! . . . I.v.92- 111
3. 0 what a rogue and peasant slave am I! . . . II.ii.553-585
4. To be, or not to be, that is the question, . . . III.i.56-88
5. 'Tis now the very witching time of night, . . . 1II.ii. 371-382
6. Now might I do it pat, now a'is praying-- . . . 1II.iii. 73-95
7. How all occasions do inform against me, . . . IV.iv.33-66

The first soliloquy occurs before the ghost has appeared and the suggestions of a
possible treacherous murder have been made to Hamlet. He comes to the world of
Elsinore, so to say, with his heart heavy with grief for his father's death and the haste
with which his mother disowns his father posthumously and accepts Claudius as her
husband. Hamlet emerges as a ruminative, reflective and a private person, much
loyal to the memory of his father and stunned at his mother's incestuous conduct.
This soliloquy also marks Hamlet's recognition that the world is full of both evil and
good-a world in which Hyperion and satyr are brothers. His mother's conduct
pains him the most-

so loving to my mother
That he might not between the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly . . . .
. . .Why she would hang on him
 As if increase of appetite had grown Hamlet : Other
By what it had fed on; and yet within a month-- . . . Dimensions
. . . ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears . . .
. . . married my uncle, . . .
It is the corruption in his mother's conduct that makes him feel his own flesh "too,
too sullied." It is in this frame of mind that Hamlet reacts to what life in the world of
Elsinore offers him.

The next soliloquy shows Hamlet committing himself to avenge his father death.
This soliloquy too deepens his disgust with his mother conduct and the fact that he is
? his mother's flesh and blood receives a reminder. The third soliloquy finds him
remorseful for not having taken any action to avenge his father's death. There is yet
another implied and understated reference to his mother in the lines in which he
I
describes Claudius as "bloody, bawdy villain! / Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous,
kindless villain!"

To be, or not to be," the fourth soliloquy, is the most philosophical statement that
Hamlet makes in the play and has provoked much debate and is perhaps the most
discussed and interpreted. One of the major concerns that Hamlet's ruminations
focus on in this soliloquy is the conflict between passion and reason. In the
seventeenth century books such as Robert Burton's The Anatom-v of Melancholy
(1621) and Thomas Wright's The Passions of the Minde (1601 ) as well as in books
published abroad and circulated in the original as well as in English translation
including Philippe de Mornay's The Defence of Death (1577) and Nicolas
Coeffeteau's A Table of Humane Passions (1621), passions clouded reason and it
was in the interest of the individual as well as the society to keep them in check.
Cicero had described passions as "perturbations, the troubled or stirred motions of
the mind strayed from reason: enemies of the mind, and also of a quiet life."

Hamlet is portrayed as possessed of the passion of melancholy--sorrow and fear

being two other emotions, it was believed, that accompanied melancholy. Right
from the beginning Hamlet is portrayed as melancholic. He himself says: "How
- I weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seems to me all the uses of'the world." His mother
r begs him to "cast" his "nighted colour off." *'The dread of somr:thing after death"
constantly hangs heavy upon t p mind and thoughts of Hamlet. And yet he admires
anyone who can control passions and rise above them. A stoic response to the
i
misfortunes of life is something he aspires to be able to show. He praises Horatio as
one who "is not passion's slave." He finds Ophelia, Polonius and especially his own
t
mother slaves of passion.

c While reviewing a performance of Hamlet, G. B. Shaw once wrote:

I
And please note that this is not a cold Hamlet. He is none of your logicians
who reason their way through the world because they cannot feel their way
through it: his intellect is the organ of his passion: his eternal self-criticism is
i as alive and thrilling as it can possibly be. The great soliloquy-no: I do
NOT mean "To be or not to be"; I mean the dramatic one, "0 what a rogue
and peasant slave am I!"-is as passionate in its scorn of brute passion as the
most bull-necked affirmation or sentimental dilution of it could be.

All the soliloquies express various passions associated with melancholy and the
longer soliloquies seek to attain the stoic ideal of "imperturbability." "To be, or not
I
Hamlet to be," shows Hamlet holding a book, a characteristic gesture on the part of a
melancholic-nothing would seem t o be more natural.

The fifth soliloquy, "'Tis now the very witching time of night," reveals Hamlet
resolute: "Now I could drink hot blood, / And do such bitter business of the day /
Would quake to look on." He, in this soliloquy, returns to his mother's incestuous,
unnatural conduct, refers to Nero (who had had his mother Agrippina put to death,
who had poisoned her husband, the emperor Claudius), hopes to be able to control
his anger while confronting her with the truth of her actions. The sixth occurs in the
prayer scene and contains one more reference to his mother-"My mother stays,"
as does the last soliloquy-". . . my mother stained . . . . "

All the soliloquies emphasise the idea of the delay in the mental make-up of Hamlet,
as well as the delay embedded in the plot-structure of the play. They reveal Hamlet
given to self-reflection and excessively speculative, indecisive, and irresolute.
Hamlet also comes across as a scholar, and a poet. The soliloquies reveal Hamlet's
tragic flaw that turns Hamlet into a tragedy and Hamlet as the prime agent who
brings about the tragic denouement: Hamlet thinks too much. He weighs the
consequences of action to such an excessive length that action becomes postponed as
reflection takes the place of action itself. In a sense, one can characterise all the
soliloquies as variations on the same theme: an obsessive concern with his mother's
incestuous conduct and the contamination that he feels has befouled him, too, as her
son.

4.3 THE QUESTION OF SUBJECTIVITY

Laurel Amtower, ["The Ethics of Subjectivity in Hamlet, " Studies in the Humanities,
2 1.2 (December 1994):120-1331 examines the "uncomfortably close connection
between the subjective bias of human values and the so called moral enforcement of
an absolute law." Hamlet, Amtower maintains, exemplifies a situation in which
there exist no absolutes. The task before Hamlet is left to him to interpret, to his
discretion. The specifics of his obligation are not identified. Each character's
attempt to construct meaning for herlhimself according to a perspective is severely
limited by a context. If the subject is guided by its culture's value system, the
answer is that conformity is illusionary as in the play value is always recreated from
the standpoint of a subjective agency. Amtower counters the assumption of cultural
materialists such as Dolimore, Barker, Reiss and Belsey, that the individual
consciousness of the Middle Ages was essentialist and monolithic, isolated from the
political and natural spheres, and naively comfortable with its moral responsibilities.
Amtower believes that Hamlet's subjectivity is "profoundly and imperturbably
pre-modern, a summation in a single character of an entire age and its point of
view." Middle Ages thus for him had a highly developed sense of subjectivity.
Hamlet thus has to justify his task not only politically and theologically but in the
light of "who he is". An early Hamlet seeks to efface his own subjectivity to the
fulfilment of absolute prescription. His madness thus is the abandonment of ethics to
solipsism of the subject, the abnegating of the social for the fullest satisfaction of the
private. Amtower goes on: "Instead of realising that he, like every entity of the play,
is moved by the greater contexts of discourse and community that immerse him,
Hamlet responds with greater attempts at control and repression, marked by
irrational outbursts, manslaughter, and finally murder." The later Hamlet "judges by
absolute law--but that absolute law is his own." The tyrannical Hamlet, Amtower
believes., "at the end of the play actually prefigures the tyrannical, moralising
repression that will later characterise the Puritan Commonwealth. It is thus the later
I
he maintains, "The concept of a balanced subject disintegrates, leaving in its stead Hamlet :Other
only victims and tyrants." Dimensions

4.4 OSRIC
Osric is generally considered a minor character and the only useful function his
character serves in the play is to present a contrast through his ridiculous behaviour
to Hamlet's serious and dignified conduct. He is also treated by the readers as well as
the directors of the play as a clown who provides comic relief in the play.

But the attention that Shakespeare bestows upon his character would suggest that he
had much more than this in his mind. He is surely not meant to be a comic character
and, thus, a mere source of comic relief in the play This is clear from the fact that the
, source of comic entertainment is, more often than not, the prince himself. Also, the
t'
gravediggers are the ones who provide comic pleasure in the play either through
their own interaction with each other or with Hamlet. Osric performs no function in
1 the play other than propose a wager-an action that Shakespeare could easily have
assigned to any other unimportant character. He appears in one of the most
important scenes in the play, in an important moment, and is sllown interacting at
some length with the play's most important character. The allention then that
Shakespeare lavishes upon Osric is not without a larger purpose. But, then, where
does lie the significance of the character of Osric?

He lends a certain lightness of tone to the play's last sombre moments and presents a
contrast to the protagonist himself. Apart from this, Osric by his presence lends a
sharper focus to some of the major themes of the play. He signifies the hollow
courtier which is one philosophical strand in the thought-pattern of the play, and gf
which Claudius is the most important icon in the play. Osric stands for the
emptiness of the youth and its predilection for the pointless pi~rsuingof current
fashions in dress, conduct and behaviour. Hamlet alludes to a lack of balance
between the individual merit and reward; Osric is a perfect example of it. He is a
double-dealing hypocrite, has scrupulous disregard for everything that could stand
in his way of "advancement."

Claudius plans a scheme for involving Hamlet in the fencing match:

We'll put on those shall praise your excellence,

And set a double varnish on the fame
The Frenchman gave you, bring you, in fine, together,
And wager o'er your heads. [Hamlet], being remiss,
Most generous, and free from all contriving,
Will not peruse the foils, . . .
[IV. vii. 130-1351

Osric, like Laertes, is a stooge and a pawn, and a weapon in the hands of Claudius.
He is the source of dread and tension-as he sets out to encourage Hamlet to lay a
wager--as much as he is the source of immediate comic pleasure. Our sense of the
impending disaster does not allow us to treat him merely as a source of comic relief.
More than comic relief or comic pleasure he provides what has been described as
"comic tension."

4.5 CLAUDIUS
After the ghost has revealed the story of the unnatural murder of the old King
Hamlet, Hamlet describes Claudius as "0 villain, villain, smiling villan / My
i

Hamlet tables-meet it is I set it down 1 That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain."
Villain in the sense of "That character in a play, whose motives or actions form an
important element in the plot" [OED] is the attribute easily and most commonly
associated with Claudius. Hamlet refers to Claudius again later as "Bloody, bawdy
villain. / Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain." [II. ii. 608-91. here
are seven other occasions when Hamlet refers to Claudius as a villain.

Apart from the meaning that "villain" is commonly understood to have, for
Shakespeare, it also meant "a low born base-minded rustic"; OED also describes
"villein" to mean as "one of the class serfs in the feudal system." The two words in
the Elizabethan English were interchangeable and, therefore, denoted base or bastard
birth. Therefore, when Hamlet calls Claudius "A murderer and a villain" it means,
"a murderer and a bastard" and not "a murderer and a wicked man." As David
Berkeley points out: "Villain" is the richest, most stinging, most unsheddable curse
that can be offered a king in Shakespeare's rich vocabulary of swearing. Hamlet's
extreme indignation against Claudius, partly founded on his knowledge that he a
true born son of a true born father must yield the throne of Denmark to a bastard
"villein" cannot be reconciled with the reiteration of the relatively waterish "villain"
[in the ethical sense of the word]." That each time Hamlet refers to Claudius as a
bastard has far reaching implications in the play and is of singular importance and
must be appreciated.

Generally, Claudius is accused of incest, hurried remarriage, murder and being a

usurper of the throne of Denmark. We must remember that Hamlet's one major
accusation against him is that he is a bastard. In a society to which Shakespeare
belonged and which was essentially a class-ridden society, being a bastard meant a
searing flaw. Shakespeare constantly invokes the images of "weed" and uses words
such as "rank" and "gross" to imply "the base-born." In his first soliloquy ["that this
too too sullied flesh would melt," . . . I.ii.129-1591, Hamlet remarks: "Tis an
unweeded garden, / That grows to seed, things rank and gross in nature 1 Possess it
merely." Later in act 111, he tells the queen : "And do not spread the compost on the
weeds / To make them ranker." Shakespeare describes Claudius in comparison with
his brother not in terms of wickedness but in terms of a bastard birth.

Hamlet draws attention to Claudius's unprepossessing appearance --"hyperion to a

satyr." Hamlet asks his mother: "Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed / And
batten on this moor?'For Shakespeare, lack of pleasant looks indicates an unethical
character, while those of "gentle" birth had attractive looks. For the poet "beauty
breedeth beauty" [Venus and Adonis, line 1671. In act I11 Hamlet himself is
described as "the rose of the fair state" and "the mould of the from."

Claudius lacks courage: he meekly listens to Laertes accusation, "0 thou vile king,"
and submits to Hamlet's forcing poison down his throat without much resistance.
Bastards, the Elizabethans believed, had envy as their ruling passion. As Francis .
Bacon remarked: " . ..bastards are envious, for he that cannot possibly mend his
case will do what he can to impair another's." [Of Enyy]. Claudius's whole life
arrears to be a series of attemtps to "legitimise himself."

In Unit One I referred to C. P. Cavafy's version in which he recreates Claudius's

character in the light of his own post-colonial pre-occupations. You might like to
compare his version with the assessment of Claudius's character given above. The
poem "King Claudius" is as follows:
 King Claudius
My mind travels to distant parts.
I walk the streets of Elsinore,
I wander its squares, and remember
that sorrowful tale of an ill-starred
king
slain by his nephew, on grounds
of certain abstract suspicions.
In all the houses of the poor
they wept for him--secretly,
for fear of Fortinbras.
A mild and peace-loving monarch
(the land had suffered much
from the campaigns of his
predecessor)
,
he treated everyone with respect,
both great and small. He avoided
throwing his weight around, and
always,
in affairs of state, sought advice
from serious, seasoned counsellors.
They never said with certainty
why it was his nephew killed him.
He suspected him of murder.
His grounds for this suspicion
were that one night, while walking
the ancient battlements, he saw,
or thought he saw, a ghost,
with whom he held a conversation.
They say the ghost made certain
allegations concerning the king.
It was just his overheated
imagination,
t of course, his eyes playing tricks.
(The prince was exceedingly
D high-strung.
As a student at Wittenburg, he was
L
thought
quite deranged by many of his
fellows.)
I
A few days later, he went
to see his mother about certain
family matters. Suddenly,
in mid-sentence, he lost control
and started howling, screaming
that the ghost stood there in front of
I
him.
But his mother saw nothing.
The very same day he slew an elderly
nobleman, for no reason whatsoever.
Since in a day or two the prince
was due to sail to England, the king Hamlet :Other
did all he could to hasten his Dimensions
departure
and deliver him from harm.
But people were so outraged
by this brutal, seriseless murder
that a rebellious mob tried to storm
the palace gates let by Laertes,
son of the victim (a bold
and ambitious youth; in the
confusion,
certain of his friends shouted
"Long live King Laertes!").
When things had quieted down
and the king, thanks to his nephew,
was in his tomb (the prince
had never gone to England--
he'd skipped ship along the way),
a certain Horatio came forward
and tried to clear the prince's name
with all sorts of convoluted stories.
He said the trip to England
has justa ploy: word had been sent
to put the prince to death
(though this was never clearly
proved)
He also spoke of poisoned wine,
the king's handiwork. True,
Laertes said the same thing.
But what if he was lying?
What if he'd been duped?
And when did he say it?
While dying--his mind wandering,
no idea what he was saying.
As for the poisoned swords,
it later turned out the king
had nothing to do with it, -
Laertes himself put the poison there.
But when pressed, Horatio
brought in the ghost as witness.
The ghost said this, the ghost said
that.
The ghost did this and that.
So while they may have listened
to what the fellow said, in private
most people mourned the goodly
king,
who with phantasms and fairytales
was basely slain, and flung aside.
Fortinbras, however, who'd had
the kingship fall into his lap,
paid close attention
to every word IIoratio said.
4.6 HORATIO

Horatio is generally considered an uninteresting if not a completely unimportant

character in the play. He speaks some memorable lines but generally his role is
expected to be a mere foil to the protagonist. But Horatio appears in nine scenes of
the play compared to Ophelia's six. He speaks about half as many more lines as
she does and is the most important speaker both at the beginning and at the end of
the play. He delivers a long speech in act I, scene i on the preparation of war in
Denmark and the long history of discord between Denmark and Norway, vividly .
recalls the portents of Caesar's fall and how the spirits behave. His second speech is
often remembered: "A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye." He speaks minor
passages of little significance until the last act when he grabs the poisoned cup from
Hamlet.

Careful readers of the play have encountered a number of inconsistencies involving

Horatio in the play. Horatio comes across to the readers as the primary source of
information on the appearance of the old King Hamlet and the likeness of the ghost
to him.

Hamlet. Is it not like the king?

Horatio. As thou art to thyself.
Such was the very armour he had on
When he th'ambitious Norway combated.
So frowned he once, when in an angry parle
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
[I. i. 63-66]

Later he remarks: "I knew your father; these hands are not more like." In reply to
Hamlet, he says about the ghost's beard, Horatio says: "It was as I have seen it in his
life, 1A sable silver7d." Horatio thus gives the impression that Horatio knew the
king personally well, at least was well acquainted with the old King Hamlet's
personal appearance. But he later says, "I saw him once; a was a goodly king."
Suggesting that he had not known him well enough-not well enough to account for
all that he has earlier said about him. But the answer lies in not reading "I saw him
once; a was a goodly king" literally to mean that he had seen the old King Hamlet
only once. After all, "once" can also be taken to mean "when": "I saw him once; a
was a goodly king" can also be read to mean that when Horatio saw him on a certain
occasion, "a was a goodly king."

Hamlet addresses Horatio as a "fellow student" and therefore it is naturally assumed

that both Hamlet and Horatio are about the same age. But the later elements in the
play do not bear this out. We are told in the gravediggers7 scene that the duel
between the old King Hamlet and Fortinbas took place thirty years ago, the same
year young prince Hamlet was born. So if Horatio was among those who witnessed
the duel, he must be appreciably older than Hamlet. But there is no reason to be
believe that fellow students, even those who are closely acquainted with each other
must be of the same age group.

Yet again Horatio is presented as one who is unacquainted with the custom of
accompanying royal toasts with cannonade even though he also gives the impression
of having been closely familiar with the current Danish political and other matters.
There is nothing in the play to suggest that Horatio came from Elsinore. He, in fact,
could have come from anywhere in Denmark and may have, thus, been unfamiliar
with customs of the royal court and the city life and its ways in Elsinore.
There is yet another matter involving Horatio. We discover that a month elapses Hamlet :Other
between the royal funeral and the royal wedding. Horatio tells Harrilet that he had Dimensions
come to Elisnore for the funeral but they meet only after the royal wedding.
Obviously he had remained in Elsinore for the whole month without having once met
Hamlet. How is it that they did not meet during this period? But this too appears
understandable in view of the fact that during this month Hamlet should have been
preoccupied with the fuperal of his father and political and other developments in the
court.

There is little doubt that Hamlet and Horatio were friends but their friendship need
not have been too close as is obvious from the fact that Hamlet uses "you" while
addressing him. He uses "thou" when he addresses Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
It is only later that he starts using "thou" for Horatio. Of course, when he discovers
the truth about his two friends, he uses "you" for Guildenstern in act 11, scene ii.
There is little doubt that Horatio matters to Shakespeare as he does to Hamlet.
Shakespeare draws upon the long-standing traditon of heroes's conipanions which
imparts much significance to such a character.

Hamlet forever addressis his friend by his n a m e i n the second scene Hamlet
addresses Horatio by his name five' times in about twenty lines. Horatio is portrayed
as a scholar and a sceptic. He is a man of much courage: he is not afraid to confront
the ghost, though his loyalty to the prince demands that he try and dissuade him from
confronting his father ghost. For Shakespeare's audience that was .a dangerous
enterprise.

Horatio enjoys Hamlet's trust, friendship, and confidence. More than that, Hamlet
respects Horatio for some of his personal virtues:

Horatio, thou.art e'ven as just a man

As e'er my conversation cop'd withal. . . .

Nay Do not think I flatter,

For what advancement may I hope from thee
That no revenue hast but thy god spirits
To feed and clothe thee? Why should be flatter'd? ...
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice, -
And could of men distinguish her election,
Sh'ath seal'd thee for herself: for thou has been
As one, in suff ring all that suffers nothing,
A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast ta'en with equal thanks; and blest are those
Whose blood and judgement are so well commeddled
'
That they are not a pipe for Fortune's fingure
To sound what stop she pleases. Give me that man
that is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay in my heart of heart,
As I do thee. . . .
[III. ii. 54-55; 56-59; 63-73]

He does come across as a "foil" to Hamlet after the play-within-the-play scene: to

Hamlet's feverish questioning, he gives replies that are cool, objective and his
demeanour calm. "Didst perceive?" "Very well, my lord." "Upon the talk of the
poisoning?" "I did very well note him." Horatio's stoic calm is Hamlet's greatest
advantage.
Hamlet - -

4.7 LET US SUM UP

There are, in addition, many aspects of the play that should be lookecl into. The
opening scenes in the plays of Shakespeare always have a major significance. In
Hamlet a number of other scenes must be carefully analysed for additional value;
the closet scene, the nunnery scene, the prayer scene, the grave-diggers' scene, the
dumb-show and the play scene, the fencing scene: these are some of the situations
in the play that are imbued with meaning. Similarly, a careful analysis of the
characters --other than the most important ones-Hamlet, Claudius, Getrude-
should be done. The characters of Ophelia and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern should
be examined. Hamlet's character can be further studied as a scourge or purifying
agent or even as a Fool. His madness, his attitude to his mother remarriage, his
father's death, his attitude to his father, his character as pulled in the opposing
directions of the twin forces of sentimentality and intellectualism, his divided nature,
his eloquence, his romantic nature are other angles which provide useful insights into
his personality. You might like to look up a reference work such as Index to Hamlet
Studies [I 9901: there are numerous entries listed under appropriate headings which
would suggest various approaches to a topic. There are, in fact, hundreds of entries
under the heading "Hamlet."

There are many issues that are part of the current critical debate about Hamlet: the
question of "delay" is one of those issues. It has been on the minds of readers-
theatregoers-scholarsfor longer than two hundred years in the history of Hamlet
criticism. Hamlet's attitude to Ophelia is also a question that deserve a closer
examination. Hamlet has been examined in the light of philosophical notions such
as appearance and reality, or idealism versus pragmatism. The dominance in Hamlet
of the ideas of death, decay and corruption, both of the body as well as mind and
soul, has caught the readers7attention. Hamlet has been studied in comparison with
Greek tragedies, in the context of Elizabethan culture, Elizabethan and Jacobean
politics and in many other contexts such as current interest in psychoanalytical
literary criticism.

Some of these issues are discussed in greater detail in many books and articles listed
in the bibliography appended to the last unit.

4.8 QUESTIONS

1. What are the major themes in Hamlet's soliloquies?. How do they

contribute to the major thematic concerns of the play?

2. Analyse "To be, or not to be" in act 111, scene i, for its dramatic significance
in the context of the play.

3. Analyse the role played by Osric in the larger context of the Danish politics
as reflected in the play.

4. "Claudius rather than Hamlet is the protagonist of the play." Do you agree?
 UNIT 5 "THE WORLD AS STAGE" :WIDER
PERSPECTIVE
Structure

5.0 Objectives

5.1 Introduction

5.2 King Lear and Hamlet

5.3 Reinventing Hamlet

5.4 Privatisation of Hamlet

5.5 Universalization

5.6 Let us sum up

5.7 Questions

5.0 OBJECTIVES

The aim of this Unit is to make you look at Hamlet from a wider perspective. By the
end of this Unit you will be able to see how other cultures respond to Hamlet and
how it has emerged as a cultural icon and also be able to assess its canonical status.
e

5.1 INTRODUCTION.

In the first four units we have looked at Hamlet with a close-focu:sed eye. We
- began, in Unit I, with an appreciation of the problems of identifying the text of
Hamlet: the long gap of four hundred years has surely put us at a disadvantage. We

- tried to determine the date of the first performance of Hamlet, the sources that
Shakespeare drew upon to construct the Hamlet story, the various versions of the text
of the play that have come down to us from various sources. We then went on to
. appreciate the tools of scholarship and various methodologies such as textual
criticism, emendation, historical criticism, new criticism, among others.

In Unit I1 we attempted to examine the meaning of Hamlet in the light of the

Elizabethan revenge tradition-a perspective which perhaps brings us closer to
seeing Hamlet as the Elizabethan audience themselves might have understood and
enjoyed the play. We examined ways of determining the meaning of a
Shakespeareantext, attempted to interpret Hamlet as a revenge play, and looked,
albeit briefly, into various other interpretations of Hamlet that have found favour
with scholars as well readers and theatre-goers.
I
Subsequently, Unit III was devoted to learning how to read Hamlet between the
, lines: the language of Shakespeare, his interest in rhetorical devices and imagery and
1 other related matters. Unit IV focused on Hamlet's soliloquies, the question of
subjectivity in the play as well its general philosophical implications in the context
of the early modern literature, and looked at the issues raised by various characters
such as Osric, Claudius and Horatio.

Having looked at Hamlet at such close quarters, it is time we withdraw ourselves a

little and look at Hamlet from a wider perspective, in larger contexts. We can look
at Hamlet in the context of Shakespeare's work. We can assess its canonical status
down the centuries, as well as at the present time. We shall take a look at the raging
controversies among the lovers of Hamlet and the admirers of King Lear for
allotting the pinnacle of glory to either play. Hamlet has emerged as cultural icon in
the twentieth century: it has emerged as a cultural icon not only in the Western world
but also elsewhere in the world. It might be interesting to look at how other cultures
have responded to the mystery and joy of interacting with Hamlet. There are Hamlet
versions in print, on stage, and screen in which Hamlet is re-constructed according
to the needs, pressures, and the inner urges of those who have dealt with the play as
creators and artists and even as readers arid theatre- and cine-goers.

5.2 KING LEAR AND HAMELT

R. A. Foakes in his 1993 study Hamlet 'versus' King Lear demonstrates how an
unprecedented shift took place in the canonical status of Hamlet between 1955 and
1965. During the decade Hamlet was displaced by King Lear as the Bard's greatest
tragedy. Lear was interpreted "not as a redemptive parable but as bleak version of
suffering and despair. The mood of the cold war period with it's threat of total
nuclear devastation found a new topical meaning in lines such as "Is this promis'd
end I Or image of that horror?"King Lear, V.iii.264-51. In the late twentieth
century world controlled by old men obsessed with power, Lear echoed the thoughts
of men more than did the violent musings of the brooding prince. Lear surely
speaks to us in more ways than one. But Hamlet is surely back at its eminent
position. Hamlet occupies a significant place in the cultural landscapes all over the
world.

No wonder Hamlet is described as a "cultural work of formidable status, " and "a
literary and cultural phenomenon of enormous proportions." Words and phrases in
no other play by Shakespeare are so instantly recognisable to anyone anywhere.
The language of Hamlet can be found to be seeping into the very fabric of the mind
or thought everywhere in the world. Hamlet is a challenge of immense proportion for
any actor/director creative artist as Hamlet becomes a milestone in the life of any
artist. No other of work of Shakespeare has been subjected to such varied and
myriad transmutations as Hamlet. As Thompson and Taylor argue later in their
book:

If a political interpretation of Hamlet was topical around 1600, it has also

seemed relevant when Hamlet has been staged more recently in countries
where there has been a real fear of the secret police, such as the former
Soviet Union and the eastern Europe . . . [p. 301

5.3 RE-INVENTING HAMLET

Michael Cohen ["On Reading Hamlet for the First Time" [College Literature, 19.1
(1992):48-591 considers "the desirability and the difficulty of approaching Hamlet
without preconception, without a kind of 'pre-reading'." He wonders whether it is
possible to find someone who does not come to the play with foreknowledge of the "The World As
details of the play or whether one can create conditions in which one can read the Stage": Wider
play for the "first time." Considering the power the play wields as, a cultural icon- Perspective
"the extra textual Hamlet has a real, unquenchable and even frightening existence"
-- it would be a gigantic task to shed, or persuade readers, students and others to
shed, the baggage of familiarity, to "unteach" before one could te<ach!

There is little doubt that an innocent first reading of Hamlet unencumbered by one's
prejudices--acquired by being part of a social and cultural context--has always been
considered an ideal pre-condition to a fuller and meaningful appreciation of the play.
An innocent first reading of the play, the recovery of that pristine experience I

"uncontam
inated by our subsequent intellectualising" of the play has been considered
inescapable to our attaining the truth. And there are a great many believers in the
truth of the fist impressions: Cohen refers to G. B. Harrison, Thomas Kettle, Karl
Werder, A. C. Bradley, G. Wilson Knight, C. S. Lewis, and Maynard Mack, among
others.

Attempts have been made to view the question of reading Hamler for the "first" time
as a historical problem and to recover what must have been the initial response of the
Bard's own audience. Cohen refers to the studies done in this regard by Mushat and
McGee. What both the first-impression school of critics as well as the
historical-retrieval school of critics seek to do is to offer an ideal reading of the play.

That Shakespeare seems to have made an attempt to "make new" (and to take away
the predictability of the plot from an existing story) can be easily inferred. Cohen
quotes Susan Snyder who believes that Shakespeare did his best to make the plot of
Hamlet less predictable by throwing a shadow of obscurity, for example, on the
queen's guilt and ghost's reliability. In other words "Shakespeare did his part
towards making it possible to read or see Hamlet for the first time." In other words
Shakespeare saw the "merit of reading a play for the first time."

What we have today is "a reading of Hamlet . . . overdeterminecl from the

beginning: in the mind of the person reading Hamlet for the 'first' time, a culturally
determined received extratextual interpretation of Hamlet joins a culturally deter-
mined way of receiving any text."

But what is the solution to this problem? Cohen locates the genesis of his problem in
the scholarly practice of preparing an "editorial" text which the editor always insists
is the real thing. We have looked into this question at some length in Unit I. Cohen
finds these scholarly reconstructed editions of the play as "social constructions." The
current editions of the play are nothing but a modem-type, modern-spelling
conflations of early printed texts that reflect the individual editors's whims and
outdated, unexamined assumptions and prejudices about the early printed texts.

For Cohen the solution lies in the suggestion made by Michael Warren when the
latter recommended a text providing "the earliest versions--the First Quarto, the
Second Quarto, and the First Folio--in photographic reproduction with their original
confusions and corruptions unobscured by the interference of later sophistications
. . . the editions get between the student or the scholar and the peculiar originals
from which they derive." Editors generally privilege the Second Quarto but almost
all editors adopt readings from the other versions of the play, too. The editorial
principles themselves, thus, are not consistently followed.

It is in one sense no exaggeration to say that no student reading only a modem

edition of tlie play has read the play yet. A student who reads either all or any one of
Hamlet the three versions of the play has the best chance of reading the play for the first
time. If then it is desirable to be able to have a first reading of the play at all, the
solution lies in abandoning the editorially reconstructed textual editions of the play
as "given" and allow the students to "compose" their own texts by reading all the
three versions in photographic facsimiles. Leaving the student alone to decide what
the real Hamlet is to offer them the best chance of achieving the first reading of the
play.

On the other hand this also is true that admirers of Hamlet have sought to make up,
in more ways than one, for the unfortunate lack of opportunity of having been there
when the play was first staged to taste the flavour of the original! There are Hamlet
versions in print, on stage, and screen in which Hamlet is re-constructed according
to the needs, pressures, and the inner urges of those who have dealt with the play as
creators and artists and even as readers and theatre- and cine-goers: and these
reconstructions are unique, different and new. Hamlet has been printed, screened
and staged in many different ways to give it a new shape and form and fit the needs
of the time and space in which, and for which, it was being reconstructed.

5.4 PRIVATISATION OF HAMLET

Bowdlerised Shakespeare. Thomas Bowdler [1754-18251 was a clergyman and

editor. He prepared a four volume edition of the works of Shakespeare in 1807
(which he later expanded to ten volumes in 1818) in which his objective was to offer
to the readers an edition "in which nothing is added to the original, but those words
and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read in a family."
Shakespeare's plays, he felt, had given us " an inexhaustible fund of instructuion as
well as pleasure which even the severest moralist would not wish to withhold from
innocent minds." He thus prepared a version of Shakespeare's plays which could be
read in a family in the presence of women and children "unmixed with anything that
could raise a blush on the cheek of modesty," or that could be unfit "to read aloud
by a gentlemen to a company of ladies." The Bowdlerised Shakespeare, called The
Family Shakespeare, was widely read throughout the nineteenth century and earned
high praise from many including the poet Swinburne who remarked that "no man
ever did better service to Shakespeare than the man who made it possible to put him
into the hands of intelligent and imaginative children." .

Marowitz Hamlet. Charles Marowitz, the author, critic, playwight and director,
has decided to take Hamlet "imprisoned by three-and-a-half centuries of critical
appreciation and grand acting," (as the blurb to the Penguin Plays edition [I9681 of
The Marowitz Hamlet and The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus describes it),
"boldly, broken it into pieces and reassembled it in a collage which he hopes makes
its meaning real again." Hamlet is described in the sub-title as "A Collage Version
of the Shakespeare's Play." In his introduction to this edition Marowitz says:

Can a play which is well known be reconstructed and redistributed so as to make a

new work of art? If Hamlet were a precious old vase which shattered into thousand
pieces, could one glue the pieces all together into a completely new shape and still
retain the spirit of the original. . . . if Shakespeare is our contemporary, why can't
we speak to him in our own tone of voice, in our own rhythm about our own
concerns? . . . [p.10]

And that is what precisely the play turns out to be: a collage of broken pieces put
together again into a shape. And the play opens in the very first scene with:
 Hamlet and Fortinbras standing facing each other. After cr moment "The World As
Fortinbras moves down to meet the Captain. Hamlet falls in behind the Stage" : Wider
Captain like soldier in the ranks. Perspective

Fortinbras: Go, Captain, from me greet the Danish King . . .

%
;.
;
;ar"'
all occasions . . ." at line
7

and we have Hamlet beginning his f a m o ~ l i l o q u y"How

,
sixteen of act one, scene one!

The Haunted House Hamlet. Tamahous Theatre of Vancouver, Canada presented

a version of Hamlet in the summer of 1986) which was spread all over a three-storey
house. Every room in the house had a scene from Hamlet being staged and the
audience were free to roalii about the three floors, peep into different rooms and
piece together what was going on in those rooms and re-construct a Hamlet for
themselves. The beginning of the play as well as the ending, along with the Players'
scene was all that the entire audience shared in common. Otherwise while some
watched Claudius in his court, some others went and eavesdropped on the
conversation between Horatio and Hamlet or between Polonius and Ophelia. There
was the whole house full of goings on that would remind the audience of the play
that they know as Hamlet, but it was also a new play. The angry outbursts of Hamlet
could be heard when Ophelia sat whimpering in one room and Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern plotted their own plans in another. The house became a metaphor and
the householders revealed themselves, an unhappy lot, each with a tale of his own to
tell.

Hamlet was staged outside Britain fairly soon. It reached France in 1745, Ruusia in
1748 and in Ameria 1759. Within the next hundred it was being staged all over the
world: so much so that foreign companies would come to London to perform their
versions of Hamlet. An Indian company was in London 1877 to slage a performance
of Hamlet. There are more than half a dozen film versions known to exist: those by
Olivier, Kozintsev, Rochardson, Bennet, Zeffirelli.

5.5 UNIVERSALIZATION

Hamlet thus appears to speak a universal language. In the West Shakespeare

occupies a position of unique centrality. Harold Bloom has recently maintained in
The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages [1994], Shakespeare "is the
central figure of the Western Canon" [p.2] " . . . more central tothe Western culture
L
than Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, Heidegger and Wittegenstein." [p. 101
Shakespeare's "aesthetic supremacy has been confirmed by the universal judgement
of the four centuries," [p. 231 Bloom tells us. "His powers of assirnilation and
I
c contamination are unique." [P.3] "We owe to Shakespeare not only our
representation of cognition but much of our cipacity for cognition." [p. 401

"The enigma of Shakespeare, " Bloom says elsewhere, "is his universalism:
Kurusawa's film versions of Macbeth and King Lear are thoroughly Kurusawa and
thoroughly Shakespeare." [p. 5241 Bloom then isolates what makes Shakespeare so
1 unique and so universal:
I
I What is the Shakespearean difference that demands Dante, Cemantes,
Tolstoy and only a few others as aesthetic companions? TOask the questions
t is to undertake the quest that is the final aim of literary study, the search for

! a kind of value that transcends the particular prejudices and needs of

societies at fixed points in time. Such a quest is illusory, according to all our
t
i
Hamlet current ideologies . . . .There is substance in Shakespeare's work that
prevails and that has proved multicultural, so universally apprehended in all
languages as to have established a pragmatic multiculturalism around the
globe, one that already far surpasses our politicised fumblings towards such
an ideal. Shakespeare is the centre of the embryo of a world canon, not
Western or Eastern and less and less Eurocentric; . . . [p. 62; emphasis
added]

But let us not forget that even in the West Shakespeare's supremacy has not gone
unchallenged. Charles Forker, a noted Shakespeare scholar, once remarked to this
writer in an interview:

In America black American response to Shakespeare is a racial response. A

black American student regards Shakespeare as a white'man's cultural
baggage. In my classes very few black American students take interest in
Shakespeare or even attend classes. When they are educated at higher levels,
they respond to Shakespeare much the same manner as educated Indians.
But an average educated black American tends to contain his interest in
Shakespeare. . . ."

Referring to one of his black American student who did his doctoral work on
Shakespeare, Forker said, "But then he is not too popular with his fellow black
American students who regard him as having identified with a symbol of white
man's oppression." But generally speaking one could say that Shakespeare in
America is an off-shoot of British literature and the Bible and Shakespeare are the
two most profound and pervasive influences on American literature. Even the
Gettysburgh address by Abraham Lincoln, Forker claimed, could be shown to
embody these two influences. Not only in Britain, but also in America,
Shakespeare is treated not merely ad literature or theatre but has become a cultural
construct.

Indian failure to respond to deal with Shakespeare at deeper levels is perhaps

because English language and literature is associated in the minds of the people with
the oppressors which the British colonisers were for a such a long time. In Japan,
where they did not have the advantage or the disadvantage of a similar cultural
interaction forced upon them, Shakespeare has permeated the life of the Japanese
obviously because of a choice deliberately made and consciously cultivated. Thus
the cultural and literary scene in Japan is inundated with novels, poems, films and
other artistic manifestation derived from, or inspired by, Shakespeare. But
Shakespeare came to India early, indeed.

Hamlet in India. Hamlet's Indian connection took shape even before the play
crossed over to the Indian ocean. The third voyage sponsored by the East India
Company to India left England in 1607. One of the three ships, Hector, while
anchored at Sierra Leone, is reported to have had two performances of Hamlet
aboard done by the sailors of the ship. The development of the Parsi theatre in the
mid-nineteenth century led to an upsurge of interest in Shakespeare in India. The
Parsi theatre companies had grown out of amateur theatrical activities organised by
the Parsi community, British-run schools and colleges and clubs such as the
Elphinstone Club. About this time British administrators were looking for ways and
means to create a class of Indians who would share the burden of running the
administration of the country at lower levels. The desire to improve the native
cultures through the means of British education too was not far from their minds.
Even the educated Indian leadership believed in the need for revitalising the Indian
culture. The Parsi theatre's attempt to appropriate Shakespeare and package it for
the Indian audience received a great deal of encouragement. Hamlet in Urdu
translation done by Munshi Mehdi Hasan with a new title, Khune Nahaq,was
46
peformed in 1898 by Parsi Alfred Company. Hamlet, we must remember was not "The World A,i
the only play that was being staged by the Parsi theatrical campaniles. Othello and Stage" : Wider
Macbeth were frequently staged, as also Cymbeline, TweIfth Night, The Winters Tale, Perspective
All 's Well that Ends Well, The Merchant of Venice, and Measure jbr Measure. With
the advent of the motion pictures, many theatrical companies turned to film-making.
Sohrab Modi and his elder brother Rustem filmed their popular play Hamlet or
Khlolon ka Khloon in 1935 in which Sohrab and Naseem performedl Another Marathi
adaptation of Hamlet called Vikar Vilasit featured Kamlabai Gokliale at the age of
four as a boy in the "play" scene.

I remarked in an earlier unit that Hamlet has often found to have acquired a life of its
own, a life outside the context of the play. No other text commands instant
recognition of such a large number of moments, images, lines and words as Hamlet
does. Words and phrases from the play have become part of our daily vocabulary.
In a recent edition of the Delhi Statesman, a news item commenting on the
uncertainty surrounding a politician's joining a political party carried the title: "To
be or not to be-that is the question Madam!" [March 11, 19981 Hamlet exists in
translation in many vernacular languages. In fact, there are many translations of
Hamlet even in Sanskrit!

Another interesting example of an alien culture taking to Shakespeare is South

Africa. Hamlet was first produced in South Africa in 1799 in Port Elizabeth and
has enjoyed continued popularity ever since. Most Shakespeare productions were
organised by English speaking whites and one of the their objective used to be to
ensure the triumph of English culture in a society where the Blacks and the other
minorities were considered, under the then prevailing laws, inferior. The first
Afrikaans productions was staged in 1947 and was received with a great deal of
enthusiasm. Afrikaners travelled from all over the country to see the production. So
much so that first Afrikaans production was seen as part of the resurgence of
Afrikaner nationalism. Afrikaans culture, considered crude and inferior by the
English speaking whites, sought to claim for itself the sophistication of a great
English playwright by staging Hamlet in Afrikaans.

Shakespeare in South Africa thus, always.became a showcase for cultural

sophistication whenever staged by the English speaking whites, A.frikaners,
Coloured, or Indians. The English speaking whites used Shakespeare to maintain
their cultural superiority, the Afrikaners sought to challenge this colonial-imperial
pride and to validate their own culture. Other minorities groups such as Indian,
Coloured and Blacks to claim a place in an equal opportunity, just society. Their
access and ability to negotiate a play by Shakespeare was used to prove that they,
too, were cultured or sophisticated groups within the South African society.

5.6 LET US SUM UP

Hamlet, thus, should be understood and appreciated not merely as a literary text in
the context of the times and the litererary conventions in which it was written. Over
the last many centuries the world has become a much smaller place and cultural
artifacts have tended to break loose from the tyranny of their geographical roots. In
the larger context of today a play such as Hamlet has been appropriated by many
other cultures. It is useful to examine how such diverse and varied readers from
diverse and varied cultures have responded to it.
1. Hamlet is credited with a unique ability to communicate with diverse
audiences in varied countries and cultures all over the world. Which
elements of the play make it possible for the play to achieve this universal
appeal?

2. Analyse Cohen's views on the significance of reading a play "for the first
time" with reference to Hamlet.

3. Bowdlerised Shakespeare represents censorship at its worst. Comment.

 UNIT 6 CURRENT CRITICAL APPROACHES T O
HAMLET

Structure

6.0 Objectives

6.1 Introduction

I 6.2 Twentieth Century Approaches upto the Sixties

k-
i..
6.3 Modem Literary Theory : Structuralism

B- 6.4 Feminism
I

6.5 Marxism

6.6 Psychological Criticism

6.7 New Literary Theory and Hamlet

6.8 Let Us Sum Up

6.9 Bibliography

6.0 OBJECTIVES

After reading this Unit you will gain a knowledge of

Critical approaches : Twentieth Century Scene upto the sixties

New literary theory : major approaches and
i?.
New Literary theory and Hamlet.

6.1 INTRODUCTION

As professional students of literature post-graduate students musl realise that their

C
1
obligations as students, and as future researchers and scholars, are not confined
merely to reading literature, however diligently and meaningfully. The joy of
immersing oneself into mankind's endless source of pleasure and instruction is in
itself a great reward. But works of literature have to be studied for a fuller
appreciation of their meaning and significance, also in the light of the organised
body of thought that has developed in response to scholastic atteinpts to understand
I
and appreciate literature.
Over a period of time an organised body of literature about literature-many
schools of thought, approaches and view-points governing literary criticism--of
myriad hues and shapes and forms has emerged. Some of the finest minds over the
I
last many centuries have developed the discipline of literary studies and studied
Hamlet works of literature in the light of intellectual methodologies specially created to
make study of literature a rewarding exercise. Even when critics do not consciously
belong to a specific school of thought and subscribe to a definite ideology, they
certainly speak from a position of reasoned thought.

6.2 TWENTIETH CENTURY APPROACHES UPTO THE

SIXTIES

In the twentieth century upto about the sixties literary criticism developed in many
more complex ways. RenC Wellek's monumental study of the twentieth century
criticism initiates his study with "symbolism" and goes on to devote a section to the
academic critics who functioned within the universities and furthered the discipline
of literary studies. He then devotes a chapter each to The Bloomsbury Group and
another to The New Romantics. The focus then shifts to the early pioneering work
done by T. E. Hulme, Ezra Pound, and Wyndham Lewis and the consolidation of the
early work into a substantial body of admirable proportions by T. S Eliot and I. A.
Richards, F. R. Leavis and the contributors to Scrutiny, the widely influential literary
journal that Leavis helped found and edited for twenty years, and critics such as F.
W. Bateson and William Empson.

Some of these approaches particularly benefited students of Shakespeare. Some

other schools of thought and critical approaches, in turn, received a fillip because of
their attempts to engage the Shakespearean canon.

Upto the sixties, then, the islands of certainty included a number of notions: That
there is an entity called literature as different from what is not literature. Journalistic
writing is not literature, for example. Literature was considered an activity specially
carried out by those who are competent to do so. The existence of an author was
always taken for granted. When we did not know for sure who had created a
particular work, a large body of scholarship developed to figure out the identity of
the author. Also, scholarship, literary criticism and other related activities were
subordinate to literature. An act of critical appreciation was secondary to, next to,
even inferior to an act of creativity. Interpreting a work of art constituted the effort
of lesser mortals.

Also, there was something ineffable--inexpressible, unutterable, transcendent--about

the act of creation. Even Aristotle who gave us the view that art is an imitation of
life ended up suggesting a great deal more about the creative faculty than his concept
of literature as mimetic activity would otherwise suggest. In section iv of Poetics,
Aristotle distinguishes between the world of poetry produced through mimetic
activity and points out that ". . . the reason of delight . . . is that one is at the same
time . . . gathering the meaning of things." Aristotle returns to this gathering the
meaning of things through mimesis which produces poetry in section IX: "The poet's
function is to describe, not the thing that has happened but the kind of thing that
might happen . . . The distinction between the historian and poet is not in the one
writing prose and the other writing verse . . . it consists really in that one describes
the thing that has been, and the other a kind of thing that might be. Hence poetry is
more philosophical and graver in import than history, since its statements are of the
nature universals whereas those of history are singulars." Poetic imitation thus
becomes creative imitation because it is something more than the actual. In section
XVII Aristotle gives yet another dimension to the concept of mimesis by defining
the nature of the faculty involved in the art: "Hence it is that poetry demands a man
with a special gift for it or else with a touch of madness in him."
 Again, the concept of mimesis has to be appreciated also in terms of what is said Current Critical
about the structural aspect of a work of art. To Aristotl'e unity is what gives a poem Approaches to
or a drama its wholeness. And this question is also a question of beauty. In Section Hamlet
VII he says: ". . . to be beautiful, a living creature, and every whole lmade up of parts,
must not only present a certain order in its arrangement of parts but also be of certain
definite magnitude." So, mimetic activity involves an act of ordering, an act of
producing a new organism. Equally significant, in this context, is Aristotle's view
that characters should be described as they ought to be, and his insistence that poets
need not use language "such as men do use." No wonder the Greeks used the same
word for poet [creator=make~writer]as they used for God. Creativity was special
for sure, and depended on the creative abilities of very special, divinely gifted
individuals.

"Language such as men do use7'-Ben Jonson used the phrase for his choice of
diction for his highly mimetic poetic activity-right in the tradition of Aristotle.
Also established, as another major concept of Anglo-American tradition of literary
critical thought, was the fact that language is a transparent medium-a medium that
remains non-interfering, totally objective, a kind of container, a paper-bag which
receives from the giver what is given and remains available to yielti its contents,
totally untouched, unimpaired, or modified.

6.3 MODERN LITERARY THEORY S T R U C T ~ L I S M

In the sixties a new view of literary critical practice emerged ant1 almost all these
literary orthodoxies were subjected to intense scrutiny. The traditional view of the
significance of literature, the role of criticism, the value of language, the very notion
of an "author," the moral and aesthetic values of literature, and its cultural and
political context, literary history, literary biography: all these notions underwent a
sea-change. Modern literary theory changed the way we look at literature in more
ways than one through, as Rice and Waugh put it, "its unprecedenl.ed attack on the
grounding assumption of the Anglo-American critical tradition." Lets us look at
these major departures from the tradition one by one.

Structuralism. One of the most trenchant attach on the literary orthodoxies came
from the structuralists who chose as their primary concern "language" in its most
general sense. Literature, the followers of structuralism believed, does not reflect
reality or life through the medium of language: it is the product of language. In other
- words, literature is born out of language, not out of the rigours of life or living. The
site for literary works to be born out of is not life but words. As I have remarked
earlier, the view that that language is a transparent medium-a medium that remains
non-interfering, totally objective, a kind of container, a paper-bag which receives
from the giver what is given and remains available to yield its contents, totally
untouched, unimpaired, or modified-this view of language took a heavy beating.
Ferdinand de Saussure [ 1857- 19131 revolutionised thinking by rnaintaining that
words signify objects-the word 'table' refers to an object called 'table' only
arbitrarily and such denotation of any external reality has no conriection with any
inevitably absolute logic. All signs [=words] signify objects [=signifiers] which are
arbitrarily so equated.

Saussure observed:

Psychologically our thought-apart from its expression in words-is only a

shapeless and indistinct mass. Philosophers and linguist3 have always
agreed in recognizing that without the help of signs we would be unable to
Hamlet make a clear-cut, consistent distinction between two ideas. Without
language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula. There are no pre-existing
ideas, and nothing is distinct before the appearance of language.

And:

. . . the absolutely final law of language is . . . that there is nothing which can
ever reside in one term, as a direct consequence of the fact that linguistic
symbols are unrelated to what they should designate.

Also:

The arbitrary nature of sign explains in turn why the social fact alone can create
a linguistic system. The community is necessary if values that owe their
existence solely to usage and general acceptance are to be set up. . . .

Saussure also drew a distinction between a specific language (English, Hindi) and a
particular sentence, text or speech in a particular language as individually employed
by a user, as also between the language as a phenomenon to be identified (or studied)
through its growth and development, historically speaking, and a body or system of
language existing at any given point in time. Thinkers such as Claude LCvi-Strauss,
Noam Chomsky and Ronald Barthes contributed to structuralism by adding new
dimensions to it. LCvi-Strauss, for instance believed that the way human beings
interacted in society (the pattern of interaction or behaviour and other social
structures (=institutions) depended on the modes of communication that they
employed.

Based on his theory of language Saussure sought to develop a "general science of

signs" (Semiology). While structuralism grew out of Saussure's attempts to develop
semiotics, it spread its wings far and sought to examine a wide variety of cultural
phenomena. More than the "meaning" that Saussure sought to investigate through
the opposites in his "general science of signs," the structuralists were more
interested in understanding the conventions that make it possible to arrive at
"meaning," the conditions that make it possible for a language-and therefore
meaning-to arise in the first place, the communicative function of language. They
sought to define, describe and understand the system rather the its individual
manifestations. The desire to achieve this led Todorov to propose a general grammar
or poetics of literature. What the structuralists, then, aimed at was the general
principles as embodied in individual works. Form rather content was given pride of
place in this system. And a science of literature was sought to be developed. While a
unified system was sought to be developed, texts were treated as manifestation of the -
system in operation. Works of literature were, thus, divorced from their socio-
historical contexts. Structuralism, on the one hand sought to analyse a literary text,
and on the other, developed itself as method of understanding the conditions of
existence of literature (as a system) and a text (as manifestation of the system in
operation.

Structuralism more or less put an end to the notion that literary studies had to exist in
some kind of isolated vacuum even within the humanities. Literary studies were
now for sure interdisciplinary in nature. Now there was a larger context to put a
literary text in. But its supposed antihumanistic, overtly "scientific" attitude to the
study of literature and an attempt to create a "science" of literary studies drew great
hostility.

While structuralists looked for conditions that created meaning, and moved towards
an understanding of phenomena to which they sought to impart coherence and order,
(what Michel Foucault calls a "principle of unity"), the deconstructive discourse
 wished to point to, not the source of completer, comprehensive meaningful pictures, Currant Critical
but to the limits of the ability of discourse and understanding to impose such Approaches to
coherent patterns upon what apparently appeared as chaotic and folmless. Hamlet
Deconstruction aims at examining and questioning self-evident tmi;hs, and registers
its distrust of appropriating all new inexplicable phenome~cninto structuralist
models of meaningful order.

6.4 FEMINISM

There were, in fact, other pockets of dissatisfaction which led the questioning of the
long accepted principles on which the citadel of literature and literiuy studies rested.
Feminism was in the forefront of the demolition squad that sought to change the very
r-
texture of literature and literary studies. Endless expressions of the repressed and
agonised clarion call for arms included Simone de Beauvoir's who wrote in her
8-
highly influential The Second Sex (1949):

. . . humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him;
she is not regarded as autonomous being. . . . She is defined and di Fferentiated with
reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the
inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute-she is
the Other. . . . Woman lack concrete means for organising themse!ves into a unit
which can stand face to face with the correlative unif. They have no past, no history,
no religion of their own; and they have no solidarity of work and intersst as that of
the proletariat. . . . The proletariat can propose to massacre the ruling class, and a
sufficiently fanatic Jew or Negro might dream of getting sols possession of the
atomic bomb and making humanity wholly Jewish or black; but women cannot even
dream of exterminating the males. The bond that unites her to her oppressor is not
comparable to any other. The division of the sexes is a biological fact, not an event
in human history. . . . Q

Simone de Beauvoir sought to analyse the social construction of the gender and drew
attention to the distinction between gender and sex. Kate Millet's !;exual Politics
focused on the oppression of women under the patriarchial social s'ystem and the

sought to analyse the image of women in cultural representations such as literature.

While the development of the feminist view-point developed in many directions,
some of its manifestations were the result of uncritical hostility to the rising
. domination of women in various walks of society.

Let us look at the two widely familiar Indian novels and see how the principles of
feminist discourse have been understood by their authors and what kind of
application and treatment these principle receive in these two book~s.Feminism finds
itself treated in them rather overtly and deliberately and in many ways rather
simplicitly. In Kamala Markandaya's Nectar in a Sieve, the protagonist young
Rukmani's reactions to the world around her are motivated by a recognition that
life is for living and when the going gets tough the human mind rnust draw its
; strength from an unambiguous acceptance of the inescapable, and that the desire to
escape is anathema. Not to break-up or destroy, but to persist and. rebuild is what
life is about. Not self-pity but self-esteem is what human existence must derive its
sustenance from. Rukmani is endowed with an awareness of the possibilities of
life. She sees value in living. For her the act of living is important; life is important.
I
And therefore the question of woman's search for identity, meaning, alienation,
or fulfilAent in marriage within and without, must be part of the larger question of
53
Hamlet Markandaya's. strength lies in the fact that the female protagonist of her novel
emerges as a character whose engagement with the inevitable conflicts of life and
living do not take the form of vulgar dog-bite-dog situations so familiar from some
of the more recent feminist fiction. One can illustrate this point from the other
novels.

Shashi Deshpande's feminist heroine in her otherwise admirable and delightful

novel, That Long Silence, experiences, as the blurb goes, "[dlifferences with her
husband, frustrations in their seventeen year old marriage, disappointment in her
two teenage children, claustrophia [sic] of her childhood." One of the
episodes in which the female protagonist seeks to correct the imbalance of her
marital life is as follows:

"The keys," he says, holding out his hand.

But the woman, ignoring that importunate hand-it becomes that as he
continues to hold it out--takes some keys out of her bag and unlocks the
door. Still ignoring him she enters the flat. He continues to stand there for
a moment, the hand held out, it now looks like a supplicatory gesture, and then
he abruptly follows her in, closing the door firmly behind him.

She goes on to justify her action:

We all do it is part of family life. Rahul refusing to have his bath before
meals, Rati refusing to tell us who it was she was talking to on the phone,
Appa crushing a raw onion and eating it with relish. . . .

Deshpande's female--therefore discontented, suffering, and oppressed--

protagonist does not appear to struggle to find meaning, identity, or even escape
from a context that she finds antagonistic. She only has contempt for human
relationship. Her contempt for her husband who had ccreconciledto failure" in life
is motivated by her lack of understanding that to cushion an individual's failure
is what a family is all about. She is too narcissistically self-centred to appreciate her
contribution to a deteriorating relationship.

Thus even though the universe of Nectar in a Sieve is dominated by a protagonist

who is a woman and in which the authorial focus is on a woman's interaction--even
confrontation--with the world around her, that universe is not artificially narrow,
not sequestered, nor an insular world inhabited by insular characters. In their
anger to destroy the wrong that the world has done to woman, some of the feminists
have tended to ignore the fact that women are and have to be, and inescapably so,
part of the same universe. I have quoted Simone de Beauvoir's allusion to this point
earlier.
A world-view conditioned by the necessity of its having to be a feminist world
view distorts the nature of its objective. Rukmani, in Markandaya's novel, looks at
the world around her through the eyes of a human being: for her--and for her
creator--her being a woman remains incidental to her being a human being.

In That Long Silence woman's search for self, identity, and meaning so easily takes
the form of low comedy that genuine, finer issues of life and living and are soon
forgotten. What distinguishes Rukmani's character in her encounters with the facts
of life is that Markandaya proposes to project not the crude encounters of a life of
which one gets an inkling from Deshpande's award winning novel. Markandaya's
heroine responds to the drama of life in its entirety. She treats life as one, as a
whole in which man-woman relationship is only one aspect. Failure to appreciate
that life is larger than love, even sex, even man-woman relationship, leads to an
inadequate appreciation of the very nature and significance of human predicament.
L
Shashi Deshpande misjudges the import and significance of the Feminist movement Current Critical
and thought. Elaine Showlater, one of the most influential feminist writer, thinker Approaches to
and intellectual, even as she drew attention to the heavy sexist bias in the male Hamlet
I
dominated liberal tradition, believed that ultimately there is one human nature;
human nature encompassing both male and female human nature. There is, thus, a
1
I universal human nature. She treated literary tradition as a continuous, unbroken
chain despite the feminist interruption of this tradition that the radical feminists
I sought to achieve. It is interesting that despite Showalter's attempt to chart the
1 course of an alternative female literary tradition, and her belief that the female
, experience of life had something unique to offer, she was treated by more radical
feminists as affirming the orthodox beliefs.

Showalter pointed out how feminist criticism can be divided into two categories:
first type is concerned with women as reader: "consumer of male produced literature
. . . . It probes the ideological assumptions of literary phenomena. Its subjects
include the images and stereotypes of women in literature, the omissions and
k- misconceptions about women in criticism, and the fissures in male-constructed
literary history." The second kind of feminist criticism is concerned with women as
writer: "Its subjects include psychodynamics of female creativity, linguistics and the
problem of female language; the trajectory of the individual or collective female
literary career; literary history and, of course, studies of particular writers or works. .

Along with Simone de Beauvoir another influential name was that of Virginia Woolf
who in A Room of One's Own focused on the problems of the woman writer. She
concluded that lack of "a room of one's own'-implying a 1ac.kof a certain kind of
economic and social independence--meant that a woman's ambition in the area of
literature remained constrained. The literary forms had developed-"hardenedv--in
such a manner that they were not suitable for women to deal with or work through.

What feminism does not do, therefore, is to hit back-do unto men what women
have been done to: feminism as a movement is not an extended historical reverige
play that Shashi Deshpande makes this ideology out to be.

Like the Marxists, the feminists were concerned with the wider social and cultural
issues before turning to imaginative literature, and found much to be dissatisfied
about. As we can thus see, feminism developed not merely as a movement in
literature but developed in many directions. And one thing that they all had, and
have, in common for sure was, and is, intensity.

Briefly, feminist literary critics were concerned with women's experience as

presented in literature. They questioned the age-old dominant male phallocentric
ideologies and male evaluation of literature to the latter's advantage to perpetuate the
status quo. They questioned male notions of how women feel and think and act -
and by implication are supposed to feel and think and act. In short male prejudice
about women and the later stereotyping were attacked and questioned. Woemn ahad
been politically exploited and suppressed and the balance could be righted by
examining the socio-political issues and the political machinations behind these
issues.

6.5 MARXISM

It is common knowledge that Marx and Engels chiefly concerned themselves with an
appreciation of capitalist theory and mode of production and their primary interests
Hamlet were political, economical and philosophical. An aesthetic of art, literature or culture
was far from their minds, even though Marx always managed to say just the right
thing about classical, traditional literatures. But the followers of Marxist thought
who were concerned with literature, for instance, adapted "socialist" thought to put
together a theory of literature. The Marxist critic therefore responds to a work of
literature fiom the stand-point of Marx's political, economic and philosophical ideas.
Class-struggle is uppermost in his mind and socio-historical and socio-economical
factors shape the thought that is applied to a work of literature. As J. A. Cuddon '
points out: ". . . Socialist realism required a writer . . . to be committed to the
working class cause of the Party. And it required that literature should be
'progressive' and should display a progressive outlook on society. This necessitated
forms of optimism and realism. Moreover, literature should bedciiessible to masses.
. . ." And: "Modernism in Western literature was deemed to be decadent . . .
because it was, among other things, subjective, introverted and introspective and
displayed a fragmented vision of the world." The focus of a Marxist critic,
therefore, was on the content, rather than form and literary ingenuity was not valued.

6.6 PSYCHOLOGICAL CRITICISM

Ever since the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud has, so to say,
dominated the minds of literary critics in more ways than one. The gains from the
study and development of psychology as discipline were readily applied to literature.
Literature was psychoanalysed for a variety of reasons. It allows for disconnected,
syncopated structures and disparate apparently unconnected details in a narrative to
be appreciated as part of pattern. Psychological criticism also allows us to read
multiple interpretations of a work of art simultaneously. Recent reinvigorated
interest in Psychological criticism emerges from its appropriation by feminists and
deconstructionists, for example, to reach, and connect literary texts, with political
power, female sexuality and the curcent complex attitudes to language.

6.7 NEW LITERARY THEORY AND HAMLET

How have these developments changed our response to Shakespeare?

Let us start with how the use of feminist political ideology and the resultant literary
critical apparatus has influenced our reading of Shakespeare.

We must realize that when a literary ideology is the result of its having been borne
out of a political or socio-political ferment, literary-critical responses are naturally
conditioned by our appreciation of that ideology. The political agenda and the goal
of the feminist ideology was -one has to unfortunately simplify such matters to be
able to g o any further at all - to fore-ground, to lay bare, what always lay hidden, the '
suppression of the female self. If the repression, the silence, and the denial of
identity to a living human being by virtue of her gender has been the fate of women,
the political ideology of the feminist movement was and is to expose, question and
then compensate for the wrongs done to women. The literary splinter group of this --
movement seeks to examine literary texts with a view to performing a similar task:
the exposition bf the repression, the silence, and the denial of the identity to a living
human being by virtue of her gender, as found in literary texts. Women want be .
redefined and given true identities, not the identities men have chosen for them.
Men make women their points of reference. Wbmen should have the freedom to
define themselves as individuals rather than as symbols to suit men's preconceived
 notions of what women should stand for, become and contribute tc~a society that is Current Critical
determined thus, by the needs and desires defined by men. Literary texts in this Approaches to
context were treated as instruments of perpetuating the patriarchal ideologies. Hamlet

We have had a brief look at how the feminist ideology as part of the literary critical
movement as it developed and where it drew its sustenance from. Now we can turn
to see how a text like Hamlet gains or suffers at the hands of a feminist ideologically
committed critic.

One would not think Sh*akespearewould earn high marks at the hands of feminist
idealogues considering how totally conventional - patriachal - his depiction of, and
the resultant inherent attitude to women are. A number of major feminist scholar
critics have sought to examine women characters in Hamlet and have insisted on
drawing inferences that have frequently been at variance with what can be called
commonly accepted readings of those characters. There are a number of questions
that the feminist critics have focussed on to create a variant, politically correct
reading of Gertrude, for example. Rebecca Smith points out that the two major
accusations against Gertrude, that she is involved in the murder of her husband, and
that she had an adulterous relationship with her present husband even as her first
husband was alive can be easily examine in her favour. And yet, Gertrude has
always suffered at the hands of a tradition in which men wielded I he pen that wrote
their fate. Smith points out how the old kind Hamlet's Ghost makes no mention of
Gertrude's involvement in his muder. He accuses Claudius of taking his life but not
Gertrude. One could argue that the ~ h d swants
t his son to avenge his murder but at
the same time leave his one-time beloved wife to her conscience and her ill-
conceived actions to the judgement of the fate. Again, Gertrude never admits to her
guilt on account of her involvement in her husband's muder.

When she reacts to Hamlet's agression-

Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of innocent love
And sets the blister there, make marriage vows
As false as dicers' oath - 0 such a deed .. ..
(III.IV.40-45)
--her reaction-
Ay me, what act
That roars so loud and thunders in the index?

--underscores her innocence rather than anything else - certainly not any admission

' Rebecca Smith goes on to examine the second question, the one regarding Gertrude's
adulterous behaviour. The Old King Hamlet's ghost describes her as "...so
lust.. ./will sate itself in a celestial bed/And prey on garbage" (I. V.55-7) it would
seem to imply that at least the Ghost considers her guilty of an extra-marital
relationship. Even Bradley agrees with the ghost: "She did not merely marry a
second time with indecent haste: she was false to her husband while he lived."
Bradley also goes on to argue: "This is surely the most natural interpretation of the
words of the ghost .. coming as they do before his account of the murder."
(Shakespearean Tragedy)

Yet Smith would consider Gertrue totally innocent. All such reference to Gertrude's
behavibur could refer to her over-hasty marriage rather to her having had an
adulterous relationship with her present husband. All the biting innendoes could be
taken to mean that all those morally culpable actions took place after her second
marriage. There is a sharp and pointed comparison made between her first and
second marriage by the ghost. Also, seen through the eyes of Hamlet, whose father
it is who is wronged, at least in the eyes of the son, she would be considered guilty
even if she merely rejected her first husband by not mourning long enough for him ..
Hamlet has numerous references to inadequate mourning: Not enough tears are shed
for Ophelia, for Polonius, certainly not for old king Hamlet: ". ..a beast that wants
discourse of reason/Would have mourned much longer," (1.11.150-1) Hamlet regrets.

Smith insists that Hamlet's pain is at the speed with which she married his uncle,
disowning his father's name and memory and rejecting the life and time that she
spent as his wife and queen.

Lisa Jardine in her analysis of Gertrude's character maintains that Hamlet 's anger
stems from not the immoral haste with which she marries, but the fact that the
haste implies lust and it is this that led Gertrude to hastily embrace a man who then
became an obstacle between Hamlet and his ambition. After Hamlet--if he were to
remain childless it is now the first-born of Claudius and Gertrude who will inherit
the crown. Gertrude then should be viewed in the light of a theme of the play--
certainly not one of the central themes of the play but rather on the relative
periphery--in which she is portrayed as the target of much anger and aggression,
much of which is made to sound moral, self-righteous, and 'well-deserved."

As you would notice, an attempt to view Gertude as a victim rather than a guilt-
ridden, lustful, murderous women can present itself as an alternative reading of the
play in fully convincing and cogent terms.

6.8 LET US SUM UP

Similarly one can apply other critical approaches that we have briefly discussed
above to the play to arrive at conclusions that are totally different from the ones we
have studied so far. The post-colonial discourse, for instance, views Hamlet as a
symbol of the colonial-imperial hegemony and how in a climate marked by new
awareness, different cultures such as South Africa, for example, interpret Hamlet to
suit their new aspirations, as we have discussed in Unit V. The Marxists, the
structuralists, the deconstruction devotees, admirers of Freud and Lacan and many
more in-between, have give myriad ways of looking at Hamlet. And there are other
approaches that open up new vistas of thought and emotions leading to versions of
Hamlet that are so different from each other as Hamlet is from Waitingfor Godot.
But does that matter, indeed? After all there is a sense in which Hamlet is no
different fiom Waitingfor Godot.

6.9 BIBLIOGRAPHY

The following critical works may be consulted in addition to the books and articles
referred to in the body of the units.

Bloom, Harold. Ed. Major Literary Characters: Humlet, 1990.

Donnawerth, Jane. Shakespeare and the Sixteenth Century Study of Language, 1984.
Dusinberre, Juliet. Shakespeare and the Nature of Women, 1975; 1995.
 Eliot, T.S. "Hamlet" in Selected Essays, 1951. Current Critical
Approaches to
Foakes, R. A. Hamlet versus Lear, 1993. Hamlet

Michael Hattaway. "Hamlet ":The Critics ' Debate, 1987,

Maher, Mary Z. Modern Hamlets and their Soliloquies, 1992.

, M.M. Mahood. Shakespeare 's Wordplay, 1957.

Prosser, Eleanor. Hamlet and Revenge, 1967

Shakespeare Survey 45: Hamlet and its Afterlife, 1992.

Gary Taylor. Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural Historyffom the Restoration to

the Present, 1990.

Taylor, Neil. "The Films o f Hamlet" in Davies and Wells, eds., Shakespeare and the
Moving Image: The Plays on Film and Television, 1994.

Thompson, Ann and John 0. Thompson. Shakespeare, Meaning and Metaphor,

1987.

Tillyard, E. M.W. Shakespeare's Problem Plays, 1950.

 UNIT 1 THE DRAMATIC CAREER OF
BEN JONSON
Structure
1.0 Objectives
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Life and Works of Ben Jonson
1.3 Chronology
1.4 Cntical Extracts
1.5 Questions
1.6 Annotation Passages

1.0 OBJECTIVES

Our primary objective in this Unit is to offer a bird's eye view of i) the major phases
in Jonson's dramatic career and ii) landmarks in Jonson's biography so that his
achievements as an artist can be examined against the background of his time and his
involvement with thc theatre and fellow playwrights.

1.1 INTRODUCTION

' The growth and development of Ben Jonson, the dramatist, has been for a longtime
treated as following an apriori critical commitment, and therefore, linear in character.
A closer study indicates how restless Jonson was as an experimenter and how he
repeatedly did not adhere to a formula: He was not trapped by success. His career
appears to open a new chapter in the history of English drama because he c o n f d
on comedy a dignity unknown earlier.

-11.2 LIFE AND WORKS OF BEN JONSON

For students of British drama, Ben Jonson's career has a special interest partly
because he was the first playwright to whom plays mattered, partly because his life is
documented in greater detail than that of his fellow playwrights, and finally because
his plays seem to bear a direct relationship to developments in the theatre and to the
I
larger social milieu. While others acquiesced in the inferior rank accorded to plays as
i q)herneral and trivial, Jonson secured for the dramatic art its due place in serious
li~cnture.Johson's inclusion of his plays in the 1616 folio edition of his works is a
milestone in the history of the theatre. By thus elevating the status of plays, he
probably p v e d the way for the publication of the first folio of Shakespeare seven
years later. From this perspective, Jonson's two seminal observations on
Shakespeare,'Would he had blotted a thousand," and "He was not of an age but for
all time" may be said to inaugurate a new earnestness in the criticism of drama.
Joi~sonwas well known as an epigramatist, grammarian, and a writer of odes, lyrics,
mi masques. But this account focuses on his plays, and seeks to locate The
Alchemist against the wider canvas of his life and other plays selectively highlighted
in the accompanying 'Chronology'.

Tradition has it that Ben Jonson's ancestors hailed from Scotland. His gratrd - father
is said to have made the move from Carlisle to London and prospered for a while. In
The Alchemist: course of time, the family estate was lost and Jonson's father became a clergyman.
A Study Guide
Jonson himself was born probably in London in 1572 a month or so after his father's
death. With the re-mamage of his mother to a bricklayer, Jonson spent most of his
childhood in the vicinity of Charing Cross. In the face of his step-father's
indifference to academic pursuits, Jonson was fortunate enough to attend a private
school in St. Martin's church. Subsequently, in the Westminster School, he caipe to
the notice of his teacher, William Carnden, the eminent scholar and antiquary, the
first and foremost influence on the boy's career.

Jonson's schooling came to an abrupt end when he was about sixteen. For a while he
was apprenticed, against his wishes, in brick laying. Unable to proceed to Oxford or
Cambridge, he enrolled himself in the English Expeditionary Force, and fought in
Flanders in 1591-92. During a lull in the fighting, he killed in single combat an
enemy soldier "in the face of both the camps". Elizabeth Coo% brings out the
significance of this event: "The scene is an emblem of his life; the giant figure, a
party to neither faction, wamng alone in the classic manner before his awed
onlookers". Jonson's carrying back the weapons of the enemy as opima spolSa
x e v ~ ~ tthroughout
e s his many literary battles with rivals and foes. In 1594 he
married Anne Lawis who bore him a son and a daughter who died in their infancy.

Like most playwrights of his time, Jonson too seems to have begun his career as an
actor and a hack. An early version of A Tale of a Tub is-often assigned to 1596. In
1597 J~nsonfigures as 'a player" in the theatre manager, Philip Henslowe's Diary.
In the same year Jonson was sent to jail for his share in Thomas Nashe's "seditiousw
play, The Isle of Dugs. In 1598 the Children of the Chapel performed Jonson's The
Case is Altered. He probably considered them minor and did not, therefore, include
them in his Wbrks,but he revised the farmer play in 1633, four years before his
death. Jonson perhaps wrote a few tragedies which are lost, for Francis Meres
mentions him as a leading playwright, among "our best for tragedy".

EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR 1

I
The yeas 1598 appears quite e+entfil. His fist major play, Every Man in his Humour,
was staged by the Lord Chamberlain's Men at the Curtain theatre with Shakespeare
in the cast. Within a few months he was imprisoned in Newgate, this time for killing
the actor Gabriel Spencer in a duel. He turned a papist, and pleading benefit of
clergy, escaped hanging a h being branded on the thumb. On the curious situation
of Ben Jonson in 1598 right afkr his release, Herford and Simpson comment: :'he
went out of prison, a recusant, a W e d felon, and a pauper, but untouched in life
and liberty, inspired by a lofly intellectual ambition, and the author of the best
example of genuine comedy yet produced in England".

The original Florentine setting of Every Man in his Humour was changed to London
and the revised version was published probably in 1605 and the first to be included in
Jonson's works. The title provides a clue to Jonson's characterization from the
perspective of Renaissance physiology. The excess of a 'humour' or a fluid in the
body, viz.phlegm, choler, blood and black bail would produce phlegmatic, choleric,
sanguine, and melancholic temperaments. Thus was born the Comedy of Humours
and unforhmately his reputation as the virtual inventor of this genre eclipsed his
many-sided achievement. The humour of the merchant, Kitely is jealousy which is
roused during a visit of his brother-in-law Wenbred and his fiends. He suspects
them of dishWurab1e intentions against his wife, and his sister Bridget. Wellbred is
accompanied by his servant, Knowell, the mischief monger, Brainworm, his country
cousin, Stephen, besides, Bobadil the boastfhl soldier, and Matthew f& town gull.
Complications wise through the inordinate concern of Knowell's father for his son's
virtue, and the trapping of Kitely through luring him to discover his wife at the water-
house. Through Justice Clement's intervention de-humouring takes place and
wedding bells for Knowell and Bridget mark the close of the play.
 TheDnmatk Career - ,
The Prologue to the revised version of the play succinctly captures a programme for of Btn Jaason
comedy as he envisages it:

He rather prays you will be pleas'd to see

One such to-day, as other plays should be;
Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas,
Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please.. .
But deeds, and language, such as men do use,
And persons such as comedy would choose,
When she would show an image of the times.
The focus is unmistakably not on persons but follies in order to portrary
contemporary life realistically.

Io the very next year, 1599, The Lord Chamberlain's Men produced at the Globe,
Every Man out of his Humour, "a comical satire" as J o m n describes it, a truer and
more forthright expression of his views on the nature and function of comedy and
humour. Set in the "Fortraate Island", the play castigates the dramatis pasonat
explicitly through a prefatory note on "the characters of the personsH,Jonson,
suspecting that John Marston had ridiculed him in the sketch of the poet-philosopher,
Chrisogwus in Hktrio-Mustix parodied with characteristic deftness Marston's
affectations in speech. This incidental portrait marked the beginning of the War of
the Theatres which raged for the next three years, and Jonson's fbrther skirmishes are
celebrated in Cynthia's Rev& and The Poetaster. To Every Man out ofhis Hamour,
Marston responded with an unflattering portrait of Jonson as Brabant Senior in his
Jack Drum's Entertainment.

In Cynthia 's Revels staged by the Children of the Chapel in 1601, Jonson as Crites,
attacked Marston, and for some obscure reason Thomas Dekker too as Anaides and
Hedon respectively. The Queen's parhcipation was hinted in the early production by
the role of Cynthia. Marston, in turn, portrayed Jonson as the vainglorious Lampatho
Doria in What you will.

J m o n countered this attack with The Poetaster produced in the same year again by
the Children of the Chapel. In the self-portrait as Horace, he poured ridicule on
Marston and Dekker through the figures of Crispinusand Metrius. The former
was given an emetic so that he could throw up all his recondite vocabulary. W e r
exposed Jonson's arrogance and peculiarities of appearance in Satiromustix or tile
Unmasking of the Humorous Poet (1602). For his part Jonson appended 'The
Apologetical Dialogue" to the Foetuster, not an expression of regret, much 1- a
holding out of an olive branch

The War of the Theatres, "Poetomachia" as Dekker called it, made the children's
companies so popular in the city that adult groups had to seek a living in the
countryside. Shakespeare takes note of this recent innovation:

... there is, sir, an eyrie of children, littlpe eyases, that cry out on the top of
question and are most tyrannically clapped for't. These are now the fmhion,
and so berattle the common stages (Hamlet, II.ii).

The fame of Jonson became a settled thing. As M.C. &adbrook sums up, : 'She War-
established Jonson's reputation among the judicious: hence forth he was
'dramaticdm sut sacculi facile pripceps"'.

In spite of this success, Jonson found himself out of favour with the players,
playwright friends and some influential people. In poverty, and possibly because of
domestic discord, he left home to be with Sir Robert Townshend and later on with
Esrne' Stewart, Lord of Aubigny. He occupied himself with epigrams and.ha& work
on The Spanish Tragedy. In 1603 -he turned his hand to tragedy for the remom
mentioned in "The Aplogetical Dialogue".
 \ ' I

The Alchemist:
A Study Guide ... sipce the ~orr/ickmuse
Hath prou'd so Wnous to me, I will trie
If Tragedie will b v e a more kind aspect.

The result was Sejanus pfoduced by the King's Men in 1603. This scholtuly and
faithful re-creation of Raman life and history proved unpopular and was hissed off
the stage. In the contextof the conspiracy of Essex, he was summoned to appear
before the Privy Council on suspicion off dangerous satire but was let of. But
fortunately for Jonson, @ was called upon to compose a masque in 1604 by royal
favour. This launched him on a new phase of his career till the end of King James's
reign.

Jonson returned to the phblic stage with Eastward Ho! collaborating with Chapman
and Marston. For his shiare in poking fim at the Scots, they were hauled up by the
authorities, and w w r e l ~ s e dafter a brief period of imprisonment. Jonson's
voluntary smender bfdre the court has been noted by his biographers. His integrity
was such that with the v$ipingaway of suspicion, he was restored to favour. In 1605
he was commissioned td discover the conspirators behind the Gunpowder Plot,
though he m i n e d a dtholic.

Volpone, produced by h e Kings's Men at the Globe in 1606, marks a turning point in
Jonson's personal and pbfessional fortunes. During the next ten years, he wrote his
""mature comedies", acbording to most critics. To this period belong Epicoene, or
the Silent Woman, (160$), The Alchemist (1610) Bartholomew Fair (1614); the
monumental Worh (16!16),and the second tragedy Cutiline (I611).
I

The action of Yolpone dr the Fox is set in the 'home' of corruption, Italy. The play is
about cheating people, game in which the magnifico, Vol?one, pretends to be on his
deathbed in order to extract gifts from the hopefuls for his legacy. His servant Mosca
(the fly) lures the lawycjr Volpone (the vulture) the merchant Corvino (the raven) and
others.

Greed is the mast& thefie of Volpone, a power degrading man and making him sink
to the sub-human level.) The animal symbolism lends the characters a fierce energy
through a reversal of thk fabliaux mode. For the dominant notes of Jacobean London
affluence and acqhisitixeness, Janson finds a parallel in Renaissance Venice
Volpone's feigning irqically mirrors a deep sickness, matched by the depravity of
the gulls, notably that df the merchant willing to prostitute his wife. Even more
impressive than Volpofie's apostrophe to gold, and his sensuality is his irresistible
love of acting, of dissi~ulation.The English visitors, Sir Politick - would - be and
his Fine Madame provide the necessary foil. The element of spectacle is exploited
theatrically. In investi@geccentricity with a rare intensity Jonson sucCeeds in
depicting characters *en by an obsession.
I

After a lapse of three ybars Jonson returned to the stage with his Epicoence, acted by
the Children of the Qutjen's Revels in 1609. The noise-hating miser, Morose is on
the lookout for a silent woman as his wife. Assisted by his nephew, Sir Dauphine, he
does succeed but very briefly. His wife, after marriage, turns out to be a loud
mouthed chatterer, and1worse, a boy who is passed off as the bride. With the
restoration of the inheritance to his nephew, Morose obtains his release. Dryden
chose this play as the *ode1 of excellence in his "Examen" and the play has been,
since then, a favourite with theatre goers.
I

THE ALCHEMIST i I

I
From the monomaniack of these two plays, Jonson turns to sketching an acquisitive
society in The Alchembt produced by the King's Men in the year of the plague, 1610.
I
I
,
 The Dramatic Career ,
Chicanery is the effect rather than the cause of the mischief in this comedy. Alchemy of Ben J'onsom I
I
is employed as a metaphor for man's proneness to be gulled. Many critics consider
this his best, if not the best in the English language. Lovewit, the master is away in
the country, the servant, Captain Face colludes with Subtle, the quack, and Do1
Common, the whore, to defraud a number of gulls through promising to fulfil their
fond hopes for wealth, youth, business success, lovnand so on. The sudden return of
Lovewit forces the cheats to flee, abandoning their earnings. Jonson's comic realism,
whether it be in the varied jargon of diverse professions, the evocation of the
Blackfiiars neighbourhood, the mastery of the alchemical know-how, or the
numerous topical references, locates the play firmly in Jacobean London. Yet its
universal appeal, despite occasional obscurity of phrase, has remained unrivalled.
The morality of lovewit's appropriating Dame Pliant to himself, the resolution of the
play's action, has been much debated. The play's enormous and enduring success in
the theatre is indisputable. The unforced economy of the action, the immense
improvisation demanded of the actors and the sustained threat of exposure contribute
to its power on the stage.

At the pinnacle of his fame, Jonson decided to return to tragedy, a genre in which he
apparently failed earlier. Catiline was acted by the King's Men in 161 1, and was a
failure on the stage. Most of the next year, Jonson spent in Europe as tutor to
Raleigh's son.

BARTHOLOMEW FAIR

In 1614, Bartholo?newFair was performed by the Lady Elizabeth's Men at the Hope.
More loosely structured than his earlier comedies, the wide canvas of the play reflects
a greater variety of characters and motives. While in The Alchemist Jonson seems to
be more on the side of the cheats than that of the gulls, a greater balance is evident in
Bartholomew Fair. The presiding deity, so to say, of the Fair, Ursula, the Pig
Woman, errs on the side of h i l t y and has a touch of Falstaff about her. Another
contrasting feature is that while in The Alchemist the impression of many characters is
an illusion produced by the cheats, the cast of Bartholomew Fair is quite large
befitting its social realism. The rogues here have been aptly compared to Hogarth's
in vivacity, especially the horse-trader Knockhun, the prostitute aptly named Punk
Alice, and the pickpocket Edgeworth. The play set the tone for the Restoration
Comedy of Manners.

The publication of Jonson's Works in the folio edition of 1616 is considered a

milestone in English drama. Jonson left out his ventures prior to Every Man out of
his Humour and chose for some mysterious reason not to include Bartholomew Fair
also. Among the plays in this edition are: Every Man out of his Humour, Cynthia 3
Revels, The Poetaster, Sejanus, Volpone, Epicoene, The Alchemist, and Catiline. The
revision, often an expansion of some of the plays, reflects Jonson's scrupulousness in
matters of detail.

Soon after the publication of his Works, the King's Men produced The Devil is an
Ass. This play along with The Staple of News (1626),The Magnetic Lady (1632), and
A Tale of a Tub ( 1 633) is ranked by Dryden and a number of critics among Jonson's
"dotages". Recent critical evaluations of these plays have, however, highlighted
Jonson's refusal to follow the beaten track and the surprising freshness of the pastoral
and nostalgic elements in the late plays.

Jonson had already been awarded a pension of 100 marks annually by King James.
As F.H. Mares notes, "In the first decade of James's reign begins the transformation
of Asper ---- into 'Father Ben', the corpulent literary dictator, compelling the
admiration of the best brains in London at a love-feast in the Devil tavern". Jonson
undertook a walking tour of Scotland in 1618, and stayed briefly with William
Drummond of Hawthornden who recorded his conversation, a not totally reliable
record. On his return to England he was awarded an honorary M.A. degree by
Oxford University, a gesture unparalleled till today. Herford and Simpson rightly
The Alclrernist: observe: I t was a tribute, rare in the history pf the University before or since, to a
A Study Guide great scholar-poet who owed nothing to Universities".

i
The decline in Jonson's fortunes is evident in a series of calamities. In 1623, a fire
reduced to ashes the b a o h and manuscripts in his personal library. Five years later,
he suffered a stroke and was paralysed. Still, he continued to write. When he died on
August 6, 1637,,theinscription on his tomb, "0rare Ben Jonson!" captures the
popular image of the man and the playwright, more than any long-winded tribute.

Jonson's career spanning the closing years of Queen ~lizabeth'sreign and those of
Charles I has been stereotyped as a linear development till 1616, followed by a
decline. Anne Barton challenges this theory and rejects the alleged Jonsonian
consistency as too simplistic an explanation. She underscores Jonson's flair for
creative adventure, his rare sensitivity to the shifting pressures of his time and his
deliberate refusal to be trapped by success into repeating a "formula". Ranking
Volpone,Epicoene, The Alchemist and Bartholomew Fair among Jonson's great
works, she undertakes a revaluation of his later plays and notes in them a return in
depth to older forms and a new pervasive tone of nostalgia. The dotage theory, she
atgues, does not account for the freshness of the unfinished The Sad Shepherd.
Jonson's enormous creativity in the non-dramatic verse of this period is cited as
further justification.

David Riggs views Ionson the man as Rabelaisian in egotism, ever compulsively
driven by persistently ne&otic impulses. He cites as evidence Jonson's boasts, duels
and imprisonment. In a striking contrast is the artist, ever in control of method and
material, employing humour and the act of writing primarily for their therapeutic
h c t i o n . Recent assessments including those of Marquette Chute, Claude J.Summers
and Ted-Larry Pebworth and others endorse Anne Barton's re-mapping of the pattern
of Jonson's dramatic career.

13 CHRONOLOGY

1572 (June Birth of Ben Jonson

11)
1572 Mother's marriage to a brick layer
Favourite pupil of William Camden
Apprentice bricklayer
Enrolment in English Expeditionary Force
Mames Arme Lewis
Draft of A Tale of a Tub
Mentioned by Henslowe
Collaboration on The Isle of Dogs
Imprisonment
The Care is Altered performed by the Children of the Chapel.
Every Man in his Humour peflonned by the Lord Chamberlain's
Men at the Curtain
Hailed as "The best for Tragedy" by Francis Meres.
Killing Gabriel Spencer
Imprisonment
Claiming benefit of clergy
Becomes a Catholic
E x 9 Man our of his Harm- perfmed by the Lord Chamberlain's
Men at the Globe
Cynthia 's Revels performed by the Children of the Chapel
Poetaster performed by the Children of the Chapel
Living in the home of Lord Townshend
Patronage of Esme.Stewart, Lord D'Aubigny
 T h e Brarn&ic Career
Sejanus performed by the King's Men of Bern 30nsr)n
Charge of Treason - imprisonment.
Invitation to write a Masque
Eastward Ho! in collaboration with Chapman and Marston,
performed by the Queen's Revels at the Blackfriars
Revised version of Every Man in his Humour acted by the King's
Men
Volpone acted by the King's Men at the Globe.
Epicoene acted by the Children of the Queen's Revels
Tke Alchemist acted by the King's Men
Re- ti, the Anglican Church
Catiline acted by the King's Men
Continental tour as tutor to Ralegh's son
Bartholomew Fair performed by the Lady Elizabeth's Men
Works - the folio edition
The Devit is an Ass performed by the King's Men at the Blackfriars.
Walking tour to Scotland.
Honorary Master of Arts - Oxford University

Library destroyed in a fue

Virtual Poet Laureate
"Sons of Ben" like Robert Herrick meet in the Apollo Room of the
inn, The Devil d St. Dunstan
Death of King James
Return to public stage under Charles I
The Staple of Navs performed by the King's Men at the B1ackfi.m.
Paralysis
The Nau Inn acted by the King's Men at the Blackfriars
The Magnetic Lady acted by the King's Men at the Blackfriars
A Tale ofa Tub, revised and acted by the Queen's Men
Death -burial in Westminster Abbey.

i 1.4 CRITICALEXTRACTS

M.C. BRADBROOK

The introduction to Every Mun out of his Humour, his fmt manifesto, contains a
definition of his new type of comedy, and a justification of his departure from
classical models. At the same time he sought constantly to defend his Art, so that the
introductions, epilogues and incidental comments in his plays furnish the most
complete theory of the drama which the age produced, based not upon scholastic
arguments but upon practical experience.

CLAUDE J. SUlbSfMERS AND TED-LARRY PEBWORTH

I
-
Although his final plays were neither popular nor critical successes, they represent
continued experimentation with theatrical form. When he died, he left an unfinished
1 manuscript of a pastoral dram The Sad Shepherd, perhaps his most lyrical dramatic
composition. He continued writing non dramatic poetry in his last years, tao, and his
final poems show no great diminution of poetic power. Perhaps most remarkably,
they avoid despair and sentimentality, embracing instead quiet dignity and gentle
humor.

RENUJurnA

Jonson began with the traditional New Comedy, largely affirmative in its.conclusion,
moved to satire, thence to irony, and finally concluded with comedies which have
 1 t

The Alchemist: rich symbolic and ritudistic overtones....Insofar as Jonson's world view is
A Study Guide consistent, his norms of judgement constant, his universe may be said to be
unchanging.

HERFORD AND SNPSON

But no earlier British pbet had so truly reigned, or been commemorated at his
passing, with honours signal, on purely literary grounds, as Jonson... A square
flag of blue marble wad alone to be seen,rudely inscribed with the legend: '0rare
.
Ben Jonson'. . That brief vernacular ejaculation, so naively huinan in its contrast
with the sententious Latin epitaphs around conveys the impression made by Jonson
upon his age more vividly than arty formal obituary... The Jacobean world saw in
this doughty champion lof unpopular traditions the most incisive individual
personality, the m s t cdmmanding personal force which had, within its memory,
mingled in the world oftletters. For it, he was not the as-or of commonplace, but
the 'rare', the incomparbble, the unique, Ben Jonson.
i

F. H.MARES (1967)
I

He was a public figure, a man of strong (sometimes overbearing) character, arrogant,

opinionated, disputatiorls, convivial, but of great courage, honesty, and integrity, and
.
surprising tenderness arld delicacy of feeling.. This independence is like Jonson's
own, who served the cop3 for years without ever seriously compromising his own
integrity, who could be$ fkom great men or dedicate to great ladies in a tone that
never allows complimedt to decline into flattery. When Jonson pr-d his text for
the printer of the folio hk did not writc in all the details of stage-business, especially
.
if they were clear fkom the dialogue.. It is the assumption of this edition that the
1616 folio represents Jowon's considered intention...
I
D.H.CRAIG
I

In the early part of his cheer, when he was establishing himself as a writer of
humorous comedies and as the English Horace, his emphasis is positive, stressing the
reforming and innovatid aspects of his drama. In 1605, in his Volpone prologue
Jonson defines his allegi@ce to classicism negatively, as an act of opposition to
.
contemporary popular dlturc.. The failure of Sejonus on stage in 1605 was the key
event in this development it.

D.V.K. RAGHAVACHaRYULU

Ben Jonson's famed edition was thus organic and functional to his world - view of
which all his work as a +matist was paradigmatic. In his understanding of tradition
and individuality, Ben Johson is astoundingly modem,which explains the recent sea-
change in his critical recytion, long overshadowed by the Shakespeare Goliath.

I
1. What was Jcmson's cdntribution to the status of plays in England?
2. Write notes on : a) Cdmedy of Humours, b) The War of the Theatres.
3. Sketch the personalid of Jonson.
4. Why did so many of bnson's plays, in spite of their success, involve him in
I
controversies ?
5. Comment on ons son'$stated goals in the realm of comedy.
6. What are the aspects c)f Jacobean society depicted in Jonson's plays 3
7. Identify the concerns yf Jonson's mature comedies. /
8. How was Jonson treated by men of letters in his last days?
I
1
I
5 . Point out the nature of recent assessments of Jonson's career. The Dramtic Career
I 0. What was Jonson's contribution to the status of plajs in England? of Bexi Jonst~n

-
-1..6 ANNOTATION PASSAGES
Pmotate the following passages with reference to context.

i)~ But I shall put you in mind, sir, at Pie Comer,

Taking your meal of stem in from cooks' stalls,
Where; like the father of hunger, you did walk
Piteously costive, with your pinched-horn nose,
And your complexion of the Roman wash,
Stuck full of black and melancholic wonns,
Like powder-corns shot at the artillery yard.

ii) When all your alchemy and your algebra,

Your minerals, vegetals, and animals,
Your conjuring, cozening, and your dozen of trades,
Could not relieve your corpse with so much linen
Would make you tinder, but to see a fire,
I ga' you count'nance, credit for your coals,
Your stills, y o u glasses, yow materials,
Built you a furnace, drew you customers,
Advanced all your black arts; lent you, beside,
A house to practise in -

iii) No, your clothes.

Thou vermin, have I ta'en thee out of dung, .
So poor, so wretched, when no living thing
Would keep thee company but a spider or worse?
Raised thee from brooms and dust and watering pots?
Sublimed thee and exalted thee and fixed thee
I' the third region, called our state of grace?
Wrought thee to spirit, to quintessence, with pains
Would twice have wan me the philosophers' work?
Put thee in words and fashion? Made thee fit
For more than ordinary fellowships?

iv) Nor any melancholic underscribe,

Shall tell the Vicar; but a special gentle,
That is the heir to forty marks a year,
Consorts with the small poets of the time,
Is the sole hope of his old grandmother,
That knows the law, and writes you six fair hands,
Is a fine clerk, and has his ciphering perfect,
Will take his oath, o' the Greek Testrnent,
If need be, in his pocket, and can court
% His mistress out of Ovid.

vi) The spirits of dead Holland, living Issacyo

You'd swear were in him; such a vigorous luck
As cannot be resisted. 'Slight, he'll put
Six o' your gallants to a cloak, indeed.'

vii) 0,good sir!

There must a world of ceremonies pass,
You must be bathed and h i g a t e d first;
 I

The Akkemist: Besides, the Queen of Fairy does not rise

A S I d y Gu&ie Till it be noon.

viii) This is my friend, Ahl, an honest fellow

He lets me have good tobacco, and he does not
Sophisticate it with sack-lees or oil,
Nor washes it in muscadel and grains,
Nor buries it in gravel underground,
Wrapped up in greasy leather or pissed clouts,"
But keeps it in fme lily-pots, that opened,
Smell like c o n m e of roses, or French beans.'
He has his maple block, his silver tongs,
Winchester pipes, and fire of juniper."
A neat, spruce, honest fellow, and no goldsmith.'

ix) By a rule, Captain,

In metoposcopy, which I do work by,
A certain star i'the foehead, which you see not.
Your chestnut or your olive-coloured face
Does never fail, and your long ear doth promise
I knew't by certain spots too, in his teeth,
And on the naif of hi$ mercurial finger.

x) The thumb, in chimany, we give Venus;

The forefinger b Jowe; the midst, to Satum;
The ring to Sol; the least, to Mercury:
Who was the lord, sir, of his horoscope,
His house of life being Libra, which foreshowed,"
He should be a m h a n t , and should trade with balance.

xi) ...There is a ship now, coming from OmKls,O

That shall yield him such a commodity
Of drugs --This is the west, and this the south?

xii) Why, now, y w smdky persecuterof nature!

Now do you see that something's to be done,
Besides your beechicoal and your corsive waters,
Your crosslets, m ~ i b l e sand
, cucurbites?
You must have stuff brought home to you to work on?

xiii) This is the day I am to perfect for him

The magisterium, aur great work,the stone:
And yield it, made, into his hands: of which
He has this month talked as he were possesed.
And now he's dealing pieces on? away.

xiv) Methinks I see him entering ordinaries,

Dispensing for the pox; and plaguy houses,
Reaching his dose; walking NToorfitlds for lepers;'
And offering citizens' wives pomander-braceletso
As his preservative, made of the elixir;
Searching the spiqle, to make old bawds young;
And the highways for beggars to make rich.

xv) He will make

Nature ashamed of her long sleep, when art,
Who's but a stepdame, shall do more than she,
In her best love to mankind, ever could.
Sf his dream last, he'll turn the age to gold.
 UNIT 2 JONSONIAN COMEDY AND THE
ALCHEMIST
Structure

2.0 Objectives
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Jonsoniatl Comedy and The Alcher?zist
2.3 Critical Extracts
2.4 Questions
2.5 Annobtion Passages

2.0 OBJECTIVES

In this unit an attempt is made to (I) trace the origins of ~ n ~ l i comedy,

sh a divided
stream, (2) contrast Shakespearian and Jonsonian comedy, (3) identify the rival
traditions of acting and (4) sketch the interaction between the native morality
tradition and the classical comic structure.

2.1 INTRODUCTION

The appreciation of Jonsoniancomedy has been complicated by (1) confining his

contribution to the virtual invention of the genre, Comedy of Humours, (2) undue
emphasis on his classical erudition and (3) alleging the want of a Shakespearian
spontaneity of spirit. Moreover, Jonson's occasional observations on the nature and
function of comedy, dispersed, as they are, throughout his plays do not offer a
consistent conception of comedy except through an over simplification. Jonson's
defining of the impact of his Satmc comedy is fGher highlighted through attention
to the Prologue to The Alchemist. Jonsonian Comedy is examined in its literary
social and economic dimensions.

2.2 JONSONIAN COMEDY AND THE ALCHEMIST

The appreciation of lo&onian comedy is hindered by the misconceptions about his

contribution. On account of the enormous popularity and the notoriety following the
production of f very ~ a in kHis Humour and Every Man out ofHis Humour, he &l
been dubbed as the virtual inventor of the new genre, the Comedy of Humours. In
fomlating this form of comedy, jonson was not attempting to validate his
characterization by reference to Renaissance notions of physiology. He was
I-ephrasing the function of comedy in terms acceptable, to the hostile Puritans. By
underscoring the therapeutic character of de-humouring, and by re-directing attacks
1?om persons towards follies and foibles, Jonson sought for his comic experiments a
F
raison d'etre. The point is well raised by Hany Levin when he observes: ''The
induction to Every Man Out ofHis Humour sets forth the full argument for comedy
i as a social purgative. It is perhaps as relevant to Jonson's work as psychoanalysis is
. to the dramas of Eugene O'Neill."

. A literal interpretation of the theory behind the Comedy of Humours would also
result in the distortion of Jonson's characters. In spite of the mode of caricatuie
Jonson adopts, his characters possess an astonishing range of distinguishing traits and
The Alchemist: an undeniable vitality. ~ a r m bconceived,
l~ the Comedy of Humours affords' scope
A Study Guide only for four characters in foyr moulds. Bobadil and Kitely, Brainworm and
Wellbred defy stereotyping. Jonson employs "humour" to mean a fad, a fashion, an
affectation as well.

Often Jonson's erudition is considered a liability. The star pupil of the eminent
scholar, William Carnden, had no rivals for learning among the writers of his time.
For some mysterious reason, buperior knowledge has been held to be the enemy of
creative spontaneity. The faiiure of Sejarttrr is instructive, for this is wrongly
attributed to Jonson's fidelity' to Roman sources. All claims to originality are
summarily di'smissed primarily because of Jonson's scholarship. Even Dryden is
guilty on this coht. L.C. Wights observes: "Dryden said of him (Jonson) that he
was a learned plagiary of all the ancients: 'you track him everywhere in their snow'.
But this, the common view, $iolently distorts the sense in which Jonson is
'traditional'. It completely l$des the native springs of his vitality".

By sheer bulk, Jonson's obstjwatioris on comedy dispersed through his numerous

prologues, epilogues, and debates in the course of the War of the Theatres, present a
formidable critical corpus. qy
nature occasional, their significance has a specificity,
and taken out of context the%tend to appear inconsistent and self-contradictory. This
is not to deny him a critical dtance of his own which has undergone creative
mutations over a span of mote than three decades. For instance, the mimetic and
pragmatic aspects of ~onsonlscomic theory can be fallaciously made out to be polar
opposites. I

One way of defining ~onsoniancomedy is to contrast it with Shakespearian Comedy.

The dramatic world of JonNn is peopled by citizens, and in the absence of loving
relationships it seems to deserve and demand "a harsh ethic". On the other hand, in
Shakespeare there is greaterinteraction among men and women of all walks and
stations of life, and the spirit of understanding appears to be pervasive. Hardly any of
Shakespeare's creations is "jncapable of a generous impulse". Hence, Shakespearian
comedy has been labelled as/ sweet and romantic, and Jonsonian comedy as bitter and
satiric. Much mischief was paused by linking the hues of the world of the plays to
the temperament of thq plawight.
I

Rightly understood, neither Shakespeare nor Jonson was offering through his
dramatic world clues to his temperament. Both were adopting earlier traditions, the
Medieval and the Renaissanbe versions of comedy were derived ultimately fiom the
Latin grammarians of the foprth century. Making up for the paucity of theories of
comedy, they viewed trage4 as an illuminating foil. Since tragedy dealt with kings
and generals and portrayed 4 movement from happiness to calamity, comedy had to
be peopled by private people and trace the movement from wretchedness to
happiness. Unlike in tragedy, life in comedy is not to be dreaded but embraced.,
Vices and follies are to be phished. Thus, elements of the Romantic comedy and of
the Satiric co-existed originblly The Romantic elements surfaced early, i.e. in the
Middle Ages; The Satiric lak underground for a long time to become prominent only
in the Renaissance, and ~onsoniancomedy is a characteristically Renaissance
manifestation. It is Shakes&are's Romantic Comedy which harks back to the
medieval times, to genial Cbaucer. The difference between the two traditions is quite
radical. I

When Asper, a spokesman for Jonson, states his aim in the introduction to Every Man
in His Humour, I
I

Well I will scourge those apes:

And to those courteous eyes,oppose a mirror,
As large as is the shge, whereon we act:
Where they shall sye the time's deformity
Anatomiz'd in eveqy nerve, and sinew,
With constant couwge, and contempt of fear
he echoes the views of Renaissance theorists like George Whetstone: "For by the Jonsonian Comedy
reward bf the good, the good are encouraged in well doing: and with the scourge of
the lewd, the lewd are feared from evil attempts;" and Sir Philip Sidney, "Comedy is
an imitation of the common errors of our life, which he represents in the most
ridiculous and scornful sort may be; so as it is impossible that any beholder can be
content to be such a one."

In tune with its quinessential corrective function, Jonsonian comedy deals with
contemporary movements, real life figures and pastimes. When L.C. Knights I
remarks, "Of the dramatists handling social themes Jonson is undoubtedly the
greatest", he has in mind the gulls and the cheats of a society governed by the
acquisitive.impulse. Though it is true that the gulls call into being the cheats, and
that Jonson's satire is directed against the cozeners, the individuals drawn fiom
varied occupations really present a cross-section of society. A pageant of vices is
transformed into an all devouring organism, and both gulls and cozeners are unified
by their ruthless individualism and obsessive acquisitiveness. The clerk and the .
churchman, the shopkeeper and the countryman are welded by their greed and lust.

As a keen observer of nascent capitalism, Jonson documented social change, notably

the rise of the new merchant class, dispossessing traditional landed aristocracy.
Jonson's concern for realism for "deeds and language such as men do use"1s well
known. In portraying contemporary manners, he was not content to provide a mere
reflection. For Jonson, imitation and mirroring involved praise and blame, i.e. taking
a moral stand. The playwright did not adopt the moral standard of the emerging
world of entrepreneurs, nor did he express a merely personal code. His standards of
moral judgement were indeed from an earlier era, summed up in M.C. Brabrook's
phrase "the traditional economic morality inherited from the Middle Ages".
1
The opening note of the play, the involuntary and habitual projection of three tiers of
self-images by the cozening triumvirate, Subtle, Face and Do1 constitutes a parody of
leading social institutions: in their "republic", Subtle is the "sovereign," Face, the
"general" and Do1 their "cinque port" and before they call a truce, they are but a cur,
~
a mastiff, and a bitch, and alternately, "Bawd!", "Cowherd!", "Conjurer!"
"Cu~urse!"and "Witch!" The abuses hurled at each other and the ranks they assign I

themselves illustrate the range of roles they can play. 1

Since the playwright's relationship with the players is a vital dimension of the
former's career, Jonsonsian comedy had to interact significantly with acting styles of
the time. There was the tradition of the Revels, which included mimes and spectacle,
and brought actors and audience close to one another. There was also the courtly,
academic, learned tradition heavily leaning towards rhetoric, and declamation on
moral themes. The former lacked shape and structure for it presented isolated scenes
I
loosely connected. The latter lacked flexibility and spontaneity. Satiric drama,
Jonsonian drama called for the greatest interaction between actors,and audience, and
flourished however briefly because of a fortuitous circumstance - "The momentary
fusion of the popular and learned traditions, the temporary interaction of two modes
:'which were not compatible."

The nature and function of Jonsonian comedy was enunciated in Cicero's dictum
cited in the inroduction to Every Man Out ofHis Humour: "Comedy is an imitation of
1
life, a mirror of manners and an image of truth". Imitation involved interpretation,
mirroring some degree of evaluation, and imaging a certain measure of permanence.
Jonsonian comedy because of its focus on the momentous changes of'his time makes
~
us aware of "a great reorientation of attitude", which according to L.C. Knights,
anticipates our own anxieties and concerns. It is the double focus bf Jonsonian
comedy on things as they are and as they ought to be, rather than his scholarship,
which is of the essence of his 'classicism'.
 The Alchemist: In the prologue to The ~lchemist,Johnson envisages "fair correctives" beyond "The
A Study Guide rage 1 Or spleen of comic Witers." The foibles of the contemporary scene are to be
presented in their essehce, their universal dimension with such realism that
individuals may not be able to recognise themselves.

If there bel any, that will sit so nigh

Unto the stream, to look what it doth run,
They shall find things, they'd think, or wish, were done,
They are so eatutrll follies, but so shown4
As even the doers may see, and yet not own.

Correction is to be brought about not by exposure to consequences of specific

manners, vices, or humouis, but by the ineffable impact of the deeper, universal
dimension of folly. That is why the doer may not own his deed.

2.3 CRITICAL EXTRACTS

J.B. Steane
This does not mean that Jqmson is an irresponsibk moralist here, or that The
Alcheaist is 'mere' entedimnent. It is a very highly organised, sharply pointed
moral comedy, but its sting is directed not so much at the exploiters as at the society:
which by its greed and fogy is so open to exploitation...The gulls are so varied-as to
show in cross-section a wciety led by greed and lust to folly and loss. The nobleman,
the countryman, the little klerk, the churchman, the small shopkeeper: Jonson's net is
cast widely enough over society to take in all these.. . What might have been a
para& of assorted vices giains unity and purpose from the motive that is common to
all of them: an obsessive desire for easy money. In this way the play does more than
offer a rich collectian of s~tiricalportraits; it depicts a whole society, ruthlessly
individualistic and acquisitive, and ultimately deluded and impoverishetiby its own
false values... Greed for wealth is so much the unifying factor in The Alchemist that
it almost seems an end in hself, but Sir Epicure reminds us that the play's attack
extends to the delusive ways of life that folk propose to themselves as ends. Here
Mammon is the means; the complete Epicure the end. The bed and the table become
the twin centres of life.

Michael Jamieson
Professor Nevi11 Coghill has usefully demonstrated that two traditions of comedy
existed in Elizabethan tims, with different antecedents, both stemming from
theoretical reversals of Aiistotle's notions of tragedy. Romantic Comedy begins with
wretchedness and the threat of danger but ends happily. Satiric Comedy teaches by
exposing the errors of ciw folk. Shakespeare, and Jonson, Professor Coghill argues
exemplify the two comic forms:.. The quality of a Jonsonian Comedy, however, lies
not only in its conswtion and in its presentation of character as obsession, but also
in its language. The master-theme in Jonson's satirical comedies is human folly,

L.C. Knights (1937)

... the material on which the dramatists work - in comedy and history play - is drawn
from-has an immediate reference to the movements, the significant figures of
contemporary life: the satire on usurers, the profiteers and the newly rich, on social
ambition and the greed for money, can be abundantly illustrated. And the social
interest that are drawn onare not those of one class alone.. . Of the dramatists
handling social themes Jonson is undoubtedly the greatest... In his handling of
18 ambition, greed, lust, acquisitivenessand so on he implicitly, but clearly, refers to a
I more than personal schenie of values. Jonson m short was working in a tradition.
 Jonsunian C'omedy
What we have to determine is where that tradition ' c a m from'. .. These significant
developments- most of them were aspects of the growth of capitalism; and company-
promoting, 'projecting' and industrial enterprise certainly formed an important part of
the world which Jonson and his fellows observed, the world which gave them their
knowledge of human nature. The Elizabethan drama owed, if not its existent
, patronage of the governing class, a class drawing its wealth mainly from the land and
conscious of the encroachment of the 'new man' of commerce and industry.

M.C. Bradbrook.
Sweet and bitter comedy, rmantic and satiric comedy, or Shakespearean and
Jonsonian comedy have all been used as terms of description for the two main
divisions, of which the first may be said to be characteristically Elizabethan, and the
second Jacobean .... Behind Elizabethan drama there lay at least two modes of acting
first, the tradition of the revels, whether country or popular, and all that these implied

i of intimate collaboration between actors and audience... Second, the learned tradition
of rhetorical and satiric drama upon moral themes, built up in the schools and
universities, found expression in an even more intimate private presentation.. .When
these two traditions coalesced, the great age of Elizabethan drama began. Jonson was
bold in his readiness to mudifL classical precept, he admired the native tradition, and
1 the form which he evolved was as far removed from the pedantic as it was fiwn the
:jpontaneous....

'W. David Kay

Like Dickens, to whom he is often compared, Jonson also offers evocative ghmpses
of the city's seemier side .,.. Jonson's local allusions, however, are not'merely
'atmospheric', but are instrumental to his satire, and although his humour characters
'
are increasingly particularized, they are conceived as contemporary manifestationsof
enduring follies and vices, given new artistic life by the realistic detail with which
they are invested.

DIeuiiI Coghill

Shakespeare was not simply following the chances of temperament in designing his

I comedies, any more than Jonson was;each was following earlier traditions, that .
evolved during the Middle Ages and at the Renaissance, from the same parent stock
of thought which is to be found in the writings of the Latin grammarians of the fourth
century .... The Renaissance view of Comedy was entirely different: suddenly the
Satiric, after more than a thousand years of hibernation, sprang fully armed out of the
ground and psssessed the new theorists. For them the proper, the only, concern of
Comedy was ridicule; it offered no necessary antithesis to Tragedy, it gave no
suggestion, however rudimentary, of containing a narrative line ... Such, then, were
tht: two theories of Comedy, the Romantic and the Satirical, of the Middle Ages and
the Renaissance respectively, that twinned out of the late Latin grammarians to
. flower in Tudor times. Faced by a choice in such matters, a writer is wise if he
follows his temperament. Ben Janson knotted his cat-o-nine-tails. Shakespeare
reached for his Chaucer.

Jonathan Haynes
1 Forcing someone who was borrowing money to take up worthless commodities was a
i weil-known fonn of sharp dealing, so Face's business sense has a touch of the
uncle~orldabout it, but it nevertheless extends to a centralized market in credit and
conmodities.

The Alchemist is exactly what the great critic inside Jonson intended it to be-a vast,
brilliant portrait of his own times set within the strictest limits of classical
The Alchemist: requirements .... The ~ l c d e m i sis
t a realistic play, rooted in the Jacobean London of
.
A Study Guide
a%l
Jonson's own day.. som of the touches in the play that sound like a poet's fantastic
imagination are actually echo of sober civic records.

L.C. Knights (1955) 1

The best of Jonson'~play,are living d m because the leadng and 'classical'

elements are assimilated by a sensibility in direct contact with its own age ... 'I
believe', said Coleridge, {thereis not one whim or affectation in common life noted
in any memoir of that age which may not be found drawn and fiamed in some comer
.
or other of Ben Jonson's ldramas ... Jonson, in short, is neither the classicist whose
learning puts a bamer between himself and the experience of his age, nor the purely
native product in whom 4certain provinciality is the price of forthright vigour, he is a
man who, having eea q d learnt fiom other civilizations, is thoroughly at home in
his own time and place. n e result of this blend is an uncommon poise and strength
.... The issues with which he chose to deal w a r among the most deeply ingrained
preoccupations when we think of the sixteenth century we think not only
of 'the Developmeht 'the Revival of Antiquity', 'the Discovery of .
the World and of of capitalist enterprise, the rise of economic
individualism, the develbpment of an a-moral 'realism' in political thought and
action.

The Alchemist has a fairlclaim to be called Jonson's most brilliant play... The fact
that it seems on the stage like improvisation by the characters is a tribute to Jonson's
skill .... Obviously one bf the difficulties of the Unity of Place was finding plausible
reasons for aH the charahten to arrive at the same spot.. . Making Lovewit's house a
centre for a sequence od frauds and confidence tricks gets over the difficulty
completely; ... Jonson &lly solved the problem of the Unity &Action by not having
a plot at all, but rather a1series of episodes unified by involving the same characters
and happening in the e place .... The real Unity of The Alchemist is more a unity
of theqe: it is a and Self-deception.
I

D.V.K. Raghavachafyulu

Ben Jonson's comedy i$ in the final analysis apocalyptic and terriwg, elemental and

7
intellectual in its pen: tion of mortal time as Kali-Yuga. With a satirical passion as
intense as Marlowe's I arian euphoria and Webster's charnel-house melancholia, Ben
Jonson presents his figtires as emblems of damnation not to look upon which is to
turn to stone. A mimetic world meticulously created and offered not for adoption but
.
avoidance: such is the &ern didactic premise of the Jonsonian comedy ... Ben
Jonson lets common sshse triumph over abstraction and civilization prevail over
attitudinization. The etpical arbitration is motivated by a comic anagnorisis, the
essence of which b an gwareness of human limitation fiom which nobody is free.

1. Discuss the dieerences between Shakespearian Comedy and Jonsonian

Comedy., 1
2. Describe the qisconceptions about Jonson's theory of comedy.
3. Bring out the dote of social realism in Jonsonian comedy.
4. . Consider Jonsbn as a Renaissance theorist of comedy.
5. Comment on the satiric function of comedy according to Jonson.
6. Summarise so@eof Jonson's dispersed observations on his art.
 I
Jonsenian Comedy
2.5 ANNOTATION PASSAGES \
Annotate the following passages with reference to context.

1) Now you set your foot on shore

In novo orbe, here's the rich Peru;"
And there within, sir, are the golden mines,
Great Solomon's Ophir! He was sailing to'tO
Three years, but we have reached it in ten months.
This is the day wherein to all my fiends,
I will pronounce the happy word, 'be rich'.
This day you shall be spe~tatissirni.~

ii) No more0
Shall thirst of satin or the covetous hunger
Of velvet entrails for a rude-spun cloak,
To be displayed at Madam Augusta's, make0
The sons of sword and hazard fall before0
The golden calf, and on their knees, whole nights,"
Commit idolatry with wine and trumpets,
Or go a- buy feasting, after drum and ensign."

I
iii) But when you see th' effects of the great medicine,
Of which one part projected on a hundred
Of Mercury or Venus or the Moon
Shall turn it to as many of the Sun;'
Nay, to a thousand, so ad in-niturn:'
You will believe me.
t

iv) He that has once the flower of the sun,

The perfect ruby, which we call elixir,"
Not only can do that, but by its virtue
Can confer honour, love, respect, long life,
Give safety, valour-yea, and victory,

I
I 9
To whom he will.
Tis the secret
Of nature naturized 'gainst all infections,"
Cures all diseases coming of all causes,
A month's grief in a day; a year's in twelve;
And of what age soever, in a month,
Past all the doses of your drugging doctors.

vi) Will you believe antiquity? Records?

I'll show you a book where Moses and his sister
And Solomon have hitten of the art;
Aye, and a treatise penned by Adam."
L

vii) Such was Pythagoras' thigh, Pandora's tub,"

I
And all the fable of Medea's charms,
The manner of our wbrk; the bulls, our h a n c e ,
Still breathing fire; our argent-vive, the dragon;
The dragon's teeth, mercury sublimate,"
That keeps the whiteness, hardness, and the biting
And they are gathered into Jason's helm0
(Th' alembic) and then sowed in Mars his field:
And thence sublimed so often, till they are fixed."
TRc Akhernist: viii) Both this, th' Hespaian garden, Cadmus'story,"
A Study Guide Jove's shower, the b o b of Midas, Argus' eye$:
Boccace his Demogorgon, thousands more,"
All abstract riddles of our stone.

ix) For I do mean

To have a list of wives and concubines
Equal with Solomon, who had the stone
Alike with me; and I will make me a back
With the elixir that shall be as tough
As Hercules, to encounter fi@ a night.*
Q

x) I will have all my beds blown up, not stuffed;

Down is too hard. Apd then mine ovd room
Filled with such pictures as Tlberius took
From Elephantis, dull Arctine
But coldly imitated. Then, my glasses0
Cut in more subtle angles, to disperse
And multiply the figures as I walk
Naked between my succubae.

xi) My mists0
I'll have of perfume; vapoured b u t b r o o m ,
To loose ourselves i ~ 1 ;and my baths like pits
TO fall into, fiom whence we wi~ come forth
And roll us dry in gbssamer and roses.-

xii) The few that wouM give out themselves to be

Court and town stallions, and eachwhere belie
Ladies, who are kn- most innocent, for them,"
Those will I beg to make me eunuchs of,
And they shall fan b e with ten ostrich tail&
Apiece, made in a plume to gat& wind.

xiii) We will be brave, Puff, now we ha' the medicine.

My meat shall all come in in Indian shells,
Dishes of agate, set in gold, and studded
With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths and rubies.
Dressed with an exquisite and poignant sauce;
For which, I'M say unto my cook, 'there's gold,
Go f o a and be a knight.'

xiv) My shirts
1'11 have of taffeta-sarsnet, soft and light
As cobwebs; and f ~allr my other raiment
It shall be such as $night provoke the Persian," t
4
Were he to teach the world roit anew.
My gloves of fishes' and birds' skins, perfirmed
With gums of paradise, and eastern air-'

xv) My venture brings it me. he, honest wretch,

A nofable, snperstitious, good soul,
Has worn his he& bare and his slippers bald,
With prayer and fasting f m it; and, sir, let him
Do it alone, for me, still. Here he comes,
Not a profane word afore him! Tis poison.

xvi) You're covetous, that thus you meet your time

I' the just point, ptevent your day, at morning.
22
This argues something worthy of a fear

I
 Of'importune and carnal appetite. Jon@oniaiaComedy 1
Take heed you do not cause the blessing leave you, I

With your ungovertped haste. I should be sorry

To see my labours, now e'en at perfection,
~
I
Got by long watching and large patience, I
I
Not prosper where my love and zeal hath placed-'em.

xvii) Infuse vinegar,

To draw his volatile substance and his tincture,
And let the water in glass E be filtered, .
And put into the gripe's egg. Lute him well;"
And leave him closed in balneo.

xviii) As, if at first, one ounce convert a hundred,

After his second loose, he'll turn a thousand;
His third solution, ten; his fourth, a hundred.
After his fifth, a thousand thousand ounces
Of any imperfect metal, into pure
Silver or gold, in all examinations
As gold as any of the natural mine.
Get you your stuff here, against afternoon,
Your brass, your pewter, and your andirons.

It is, of the one part,

A humid exhalation, which we call
Materia liquida, or the unctuous water;"
On the other part, a certain crass and viscous
Portion of earth; both which, concorporate, .
Do make the elementary matter of gold,
Which is not yet Propriu materia,"
But common to all metals and all stones.
For where it is forsaken of that moisture,
And hath more dryness, it becomes a stone;
Where it retains more of the humid fatness,
.
It turns to surphur, or to quicksilver,

Of your elixir, your lac virginis,

Your stone, your medicine, and your chrysosperm,
Your sal, your sulphur, and your mercury:
Your oil of height, your tree of life, your blood: ,
Y ~ t tmarcasite,
r your tutty, your magnesia,
Your toad, your crow, your dragon, and your panther:
Your sun, your moon, your firmament, your adrop:
Your lato, azoth, zamich, kibrit, heautarit,
And then, your red man, and your white woman,"
With all your broths, your menstrues, and materials
Of piss, and egg-shens, women's terms, man's blood,
Hair o' the head, burnt clouts, chalk, merds, and clay,
Powder of bones, scalings of iron, glass,
And worlds of other strange indgredients,
Would burst a man to name?

xxi) Was not a11 the knowledge

Of the Egyptians writ in mystic symbols?'
Speak not the Scriptures oft in parables?
Are not the choicest fables of the poets,
That were the fountains and first springs of wisdom,
Wrapped in perplexed allegories?
The,Alchemist: xxii) I I urged that,
A Study G u m And d a r e d to him that Sisyphus was damned0
To roll the ceaseless stbne only because
He would have made dws common.

m'
xxiii) 0, by this light, no, not wrong him. He's
Too scrupulous that wqy. It is his vice.
No, he's a rare physician, do him right.
An excellent Paracelsizbn! And has done
Strange cures with midera1 physic. He deals all
With spirits, he. He will not hear a word
Of Galen, or his tedio* recipes.'

xxiv) You're very right, sir; 4he is a most rare scholar,

4
And is gone mad with tudying Broughtcm's works."
If you but name a wor touching the Hebrew,
She falls into her fit, will discourse
So learnedly of genealbgies,
As you would run ma4 too, to hear her, sir.

xxv) An this be your elixir,

Your lapis mineralis, qnd your lunary,"
Give me your honest tdick, yet at primero,
Or gleek; and take your lutum sapientis.O
Your menstruum simpb.

xxvi) I 0 , what else, sir?

And that you'll make hkr royal with the stone,
And empress; and yo&elf king of Bantam."

xxvii) A townsman born in ~ a u r ugives

s the bull,
Or the bull's head; in k e s , the ram.
A poor device: No, I y l l have his name
Formed in some mysti$ character, whose radii,
Striking the senses of +e passers-by,
Shall, by a virtual infldence, breed affections,
That may result upon the party owns it;
 ,
'

&ructtrre
3.0 Objectives - -
3:1 ~ d u c f i a n- -
3.2 ' StruGture
3.3 Glossary Of Alckmical Tams
3.4 - Critiml I3mlcts - -
3.5 Questiaq
3.6 A~OWOBL

3.0 Ow-

.- Iri thi~Unit,the fbms is on the structureof the play. An analysis of the phy's
stmctws is a pretbimy stcg. This is fdlowed by issues like pedbmwm of&
play, stagecraft c M m t i c m , md l q w g e yin the s-t wits. A M c t y of
paqmtivm art thwr p r c d asaids to evaluating the play's mahg fix the
modepa-.

3.1 . INTRODUCTION

Mocfenr science teaidws us that substances differ in atomic structure. T h E d l e d

Base metals can be tmtrs- gold through e highly ckpemiw pr~cessof
. &toincfwhg
,
fih.M s v the lamed and t h e e did br:Win
abkmy: Quoen E k b & w a s no exception. Tke religious aura tk
of Tlkg Aidmtisf, &is v h intdarded with astnslogialjargsn, andtvis &S bf piety,
hmdity, and W-binc to lend him a sktw above a d h t r y ~ b a
O t d g t o m j o y ~ p l a yWteaderandthespectatorneed
, toshed%~~fbrthe
dwation of thc readfag oaaf ttae performance.

-
Thc adion ofthe play hvdw the three cheats Subtle, Jeremy & M a , and Do1
Common who enter into a 'venture tripartite' to cozen eight gulls thc cia% hppmy
Bugger the tobacconist,the bight Sir Epicure Mammon, the gam&sSbly, the
two lbritam, TriWaticm and Ammias, the boy Krrstril and his sister, the wkbw '

Ptiant. Inthe absence ofthe master of the house, Lovewit on wcmmt of the
plague, the cheats carry on their trade briskly, luring potential gullsby to
their delusions.

. Thcjoyofthc~in~ngthecredulousgullsseemstohavtan
autobkgmphid bash. WiliiamDnmunond of Ha-n, Jcm~m'shQst in his
%&sh tour nxxmbm i btwm had tricked a Cady by disguisingW f as an
Sohson's ammmsense attitude towads alchemy is evident in Epigram
~~igok,ger.
VI,"To Alchemi+~".
if all you Baastef~lcwrgreat art be true
Swre, willingpoverty lives most in you.
The Alchemist: Thematically, The Alchemist bas been linked to Chaucer's The Canon's Yeoman 's
A Study Guide Tale and Erasmus' ColloquieS, the major early satires on alchemy. It has also been
suggested that Jonson may W e drawn upon The Puritan, or the Widow of Watling
Street, a play anonymously p blished just h e years before the first petfbmance of
The Alchemist. In "the imm l!!e iate model," W. David Kay argues, the elernepts that
might have gone into the making of The Alchemist include: "two swindlers posing as
a captain and a conjurer, an idtrigue plot involving the marriage of a rich widow, and
incidental satire on Puritan h w r i s y and casuistry."

The teeming life of London iq evoked through numerous local allusions which,
besides contributing to the ple/y's realism, are vital instruments of satire. Jonson had
used London as the locale for action in Eastward Ho! on which he collaborated with
Chapman and Marston, and a b turning to Venice for Volpone, confirmed his
preference for London in The ~lch&rnist(1 610), ~arfholomew Fair (1 614), l%e Devil
is an Ass (1966) and the reviskd folio version of Every Man in His Humour (1616). .
Jonson's many references to the vicinity of the Blackfriars theatre where the play was
performed, and tb the plague /Is the time of action made for direct appeal to the
audience, to a pressure of the fimes. The prplogue to The Alchemist clarifies this
intent:

No clime bretds bet& matter, fcrya~lrw h ,

Our scene is London, 'cause we would make known
No country9sm M isbetter than our own,
Bawd, squire, impostor, many p e r m more,
Whose manners, nod called humours, feed the stage.

The pace of action does not slhcken and is virtually continuous spanning the six hours .
4
from 9 O'clock in the mornin The setting is a room in Lovewit's house with a lane
facing the front door. The pl opens gn an almost explosive quelled by the
prostitute pickpocket Dql C o ~ o n The
. gulling of the eight assorted victims
concurrently contributes to suppense, for some of them are known to one another.
Suspense is further heighten4 by the prospect of Lovewit's return too. When the
imaginary laboratory goes up in smoke, the makebelieve world is shattered. The
rehabilitation of Face, a h hi$ master's marriage with the Dame Pliant is arranged,
rounds off the action. & in other plays of 'the time, one character step out of his role
partially to comment on the dding: Lovewit's address to the audience,
I

Therefore, gentlemen
And kind spectators, if I have out-stripped
An old man's gravity, or strica canon ...
Introduces a note of objectivity, demanding the audience's attention.
Face's are the certain lines:
I
Gentlemen,
My part a little fell in bus last seenes;
Yet it was decorlun

An absorption in oneself, the strategy required of the cozener momentarily slips off to
I
reveal his humanity.

An analysis of the plot s u g g 4 a patterning of effects in the action. The pr010gue

focuses on corruption in Zond n, the playwright's attempt to correct vices, and above
all his care to pnsent correcti& without edmrmsing the tricksters and the gulls.
Act-I opens with an intdmPtidn of chicanery in m s , occasioned by Face's
condescension towards Subtle1and the intmauion ufthe bullying Do1 Common. In
quick succession, Dapper the lpwyer's clerk, Drugger the tobacconist and Sir Epicure
Mammon the voluptuary arrive to renew their petitions for a familiar, advice for
setting up a shop and the Phildsopher's stone respectively. On one protest or other,
each is sent away to return afiw fulfilling certain conditions. Thus, early in the play,

f
the absolute power delusion h over the gulls is sketched. Subtle demonstrates his
capacity to become whatber t e gull's imagination requires.
 Mammon's re-entry in Act-If, accompanied by the sceptical Surly, establishes the
form&'s sensuality and amorality. A number of ironic turns are noticeable in
Subtle's insistence on purity in the pursuit of the Stone, Mammon's causistry in
asserting Subtle's purity and his own capacity to buy. Subtle's insistence on patience
and purity on Mammon's part is a clear anticipation of the ending of the play. When
, Face presents Do1 as the sister of a loid given to fits of madness, Mammon's carnality
comes into the open. The Puritan Ananias' demand for the stone is bms
Subtle and Face. Their esoteric mumbo-jumbo leaves him crest-fallen. rateful7 for
Off by
the magical anagrom, Drugger mentions Kastril would have his sister widow Dame
Pliant many only an aristocrat, and this brings in a new pair of gulls.

In Act-111 Tribulation seeks to make amends for Ananias' rudeness, and gladly
accepts Subtle's aplpval of the plan to make counterfeit coins. Puritan hypocrisy
stands thoroughly exposed here for after all only Dutch dollars are invdved. Surly in
order to woo Do1 enters disguised as a Spanish don. While Dapper is ready for a
meeting with the Queen of Fairies (another role for Dol), he is blindfolded and his
pocket picked. Further, he is gagged and locked in the privy to prevent discovery by
- mammon almost at the doorstep.

The action flows on into Act-N when Face as Lungs helps Mammon to meet Do1 as
the sister of a lord. As Kastril and Dame Pliant arrive, being a quick change artist
resumes his role as Face. Unable to bring in Dol, they thinkon their feet, and alkvw
Dame Pliant to be alone with Surly in the givden. Kastsril is instructed in polite
quarrel-too. In the meanwhk, #%mmon with his mind set on the philosopher" stone
utters the fatal worcis+ad brings on W f i t of madness." Because of Mammon's
violation of s- command, the fulfilment of his dream is postponed, and the
l a b o ~ 4 i t e r a I l ygoes up in smoke. Still Mammon is undeceived. Surly's attempts
@winDame by cxposing Face and Subtle are shattered when he had to remove his
own disguise i r the process. Ananias arrives, but enraged by Surly's g d y dress,
drags him out. 1o crown it all, Lovewit is just then sighted. -
- /'
"n the concluding act, the goings on in Lovewit's house are made known to him by
the neighbours. Jeremy is no longer able to manipulate the situation. While all the
gnftsrush back and threaten to complain to the police, Dapper calls out for release
and meets the fairy of his h e m briefly. As the officers knock at the door, Subtle and
Do1 nm away. Lovewit marries Dame Pliant leaving the gulls helpless lookers on.
Face alone appeals tofhe audience to understand his lot.

In spite of the multiplicity of intrigues, the plot has a unity as noted by several critics.
In Coleridge's view, The Alchemist, Oedipus Tpranners and Tom Jones have the
three 'most effect plots ever planned.' Coleridge perhaps had in mind the union of
comic decorum with fieedom of and richness of inventions. Evaluating the structure
of the play, in terms of seven numbered intrigues which forms the core of the action,
Uma Ellis-Fermor draws attention to the inner form of the play-characterized by a
I-hythmicdesign, anchonsiders The Alchemist "to be without a companion in the
drama with which&ah acquainted." Paul Goodman offers an Aristotelian approach
lo the action. TheYmpression of unity is attributed by T.S. Eliot to an "inspiration
, lhat radiates into plot and personages alike." Indeed, "as a masterpiece of design,
within the compass of the classical unities," says Frederick S. Bocs, "The Alchemist
takes its place at the head of Jonson's comedies." Here, we have, declares Felix E.
Schelling, "the utmost cleverness in the construction, the whole fabric building
cilimax on climax, witty and ingenious, and so plansibly presented that we forget its
departures fiom the possibilities of life." And L.C. Knight avers: "The AlchentiSt is
kluilt as the double theme of lust and greed and the whole play is constructed go as to
isolate and magnify the central theme. The extraordinary complications of the plot
all centre on Subtle and Face, and all work in one end. The play is completely self-
consistent; all the characters are actuated byvariations of one motion, and no
extraneous passions are allowed to enttt . .'...All the interests aroused in the readers
I I
The AIchmist: point in one direction."Thus i?ie Alchemist has acquired the status of a classical play,
A &By aide and c o n h e d for better or wgrse the clacissist image the playwright cultivated. .

Moreover, the plot of T9re Alcfiemist is both original and realistic. It is based on the
facts of contemporary M o r t life; and Jonson's originality can be seen in using these
facts. The s p r M of the epidetnic plague in Lgxh and the evacuaticpof their
houses by some of the lmdloqds gave h s o n the idea of using'these very
circumstances as the b & q n d of a play exposing tire frauds of the alchemists and
the follies and the foibles of their victims.

In The Alchmist, the three ckssical unities have been observed to perkction:

Unity sfActions The openihg quarrel of the cozenen has been acclaimed as
masterly exposition, inCbia$ing the antagonism b e e n Subtle and Face patched up
momentarily by Dol and 'the venture tripartite'. The old rivalry surfaces again in
moves and countermoves in kgard to marrying the rich widow, Dame Phint, and
ends eventually in Face's assertion of his place in Lovewit's household and the hasty
escape of Subtle and Dol. The core of the action, the intrigues the comers plan, is
highly theatrical. The readiqess with which Ssbtle, Face and Do1 assume a role on
the spur of the moment, theit spantawom reahgmcnt because of last minute change
of plans (notab1y d d n g SurIy's attempts to expose &em) and their skill in
improvisation and histrionics are much in evidence throughout the play. Besides the
aforementioned e p i m b , another would be the end of Act 111, the bundling of Dapper
off to the privy, the transoikhation of Captain Face into Lungs,and the smptitious
entry (at the start of ActIv of the amorous Mammon on to an empty stage that a
moment before was full of 4ctivity; another would be Mammon's guilty attempt to
hide and Subtle's s i m W o n of distressed piety after the explosion of the furnace later
in the same acG yet another~wouldbe the discovery by Lovewit of Face, as he
attempts to cwnmuniaate:ta Subtle inside the haus in Act V scene III. The examples
could be muhiplied. Disceining stden@ would notice i) that not only are the various
minor plots gathered into a /singleaction, but the gathering itself is used to provide a
great deal of theatrical comedy; and ii) that the stories of the various gulls interrupt
each other and provide repeated opportunities for the oldest anQmostpermanently
effective kinds of comic action. This justifies J.B. Barnborough's comment: "Jonson
really solved the problem qf the Unity of Action by wt having a plot at all, but rather
a series of episodes unified by involving the same c h t e r s and happenings in the
.
same place .. the real Unify of The AIckemisl is more a unity of theme: it is a study
in greed and self-deceptiq. Struchrally, Jonson's "brilliant use of alteration," in the
opening scene Ail* Sale observes, makes it "a demonstration of method .,. like
the prelude to an opera." +

Unitia of ~ i m and
e sP.~
I

Not only has 23e A&hm&t the most e o m p k unity of action of any of Jonson's
plays, it dso obsemes he mities of time and place with more exadness €ban any
other play of Janson. Tha time of the action is pretty well coterminus with the
duration of the ptay in perfopxince. ?here is only one place where time can be
considered to pass during a break in the actian, and that is between Act-II and III.
According to Subtle's statement nearly an how pasaies between the end of Act I1
Scene V, and the opleningtofAct III &me ii, the two intervening lines contain just
150 lines. There is no az$cipation at the end of Act I1 of the characterswho will
open the next act; w - at the end of Act I we are told of the approach of
Mammon and Surly; the last wwds of Act ID ape addressed to Msmmon, who is off-
stage, waiting to e r ; arld Act IV ends with Lovewit seen out of the window, talking
to the neigburs with w$om we find him when Act V opens. This audience would
lose its point if f d W /tt cmce by an inter& in which it could be forgotten. There
are no lapses of time imlipated between the scenes within the acts, and in most cases
there is clear evid- oficantinuity. On the basis ofthe discussion we have had till
now, it seems reasonably safe to suggest that Z%eAIchemist was written to be
performed without intemption except for one interval between the secortd and third
,
.
 acts. With regard to Unity of Place, too, this play is the most circumscribed that The Strueture '-
I
Jonson wrote. The whole action is confirmed within or immediately outside 1

I
- - \

Lovewit's house in Btackfriars. I

I 1

33 GLOSSARY OF ALCHEMICAL TERMS

No edition for the general mder or pIaygoer can hope to cover the alchemical
background thoroughly, and we have not tried to explain all the terms either in the
glossesor in the longer explanatory notes. Jonson's alchemical terms fall into three
I main classes: (a) materials and substances, (b) alchemical equipment end qjmatuq
(c) alchemical processes. The following selective glossary may assist the artd '
I
playgoer.
1
t

Materials, substances ctc.

1 Adrop the matters out of which macvy is extracted for the

I aquafortis
a p reg& :
:
Philosopher's Stone; the Stone itself.
impure vitriol
a mixture of acids which can dissolve gold.
aqua vitae : dc&A
argaile l!m&d tattar
wcnurr pmbile : liquid, drinkable gold
gz(;qh mf=w
mot nitrogen
calm powdered substame produced by combush or
'c*Won'
ehibrit m==Y
di?ysmpernr : elixir
einoper sulphEde of mercury
kibtit sulphur
lacvirgrrgrnis : d a l water
loto a nixedmetal which looks like brass
rnaistrie the magisterium or Philosophr's Stone
a mixture of m i c and sulphur
sericon . . bh+inmm
; zeniela . arrripigment or gold paint

Alembic the vessel at the top of the distilling apparatus which b

M s
tke distilled material
aide€ suMiming pot
&nor atkmxx
hainem b& or grocess of heating a vessel
bolt's head a long-necked vessel
crc~s-lar mcible
cucurbite a distilling vessel
grip- e m a vessel shaped like a vulture's cgg
lernbek a still
pelican analembic

mation softRning hard substances

chysopaia : the making of gold
chynnia a k h y
cibaciorr seventh;stage in alchemy
The Alchemist: citronize to %come yellow
A Study Guide
cohabation redibtillation
digestion predaration of substances by gentle heat
dulcifL to piuify
inbibition a bqkhing process associated with the tenth stage
inceration softening to the consistency of wax
macerate to sleep
potate liquified
projection the twelfth and last stage in alchemy
putrefaction the fifth stage in alchemy whereby impurities were m o v e d
by the use of moist heat
solution the $econd stage in alchemy
spagyrica the ~pagiricart; Paracelsian chemistry
sublimation con+rsion into vapour through the agency of heat, and
recanversion into solid through the agency of cold

F.H. Mares (1983) II

In both Much Ado and The Alchemist the action depends very largely on a series of

k
deliberate deceptions. This more the case in Much Ado than in perhaps any other
comedy of Shakespcaw's.. . e comparison between Beatrice and Do1 is a little more
.
elaborate. Dol, clearly, is a &lly liberated woman.. Jonson, more fiequently than
.
Shakespeare, withhold$ infohtion &om his audience.. Jonson's comedy is
mordant, reductive and consfmative, while Shduxpre's is kindly, exploratory and
radical. I

In marked contrast to Beatrige, the docile Hero is willing to marry who ever she is
told to marry. Dame Pliant \;irillmarry anyone wearing a Spanish suit. Both ladies
are commodities to be acquhjed, as is clear fiom the way Face and Subtle discuss the
Widow ... the comparison bebeen Beatrice and Do1 is a little more elaborate. Dol,
clearly, is a hlly liberated wbman.
I
,
It is m g e d for Subtle to overhear the raving of Do1 as the mad lady; and it
provokes his own brilliant c b d e of outraged virtue. When it is arranged for
Beatrice and Benedick in thefr turns to overhear the account of how each loves the
other, we have a little maliciqus pleasure in the gulling, but we are not moved to
admiration by the skill of the performance .... Beatrice and Bendedick.. .Like the
gulls in The Alchemist, their awn desires help them to be deceived. The difference is
in the nature gf their desires md our moral valuation of them. One final point: the
agents of resolution in both Much Ado and The Alchemist are the most simple and
stupid people: Dogbeny in Much Ado and Drugger in The Alchemist.

J.B. Steane

Alchemy, however, is essentjally a vehicle in the play: the center of interest lies
elsewhere, and Jonson is usiqg the particular subject of alchemy as the means to
another end. Other kinds of tb.ickery might have sufficed, certainly other ways in
which men could be exhibiteb as capable of infinite selfdegradation when confronted
with the prospect of easy mopey.. . 2 7 Alchemist
~ too dramatizes this kind of
'possession'. Because they &e Lovewit's house as a gold mine, the gulls who come
visiting are obsessed with thd single idea of gain, and this is now their 'humour'. .. So
by his status in the plot, Lovdwit's judgement should be the one which we as
..
audience are called on to respect ..The rogues themselves ought, in an orthodox
morality, to be merely ruthlegs and despicable. Instkad, we find ourselves laughing
I
with them too often... There is every inducement for the audience to identify The Gtruqure
themselves with the rogues.

Michael Jamieson

The density of the dialogue, the contemporaneity of the comedy to Jacobean

audience, makes The Alchemist (like Bartholmew Fair) more difficult than Vulpune
for readers and playgoers today .... That he (Lovewit) dodges retribution is
psychologically right, and reminds the audience that con-men, like the poor, are
always ~ 5 t us.
h

Arthur Sale

The Alchemist is not only about alchemy: it is itself an alchemical work. Its blood is
visual and verbal - especially verbal - transmutation. Reality where all is illusion is
the reality of the illusion... The first scene is not mere1
T
"

fiom static narration to violent drama by a brilliant use o

completed alchemical process, a demonstration of meth
2
like the prelude to an opera... Also, more strikingly, itT' eed marvolously, the coals
and stills and alchemical ferments which give such excitement, rich colours, exotic
-
associations, and piled up solidarities in the play are not facts but words... The
glittering captain and the canonical doctotuse the language of the gutter to
.
metamorphose each other ffitct animals, beetles, vomit .. . Among other great things ,
Do1 is here saying not only that the Heads of State share her equally but also that they
.
are contained in her ... Subtle, of course, intends that for Mammon it shall remain a
visiop and a dream, and all the alchemy in the play has this ironic dimension. Subtle
and Jonson,lp@ust alchemy for their own ends, but the interested motive of the
do call into question, but enrich; those of the latter. Sexually, Mammon
,and Subtle embody two ancient and opposed alchemical concepts.

W. David Kay

In the tradition of the 'estate morality', Jonson uses this representative sample to
.
demonstrate how greed and credulity pervade society at all levels.. Jonson's attitude
toward alchemy is indicated in Epigram VI, "To Alchemists": 'If all you boast of
..
your great art be true; / Sure, willing poverty lives most in you'. The satire in The
Alchemist thus cuts in many directions at once, mocking fantasies of self-gratification
and power, as well as particular forms of credulity and ignorance.

Una Ellis-Fermor

The play, The Alchemist is outwardly a comedy of character and event, so that the
intrigue and interactions of the plot have one set of relations, analogous to the
rhythmic design expressed in the painting by the lines. But the inner furm of the play
is one which is hardly representational at all of this interaction of event in everyday
life, for the characters and consequently the moods they impress upon our minds,
exist independently also as something more than the means. For the sake of this
brevity I have given each intrigue a number in order of its appearance and used this
number to refer to it in the text. Thus the plot set up against Dapper i s the first, that
against Drugger the second, Sir Epicure Mammon's the third, Surly's the fourth,
Ananias' the fifth, Mistress Pliant's the sixth, Kastril's the seventh... As a piece of
almost geometrical form, this play appears to be without a companion m the drama
with which I am acquainted.
f
Jonathan Haynes

Subtle and Do1 and Face are clearly u n d e r w d figures, professional criminals,
setting them off from Jonson's sharp gallants and fiom the i n s p i ~ amateur
d Volpone,
who glorifies more in the cunning purchase of his wealth than in the glad possession.
-. -
I
T k Atchemist:
A SIudy Guide
They have evolved directlyout of the cmy-catchiag pamphlet liteature .. .The .
bbArgument"makes the "tri4artite indentwe?'sound like shares in an stctiqg cmpany
they here contract. It Imhlike a joint stock company, the newest form of capitalist
..
organization .. bucfiemy i+the g r d symbl for this volatile statg ofaffairs.
Alchemy makes a m e & k fornasGent capitalism, and W A k h e m i s r fits neatly
in thc development d w s s o & thought W e e n Yolpone,in which a reat
pile of ... gold draws '+in-t" in W o l d oenda ofmrcantiliam,and the hiract satiric
exploration of capitalist "j&on" in TIte Devil is an Ass .. ,. The play toys with the
idea that d n g eain cMhe of nothing, k t
from the tripartite i n & n T to a mania
Lovewit and Dam Pliant The play in the triple initmtwe,
with Subtle claiming he 4- t d Face (pun intended) by skn@is
knowledge, and Face claiming to have coun#n& Subtle by providing the house, .
the material means ofppmhpoh.
I
Renn Jnaeia I
I

The "honed" SW& ia lkhehemist fmbdly. Om samd way of arscadmg

Jonson's attitu& to a ck&@er is to m how the plot deals with him. The dispute
over the worthkms ofSlg'1$ as againsf the skulbggay and rrzoral Wine of
Lovewit can be em@$mcefor all by ran- u w w k that it is Liavwit who
succeeds an8not Surly. f
r does not al-s
he allowthem b triumph u n e q u i v ~ as

S,Musgr03
I
I
&h the
y Lo-t tri
but rn does
*',"
stg.:s

I
1

on's pime saviceto ~Iizabethancomedy was to give it shuchac and ~ohrrslce,

fm plotting ad G& cha+cterization. The overshadowing genius of Shakespeare
.
tends to hide its netd of wck reform,, ,bnson*scharacters, like Marlowe-'s, are
hmically obsessional: nce+g to beanne themsetves to an absolute degree, they
expose the raging vacuum df the self.. . Each of the gulls seeks to be changed &om
himself, but only becomes &ore completely what he really is.

3.R Bambtxougb@%7)
I

The argument is also a tkthe kn& ofthe audience, i

TAe Alehemis .
8 saks ofqnmels.. The out-hing of Swly in
these scenes, d e d as Face and Subtle's h e s t h o u r k u s e it
is all improvised, whenas @ discomfiture of M m is something they have
planned long b e k . Effc vety, as the audience actually experience the play, bath

Subtle as it goes along.... &

scenes contributeto the feel g that The Alchemist is being made up by Faec and
e Afdrema, and l i b d l Jonson's com&dy it demands to

his fbols,.. WW .?

in his portrayal of 'natbral ir9jieAw, .-

J o n s o n h a s ~ f o I u s e s i & t o f h i s ~ ~ ~ .
I

I
Alan C. kssea I
I

Does analyeis pPmideQ~suchtade~Ii~&rrrry

insight into th
..
comedy, Ben Jomon?. thete have been .few-critical@dieswhich b v t mpe4 f w a
definite relationship bedp any of hnson's majar comedies aM1 the morality
... ...
tradition n ~ a l l e ~ ~ ~ ~ a e i n t m c k i r i t o t h e ~acobeanscer#:
titera~ ons son
has here supplied six dmi+m who rqmmtd i f f m t social rstahm, diffkreat
professions, d different a& groups but who pamess one conmrondmominatm,a
suscptibility to the *of/~ubtle, P w , and Dol ..... But so does the eadiingof Tlie
I
\
I
I
 ,
7r

' "
Alehemisl. Here, sts in @ mmIity play or the masque, Jonson has pm$%&dr&s fmritf
e f f i bey& 'the i%kti<e#wid on stage into the lives that must be ld%y-&
audience after t h e w m m f a':. In general structupe, fie Alchemist b-m*
tn&restiog c&ticins wi&W late morality... owing to our own culp&1lty, 6kew:is
only limited hope k*ngmvamnt in the world outside the theater. 27wi hlehmkt,
ptuti&Iy in its lwt b w a m , is the cutmination of Jonson's moral comedy.

- Edwarti B. Partridge
This h&tion and ~xplosion .&&e plot is apparcnt in the way @the@ tkwd
tftrotigkw B e Ate*% :@,%hefirst scene two mu@& ~ f devela*@deby
e sside;
... aeis the motif oQaWw epithets which Subtle, Face, and Do1 **e~ch
other. They call wch okhrmgac, &ye, cheater, cut-purse, bawd, &-sai-saitc:h. ..The
s impostors aFe corn@* aaana;rels, scarabs, vermin, curs .... The bog - i
mum nost often. nS1 isa"b*h; and Face and Subtle are mastiffs. In.short,we tue
amonfs the snarling anima)sthat live on othe beings or each other ... wribiguous
world between the mima1and the human ..,. The imagery of The Alcfbmisr is
pmfectfyfunctional in several ways. First, it develops, as alchemy h t ~ ,
as a whore, a pander, and a quack, whkh it tries
o finer beings - finally ending, tts the &earn of the
philmxqhefs stone ends, in a returnto the state of base metals... The imagery is
W o n a $ in another way. 7% images work on the same principle f&et tlk pby as a
wfiole md usuaUy e&h swe work. They are extravagant, inflated, and ludimms ....
Tke mortsennrs gap--*s ktween the tenof &at we h o w to be sw+ndthe
vehick that we to be great, and the demand that we find
between t h a n 2 0 F & l b . 1 gap, outrages our sense of decency a
third k c t i o n of the-i is to extend and devehp the in
a l e m y had in actual fifeepeeially the religious, medical,
r&kentes .... In other words, the m i am suggests that, in The Alcka&txs world,
tlfe acquisition of gold is a religion, a cure-all a sexual experience, and a comercia1
mt-se.

F. H.Mares (1967)
Tt is an ow-sim$ificatian b say that Jonson's plot 'provided him with i&xceptional
oppcHmities ~ Q Fs a w 8 two social pests of the age: Puritanism and the p&t%simi
of alchemy'. &hemy is 9at so much the object of his satire as themeam he uses to
-
ridicule humern greed aad W u l i t y ....The laborats,ry It is the drearri w, the
most potent b t m m e M o f ~ i m ,...This one fixed pomt in space dS& Jamn to
have others:the two doors,right and left, one to the outside world, one to the 'back
.
way'.. . Tbc q$t m the ~b&tary is the focus of the play's physicaI,.dim, its
implied pmcmx Wid portant.. . For this r e a m tke l d i t i o n
of* scerte is fix& Emb until &m the symbolic c x p t d . . . The
fantasy becomes mcanb@tss:by its
.
.. . A11through the play there is a diq&ty kmm
say they are. ?ht servant, the quack,rtnd&
the Doctar, and the Lard's sister, or a p r i e s f a tbe.Queen
.
sacwnterpointed with abusive oms ..,frr Z k Al&&m&t
&wme;betwcerrusdit w e a r c i n v i t e d t o c o m e c I ~ ~ ( ~ , t o ~ f y
s;iNith it. &ovewidand Face address the audience directly-Fwe ewsvffers a
:but they&sowithuutconri t*
...,This is not to make Jonsan
PirdeIlo, imppalin tht inwhble problem of distinguishing i f l u s hh teafity, or
a CMxt, assatingat once man's inevitable need for illusicm and tkc lIemy nature of
dl conylentiml moral authorties... Jonson does not doubt for a mamcnt that truth
can be distinguished from rlbion, that right and wrong are absolute aMt not.rchtive
terms. -
The Alchemist:
A Study Guide D.V.K. Raghavacharyulu
-
Jonson's denouements have an air of the unexpected, in the A s e that the
dispensation of rewards and pdnishrnents is subtly calibrated through a principle of
comic justice operating in favqur of intelligence and common sense instead of
innocence and piety. This adniinisters a kind of comic trauma directed towards the
quotidian poise of social order rather than heroic individuality .... Subtle is no
alchemist and the theme of the play is not alchemy. Alchemy is a burnished mirror in
which Faustian power is madeto cast weird, heraldic images of Mephistophelean

f
appetite .... Somewhere collat ally stands Sir Apicure Mammon whose auriferous
extravagances of fantasy and besque serenades of sensuality are products of an
excessive romanticism t h t g s entirely against the Jonsonian norm of classical
balance and decorum .... He i Faustus and Falstaff doubled into one .... He is the
gr'dnd anarch waiting to undo 911 civilized order; he is a gargantuan Anti-Christ who,
in trying to set things right in qis own fashion, would destroy the cosmic order itself.

-1
1. Analyse the structure
2. Bring out the e&ct o concurrently.
3.
4.
5. 3
How does Jonson pr uce the illusion of reality with regard to alchemy?
Comment on the imp t of the opening scene.
Does The Alchemist p int to a lowering of the standard of judgement?
Illushate from the endhnrr.

I
I

Annotate the following passages with reference to context: I

I I
i) , He bears
The visible mark of de Beast in his forehead." II
And for his stone, it is/ a work of darkness,
b
And with philosophy linds the eyes of man.

ii) The children of are oft-times 1

I
Made instruments e v h of the greatest works.

t
Besides, we should gi e somewhat to man's nature,
The place he lives in, till about the fire,
And fume of metals, &t intoxicate
4

The brain of man, and1make him prone to passion.

1
iii)
k9
Where have you great atheists than your cooks?
Or more profand or c oleric than your glass-men?
More antichristian t your bell-founders?'
1
What makes the devil so devilish, I would ask you,
d
a~
Satan. our common e emv. but his beine
PerpetualIy aboht the ire, and boiling
Brimstone and akseni I?

We must give, I say,

iv)
Unto the motives, and the stirrers upO

p
Of humours in the bl . It may be so,
When as the work is one, the stone is made,
The heat of his may tyrn into a zeal,
 I

And stand up for the beauteous discipline The Structure 1

Against the menstruous cloth and rag of Rome."

V) Have I discoursed so unto you;,of our stone?

And of the good that it shall bring your cause?
Showed you (beside the main of hiring forces
Abroad, drawing the Hollanders, your friends,
From the Indies, to serve you, with all their fleet)"
That even the med'cinal use shall make you a faction,
And party in the realm?

vi) As, put the case,

That some great man in state, he have the gout,
Why, you but send three drops of your elixir,
You help him straight: there you have made a friend.
Another has the palsy or the drospy,
He takes of your incombustible stuff:
He's young again: there you have made a friend.

vii) A lady that is past the feat of body,"

Though not of mind, and hath her face decayed
Beyond all cure of paintings; you restore
With the oil of talc: there you have made a friend,
And all her friends. A lord that is a leper,
A lcnight that has the bone-ache, or a squire
That hath both these, you make 'em smooth and sound,
With a bare fricace of your medicine: still
You increase your friends.

viii) No, nor your holy vizard to win widows.

To give you legacies; or make zealous wives
To rob their husband for the common cause;
Nor take the start of bonds, broke but one day,
And say they were forfeited by providence.
Nor shall you need o'er night to eat huge meals,
To celebrate your next day's fast the better,
The whilst the brethren and the sisters, humbled,
Abate the stiffness of the flesh. Nor cast
Before your hungry hearers scrupulous bones,"
As whether a Christian may hawk or hunt,
Or whether matrons of the holy assembly
May lay their hair out, or wear doublets,"
Or have the idol, Starch, about their linen.

ix) Nor shall you need to libel 'gainst the prelates,

And shorten so your ears against the hearing0
Of the next wire-drawn grace. Nor of necessity
Rail against plays to please the alderman
=> Whose daily custard your devour. Nor lie
A
With zealous rage, till you are hoarse. Not one
Of these so singular arts. Nor call yourselves,
By names of Tribulation, Persecution,
Restraint, Long-Patience, and such like, affected
By the whole family, or wood of you,
Only for glory, and to catch the ear
Of the disciple.

x) When you have viewed and bought-'em,

And ta'en the inventory of what they are,
They're ready for projection; there's no more
 I

-.

To do: cast on the medicine, so mueh silver

As there is tin there, so mych gold as brass,
PI1 gi' it you in, by weight.

xi) She must prepare pe~fumeS,delicate linen,

The both in chief, a banquet, and her wit
For she must milk his epidiidyrr-is
I
He will win you I
By unnesistable luck, within this fortnight,
Enough to buy a
Upmostl, at the
And for the whole ycrar thmugh, at every place .
Where &ere is play, p r e q t him with the chair,
The &k attendance, the h s t drink, sometimes
Two glasses of canary,and pay nothing;
The purest linen, and the sharpest knife,
The partridge next his treqcher, an& somewhere,
The dainty bed, in private, with the dainty.

xiii) In the third square, the vergr street and sign

Where the commodity dwtlls, and does but w i t
To be delivered, be it peP&r, soap,
Hops,.or tobacco, oatmeall woad, or cheeses.
All which you may so hanble to enjoy
To your own use, and ne* stand obliged.

xiv) And then for making matches for rich widows,

Young gent~ewomen,heir+, the fortuipt's man!
He's sent to, far and near, $11 o w Engfand,
To have his munwl, and tb know their fortunes.

xv) Hoping that he hath vinegar4 his senses,

As he was bid, the Fairy T e e n dispenses,
By me, this robe, the pettipoaf of Fatme; \)

Which that he straight put ion, she +th importune.

xvi) And though to Fortune

Yet nesver is her
And therefire, even of that a piece she hath sent,
Which, being a child, to wrap him in was rent;
And prays him for a scarf he now will wear it
(With as much love, as theh her Grace did tear it)
A h t his eyes, to show hd is fortunate.
\

xvii) She now is set

At dinner in her bed, and has sent you
From her own private w h e t , a dtyd mouse
And a piece of gingerbread, to be rneny withal,
And stay your stomach, lest you faint with fasting;
Yet, if you could hold out till she saw you (she says)
It would be better for you.

xviii) Of gingerbread
1

Make you it fit He that hdth pleased her Grace

Thus far, shall not m w crihkk for a little.
UNIT 4 THE ALCHEMIST IN THE THEATRE

4.0 Objectives
.4.1 Introduction
4.2 The Alchemist in the h e a t r e
4.3 Performance and Stagecraft
4.4 Critical Extracts
4.5 Selected Biblioghtphy
4.6 Questions
4.7 Annotation Passages

The main objective of this unit is to discuss (I) me Alchemist in the theatre, and (ii)
its perfonname and s t a g m i l and to place before you thc critical o p i l m of some of
the great critieson m e Alchemist in the theatre and its performances. '

4.1 INTRODUCTION

At the end of the unit of m e Alchemist in the 1616 folio of Jonson's J&& is the
statement: "This comedy was first acted in the year 1610 by the King's Majesty%
Servants": Since then 13re Alchemist became popular and stayed in the rqmtory until
the theatres were closed on the eve of the Civil War. With the R e s t d m in 1660, it
was one of the first plays toBe reviewed, and with some minor rises and fans in
popdarity, it continued to be played for more than three centuries.

4.2 THE ALCHEMIST IN THE THEATRE

The enduing popularity of m e Alchemist is acknowledged by its i d - in the

repertoires of several theatre groups. The first phase of its stage h w &v&dy
ccuresponds to performances during Johnson's life time. The very first perfbmmce
Ims been a matter of considerable debate. It was performed in 1610 by the King's
Men probably at the Globe, according to Herford and Simpson. Thc Men
might have staged the play before July at the Globe; or during the elsure of the
theatres they might have taken it to-theprovinces. The possibility of trymg at a new
play outside h d o n is often discounted. On account of the plague, the tbe&m in
Landon were closed from July to November. GeofFrey Tilllotson disco-
evidence of an earlier performance at Oxford in September 1610.

"Since the setting in Blaektkiars", Mares avers, "the King's men possibly shged thc
play at the Blackfrairs theawn. A signifmnt detail that emerges, however, is that
Burbage played Face right until his death in 1618. Performa~ceat the court in 1623
has &o k n recorded. In a telling comment on the dramatis personae, William
Gifford hits upon the dominant note of theatricality: "The Puritan neighb~urstell
Lovewit later that they have been visitors of all classes: "some as brave as Isrds,"
Ladies and gentlewomen, "Citizens' wives," knights", 'oyster women'. Sailors' wives,'
-
and Tobaceo men', a good cross section of the Blackhirs community. The only
absentees are actors, but they are already inside the house, putting m the sttow."
The Alchemist:
A Study Guide Y
The second phase is marked b the revival of The Alchemist at the Restoration. The
influence of The Alchemist on,the emergence of the rlew genre, the Comedy of
Manners has already been noted. This period is characterised by the appearance of
great actors and the play's intrpduction into the repertoire of major theatres. Mrs.
Corey who played Do1 Commbn right after the Restoration, was better known by the
nickname, Dol. For nearly 4Olyears during the first half of the eighteenth century,
The Alchemist was regularly staged at the Dnvy Lane theatre. The financial crash,
known as the South Sea ~ubbie,gave a new lease of life to the play in 1720.
Jonson's critique of nascent capitalism and of man's acquisitiveness found an echo at
that time.

For more than a quarter een

? Garrick by his sheer histrionic talent, Gon for the
play unrivalled acclaim. Begi ning with an appearance as Drugger in 1743, he took
up that role from 1746 until hi/sretirement in 1776. Garrick's Drugger was at that
time compared only with his own Lear. Observations on how he played Drugger are

f
instructive: "Mr. Garrick has t ken that walk to himself, and is ridiculous above all
conception. When he first o ns his mouth, the features of his face seem, as it were,
to drop upon his tongue, it is a\l caution; it is timorous, stammering, and
inexpressible. Another notable actor who make the play enormously popular was
Macklin, who played Face in the decade, 1737-1748".

Towards the close of the nineteenth century, a new phenomenon makes its
appearance, viz, revival by acqdemic and professional groups. The Elizabethan Stage
Society, for instance, staged the play under the direction of William Poel in 1899 and
again three years later. After the outbreak of the first World War, the play was
performed by the Marlowe Swiety, the Birmingham Repertory Company, and the
Phoenix Society. Further draaa festivals were occasions for staging The Alchemist.
Mention may be made of the Malvem Festivals of 1932 and 1934, and in the U.S. the
Oregon Festival of 1961. I
I
Among modern experimental ~oductions,mention needs to be made of Tyrone
Guthrie's at the Liverpool H o q e in 1944-45 and at the Old Vic in 1947. Revieybg
the latter production, Arthur Cblby Sprague contrasts the acting style of AltwCuiness
with reports on Garrick's perfotmance: "Both actors, it is curious to no@ were at their
best in moments of invented by-play. Garrick was particularly a
..
and boxing scenes4.. . ...As for Guinness, his Abel Drugger, bving been sent to
fetch the Spanish hat and cloald, returned wearing the showy things, and as he waited
outside the house, did a little d ce of self - adrnirat&n? Jonson's sense of the
theatre is a marvel. Y
I
The actors appeared in modern dress b m u s e costumes of Jonson's day and disguises
did not convey social rank or degree& formality to the audience three centuries after
the first production. At the 014 Vic production attempt was made to further
modernise certain details: the plague is replaced by a flu epidemic, and in the opening
scene Subtle threatens F s e not with a magical vial but with a chamberpot. The
Alchemist was stapt9 for the BBC, over the TV,and by several dramatic societies of
I
universities.

The appeal of The Alche~istislpartly because of the impression of crowded acticm.

As Do1 plays the distractad genklewoman and the Queen of Fairies, Face too assumes
the role of Jeremy, Captain Fa*, Lungs, and Ulen Spiegal. The gulls, all eight of
them, Dapper, Drugger, ~ a r n d o nSurly,
, Ananias, Tribulation, Kastril, and Dame
Pliant, have to cope with gn eql/lal number of cozeners. Improvisation and the
capacity for quick change of dieguises makes the perfmance spirited and lively.

The offshoots of The Alchemisd bring out elements in the play which have great
histrionic potential and relevanee. In the seventeenth century form of entertainment
known as droll originated. Thebe are farces based upon well-known comic scenes,
and depended for their success bn the improvisation the actor could display. These
performances had a special vo@e during the interregnum, and Bartholomew Fair and
similar festive occasions were preferred. In 1672 a droll was performed adaptin two Tlie.Alchemistin the
scenes with Drugger and another with Ananias. Drugger was the favourite of s veral
leading actors beginning with Arrnin, followed by Garrick, Cedric Harwicke and
2 Theatre

Alec Guinness. Assessing the importance of Garrick's acting, Robert Gale Noyes
rightly concludes: "The history of The Alchemist was virtually the history of the role
of Abel Drugger."

Another offshoot was "The Tobacconist," Francis Gentleman's prose farce produced
in 1770 with revivals in 1782, 1787, and 1800. Edmund Kean's performance as
Drugger was much applauded. A recent adaptation of The Alchemist is Eric
Linklater's The Mortimer Touch produced in 1950 during the Edinburgh Festival.
The power and appeal of the play is noted by Steane:

"Certainly the relevance of The Alchemist to the modern world should be clear
enough. Our own acquisitve society is quite as susceptible to exploitation as were the
Londoners of 1610. The prospect of big and easy money makes knaves and fools
now as it did then," and one of the chief pleasures of the audience is laughing with
the rogues. Jonson is modem too in demanding judgement rather than empathy, in
being critical and unsentimental.

It is true that on the stage, Jonson's use of a variety of jargons acquires a me force.
The encounter between Subtle and the Puritans is an example. Surly's feigning
ignorance of English when he disguises himself as a Spanish grandee and the
cozeners' acceptance of the disguise bring out the talent of the actors. Echoing Una
Ellis-Ferrnor's estimate of the play, John J. Enck comments."It is true that The
Alchemist'is a stunning comedy and nothing else quite equals it in English".

The relation of the script to the aition is an aspect of the play that surfaces in the
course of performance. The Alchemist was entered in the Stationer's Register in
October 1610. Franz Fricka rightly infers that the Quarto edition was "printed from.
a prompt-book." The stage directions, then, "can be interpreted as makeshift notes
added to the text." Jonson's use of knocks, and implied exists and entrances confirm
the need for reflexive mirror passages. The actors' clues to one another in such
passages as Dol's question "Will you have/The neighbours hear you?" and Face's
admonition, "Speak lower, rough," re-create mutual responses theatrically. In
supplementing voice, gesture, and mood, the mirror passages have a theatrical
function. As sophisticated aids to the actor, the passages reveal Jonson's vision of the
comic action.

4.3 PERFORMANCE AND STAGECRAFT

In Unit I11 we have discussed that The Alchemist-is the most circumscribed play that
Ben Jonson wrote. The whole action is confined within or immediately outside
Lovewit's house in Blackfiars. The nineteenth century editor, Gifford designated 'a
roam in Lovewit's house,' 'an outerroom.. ..I, 'the lane before Lovewit's house,'
'another room in the same' (three times), 'before Lovewit's door, and finally returned
to 'the room' and 'the outer room', again for the last two scenes of his last act.
Discerning students will understand that this method of location is novelistic rather
than theatrical; that the two outside scenes are the same, and that it is hardly
necessary to suppose two locations inside the house, certainly not five. Further, if
there were a door to be approached from the 'street' side before entry into a realistic
Lovewit's house, there would be no need for Jonson to inform his audience, with the
last words of Act I, 111, and IV, and at the end of several other scenes, who is going to
come on the stage next, and where they are. In the first two acts, not only is the
action of the play continuous, but it can easily be scene as taking place in a single
location - a quite generalised 'room in Lovewit's house.' Also, it is easy to show that
this 'room' requires three entrances - a requirement that could be met by most of the
 The ACchentist:
A &&y Guide . The play opens with m explosion; through the centrat en&nat, Subtle and Face ru&.
on to the stage qwrrelitrg, vytrich Dat tries to psst them. By means of this quatrel; " -
both the pretensions and thq true nahtre of these three are made cleat, and a gosd dad
of expositions managed quipkly, excitingly aad with dramaticprobabilrty. The --
hardly whle-hearted reconiciliatiow provide the motive for the action, and its
limitations in time.
i
The rest of t k a c t s e n e x td demonme the methods of the partnership in dealings
with Dapper and Lkugga, @ tb e&&M h l y the significance ~f the right and leh
doors. One isto t kbutsidq, h u g h wkich the cwtumers are admitted - or not:
'good wives, I pray ydu f-me, now' (i3iii) and through which Captain Face
enters following A M DNqer;:$fter he has conveyed Dapper %ythe back way' -
throughthe txit on the i%hqrside of the stage.

Act I1 IntroducesMattunoa,,andSurly, andthe first scene is set by Gifford in'an outer

room ofLavewit9shapie! *re is no need for this as i t is clear from the text that
there is no break in the actibil during ths whole of the act, and certain scenes are
plainly inside the base clearly rehted to the laboratory. Further,Jonson's
intention is to attach wtbit$plain significances to certain areas of a non-
represmlationd stage

"Cmeon, Sir. Nflw, you set your foot on shore

,- W b the rich pern;
And there within, $ir, are the golden mines,
Great Solomon's dphir! (IV,I,I-4)",

says Mammon to S d y . 1fwe d y s e his metaphor, we perceive that when Surly '.
sets his foot on shore in h ,
he ,
kams the ocean of the street and enters the
- -
house i.e. though the sta e right door* leads to the street in an arbitrary
disposition of the stage. ~ M a m m a , p o i o t s ~ ~ ~ d d n , m ~ w i t h a . w i d i ~
he means the laboratory, tl@ alchemical a p t u s , and he points to thei central
entrmce to the stage's thrwgk all the act, and particularly in the third scene, the
attention of the audieace 4 concentrated on this central entrance, You must note
when Jmsm prepared his {entfor the prink a f t ..fbliv,he did not write in all the
details of swe-bus+, &mially if the$ were &karhmthe dialogue.

-
Moreover, when at the erid of Mammon's hyperbolical outburst on the life of
s e n d pIeasure he win ierid when- the sfom, Face says:
1

"Sir, I'll go l@cU '

A littk, how it heightms (@,ii,87-88)and leaves the sta'ge by the central entrance that
leads to the laboratory, Stfictfy afterwards, Subtle efiters through the same door at
the beginning of scene iii. ;Inthe1-' discussion dfakhemy that fdhws,Fax now -
-
Ulen Spicgel is rqmrtdlb d k d attogive a mpm&on the progress of the-works
must repeatediy pass into #td out of the i h t m y . He may sormthes call out h r n
-
within, or perhaps the c-ins of the "dim-le spaceewwe Qawn back,
revealing an elalxmC p&k of appamtw set up and the stage locationsof the dream
fmory is firmly estBbli* for fume eefmwlcc.

Also, - , ,,
I
i
"What a b v e lmgu@e is, next to cawtry!"
1

says Surly of the d i s c d n s of alchemy, bul the point of the scene is not only to
ridicule the grotesque im&priety of the alchemical language which at the same time
establishing the pemasive+essof Subtle and the obsession of Mammon; it is also to
establish in tams of stageigeograpkythe location of the 'golden m k 'in Mammon's
40 rich pern' I
 The Alchemist in the' 1
In a production in aproscenium - arch theatre, the scene that opens Act 111, the Theatre I

conversation between Ananias and Tribulation in the lane outside Love wit's house, , I
I
would probably be presented in fnmt of the stage curtains.

At the end of the scene they would go off, the curtains would open, and they would
promptly enter once more. Once the action is back in Subtle's consulting room, the
locations so firmly established at the beginning of the play become operational once
more. Subtle at once refers to the apparatus within, and could move angrily towards
the laboratory entrance, restrained by Tribulation, to set about the threatened work of
destruction when Ananias chips in with his protests. When these locations are
established they are put to excellent comic use. The pace of the play gets faster as the
custdmers arrive one after another and have to be prevented from meeting.

Act IV begins at the point of Mammon's entrance because this is the beginning of the
crisis. It leads to the explosion of the laboratory in scene V. Do1 'in her file of
talking' and Mammon could use the 'upper stage' (if there was one) in this scene, but
there is no need for them todo so! The scene could with more convenience be
managed on the main stage.

Act V begins in the street outside the house and remains there for the first three
scenes., while Face is finally forced to telling his master the truth - or some of it. As
scene iii ends, and Love wit and Face go into the house through one door, Do1 and
Subtle bring Dapper out through the other - soon followed by Face - and we are back
inside the house again. The loose ends of the plot are tied up one by one. Face blows
up one by one - reversing the expectations of Do1 and Subtle. The dupes return with
officers to search, and are out faced by Lovewit, and the play ends.

-
You must note that the laboratory though it is never seen, or need not be is the
symbol at the centre of the M y . It is the dream factory - the most potent
-
instrument of delusions, and its presence and locations are firmly established early in
the play. This one fixed point in space obliged Jonson to have others; the two doors,
right and left - one to the outside world and one to the 'back way'. Jonson the
scholar was no doubt pleased to construct a play that fitted so neatly the neo-
classical prescriptions of the unities of time, place, and action; Jonson the man of
the theatre turned these strict limitations to brilliant account - in contriving
comic stage-business-comingsand goings quick changes unexpected entries,
double takes, and so on. But scholar and theatre craftsman are but subservient
-
to the imaginative artist, who saw the apparatus for making gold the get-rich
-
quick machine as the central symbol of a play about human greed and
credulity, and their inevitable consequence in disappointment and loss.

4.4 CRITICAL EXTRACTS

rI-- J.B. Steane

The Alchemist is one of the best comedies in English, but many conscripted readers
may be forgiven if they do not think so. They will have met the play in a schoolroom
and read it 'in class'. They will have looked ahead to try to make some sense of their
own next speech, lending one ear meanwhile to Subtle who is only just able to keep
pace with his script, casting one eye at the notes to see if they have anything to say
about a line that might possibly be amusing if it could be understood, and wishing
perhaps that they had listened to their teacher's symposia of what was happening
f ^ 'last period'.
tz
Michael Jamieson

When Sir Tyrone Guthrie directed The Alchemist at London's Old Vic in 1962, the
play was performed in modern dress. In part this was because the desire for wealth
The Alchemist: still makes people gullible t&y, ~ u & e gave a*further reason in his programme -
A Study Guriie note: modem dress gives mfepoint to the frequent disguises and impersonations
used by the trio of rogue. In Jacobean dress, who would know when Face was a
Captain or House Servrint? But because Jonson used contemporary idiom and place-
refheme so vividly, some ot)scurity is imwdays unavoidable, and a director may
well want to make cuts,

L-C. KRigbts (1937)

.
,
4

I
Recent revivals of VBIpone &d The Alchemist occasioned some surprise - surprise
that they were such good 'thtre'. Certainly the reception given to those plays
implied a still.widespnzad m$wneeption both of Jonson's intrinsic merits and ofthe
extent and kind of his indebtedness to the Classics.

1IZC. Bradbrook. 1

Jocson's Dickensian comtdi#s of the London underworld, The Alchemist and

Bartholamew Fair, have poked much the most popular with modem audiences; the
literary as distinct Mthe theatrical popularity of Jonson has grown. In the
universities, where in mary ibises social and interdisciplinary features of literary
history are stressed, Jotlson'$ plays take a central place.
I

S. Musgrove

The staging, like the pby, is ;highly concentrated.. . A problem arises in those scenes
-
where some characters are idside and others outside the house. H.S. and E.K.
Chambers visualise a wall bhild out on to the stage containing a door practicable
from both sides, used hy F w talking to Mammon in 111. Y.. . If this is so, then every
character entering fiam the $met must be seen by the audience well before they enkr
was implied in the text. Lovlewit and the Neighborn, for instance, must appear, with
nothing to say, before the enkl of IV. vii; and there are other difficulties. I have
therefore foliowed the traditional editorial view by which the stage turned itself into
the exterior of the h_ouse for V, i-iii, and probably 111. i, but otherwise remains an
interior, with the characters in the street heard, but not seen, "within".

J. B. Barnbornugh
His technique of accurnulatibn, of heaping one absurdity or humorous clause on
another until the audience is ahnost battered into laughter, works well in the theatre,
but is difficult to demmsbr;ltie in a lecture-room, and because even his shorter comic
passages depend so much for their effect on the context in which they occur they
cannot easily be detached by the critic. We do not swap quotations from Jonson as we
do from Shakespeare or Wilfle, and this perhaps may have contributed to the belief
that he is a slow and ponder~uswriter.. . A visit to a production of The Alchemist
should prove an adequate corrective to this belief. It is the most energetic and fast-
moving of all Jonson's robust and vigorous comedies, a non-stop display of
ingenuity add invention, centering flawlessly in the quick-change artistry of Face,
.
Subtle, and Do1 Common . i. The Afchemist,and like all Jonson's comedy it demands
to be played quickly and without pause.

F. H. Mares (1967) I

This play is the most circumiscribed that Jonson wrote. The whole action is confined
within or immediately outside Lovewit's house in Blackfriars... E.K. Chambers .
&ems to have thought of some kind of permanent set for this play, for he mentions
the need for a 'practicable' door and seems to suggest that, for eyample, at the
beginning of Act I11 the Anabaptists would approach this door from one side and &ilk
outside it in the frst sew, @en knock and go through the door (all the while fully
 illusionism is given its visual counterpart in the rapid assumption of different roles- l%eAlchemisF in the
The Alchemist presents a different personality to each of his customers-or infrequent Theatre
I
changes of costume: Abel Drugger was one of Garrick's most famous and slrccessful
i
parts, and his performance m il was regularly contrasted with his Lear as a measure 1
of his range and versatility.. . In 1770 an Irish actor, Francis Gentleman, provided a I

h e called The Tobacconist, crudely from Jonson's play, with M a s Weston in i

the part of Drugger...

The happiest period enjoyed by this most popular of Jonson's plays began in 1721
and ended, with the retirement of David Garrick, in 1776.. . Somethinglike an
Elizabethan upper stage is useful in certain scenes, most clearly, I should say, at
Lovewit's homecoming, when the action takes place outside his house and Face at
last appears in answer to the repeated knocking.

Franz Fricker -

C-
The large mass of stage directions are, as in Vol'ne and Epicoene, adbitions for the
sake of the reader. They are concerned mainly with sound and stage business. Half
dozen reflect exits and entrances, the rest deal with disguise and ways of
.- speaking.. .first, there is the simple kind defining walk-ones and mlk-offs in an
incidental way such as by means of short reflexive mirror passages.. . The second
h

kind is much more elaborate, often developing into a dramtic scene invariably
created as the careful prqamticmof a dupe's walk-on...The possibility of u h m i n g
visitors from the wind& conveniently lends itself tot he discussion of characters
before their walk-ons. The device used is frequently that of the transitive mirror
passage .... S w w i z i n g the results of ow examination of the minor passages in The
A l e h i s t , we can say that

They are concerned mainly with sound, disguise, and deception;

An allusive quality of he speches often replaces possible straightfmsrd dramatic
control, related to a tendency to prefer colloquial language to rhetoric; Y

Clear-cut mirror passages tend to occur in satirized rhetoric;

Their function is frequently to express irony;

The playful, o h sophisticated, technique offers less guidance to the actor tknrn the
straightforward method h w n from Volpone;
I The author found it necessary to add stage directions to restore the balance between
implicit and explicit theatrical guidance.
r
I
I
Herford And Simpson
I

Jonson's setting of the scene and careful dovetailing of the events of the plot are
exceptionally well fhought out, even for him. There is no change of scene.
E v e m n g takes place in a single room of Lovewit's house of in h t of the door

I that opens on 'the lane outside. The house has a window which commands a view of
the h e ; The doors were man interior wall built on the stage, 'for action Jonson here
is a clear innovator, so far as the English public theatre is concerned; no otha play of
our period reproduces this type of permanent interior setting... The time-sequence is
1 _
worked out with exceptional fullness.

1
i
Robert Gale Noyes
Of all the comedies of J m , The Alchemist had the most brilliant stage-history... It
was acted o h e r than an).other Jonsonian play, it held the stage the mast steadily,
almost exclusively as a Dnujr Lane piece; always there was a curiously false
emphasis in considering the most important acting role neither Subtle, The Alchemist,
 h e Alchemist:
A Study Guide

His Humour.
D.V.K. Raghavacharyulu 1

Texts I
I

Bamborough, J.B. ed. m e Al&emisr. London: Macmillan, 1967 (helpful notes).

Cook, Elizabeth, ed The Alchemist. London: A & C Black, 1991 (comprehensive

;overage of backigmid, text and production).

Kernan, Alvin B. ed. Ben Jonfon: The Alchemist. New Haven, Corn: Yale U F'r, ,
1974 (explores the bac#cgroundof alchemy and explains technical terms in an

Levin, Harry, ed. Ben Jonson: Selected Wwks. New Yo*, Random House, 1938.
(re-assessment of Jonsbn's achievement)

Raghavacharyulu, D.V.K.ed. JTheAlchemist. Madras: Macmillan, 1977 (pnxmts

Indian perspective). 1
1
Sale, Arthur, ed. The Alchemigi. Delhi: Oxford U F'r, 1969; 1977 (very helpful notes
on aspects of the play $peciallylocal colour).

Steane, J.B. ed. Ben Jomon: F e Alchemist. New York: Cambridge U F'r, 1967
(detailed Introduction p d Notes).

Books I
I

44
 The Alchemist in
Barish, Jonas, A. ed. Ben Jonson: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood thc Theatre
Cliffs, N.J.: Rentice-Hall, 1963 ("Introduction" identifies trends in critical
reception of Jonson, and the anthology includes assessments by T.S. Eliot,
L.C. Knights, Hany Levin, and Edmund Wilson, and an analysis of the plot
of The Alchemist by Paul Goodman).

Barton, Anne. Ben Jonson, Dramatist. London: Cambridge U R , 1984 (important

revision of Jonson's self-image and of the linear theory of development).

Bradbrook, M.C. The Growth and Stiucture of Elizabethan Comedy. London:

Chatto & Windw, 1955; 1973 (landmark in assessment of Jonsonian
Comedy).

Chute, Marquette. Ben Jonson of Westminster. New York: Dutton, 1953 (bio-critical
study valuable for the re-creation of the age).

Craig, D.H. ed. Ben Jonson: The Critical Heritage 1599-1798. London: Routledge,
- - 1990 ("Introduction"*sketches approaches to Jonson; valuable for

contemporary notices and stage history).

Dessen, Alan C. Jonson 's Moral Comedy. Evanston, Ill: Northwestern U R, 1971
(emphasis on social change and traditions of drama).

Ellis-Fermor, Una. The Jacobean Drama; An Interpretation. London: Methuen,

1958 (The chapter "Jacobean Dfamatic Technique", and the Appendix,
''Biogra$ical Notes"are very helpful).

Enck, John. Jonson and the Comic h t h . Madison: U of Wisconsin R, 1957

(Cbpter VII brings out uniqueness of The Alchemist).

Enright, D.J. 'Crime and Punishment in Ben Jonson". Scnrtiny IX,3 (1940) (alleges
lack of Unity).

Fricker, Franz. Ben Jonson s' Plays in Per$ormance and the Jacobean Theatre. Bern,
Francke Verlag.

Haynes, Jonathan. The Social Relations ofJonson 's Theater. New York: Cambridge
U R, 1992 (emphasis on play's relation to pamphlet literature and changes in
the underworld).

Kay, W. David. Ben on: A Literary Life. London: Macmillan, 1995 (focus on
trends in literature).

Knights, L.C. Drama and Sociery in the Age of Jonson. London: Chatto & Windus,
1937; 1968 (links comedy with economic change and analyses in depth the
dramatic tradition).

Noyes, Robert Gale. Ben Jonson on the English Stage 1660-1776. Cambridge,
Mass: Harvard U Pr,1935.

Partridge, Edward B. The Broken Compass: A Study of the Major Comedies of Ben
Jonson. New York: Columbia U R , 1958 (very helpful study of motifs,
imagery and language).

Riggs, David. Ben Jonson: A Life. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard U R , 1989 (presents
paradox of Jonson, the violent man, and the disciplined artist and examines
the implications).

Summers, Claude J. and Ted-Lany Pebworth. Ben Jonson. Boston: Twayne, 1979
(scholarly survey of Jonson's life and work).
The Alchemist:
A Study Guide Articles ,

Coghill, Nevill. "The Bgsis of ShakespeareanComedy". Anne Ridler, ed.

Shakespeare Criticis& 1935-60. London: Oxford U Pr, 1963 (traces origins
of Jonsonian comedy ~ n its
d characteristic features).

Duncan, Edgar Hill. "Jonson%Alchemist and the Litmatwe of Alchemy". PMLA

LXI,1946 (shows how "certain of the qxxchs of the play take on a new and
fuller meaning wkcn +ad against a background of some knowledge .. of. .
alchemical l i ~ ~ e ~ .
I
Eliot, T.S. "Ben Jonson". Selected Essays 1917-1932, reprinted in Barish
(influential in Jqnson revival).
Goodman,Paul. "Comic ~ l o k The: Alchemists'. The Structure of Literature,
reprinted in Barish. (a structural analysis bringing out "the peculiar delight of
... (Jmson), unfunny but very glorious").
Junoja, Renu. b'Denouemmt Jonsonian Comedy". Recent Research on Ben
Jonson, Jacobean i h m a Studies Series 76, ed. James Hogg. Salzburg:
Universitat Salzburg, 1 1978.
Kay, W. David. 'The Shapink of Ben Jonson's C m : A Reexamination of Facts
and Problems." Modkrn
, Philology, 67 (1970).
Knights,L.C. "Ben Jonson, @mmtist+" Etoris F d ,ed. The Age ofShakespeare: A
Guide to English Litelrahtre, Vbl. 2, H m d s w o r z h , Middlesex: Penguin,
1955. (an examinatiop of Jonson's tragedies too).
Levin, Harry. "An Intrsdudilon to Ben Jmson." Reprinted in Barish (reproduction
of "Introduction" to $elected Plays).
Mares, F.H. "Comic Procedures in Shakespeare and Jonson: Much Ado about
Nothing and Tke Akchemist." Ian Donaldson, ed. Jonson and Shakespeare,
London: Macmillan, 11983.
Palmer, Daryl W. "Ben Jonson as Other: Recent Trends in the Criticism of Jonson's
Drama". Research C)pportunities in Renaissance Drama, XXI (1992).
Platz-Waury, Elka. 'The ~ h b t e r i z i Function
n~ of Names in Jonson's Comedies".
Recent Research on Ben Jonson, Jacobean Drama Studies Series 76, ed.
James Hogg, SalzWg: Universitat I Salzburg, 1978.
Sprague, Arthur Colby. "The Alchemist on the Stage." neatre Notebook: A Journal
of the History and T4chniqueof the British Theatre, 17 (1963).
Wilson, Fdmund. "Mdrose Ben Jonson." Reprinted &om Triple Thinkers, in Barish.

4.6 QUESTIONS

1. Keeping the stage craft used in The Alchetr~ist,discuss the problems, with
possible solution, thit might arise in trying to make The Alchemist acceptable
to a modern audience.
2. Write a short note om The Alchemist in the theatre.
3. What were the contributions of Jonson the scholar, Jonson the theatre
craftsman, and JonsOn the imaginative artist to the making of the play, 77ie
Alchemist.
I
4.9 ANNOTATION PASSAGES

Annotate the following passages with reference to context:

i) How scruputous he is, and violent,

'Gainst the least act of sin. Physic, or mathematics,
Poetry, state, or bawdry (as I told you)
She will endure, and never startle; but
No word of controversy.

ii) Rain her as many showers as Jove did drops

Unto his Danae; show the god a miser
Compared with Mammon. What? The stone will do't.
She shall feel gold, taste gold, hear gold, sleep goid:
Nay, we wili concumbere gold.

iii) Nature
Never bestowed upon mortality,
A more unblamed, a more harmonious feature;
She played the stepdame in all faces, else.

iv) Above the art of Aesculapibs,

That drew the envy of the Thunderer!"
I know all this, and more.

It is noble humour. But this form

Was not intended to so dark a use!
Had you been c x ~ ~ dfoul,
d , of some coarse mould,
A cloister had one well; but such a feature
That might stand up the glory of a kingdom,
To live recluse! Is a mere solecism,"
Though in a nunnery.

vi) I'm pleased the glory of her sex should know

This nook, here, of the Friars, is no climate
For her to live obscurely in, to learn
Physic and surgery for the constabIe's wife
Of some odd hundred in Essex; but come forth,
And taste the air of palaces; eat, drink
The toils of emp'rics, and their boasted practice;
Tincture of pearl, and coral, gold, and amber,

vii) Be seem at feasts, and triumphs; have it asked,

What miracle she is? Set all the eyes
Of court afire, like a burning glass,
And work'em into cinders, when the jewels
Of twenty states adorn thee, and the light
Strikes out the stars; that, when thy name is mentioned,
Queens may look pale; and we but showing our love,
Nero's Poppaea may be lost in story!"
Thus will we have it.

viii) We'll therefore go with all, my girl, and live

In a fiee state, where we will eat our mullets0
Soused in high-country wines, sup pheasants' eggs,
And have our cockles boiled in silver shells,
Our shrimps to swim again, as when they lived,
In a rare butter made of dolphins' milk,
The Alckemlst: Whose m a m do& look like opals; and with these
A St@ GuMe
Delicate meats, set orn$elves high for pleasure,
And take us down agaifl, and then renew
Our youth and with drinkizlg the elixu;
And so enjoy a -ty
Of life and lust. I

And thou shalt ha' thy wardrobe,

Richer than Nature's, still, to change thyself,
And very ofther, for pride, than she,
Or Art, her wise and alfnost-equal servant
/

0, this'd no true grammar''

And as ill logic! You dust render causes, child,"
Your first and second ibtentions, know your canons
And your divisions, m*, degrees and differences,
Your predicaments, suIpstance and accident,
Series extern and in*, with their causes
Efficient, material, fonplal, final,
And ha' your elements perfect-
xiv) 0, your linea fortunae Snakes it plain0
And stella, here, in monte Veneris:'
But, most of all, junc* anularis."
i 11of art, lady,
He is a soldier, ot a m4
But shall have sotne &at honour shortly.
xiv) I'll ha' you to my chamber of demonstrations,
Where I'll show you bdth the grammar and logic
And rhetoric of quarrelling; my whole method
Dqwn out in tables; arid my instrument,
That hath the several 4ale upon't, shall make you
Able to quanel at a S ~ W ' Sbreadth by moonlight.
xiii) Now lies upon't. It is but one marl more,
Which on's chance to Have her; and, beside,"
There is no maidenheab to be feared or lost.
I

xiv) Your Spanish jennet isthe best horse; your Spanish

Stoup is the best grab; ) m r Spanish beard"
Is the best cut, your Spbnish ruffs are the best
Wear; your S p a n h p a k the best dance.
Your Spanish titillatio~in a glove
The best perfume; and for your Spanish pike,
And Spanish blade, letlyour poor Captain speak.
by
And so we may arrive Talmud skill,"
And profane Greek, to raise the building up
Of Hebefs housei, agaibst the Ismaelite,"
King of Togarma, and /his habergionso

1
Brimstony, blue, and ery; and the force
Of King Abaddon, an the Beast of Cittim,"
Which Rabbi David ~ h c h iOnkelos,"
,
And Aben-Ezra do intdrpret Rome."

xvi) 0 sir, we are defeated! All the works

Are flown in f w o ; ev ry glass is burst."

,:"
Furnace, and all rent d wn, as if a bolt
Of thunder had been ivcri through the house.
Retorts, receiver$, pelibans, bolt-heads,
 Lady, you see into what hands you are fallen; The Atchemist in the .
'Mongst what a nest of villains! And how near Theatre i

Your honour was to have catched a certain clap

(Through your credulity) had I but been
So punctually f m a r d , as place, time,
And other circumstance would ha'made a man;
xviii) For you're a handsome woman: would yo' were wise, too.
I am gentleman, come here disguised,
Only to find the knaveries of this citadel,
And where I might have wronged your honour, and have not,
I claim some interest in your love. You are,
They say, a widow, rick and I am a bachelor,
Worth nought. Your fortunes may make me a man,
As mine ha' preserved you a woman. Think upon it,
And whether I have deserved you, or no.
xix) Ther'es no such thing intended. A good cart
And a clean whip shall ease you of that fear."
I am the Spanish Don that should be cozened.
=) 0, make your approach, good Captain.
I've found from whence your copper rings and spoons
Come, now, wherewith you cheat abroad in taverns.'
"Twashere, you learned t' anoint your boot with brimstone,
Then rub men's gold on?, for a kind of touch,
And say 'twas nought, when you had changed the colour,
That you might haY for nothing? And this Doctor,
Your sooty, s m o k y - k d compeer, he
Will cbse you so much gold in a bolt's-head,
And, on a turn, convey Fthe stead another
With sublimed mercury, that shall burst I' the heat,
Then weeps Mammon;
Then swoons his worship. Or he is the Faustus"
That casteth figures and can conjure, cures
Plague, piles, and pox, by the ephemerides,
And holds intelligence with all the bawds,
And midwives of three shires? While you send in-
Captain-what, is he gone?&sels with child,
Wives that are barren, or the waiting-maid
With the green-sickness? [Seizing Subtle] Nay, sir, you must
Though he be 'scaped, and answer by the ears, sir."

i) This cheater would ha' cozened thee o'the widow.-

He owes this honest Drugger, here, here, seven pound,
He has had on him, in two-penny'orths of tobacco.
ii) Thou art not of the light. That ruff of pride
About thy neck betrays thee, and is the same
With that, which the unclean birds, in seventy-seven,
Were seen to prank it with on divers coasts."
Thou look'st like Antichrist in the lewd hat."
iii) The Spaniard hates the brethren, and hath spies
Upon their actions; and that this was one
I make no scruple. But the holy synod
Have been in prayer and meditation of it,
And 'tis reyealed no less to them than me,
That casting of money is most lawful.
 UNIT 5 CHARACTERIZATION AND LANGUAGE
Structure
5.0 Objectives
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Characterization
5.3 Language
5 -4 Critical Reception of Ben Jonson
5.5 Questions
5.6 Annotation Passag&

5,O OBJECTPVES

The main objective ofthe unit is to discuss the characterization and language used in
. the play.

Characterization, as you w w , is an important aspect of plays. As characters

contribute to the development ofplot and attract the attention of the audience.
Dexterous playwrights like Jonson and Shakespeare put in efforts to infuse blood into
their characters and made them immortals in tht minds of their audienceslreaders. To
make the characters realistic and lively, suitable language shoukl be used by the
playwright.

Ben Jonson based his characterization on the doctrine of humours derived from the
-
Middle Ages. The humours were four bodily fluids choler, blood, phlegm and
-
melancholy correspondingin their attributes to the four elements; choler, like fire,
was hot and Qy; blood, like air, hot and moist; phlegm, like water cold and wet;
melancholy, like earth, cold and dry. just as the baIance of the elements in a material
body determined its khd, su the balance of the humours in a man determined his
psychological type. A disidbance of the balance-appropriate for an individual's
...
temperament .. .to both physical and psychological disorders, Jonson wrote two
comedies, Every man In Hi? Humour and Every Man out ofHis Humour, where he
relied on the doctrine of humanness as a basis for his characters' personalities. Such
an approach constituted a scientific justification for the extreme character types that
have always been a staple of comedy.

Jonson stated his position in the opening scene of 8very Man Out ofHis Humour and
the key lines are worth quoting:

.
" ....soin every human body
The choler, melancholy, phlegm, and blood
By reason that they flow coatinually
In some one part, and are not continent,
Receive the name of humow. Now this far
It may, by metaphor, apply itself
Unto the general disposition;
As when someone peculiar quality Charactaization and ,
Do& so possess a man, that it doth draw Language
All his affects, his spirits, and his powers,
In than confections, all to run one way,
This may be truly said to be a humour."

However, humours were not as important in Jonson's later plays as they wFe in his
early plays. In the twelve years between Every Man In His Human (1598) and The
Alchemist (1610) his emphasis shifted. Tke Alchemist, like Volpone's a few years
earlier, was a satirical attack on lust, greed and hypocrisy. In The Alchemist
"humour" means simply a quirk of character. Surly says "I have a humow5 would
not willingly be gulled," which means "I have an odd quirk of charact'u; I do not like
to be cheated.'

As a dramtic technique, the doctrine of humours has advantages as well as

disadvantages. It is a simplifytng method. If we compare Jonson and Shakespeare as
dramatists, it is at once apparent that Shakespeare's characters are more complex;
that-their motives are more various than Jonson's; that they are capable of surprising
us. In other words, they are more like real people. Jonson's, on the other hand, are
like caricatures but not portraits. They are simplified and exaggerated, and just for
this reason, they are alienated from our sympathy. We shall explain them by citing
an example. It is a serious problem in Tke Muchant of Vemice that Shylock is a
traditional comic villain who suddenly twins into a deeply informed human being
whose desire for revenge, if not pardonable, is at best understandable. This wuld not
happen in The Alchemist: we feel little or no sympathy for the characters h a u s e we
know from the start they are not human; They are both super-human and sub-himan:
s ~ and intensity
~ in the extent n of their passion and sub-human in its
singleness and limitation a d in the absence of redeeming counter qualities.

Attached to these broad principles of character creation are two devices that can be
considered points of craftsmanship. Jonson always supplied a thorough inkduction
for each character on his fnst appearance, we come to h o w Subtle, Face and Do1 in
the first scene. We also come to b o w each of the victims as he arrives. After their
introduction, characters do not develop during the play. The other device is the
Impage. It is discussed in the following section.

We shall now discuss the important characters:-

A. The C h e u : The three cheats: Subtle, Face and Do1 Common operate in
different ways and, perhaps out of different motives. When they don the costtunes of
their roles, they assume the characteristics of the disguises they put on, not just
playing the part, but by identiffing themselves with the roles.

i) &&&: He is the central figure in The Alchemist. As Herford and Sirnapson

put it, he stands with one foot in the region of the prodigious, with the other pianted
firmly on the ground of contemporary human nature. It is through him that Ben
Jonson has exposed and satirised the cheats and swindlers who flourished a b d a n t l y
in his age.

Alchemy a pseudo-science - was a widespread social malady in the Elizabethan Age.

The jargon of alchemy is the basis of Subtle's metaphors and our echo of how he
thinks. Throughout the play he is the complete swindler who derives full satisfaction
from his job of swindling. To illustrate: in Act 111scene ii, when Face is not
-
particularly concerned about not finding Surly in town as, after all, there is no
-
money to be made ffom Surly Subtle has his mind on higher things than money: "0
but to have gulled himhad seen a mastery."

Subtle is most interesting when he plays various roles, changes his role at a moment's
notice, and behaves differently with different dupes. At the opening of the play, we
The Alchemist: will find Subtle in ordinary clothes - the only symbol his craft being the vial of acid
A Study Guide that he carries. But as soon a$ Dapper arrives he dons his robes, and he is now
engaged in magic. He assumes the dignity that is required; he feigns reluctance to
take money. He is equally d i e f i e d with Drugger when he reads his forehead or his
palm. In his dealings with MBmmon, Subtle apparently becomes the completely

1
dedicated alchemist, wurking with his ambition to achieve the philosopher's stone.
He proclaims that imp? tho ghts wiH result in the failure of the process. He is

I
worthy of the awe with Yhic Mammon treats him, who, except Surly, can doubt that
Subtle is not the holy ddctor? Im e n he describes the process, he speaks with dignity
and authority as though he h& forgotten that no experiments are in progress and no
work has been done. And whbn he explains the rationale of alchemy to Surly, he is
the very spirit of sweet reasonableness - a man who is secure in his knowledge and
has only pity for the skeptic dvho does not understand. Finally, when the fake
explosion takes place, he su*ds in convincing Mammon that it has occurred due to
Mammon's sin. With the puilitans, Subtle adopts an entirely different image and is
consistent in it: he is it'dscibld, stubborn, opinionated, and impatient.
I

But he lacks the refinement, culture, and poetry of Jonson's Volpone. In this regard,
Herford and Simpson wrote: Volpone yields nothing in knavery-to Subtle, but Subtle
is despoiled of the explicit *try which breaks in lurid flashes from Volpone, the
Fox; he comes before us, nog chanting an exultant morning hymn to his s k n e d
treasure, 'the world's soul a 4 mine', but exchanging volley's of gutter language with
his partner i.e. Face. And this sordid imposter of north is at bottom far more
intelligible than the Vehetid patrician. Volpone, so securely incorporated, by his

,?
rank and status, with the v body of the Venetian polity, is yet felt to be the alien he
is. Subtle is bound by no su h ties of ostensible community to the society. He prays
upon, and his operations are far more deeply ingrained- with sham; but, we are made,
nonetheless, to see that this mature had a natural history, that his is a growth of the
soil, a fungus - growth routed in the greed and hunger of London. In words of
Carylean flavour and punger/icy, Jonson tells us what he preciously was:

"Taking your nealelof heam in from cookes,

k
Where, like the fath of hunger, you did walke
Piteously costive, 'th your pinche'd hme-mess
And you complexiob, of romane wash,
Stuck full of black, b d melan cholique wormes.
-
And Subtle remains to the w d sordid in his making and spending of money."
I

Subtle, thus, is a pow& rkpresentativeof the medieval pseudo-alchemists who, -

unlike the other alch-ists b t figured in literature - has some individual attributes.
He is shrewd and versatile, perspicacious and petsuasive . He is both a type and an
individual.
I

ii)w: In the play Face 4 s not one face but mny: he plays varied roles and wears
many masks. In the beginning of the play, he is Jeremy, the butler in the house of
Lovewit and so he is at the /end. He is also a persuasive rogue who lures clients for
Subtle by using his skills shrewdness. It is he who builds up the image of Dr.
Subtle as the man who can bake the philosophefs stone; as a magician who has
dealing with the world of dirits; as an astrologer who can read signs and lines on the
palm and foresee the future%He is here, there and everywhere.
I
He is sharp-witted, glib-toqgued and is always ready with some excuse or plan to
save a situation. He k r i a in saying that he should be given a larger share of the
projects as he iures in the clients and dupes and takes more pains than Subtle.

Jonson, in the opening scetje, throws some light on the part of Face. The play opens
with a quarrel between Fade and Subtle, and the latter gives a graphic account of the
earliest face of Face befo he became Jeremy, the butler. In those days Face was
7 ,
 --
I

poor, thin, and had the company of ruffians whom he had met in disreputable taverns. - Cltaracterlzation
As Subtle puts it: am9 Loogwge II
I

"Thou Vermine, have I not taken thee, out of dung,

So poore, so wretched, when no living thing
Would keejw thee companie, but a spider or horse?
Rais'd thee from broomes, and dust, and watering pots?
Sublim'd thee; and exalted thee, and fix'd thee
I,' the third region, call'd our start of grace?
Wrought thee to spirits, to quintessence, with panes
Would twice have won me the philosopher's works
Put thee in words and fashion?
Made the fit
For more than o r d i k e fellowships?"

Moreover, Face is a typical rogue who reminds us of Mosca of Volpone. Here is the
analysis of Herford and Simpson: "Face is much more nearly related to Mosca than
Subtle to Volpone. But he is far from being a replica. The fabric of make believe
which he sustains is several degrees more complicated and various; Mosca is a real
parasite dependent upon a real patron; Face plays alchemist's drudge, as he plays the
Captain in the joint business in which, at least, he is the more masterful partner and
has the larger stake. The energetic opening scene, where the two rogues vie in
tearing away the last ragged vesture of each other's self-esteem, makes us vividly
aware of the natural history of Face no less than that of Subtle; but Jeremy, the
enterprising butler, accomplished in all the varieties of back stair pilfering, who
compounds with a conjurer f& the use of his master's empty house on the terms of
equal profits and a bonus horse-race, cock-pit, cards, must have been instantly
accepted as a London rascal true to type."

Like Subtle, he responds to the roles he must play. He is Captain Face; he is 'Lungs',
the sorcerer's apprentice, and at the end he is Jeremy the butler. As Captaih Face he
is the rude and over bearing bully. He can fight Subtle in the opening scene of the
play, and this role gives him the required fillip to his confidence fmt and later,
success. When he is the sorcerer's apprentice, 'Lungs', he is affable and obsequious.
As Jeremy he retires from the limelight as soon as his real master, Lovewit amves.
You, as a discerning student, can understand the actor's (i.e. the one who plays this
role of a rogue) difficulty in changing personalities while changing roles.

m:
iii) Though Do1 is not as active as Subtle or Face, she plays well the
part assigned to her. The following are the comments of Herford and Simpson on her
roll: "If Face is a Mosca of more shifts and better luck; the third member of 'the
indenture tripartite' has no equivalent in the earlier play. The female rogue,
paramour, and partner of the chief contriver of the harms, was, however, a figure not
-
unknown to Jonson. She is an indispensable member of the 'house' indispensable to
the precious pair whose game she plays and whose dangerous fends she quells,
indispensable to the intrigue which she complicates and enriches, indispensable
above all to the satire, to the flavour of which her presence adds an ironical pungency
not to be otherwise obtained. Even the business of catering for the lust of clients
illustrates less drastically the pretension of the alchemist to 'holy living' than do the
sordid lotteries and altercations of Subtle and Face for the possession of their
common mistress." Even though as the Queen of Fairies, she has no opportunity to
improvise, she still stands in the front rank of Jonson's women.

B) The:The three dupes Mammon, Drugger, and Dapper, have different levels
of imagination and are at different levels of evolution.

i):- Surly describes Sir Epicure Mammon aptly:

"Heart! Can it be
That a gram sir, a rich, that has no need, I

I
The Alchemr'st: A wise sir, too, at ofher times, should thus,
A Sudy Guide With his own oaths;and arguments, make hard means
To gull himself? '

Mammon is an imposing fip who statlds head and shoulders above the other dupes
viz., Dapper, Drugger, and &astrill. His highly poetie imagination exalts and
transmutes even the coarse andthe vulgar into something noble and high. His
passions are two: craving fot money and htst far wcmeft. Due to these passions, he
becornesa prey to the threc +heatsin the pFay, viz. SuMe, Face, and Dol.

Here are the comments of H d w d and Simpm on Mammon's opulent imagination!

"Sir Epicure Mammon stand$ apart and aloof. He'belongs not merely to a different
social rank as it's a differentorder of imagination. The realism of Jonson's method,
elsewhere in this play so pahding and to all appearance so sedulously p r e m e d ,
here gives way to personage who belongs to the London of Jonson and James I by
a b u t as good right - as Marlrn's Faustus to Wittenberg. The sinister romance of
Volpone, the hint of poetry iq the worship of gold, his god, is resumed and
heightened in Sir Epicurn's nbgnificent dreams. Jonson is here for once
Marlowesque, but in a kind t@&orrpwed and his own. Mammon is a Faustus of the
senses, captivated by the d m m s of exploring the utmost possibilities of~econditeand
requisite sensation, as Fatstub by the dream of boundless knowledge and power. The
sordid Mephistophiks of the laboratory never filfils his bod, but Mammon has
already taken possession of his kingdom and fmsts futl at the origins his imagination
provides. V o l p e ' s imagination is an instrument of his cunning and cruel brain,
employed to discover new ways of explicating and deluding others. Both are
magnificent in sin; even theirilust is aristocratic and demands a noble prey; but while
Volpone almost secures the noblest and chastest lady in Venice, Mammon hails a
harlot as a princess, and discovers in the common mistress of Subtle and Face, not
.only the Austrian lip and the Medicean forehead, but an air,

'That sparkles a diceinitic, beyond an earthy beantie!"

Keeping in view the codmenth of Herford and Simpsdn given above, we can analyse
his role: we first meet hiin he has been a client of the three cheats for sometime
and so we can conclude that they have had ample time to convince him. But, what
we see is Mammon weaving fantasies - which are above the reach of Face's
-
descriptive abilities in a lanmage fill of poetic colour and imagery. He describes
the virtues and the procedures of alchemy with learning and delight. He talks of
books written by Adam (in 'Hikh Dutch'); he reinterprets mythology (Jason's fleece)
to fit his purposes. The weaviag of fantasies neva ends while he is on stage. The
luxuries he describes are the dieasure of his character:

"I11have no bawds
But fathers and mothers they will do it best,
Best of all others. And my flatters
Shall be the puk and gravest o t divines
That 1 can get for money. My *ere fools..
Eloquent burgenes
The few that would give our thdmselves to be
Cant and town-stallions.. ..
These will I beg, to make me eqmuchs of "

Moreover, the famous passage qbout food is fascinating and enticing fbr Gourmets.
Gluttony, a vice usually cbmic Or distasteful is heightened by rich verse:

"My meat shall all come on, in Indian shells,

Dishes of agate set in gold, and Ctudded
With emeralds, sapphires, hyaci).nths,and rubies,
The tongues of carps, dormice, dnd Camel's heels,
Apicius' diet, 'gainst the epilemy:
And I will eat these broth's with spoons of amber,
Headed withdiamond and carhunch.
-------- I myself will have
The beards ofbarbell served, instead of salads,
Oiled mushrooms, and fhe swelling unctuous paps
Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off,
Desert with an exquisite and poignant sauce"

This poetry, fit11of imagery, wfiieh is evocative of lust and gluttony, pqpred with
dreams of luxury beyond belief and showing occasional display of omnipotence
- -
based on unlimited wealth describes though partly the character of Sir Epicure
Mammon.

ii) He is a simple tradesman with modest ambitions. As he intends to open

a new tobacconist's shop, he is in search of a lucky sign; he wants his hsrcmopk read
so that he will h e w whether he will be successful; and he is keen on knowing how to
arrange his merchandise and M v e s on the best scientific principles, so ~ t t h e
supernatural forces will be favourable to him, so his quest is not for Philosopher's
.
stone , but for lucky signs and days We will, now, take a look at the anarytis of
Herford and Simpson:

"In the admirable chamcter of Drugger, on the other hand, Jonson has
exemplified the side of alchemy which commended it to the plain, prossic
philistine who warited to insure his business, or to steal a march upon trade
rivals by more 'scientific' methods than theirs. And the scholar's ridicule for
pseudo-science is here cumpounded with the ridicule of a man of shrewd
sense for the'dabblers in science who try to make learning do the work of
mother-wit, and book knowledge to take the place of practice, Drugger,
proposing to plan his shop 'by necromancy,' and Kastrill, eager to qualifjl for
the company of the other Angry Boys by learning the rule of duelling suffer
+equally. They are less innocently amusing creatures than Stephen; but the
infusion of gull in their composition, if slighter, is intrinsically of a deeper
dye. They are pedants of a bogus craft."

Moreover, had Drugger paid his money for knowing lucky signs and days, he would
have succeeded in his business. But, unfortunately for him the team of swindlers lure
him with the possibility of marrying a young, beautiful, wealthy widow i.e. Dame
Pliant. Thus, the swindlers exploit the superstitious and credulous nature of Drugger
to the fullest extent.

iii) By profession, Dapper is a lawyer's clerk, but he doesn't have

commonsense. He is easily gulled to believe that the Queen of Fairies is his aunt and
that she is fond of him. He is inflicted with the most humiliating of personal
indignities; he swallows anything including gingerbread gags. Of all the gulls, he is
the worst.

C. The P y r i m : In Act I11 we have discussed how Jonson made use of the
happenings in contemporary England for the purpose of writing his plays. We find
two such historical happenings, which were responsible for Jonson's depiction of the
characters of the Puritans. Thw are: i) The puritans of Amsterdam, in order to
promote their 'holy cause' of converting more and more people of England to their
faith, were in need of huge amounts of money; and they thought that they would get it
through the Philosopher's stone. When they approached 'the aIchemists in England
for 'the stone' they were gulled by the latter. ii) The puritans wanted the theares to
be closed down as they considkred them dens of inequity and disrepute. The
playwrights like Jonson _and Shakespere accused them of hypocrisy and satirikd their
cant hypocrisy and greed in their plays: Jonson's most famous Puritanical hypocrite is
Zeal-of-the-Land Busy in Bartholomew Fair and Shakespeare's is Malvolio in
Twelfth Niglzt,
. The Alchemist:
A-Gcricis We will take a look at the analysis done by Herford and Simpson of the two puritans:
. "The purtan dupes, Ananiu and Wholesome, mark a new departure. Jonson, as a
professed catholic, during the precious ten or eleven years, can never have felt any
attraction for the '-ts of itht Refinmation', but this was his h t undisguised
uc- of puritan fbibleq on the pillory of the stage. His attitude to puritanism was
indead not unlike his a t t i y e to alchemy. Both were, for him, social pests,offensive
by their hypocritical ptettdon bd their masquerade of hollow and questionable
learning. He treats tlee twd puritans, indeed, with a palpably deeper contempt than
any of other dupes, or wed than the chemist himself. The debates with Subtle are
insidiously contrived to exhiit the similarity of their aims and his. The Philospher's
'Starc is a more effective Fd certain way of getting that advantage which the
puritans sought through thp cumbrous machinery of longwinded exercises' and
inconvenient chess; Bnd Sdbtle's praise of it thus naturally takes the form of an
ironical recital of the Puritps' practices with which the stone will enable them to
dispense. When Ananias htroducei himself as 'B faithful Brother', and Sub& affects
to understand by this as ddvotees of alchemy, the two professions at once assume the
air of parallel fratnnities. And Jonson's etudite humour is thoroughly in its element
when he is pitting the twoprofessionaljargons against each other as in the second
scene of Act III." I

i) Ananias: He is narrow b d stupid, violent and inflexible. He regards

f
Subtle and his language o alchemy as heathen and his stone 'a work of darkness', and
dots not want to have an truck with the alchemist. He firmly believes that the
stared cause of Puritani* should flourish by good means. But, due to his great faith
in the integrity and wid@ of his fiiend. Tribulation Wholesome, he approaches

godly; I may not'. But Gg

Subtle. But he disagks 'th Subtle and says: 'please the profane, to grieve the
a hypocrite, he concludes that 'casting of dollars is
concluded lawful! Whenl Lovewit threatensto beat him with a cudgel, he grows
violent and heaps curses qn Lovewit's h o w :

"May dogs defie by

walls
And wasps and Wrnets breath beneath thy roof'

ii):- -
He also like his naYve fiiend, Ananias - uses
expressions peculiar to @epuritans. But, unlike Ananias, he does not believe in
-
means and he thinks that means am justified by the ends:

"We must bend $to all means,

That may give fitrtherance to the holy caw".

When Ananias is horrifid at the idea of appeasing a swindler like Subtle, for
Tribulation,

"The children of perdition are oft-times

Made instrumenis, even of thegreates works."

-
Subtle-being a shrewd sdvindler understands his client, Tribulation extremely well,
Having been able to con$ince Tribulation about getting money by means of

1
Philospher's stone, Subtl moves fiom noble causes to those that appeal to the
former's bases use$ such as it is a cure for gout or palsy or drops; (for health purpose)
it can restore 'A lady that is past the feat of body, though not of mind' (for lewd use)
and as an offshoot ' you fiave made a friendthd all her friends' (again for lewd use)
and then, T o buy the kirig of France out of his realms, or Spaidout of his Indies.'

1
Having been enticed an entrapped, Tribulation says, "We may be temporal lords
ourselves, I take it," Th s, the puritans, Tribulation is an epitome of hypocrisy.
1
D) Minor:$ly, Kastril, Dame Pliant, and Lovewit are minor
-
characfers, but as they cbntribute to the development of the plot especially
 i) Surly: We first meet Surly with Mammon. He suspects the alchemical cant and the CBarnctsrizPtion
elaborate masquerade, regards Subtle as a swindler, calls their house a bawdy house, and Language
and says Do1 is a prostitute in league with Subtle and Face to cheat people like
Mammon. The discerning comments of Herford and Simpson are as follows: "....he
is the all-knowing and well-meaning in the play, a type of character who makes
fi-equent appearance in Jonson's plays. If his function in the plot connects him with
asper, his name associates him with Morose, and the one who sees through and
exposes imposture is as effectually denuded of heroic quality as Dame Pliant is, of
pathos. He is beaten in argument by Subtle. When on the verge of triumphantly '
establishing his case, carrying out his just vengeance, and reaping his modest reward,
he is checkmated by Lovewit's volts-face, and is involved in the discomfiture of the
'rogues and dupes. Surly corresponds to Bonario in Volpone, as Dame Pliant to Celia
. ......Bonariolsrescue of Celia is a wooden imitation of the chivalry and pathos of
romance; the rescue of Dame Pliant by Surly is denuded of romance to the last shred:
n
You are
They say, widow, rich; and I am a bachelor,
Worth nought: Your fortunes may make me a man,
As mine have preserved you a woman. Think upon it,
And whether, I have deserv'd you, or no".

Surly at this point appears, like Bonario, to have the game in his hands. Subtle, like
Volpone, is for the moment dumb-founded, but Face, like Mosca, promptly recovers
the lost ground, and enlists the whole band of dupes against the one shrewd man.
Drugger and Dapper testify against him, and he is forced to go away, humbled and
disgraced by the support - Lovewit extends to Face. He is a shrewd man and
disguised as a Spanish Don he gets inside knowledge of goings on in the house, but
all his efforts are m t e d because Lovewit reverses the situation.

ii) K a :He is the brother of Dame Pliant and a heir to three thousand pounds
a year who has come to town recently. He still retains the mannerisms and
coarseness of a villager:

"Ass, my suster,
Go kuss him, as the cunning man would have you;
1'11 - thrust a pin in your buttacks else"

Even a cursory reader can notice the way he mispronounces 'sister' and 'kiss' and his
coarse language. Jonson based his characters on 'humours' in Every Man in His
Humour, Kastril's character in The Alchemist was also based on a humour called
'Choler'. In the play, he is referred to as 'the angry boy'. He has come to town to live
by his wits and to learn the art of duelling. To a modern reader like you the idea of
learning the art of duelling may look ludicrous, but - Kastril has some like-minded
fiiends in Shakespeare's plays: In Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio talks about Tybalt,
who adheres to the rigid etiquette of the duel; one in A s You Like it-Touchstone
describes the art of insult - the steps by which a duel is developed. Kastril, thus, is
young, brash, purse-proud, and ill-mannered.

iii) :- She is a young, beautiful, and wealthy widow who does

not have any individuality. She is offered as a bait to Surly; she is annoyed with
Surly as he did not act in time for marrying her. She is meant to be a prize and is
bestowed on Lovewit at the end of the play. We will take a look at the analysis done
by Herford and Simpson: "Little need be said of the three characters who in various
degrees and ways contribute to bring about the denouement, and who, though all at
one point or other victims of the imposture, yet stand apart from the main body of the
alchemist's dupes. Dame Pliant is in every sense the least important. In his desire to
makeher character expressive of her name, Jonson, has really made her o f h o
character at all'. Even Pope, however, would not have regarded her as like 'most
women'; she is Mtle more than a passion, and serviceable abstraction - a ball whose
..
The Akhemist: various movements serve exhibit the quality of the players and mark the progress of
A Study Guide
the game - projected by the Angry Boy, saved by Surly, struggled for by Surly and
Face, and finally secured by Lovewit. It is in this last stage of her fortunes that she at
length counts decisively in the plot, when her person and her money serve to buy off
the Nemesis which threatenb the chief rogue and brings about one of these amazing
reversal with which Jonson was somewhat too fond of baffling the expectations of his
audiences. Her part in the plot somewhat resembles that of Celia; but Jonson has this
time taken care that as a c-cter in a comedy, she should not excite any tragic pity.
Unfortunately, in denuding her of this improper kind of interest he has made her too
unsubstantial to be even matter for mirth."

iv) M -
t He arrives late i.e. in the last act of the play and describes
himself in a single senten&. "I love a teeming wit as I love my nourishment."
Like other landlords in London, Lovewit leaves his home in the care of his servant
Jeremy, when the plague brleaks out. On his unexpected return, he comes to know
that his house has been misused by Jeremy in the guise of Face. He loves his servant
for his 'teeming wit' and readily forgives him in return for a matrimonial alliance with
Dame Pliant. The analysis of Herford and Simpson is pertinent: "Righteous Nemesis
at the hands of an indignanfl mob allied with offmded justice appears to impend, too
secure for comedy. It is Lovewit, who at a stroke , reverses the situation. Jonson was
bent upon avoiding the lofty retribution air by which in Volpone he had established
his abhorrence of violence; and he has contrived the denouement with great skill for
this end. Lovewit is as far Bs possible frcHn resembling the ideal vindicator of virtue.
He comes with an authoribitive air; but strikes a bargain with the principal culprit -
-
Face for the lion's share of the spoils. He effects a revolution in the plot in virtue
merely of a temper too ea@ and humorous, serieusly to resent wrongs even when
they coneem himself, andready for a je$ to overlook a multiwde of sins. 'Ilove a
teeming wit, as I love my nourishment,' he dedares and indeed his only concem,
when he hears of the mysttkious goings on in his house, is as to the 'nature of the e

device which his witty h a y e may have contrived.' Jonson has placed the jest in the
hands of a joy boy'. Not hide-bound, whose easy geniality proves a ready s o h t for
menacing tragic harms. The witty trickster comes of unscathed, while the fools and
-
dupes suffer." Lovewit whose name is suggestive of love for wit and witty
situations-brings out a merfy denouement befitting for a comedy.

The aforementioned discussions of characters is sufficient to make you understand

that with The Alchemist weare not concerned with 'characters' at the level of
psychological realism that often we are in Shakespeare's plays. Jonson's characters
are types, exemplificationbof particular attitudes and capacities that are found
in society, but rarely found in the isolated and purified form in which he
presents them. His process is what the Elizabethans might have called an anatomy -
meaning a dissection, a careful layingsut of the parts of a body, to show their
essential nature and functiot.1, and their interrelations The Alchemist is an anatmy of
the 'humour' of greed, and it demonstrates with beautiful simplicity an obvious truth
that is often forgotten; if everybody cheats, eyerybody will be cheated. Tbis is not to
say that Jonson is not iwrested in human nature, and that he doesnot know a
great deal about it. Moreover we don't complain of a newspaper's cartoon that it is a
worse picture of a politici* than the news photo on the front page. The
exaggerations may amuse and delight us in the caricature at the same time as they
reveal things not ap- iir the photo. Jollson*scharaeterisationhas the ruthless
energy and economy of tau! best kind of eariature.

5.3 LANGUAGE I

Over a period of time the aizabethan playwrights developed a kind of dramatic verse
which reached its pinnacle by the time The Alchemist was written. The entire area o l
development can be traced in Shakespeare's plays from his earliest to the latest.
 Elizabethan and Jacobean verse is usually called 'blank verse' (please note that it is ~Lracterizatien
not 'free verse') A ten-syllable line 'iambic pentameter' is the basic. The line has five and Language
feet; each consisting of alternating unstressed and stressed syllables. By the time The
Alchemist was written, the lines were irregular in stress, fiequently contained more or
fewer than ten syllables. They were fiequently run on; that is, no natural pause in .
meaning occurred at the end of the line. These irregularities made for a more flexible
verse. The lines did not cease to be poetry; the audience had a built in expectation,
due to long habit, of the rhythmic line, and irregularity added a feelingof variety. At
one extreme, a passage could be more mundane, less lofty, prosaic without being
prose, while at the other end, passages become more poetic, flowery, musical without
perhaps ever quite being poetry.

Further Jonson's dramatic verse is functional; it is the rhetorical means to the end of
his art. The Alchemist is in blank verse except for Surly's phrases of Spanish, the
. -
concluding Iines of the play where rhyme is used unobtrusively arid parts of the two
scenes where Dapper is prepared for an then meets the Fairy Queen. Here the mock-
fitual is emphasized by the addition of rhyme. The use of the one form of verse for
all the varieties of idiom, mood, and social status in the play insists on its essential
unity, but within this common form Jonson is capable of very varied effects. He can
range from the coarse insults of the opening quarrel to the grandiose fantasies of
Mammon. The language and the forms of syntax it takes are always appropriate to
character and situation and the blank verse has great variety and rhythmic vitality.

I am a young beginner, and am building

Of a new shop, and't like your worship; just,
At comer of a street. (Here's the plot on't).
And I would know, by art, sir, of your worship,
Which way I should make my door, by necromancy,
And, where my shelves. And, which should be for boxes.
And, which for pots. I would be glad to thrive, sir.
And, I was ivish'd to your worship by a gentleman,
One Captain Face, that says you know men's planets,
And thie good angels, and their bad. (1.111.7-16)

In this passage Drugger's stammering nervousness, his clumsy repetitions, and his
low and monosyllabic vocabulary dislocate the verse until it scarcely exists. Only
two of the lines above have ten syllables: they are consecutive, and linked by a
violent enjambement which virtually imposes a different division on the speaker:
'just, /At comer of a street!

Tribulation, the practised preacher, has by contrast an unctuous fluency:

The children of perdition are, oft-times,

Made instruments even of the greatest works.
Besides, we shouId give somewhat to man's nature,
The place he Iives in, still about the fire,
And f i n e 6f metals, that intoxicate
The brain of man,and make him prone to passion.
Where have you greater atheists than your cooks?
Or more profane or choleric than your glass-men?
More antichristian, than your bell-founders?
(1II.i.15-23)

This is much more regular and the units of syntax tend to coincide with the divisions
of the verse. While he c m carry a sentence over two or three lines of verse
Tribulation never goes far before coming firmly to rest on a metrical and syntactic
pause. The repeated rhetorical questions (a line apiece) indicate the pulpit orator as
clearly as phrases like 'children of perdition', 'instruments ...of the p t e s t works', or
'more profane'. Mammon's syntax, like his range of allusion, is much m m
 ' The Alchemist: adventurous. His clauses sgkng from one another and ptdlhfkfate in % p s i t i o nas hi;
A Study Guide fantasy moves (by associatibn) to wilder visions: I

I am pleas'd the glopy of her sex should know,

This nook, here, oflthe Friars, is no climate
For her, to live obsfurely in, to learn
Physic, and surgw, for the Constable's wife
Of some odd hG&d in Esses; but come forth,
And taste the air ofipalaces; eat, drink

&
The toils of emp'ri s, and their boasted practice;
Tincture of pearl, d coral, gold, and amber,
Be seen at fehsts; aind triumphs; have it aslc'd,
What miracle she ib? Set.all the eyes
Of court a-fire, like a burning-glbs,
And work 'em intocinders; when the jewels
Of twenty states adorn thee, and the light
Strikes out the starb; that, when they name is mention'd,
Queens may look dale: and, we but showing our love,
Nero's Poppaea m y be lost in story!
7 (iv.i. 130-45)
I

The natural rhythm of the .iroice speaking these lines does not destroy the pattern of
recurrence in the metre, aslso nearly happens in Drugget's lines. Nor, as with
Tribulation, does it reinforpe it, offering only crude and simple variations. Rather it
counterpoints and harmoni/zesto produce a rich and exciting rhythmic texture.
sixteen lines are all one and can scarcely be divided: the energy of
Mammon's vision and unifies the almost Miltonically relaxed syntax.
The syntax itself vision, where things shift into each other and
change their fonn.
I

The syntax of Subtle's expsition of alchemy (ii.iii. 142 ff,) is, like the verse, regular,
-
logical, and orderly. As dith Tribulation's speech, the verse and sense-units tend to
coincide, but here the ling/listic structures are those of reasoned argument, not
emotional exhortation.
3 at Subtle is saying is non-sense, for the language of
alchemy defines itself, a has no reference, for all its sonority and glamour, to the
real world. But the formsthe language takes are those of ordered rational discourse,
of logical, learned, &m
d
i p ssioned disputation. This tone is emphasized by the
regular but not over.emp tic forward march of the verse. Here in the verse-fonn
and the syntax is a paralIe/ to the concan with disguise and the playing of parts
noticed before (see p.xxii4). Subtle disguises his language in the f m s of learning
and reason, and therein bhnonstrates his subtlety. Surly cannot dispute with him on
these tmns, for to do so +odd be to move into Subtle's selfdefining world and argue
upon his premises. Accddingly he launches into o catalogue, a violent piling-up of
tenns (182-98) that '
I
would burst a man to name

And almost bursts ihe .o+ in speaking. The continued a p p a n c e of sweet reason
in Subtle's response to thip irascible and (in form) irrational outburst leaves Surly no
reply. In the s c e m whicy follows, wherc Subtle has to deal with the much less
sophisticated Ananiu, hi$ tone is more authoritative, his rhythm much more staccato.
It is, as he says, I

In a new (tune,new gesture, but old language.

(II.iv.27)
I
The pattern of the v m e ik maintained not only in the longer set speeches. It persists
in the most rapid exchanges of di&ogue:
60
I
 Sub. Cheater.
Face. Bawd.
Sub. C o w - M .
Face. Conjuror.
Sub. am=- -
Face. Witch.
Doll. 0me!
We &remin'd! Lost! (i.i. 106-8)
Jonson admirably mmagcs efkcts of interruption and rapid changes of gear:

I Ana.
Sub. The divine scmt, that doth fly in clouds,
P m east to west; and whose tradition
b m t from men, but spirits.

I hate traditions:

Idonattnrsttkem-
Tri. Peace.
Am. They are Popish, all.
1 will not peace. I will not-
Tri. Ananias.
Ana. Please the profane, to grieve the godly: I may not.
Sub. Well, Ananias, thou shalt overcome.
(1II.ii. 104-10)

'Tribulation's 'Peace' fits into the caesura of Ananias's line. His 'Ananias' cuts a line
:short and completes it, but Ananias's next line is long and he need hardly pause in-his
delivery (which must be rapid) for Tribulation's interruption. Subtle's much slower
line would come after a marked pause, leaving 'I may not' hanging in an embanassing
silence. Mammon and on occasion other characters) interrupts himself:

My baths, like pits

To fall into: from whence, we will come forth,
And roll us dry in gossamer and roses.
(Is it arriv'd at ruby?) - Where I spy
A wealthy citizen,. .. (II.ii.50-4)

I
A. most ingenious verse effect is the passage at N.V.25-32, where against the
background of Doll's incantory ravings 'out of Broughton', Face and Mammonhave
a1 agitated colloquy about what is to be done.

i
Jonson's dramatic verse is less easily quotable than Shakespeare's. Set pieces do
not detach themselves so readily from context. It is exactly Jonson's 'art', in his sense
ol'the term, the art that he said Shakespeare wanted, that makes this so. His ramatic
verse has great range and energy but it is always ordered and controIled by a '-
considered dramatic context, and this is both its strength and its limitation.

- ,

5.4 THE CRITICAL RECEPTION OF BEN JONSON

Jo~~sonwas a celebrity in his own day. Taking the English stage by storm with Every
'
M m in His Humour he followed it up with the comical satire, Every Man out ofHis
Humour,a theatricgl success accompanied by considerable controversy. His
characters were sd life-like that to clear himself of the charge of attacking particular
persons, he had t~ declare his purpose, viz., portraying follies, not individuals. The
War of the Theatres, and the mature comedies brought his avowed critical principles
so much to the fore that it was easier to label his artistry as classical, realistic, etc.,
The &hemist: rather than takeinto account its growth and development. Thus,the dynamism of his
A Stdy Gll* dramaturgy came to be ignow. Among the playwrights of his age, Jonson was alone
in viewing plays as 1itaatw-q. The significance of the publication of Jonson's Works
in 1616 has been pointed out in Unit-1. Jonson was in the habit of revising a play for
publication and in the proce$sexpanded the text considerably. The acting versions of
the play, on the other hand, reveal several cuts in the long spetches and expository
passages. Jonson seem to have followed the Renaissance principle of 'copia' and
elaborated so that a p i n t is heavily underlined. Combined with this is his love of
technical terminology of diverse kinds, which he was fond of displaying both for
purposes of rrccuracy orm$srn and to impnss others with his learning.

Milton was perhaps the first to pair J a s o n and Shakespeare, and the familiar lines
fkom 'Z' Allegro," as Michdel Jaimieson explains, contain "a graceful compliment to
Bcn Jor~son,~ which is missed by many modem readers. This pairing was continued
by Dryden as well. The co* of J o n m Criticism came to present an irony of sorts a
little later. In the eighteenth century fonson who praised Shakespeare as 'hot of an
age," was declared not "a uhiv&sal genius, but of his time only." In 1753 an
enthusiastic champion of Shakespeare, Robert Shiells, quietly added his own
comments into an edition ofConversations. As Shiells 's interpolations were not
detected till the end of the Century, his unfavourable comparisons of Jonson to
Shakespeare was mgar&d BS the testimony of one who knew the poet in the flesh. A
few years earlier, Macklin, a Shakespearean actor brought out a letter supposedly
refeming to a pamphlet published in the last days of Jonson's career. Barish cites a
passage to establish the wlicious forgery:

"It would greatly qxceed the limits of your paper to set down all the
contempts and inv#ctives which w m uttered and written by Ben . as..
manswcraMe andlshamingevidences to pmve his ill-nature and ingratitude
m Shskapclrc, a b o first intmduad him to the Uvabc and fame [modemised
spelling]."

The critical I.sccption of J~nsonis eoloured by misconceptions about fonson's views

ob Shakespcn's art. The 1616 Folio edition of Jonson's Works probably paved the
way for the publication oPthe First Folio of Shakespeare for which Jonson wrote the
commemorative poem, "tb the memory of my beloved, The Author, Mr. William
Shak-n. fonson's qbute reaches out to the quinteseutial Shakespeare, and his
.
very phtases have been asimilated inbo all estimates of the bard: . ... Soul of the
age!/ The applause ! Delight! The wonder of our stage! . ..
He was not of an age, but for all time! ... . My gentle Shakespeare.. .

But what has stuck in thq public mind is the oblique criticism of Shakespeare
incidental to the defence of Jonscm's awn conception of comedy. References to
Pericles. 'Tales, Tempeqts and such drolleries' and his general condemnation of the
violation of the Unities, hnsidered along with Jonson's remark cited by William
Drurmnond in the wum of c o n v ~ o n "That . Shakespeare wanted Art"'had
initiated unfavourable coniments on Jonsm, theman, and the dramatist.

As a kind of litcraxy eminence, J o n m presided over the'tribe of Ben' which used to

assemble at the Devil's tavern. This ckcle included Robert Henick and other "poetic
sons". The tribute to Johson's memory, Jonsonus Yirbius (1638), in spite of the
hyperboles, does reveai,,remarksD.H.Craig, "something like an alternative literary
history, an English Renaissance witbut Shakespeare. According to the elegists, it is
Jonson who has bmughl English culture, and the English language fkom obscurity
and crudity to one that dan match the culture of the ancients". The motivation behind
this tirade remains to a large extent a mystery. It was a half-apologetic Edmund
Malone who c l d Jo*son's name but diffidently. The final cleansing of the blot on
Jonson was chiefly the bork of William Gifford much later. An unfavourable :

comparison of Jonson , khe artist, with Shakespeare became in the words of Barish, "
I
a conditioned reflex," and Gifford " silenced the chorus of detraction against Jmmn
as man .''
The eighteenth century presents a paradox, while Jonson the man was reviled, his
plays enjoyed immense popularity. A feverish contest seems to have run its course
"the 18'"century critics - those who were involved - competed with tach dher in
ascribing ignoble motives ta Jonson. " scenes were invented purporting to sketch
Jonson's being "forced to acknowledge Shakespeare's superiority." Forgeries were
resorted to so that Jonson could be presented as a plagiarist and even a blackmailer.
The malicious forgeries of Robert Shiells and the fabrications of Macklin are well
.
known instances It was the actor David Ganick, who in the role of Dmgger,
secured for The Alchemist a special place in English stage history.

Jonson's self-image did not fit in with the Romantic conception of the artist, a
dreamer; in temperament and artistic aim he was the apposite of Shelly and Keats.
Hazlitt, for one, deplored whet he perceived to be a defect inJonm9zke15iiljilityto
roam imaginatively, beingjust a grub. Much stress was laid on artifice. As Barish
notes, "To praise Jonson, m e had to turn him into a schoolmaster, or an exhibitionist
of learning, or a purveyor of exoticism".

The tone of criticism changed somewhat in the Victorian era. Jonson's lyrics were
singled out for renewed appreciation, thus accounting for the inclusion of a few
pieces in that celebrated af~thology,Palgrave's Golden Treasury. T.E.Hulme paved
the way for an appreciation of classicism and romanticism in his famous essay, and
indirectly fix a critical re-orientation more responsive to Jonson's kind of art. It was,
however, T.S.Eliot with whom there was a turning of the tide. His identification of
Jonson's artistry as a matter of overall design rather than of single passages, and his
emphasis on Jonson's relevance to the modern times brought about a revival of
interest in Jonson. Edrnund Wilson, in spite of his general censure of Jonson, isolates
The Alchemist for special praise. A number of twentieth century critics carried
forward the new enthusiasm for Jonson's art and some of them were cited in Unit-111.

The researches of Herford and Simpson over a quarter of a century bore h i t in the
massive edition of Jonson's Works in ten volumes (1 925-52). Most critical studies
and editions have been r e f d to in the preceeding Units and in the Bibliography. A
review of Jonson scholarship of the 1980's is provided by Daryl W.Palmer. Besides
examining the biographies by Rosalind Miles and David Riggs, he summarises the
finding of seven studies of Jonson's oeuvre and of nine critical approaches to
isolated aspects. The final word op this survey is furnished by D. H.Craig: "In a
special sense, then, Jonson is irreparable from his critical heritage; the student of his
works in the late twentieth century must still begin with questions which he himself
raised and which his contemporaries and his immediate posterity were compelled to
answer."

5.5. QUESTIONS

1. Write a long note on the swindlers:

Subtle, Face, and Do1 Common

2. Write a long note qn the dupes: Mammon, Drugger, and Dapper

3. Write a short note on the female figures in the play.

.s

4. Discuss the appropriateness of the names given to the characters in the play.

5. Show how language reflects the social standing, the temperament, or the
The AlclremiH:
A Sltrdy Guide 5.6 ANNOTATION PASSAGES

Annotate the following payages with reference to context.

i) Sure he has got

Some bawdy pictu-s, to call all this ging;
The friar and the n h ; or the new motion
Of the knight's cur$er covering the parson's mare;
The boy of six yead old, with the great thing;
Or 't may be he has/ the fleas the run at tilt
Upon a table, or sobe dog to dance?
I
tl) - But that 'tis yet notdeep I' the &moon,
I should believe m$ neighbours had seen double
Through the blackpot, and made these apparitions!
For on my faikh to our worship;for these three weeks
And upwards, the !c oor has not been opened.
I

iii) Sir, you were wontlto affect mirth and wit-

But here's no place to talk on't I' the street.
Give me but leave 40 make the best of my fortune,
And only pardon rqk th' abuse of your house:

iv) But the sweet face +f your hath turned the tide,
And made it flow k t h joy, that ebbed of love.
Arise, and touch o+ velvet gown.
I

v) To leave him four hundred chests of treasure,

acres of Faixyland,
with good gamesters.

vi) She must by any m$ans address some present

vii)
3
To the cunning m ; make him amends for wronging
His art with her su icion; send a ring,
Or chain of parl; s e will be tortured else
Extremely in her sl ep, say, and ha' Strange things
Come to her. Wilt (hou?
I
Good faith, now sh&does blame y' extremely, and says

1
You swore, and to1 her you had ta'h the pains,
To dye your beard, nd umber o'er your face,
Borrowed a suit and ruff, all for her love;
And then did nothing. What an oversight,

i
And want of puttin forward, sir, was this!
Well fare an old ha uebusier, yet,
Could prime his p$der, and give fire, hit,
All in a twinkling.
I
viii) That master
That had received shch hap&ness by a servant,

f
In such a widow, an with so much wealth,
Were very u n p t e 1 if he would not be
A little indulgent to hat servant's wit,
And help his fortund, though with some small strain.
I

I
 UNIT 1 BACKGROUND TO THE PLAYBOY

1.0 Objectives
11 Introduction
1.2 Biogr~phidNote on Synge
1.2.1 Synge's W&
1.2.2 The Irish Dramatic Movement
1.2.3 The PIayeoy Rids
1.2.3.1 Dublin
1.2.3.2 US Towns
1.3 Modern Comedy
1.4 Let Us S m Up
I 1.5 Glossary
1.6 Questions I
1.7 Suggeskd Readings

This Unit aims to provide you with d i a l background information about the &and his
mb,the lrisb D r m t i c Movement and the P l y b a y riots and also on modem camarty so
thet you could approachthe~ofcloseterrtual analysis witzlfidlercrmfih andehmr
r m d e g of is- iwohrcd

It is wt otBen in dramatie Bistgr that tl single Indi-1 should be reqmwible for trrro
nmmtwrs events. W.B. Yeats was a pecan. Though he was not b i f a atajor
dranlrttist, the national theatre in Ireldwm first an idea in his mind. He also ettabld an Irisk
i ~~~tohdhimseE~ggli~~hlItue&tionwasJohnMihgton~gewhomYeagr
encouraged to go Bo the Alan I a l d end "express a fife that has never fowl mqmkopt"

--
i
w e heeded bis- a xnme&nus results.

A p l y is essentially a public events as a n o d is not. This public nature of fhe play contes to
the five in the accomt ofThe Play)loy riots. The account also raises the w onof
hp;mdthe~moftheartisttoexpcesshimself.

Synge lived or@ fw 38 years h187 1 to 1909. Hisshort creative lie barely Med 7-8 yeais
&in&: which period he was able to write 6 plays besides an account d his visit to A m
M s d some paam and t n & h Twp of his pktys Riders to the Sea f 1903) atxi ?k
Pkyboyoffke W e e m WiwM(l907)-owatrrt&on theclassicdmodeL the othaaderk
comedy that provoked a w e d of a-k&tin Dublia, are amang the best plays in twenW&eatmy
drama
-<

t6@11#1
Syage~rasbm e t R ~ m e a r D u b l i D ~ h i s f & w a s a ~
and was chrietwtrxf Edmond hbn miHbqfm Spge. A year later his father died lmving o
~ t o ~ u p f i Syngewas@a+exmuc;h&stress
v e ~
corarts:~loasofreiigiml3~8bd~~an~,his
V i O b and fluttiwfiich he wanted to adopt as a profession; and his symp
Tlk Pl&q of cbe
wedam wonld
pressrgl tam@. 'Fhis last
of Y%ak s
'

I
tenst found a full d c t when lie visited the Islands on the advice

Spge's eazly edwdion w& mostly private until he entered the Trinity College, Dublin, in
1tMi, Hrhich was tradition& the fountaidwad of Anglo-Irish culhue, It was here that he
~ l ~ l r i s b a o d H~e ~w~ u.d a ~ d e a l a b o n t I r i s h h i s b y a n d l n s h
rurtiquiiks. - I
I
Xia lmybed w.s spent i o n g the hills and momtams to the sGlth of Dublin. He had a
WordswoFthian hw for nature and also an intimate knowledge of natural history This is
r d d in the images aqd descriptive passages in his plays.

In 1893 went But later his interest shfted

fram music to several youngmen of his time moved to Paris. In Paris he read
probably thought of becoming a literary journalist He visited
the summers he would return to Ireland where he pursued

18% that he met W.B.Yeats rrnd later the young mlutionaq

ud's hi& League in Jmuary 1897 but resigned soon &er in April
'theory of regenmian for Ireland" and that he wished to work in
that he did not wish to get mixed up with a revolutionary and
semi-militarymovement.
,I
Yeats was onty 7
his life. H a t is a
older but Synge's eawunter with him pmved to be a turning point in
account of their m&bg in Yeats's own words:

Six ycolr ttga 1 d p s staying m a studeats' hotel in the Latin cpder, and m e -
I
c m o t recollect htrohced me to w ifidma, who,even
had taken a rcxnn at the top house. It was J.M. Synge, and I,
the name of every lrishmart who was w- at literantre,
. He was a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, too, and
Trinity Celbge not aa a rule produce aatistic minds. He told me th~the had
and Gemmy, xe&q French and German literature, and
a writer. He ha4 however, nothing to show but ane or
essays. of that kind of morbidity that has its
root in too nn# broodurg over methods of expression, and ways of looking
out of life but out of literature, images reflected &om
w d e r e d smmg people w h m life is as pieturesquc as
, ptaying his fiddle to Italian sailors, 4l s b m g to &es in
but life had cast no h&t into his writings. He hold lemed Irish
beg^ to h g e t it, for the only lsnguage that interested him
language of modem poetry which has begun to mske us all
up Paris, you will never create a n y h q by reading
dlahways be a better critic of French literature. Go
as if YOU were one ofthe people themselves;
expression." I hed just came firom Anan and

bemuse of €I$ Becrruse of the ~"

stones. {Greetle, 70).
I \

Yea& wrote t h 4
~~
r
"s perface to the play The Well of the Saintr published in 1905.

association with Ye& and later with Lady Gregory and with other
Literary Revival, which bae such strange and rich hut.

The Aran Islpnds & a group of three roolrj islands in the West coast of Ireland w k Irish
was still spoken io h;s days wd Bvfiere the older Irish way of life had been pmaved.

&fore conri2lg to qaris, Ye& with his f & d Arthur S m had been to the Arm Isi& in
1896, whetw they qoth said they hrtd he& the story upon wmi.ch Synge later based The
Synge had studied Gaelic (which is a language spoke11in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of
Man), which enabled him to master 'the pure but rapid and colloquial language of the island.'
He had spent his boyhood in Wicklow and this had given him his basic understanding of the
Irish peasantry. His Protestant and landed ancestry and his later loss of faith ~ ~ c i e n t l y
distanced him from the people around him so that he was able to view them at once with
objectivity and ironic compassion. Synge visited the Island fi)w times, in 1898, 1899, 1900 and
1901 .which gave him the mate+l for his plays in teims of incidents, characters and language.
But while the visit to Aran was momentous, it did not transform Synge instantaneously into a
writer of genius. Several years were to elapse between his first visit to Aran in 1898 and his
completing his first successll play in 1902. Moreover, all this while he was writing The.Aran
Islands which was the first book h;:wrote, though it was published in 1907. So while his
transformation into a "playwright" was astonishing it was not sudden. In this period of
apprenticeship, Synge was obviously honing his skills in his use of the peasant dialect. He
himself said that in "writing out.the talk of the people and their stories in this book [The Arun
Islands], and in a number of articles in the Wicklow . . . learned to write the peasant
dialect and dialogue I use in my plays" (Synge, 24)
Synge was sickly as a boy and later suffered much because of his poor health. This possibly
accentuated his morbidity which seems to have been a family characteristic and which is most
evident in his poems. But perhaps as a compensation lke R.L. Stevenson, "he took a huge
delight in all that was superb and wild in reality." He had a malignant tumour-Lymphatic
Sarcoma--detected in his neck in 1897, which ultimately cost him his life.

The last love in his life was Molly Allgood, a Catholic shopgirl turned actress who was fifteen
years his junior and who played the role of Pegeen in The Playboy when it was first produced.
In a letter to her Synge referred to her as his wife but he died before they were maned., Th$
end came in Dublin on the morning of 24 March 1909. Yeats recorded: "Synge is dead.\In the
early morning he said to the nurse, 'it is no use fighting death any longer' and he turned over
and died. I called at the hospital this afternoon and asked the assistant matron if he knew he
was dymg. She answered, 'He may have known it for weeks, but he would not have said so to
anyone. He would have no hss. He was like that.' She added, with emotion in her voice, 'We
were devoted to him. "'

1.2.1 Synge's Works

Five of his six plays were published during his Iifetime. These were :

1. The Tinker '.r Wedding wr. 1902-1907 pb. 1908.

2. In the Shadow of the Glen (one act) pr. 1903; pb. 1904.
3. Riders to the Sea (one act) pb. 1903; pr. 1904.
4. The Well of the Saints pr. Pb. 1905.
5. The Playboy of the Western World pr.pb. 1907.
6. Deirdre of the Sorrows pb.pr. posthumously 1910.

Non-dramaticwork

TheAran Islands wr. 1902; pb. 1907.

Synge is -idered the greatest dramatist of the Irish literary revival. His 6 plays provide
evidence of his versatility. He tried plays of varied lengths from one act to full length plays.
His four comedies include knockabout farce and also moments of high seriousness and one of
them trembles on the verge of tragedy. He also excelled himself in writing tragedies, a folk
tragedy which is arguably the finest one act tragedy in literature and the other a heroic tragedy
based on an Irish love legend.

A major theme in his plays is the yawning gap between romantic dreams and the harsh reality.
He writes principally of Irish folk life, of peasants, tramps and tinkers, viewing them with
unsentimental compassion. Synge is also acutely consCious of the mutability of all things
particularly of the passing away of beauty and of the dread of old age and death. Another
important elemqt in his plays is the relationship betwe-m man and the natural world.
TRe PlqBoy of the Synge expressed his vision of Wsh folk life in prose that was intensely poetic and used a
Westem WorlB peasant dialect which was English in tbrm but Irish in thought and feeling. His style is marked
by vigour, ironic humour and dramatic pathos.

The shadow of the Glen (1903)

The play based on a story heard by Synge in the Ariin Island is about a young woman Nora .
Burke who leaves her cantankerous old husband Dan with a tramp who offers a romantic life to
her. Her husband suspecting ha! of infidelity gives out as though he was dead in order to trap
her. The trap succeeds for the woman has invited her young man to the house. At this point
the wronged husband springs u$ out of the bed and turns his wife out. The lover. beats a
hasty retreat; it is the tramp who comes forward to rescue her. The play ends with the about-
to-be-wronged husband sitting down to drink with his wodd be betrayer. \

The play dramatizes Synge's chpuacteristic themes: the conflict between the reality and man's
dreams, h s awareness of human mutability and man's intimate relationship with the natural
world. It was also the first play to treat the theme of sexual frustration explicitly on the modem
Irish stage. Its first production in Dublin evoked protests against its 'unfair' portrayal of Irish
women which anticipated the rim that greeted The ~luyboyin 1907.

Rirlers to the Sea (1903)

Synge's first tragedy Inone act modelled on the classical Greek tragedy, draws heavily on his
experiences on the Aran Islands. The simple and h i a y compressed action of the play
concern an old woman'Mauryalofthe Island whose lost two sons Michael and Bartley are
drowned while trying to cross the stormy sea to Galway as all her other sons have been
drowned. The sea is presented as the Islande~s'source of sustenance and also their principal
natural enemy. The play which rakes less than haE an hour to perform climaxes into Maurya's
lament at the cavalcade of death in the family ending with a prayer for all the living and the
dead.

The Tinker's Wedding (1908)

The play is based on an incident that happened in Wicklow and which is recorded in Synge's
Wieklow memoirs. It concerns people including tinkers, tramps, etc. who lived on the fringe of
society and fascinated Synge. Sara Casey has been living with Michael Byme, a tinker, for
many years but now wants-to get married to him properly in a church by a priest. Their eiT0rt.s
to coax the priest into marrying them leads to much knockabout farce in the play. The wedding
as the title of the play suggesG does not come oE bedause a woman's fear of a lonely and
comfortfess old age motivates-her to foil her son's marriage.

In his mtroduction to the play, Synge said: "In the greater part of Ireland, . . , the whole people .
from the tmkers to the clergy have still a life, and view of life, that are rich, genial and humor-
ous. And I do not think that tHese country people, who have so much humour themselves, will
mind being laughed at without d i c e . . ." However, the characterization of the priest who at
one stage is beaten and thrown into a sack ruled out any performance of the play in Ireland.

The well of the Saints (1405)

Synge derived the idea of the plot from an early French farce in which a cripple and a blindman
are healed. Synge's beggars are however man and wife, both blind living happily in the illusion
of beauty and they are healed !bythe miraculous holy water of a hallowed well. The cured
beggars are however disappointed in their fondest dreams when each discovers that the other ,
is old, weather-beaten and ugly. The play reminkcat of Ibsen's The Wild Duck underlines
man's need for illusions that $an sustain him in life. At the end the effect of the miraculous
water wears off and blindness is restored to the beggars, and with it a measure of happiness
in each other. 1

The play was not received well by the Dublin audience when it was hrst produced in 1905.

8 "
Deirdre of the Si~rrows(1910)

The play which Synge left unfinished and which was published and produced posthumously
mtrked a new departure for Synge. From depicting peasants, tramps and beggars, he turned to
an ancient legend of Ireland for his subject. It is the story of the love of an ageing king
Cclnchubar for the young and beautiful Deirdre who elopes with her lover Naisi. When the
lovers return after seven long years, Naisi is treacherously murdered and Deirdre then takes
her own life. This brings with it the destruction of other city of Emain.

T.13. Herm says that the play was written "in illness, in the course of a prolonged and h s -
trated love-affair, and in a state of depression to which The Playboy riots had contributed."
When the play was produced in January 1910, Synge's beloved Molly Allgood played the

1.2.2 The Irish Dramatic Movement

The Irish Literary Revival or Irish Literary Renaissance was a movement that aimed at reviving
thc: past literary greatness of' Ireland. It was believed that the Irish people had a great past and
a ( p a t body of literature written in their own language-Irish Gaelic. But it was only among the
peasants in the West and smth of Ireland that the Irish language was used and the n&ve
litcxary tradition exlsted. Few Irish people knew anything about their literature or their heroic
past The fbunders of the Literary Revival aimed to revive interest in their literary heritage and
alto to create an art that was local but not nai~owlyprovincial and that would bring honour to

In 1891 "the Great Founder" as Sean O'Casey called hm, Yeats founded the Irish Literary
Society in London. The following year he and Mauid Gome, John O'Leary and other enthusi-
asis founded the Irish National Literary Society in Dublin. Its objectives were to publish books
and give lectures and hold Qscussion "upon notable figures in Irish history and notable
epochs in the national life, and on problems and difficulties of today."

Synge was at thls time busy learning Hebrew and Irish and had not come under Yeats's
influence and so was not part ofthe original society.

The next important date is 1898 when Yeats discussed' the possibility of founding an irish
theatre in Dublin with Lady Gregory, her country neighbour Edward Martin and George
M~mre.The plan way to produce in Dublin eveiy year "certain Celtic and Irish plays which
whatever be their degree of excellence will be written with a hi&. ambition, and so to build up a
Ce4tic and Irish school of dramatic literature."

Di~blinwas in fact the site of the first licensed English theatre outside London established in
1637. There were also a series of Irish playwrights-Congreve, Farquhar, Steele, Goldsmith
Sheridan and later Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw but they all gravitated to London and to its
English audiences. The theatrical fare served in Dublin at the close of the nineteenth century
consisted of light operas, melodramas and musical shows. The Irish melodramas of Dion
Boucicault made use of Irish material but this was done with an eye to export. The result was
pn:sentation of what has come to be known a%"the stage Irishman" who was a drunkard,
clown or excessively sentimental. The Irish Literaiy Theatre was meant to undo this impres-

We hoped to find, in Ireland, an uncorrupted and imaginative audience, trained

to listen by its passion for oratory and believe that our desire to bring upon the
stage the deeper thoughts and emotions of Ireland will ensure for us a tolerant
welcome, and that fteedom to experinlent which is not found m theatres of
England, and without which no new movement in art or literature can succeed.
We will show that Irish is not the home of buffoonery and of easy sentiment, as
it has been represented, but the home of an ancient idealism.
*
(From the Prospectus of the Irish Literary Theatre)

9
The f3%yboyof the The Gsh Literary Theatre b m e into being in 1899 and gave its first performances at the
W d e m wordd Antient Concert Room in d>ublinwith Yeats:s Countess Cathleen and Edward Martyn's the
Heather Field (in Insh ~adlic).
I
The Irish Literary heatr re land its successor The lnsh National Theatre Society continued ty
work till 1904 when it acqCired its own theatre known as Abbey Theatre from its location on,
the Abbey Street. Thls ac$uisition was made possible through the generosity of an English
woman Miss Annie H o d a n who was primarily interested in advancing Yeats's career. Her
association with the Abbey Theatre continued till 1908 when the Merences between her and
Lady Gregory and others qame to a head and she decided not to pour money into the Abbey
Theatre m y more and fouqd another theatre nearer home in Manchester.

b
I

The first performanoes of Irish Literary Theatre were given by English professional actors,
The idea of a compqny mMe up exclusively of Irish actors who could be taught a fresh style of
acting h e of the manuendm of the English professional stage came with the Fay brothers.
Willie Fay and Frank Fay pere actors and they believed that they could form such a company
provided they had more plays about Irish life. 'A.E.' (George Russell) gave them his play
Deirdre and Yeats his ~alhleenNi Houlihan. This led to the founding of the Abbey Theatre
Company. The perfmnanck of these plays in April 1902 with Maud Gonne in the lead role in
Yeats's play proved to be an exciting and inspring success. The pe~%ormances led to the
formation of the Irish National Theatre Society with Yeats, Maud Gonne and Douglas Hyde as
directors. The sociew was tieorganized by Yeats in 1905 when Maud Gonne and Dougles Hyde
were replaced as directors by Lady Gregoiy and Synge.
I
I

Synge had met Yeats in 1896 in Paris, and met both Yeats and Lady Gregoly in 1898 at the
Coole Park where discussibns on the Irish Literary Theatre were going on. T h s second
meeting led to his fiiendsap with Yeats and Lady Gregory which proved to be most important
in his life. I
I

t
Synge's first play (virhen e Moon is set) was rejected by both Yeats and Lady Gregory. But
both noticed that the peasant characters who played a minor part in it were more effectively
realized than the chief chdacters. They encouraged him to stick with t h peasant
~ and forget all
else. As his plays showed1 Synge followed this advice with splendid results. The dates of the
production of his play and other important details are shown in the chronology of the Irish
Dramatic Movement and lied not be repeated here.

But a f w b g s need to bb stated. As we said earlier, the Irish National Theatre Society was
reorg1 ed in 1905 and ge and Lady Gregory became director in the reorganized Society.
Synge was the had made Dublin his home and was to play more active role
theatre. He read the plays submitted to the company by
to enlist and train new actors.
~
There was an upheaval in povember 1905 when some young actors back from a triumphant
tour of Oxford, London, severed their connection wi& the society because
the kheatre completely away from the nationalistic direction.
was spearheaded by people (like Yeats, Lady Gregoly,
Synge) whose origiris we* not Celtic and whose in~olvementin the movement was purely
I
emotional.
I
In 1906 there was considdable discussion on the aims of Irish Dramatic Movement (DM).
There was a suggestion bbked by Yeats that the Abbey Theatre should also devote its
creative energies to stagi* classics. Synge was opposed to the idea. He felt that their
.movement should mnceneate on the "creation of a new dramatic literature where the interest

1
is in the novelty and pow r of the new work rather than in the quality of the execution."
Finally Synge was able to win his point and the Abbey Theatre stuck to its original objective.

4
The Abbey Theatre survi ed many crises. Miss Hornirnan withdrew her subsidy. The Fay
Brothers also left. Synge 'ed in 1909, and Yeats resigned as a result of a dispute with Lady
Gregory. But the Abbey '$eatre aontinued to be the centre of the dramatic movement in
Ireland till 1957 when it dot burnt down. Among distinguished Irish dramatists whose plays
were produced at the ~ b b $were ~adraic~ o l u r (1 -
n 881 1972),St. John Greer Ervine (1883-197 1) ,

and Lennox Robinson (18q6-1958) and later Sean O'Cusey (1880-1964).

 -
Irish Dramatic Movement A Chronology B*ckgreumd to
l%e Plqyboy
8 May 1899. Irish Literary Theatre founded; its f i offering staged in Dublin: Yeats's The
Countess Cathleen and Edward Martyn's The Heather Field put up by an
English Company at the Antient Concert Rooms in Dublin.

I
Feb. 1990. George Moore's adaptation of Edward Martyn's The Tale of a Town entitled ,
The Bending of the Bough plus two shorter pieces The last Feast of the
Fianna by Alice Milligw and Maeve by Edward Martyn were offered.
Olct. 1901. Dougles Hyde's Gaelic play The Twisting of the Rope performed by a
company of amateur Irish actors, and Yeats's Diarmuid and Grania and King
Leal. by F.R. Benson's company of English professional actors.

2 4 4 April 1902. 'AE.'s Deirdre and Yeats's patriotic Cathleen Ni Houlihan yith Maud
i Gonne in the title role in the latter, performed by the Fay brothers: the begin-
1
ning of the Abbey Theatre Company.

, 1902. Synge wrote In the Shadow of the Glen and Riders to the Sea; iirst dr& of
The Tinker's Wedding.

Oct. 1902. Yeats's farce The Pot of Broth, a gaelie play Eilis and the Begger Woman by
r P T. McGinley and plays by Fred Ryan and James Cousins perfmed.

1
F
Od-Nov1902. Last visit to Inishere, one of theAran Islands.

2 May 1903. Fjve plays-The Hour-Glass, Cathleen Ni Houlihan and The Pot of Broth by
Yeats, Lady Gregary's Twenty-Five and Fred Ryan's The Laying of the
Foundations performed by the Fays in London.

I June 1903. In The Shadow of the Glen read out by Lady Gregory to the group in Dublin.

Sepl. 1903. Riders to the Sea published in Samhain the organ of the Irish Literary Theatre
started by Yeats in October 1901; also published was a play in Irish by
Douglas Hyde.

8 Oct. 1903. The King's Threshold by Yeats, the Shadow of the Glen by Synge and
Cathleen Ni Houlihan by Yeats were staged in D u b h in this order. Synge's
play was received with some hissing; the play was criticized by the The Irish
Time as casting a slur on Irish womanhood.

Dec. 1903. Broken Soil by Padraic Colum performed by the Fays.

25 Feb. 1904. Riders to the Sea and A.E.'s Deirdre performed by the Fays.

26 March 1904. Synge's Riders to the Sea and In the Shadow of the Glen, and Yeats's The
King's Threshold, Brown Soil and The Pot of Broth performed in London.

11 Mlly 1904. Miss Horniman's generous offer of Abbey Theatre accepted.

27 Dec. 1904. The Shadow of Glen published in Samhain. Yeats's On Baile's Strand and
Lady Gregory's Spreading the News (new plays) and Cathleen.Ni Houlihan
and In the Shadow of the Glen presented as the Abbey Theatre's first offering
In Dublin.

4 Feb. 1905. The Well of the Saints presented; copies of the play published by A.H. Bullen
were provided for sale in the theatre.

20 Jan. 1906. Molly Allgood played Cathleen in a revival of Riders to the Sea. She was
Synge's last love. Synge plays a more active part in managing the Abbey
Theatre.
The Playboy of the 17 April 1906. In the Shadow of the Glen revived.
Western Workl
24 Nov, 1906. Yeats's Derrdre presented.

8 Jan. 1907. The Playboy went into rehearsal with Molly Allgood in the role of Pegeen

26 Jan. 1907. The Pl@boy presented at the Abbey Theatre.

1907. The Playboy published; The A r m Islands also published.

Jan 1908. The Tinker 'S Wedding published; in the Land by ~ a d r i a cColumn presented

1910. Deirdre of the Sorrows with Molly played the leading role performed, 13 Jan.
; play also published.
*
1.2.3 The playbdy Riots

1.2.3.1 Dublin

Now let us closely exmine the Issue why The Playboy was the centre of fierce controversy
when lt was first s t a g 4 in Dublm. Involved here is aIso the cmcial issue of an art~st'sfreedom
of thought and expression. Such a controversy is an impllcit recognition of the power of
theatre to subvert traditional morality.

In order to examine all 'these issues, we first need to look at the available evidence. Luckily we
have eye witness aecodnts of the riots written by Lady Gregory and John Holloway and
others connected with the Irish Dramatic Movement. Synge's plays before The Playboy were
not all well recelved in Dublin on first presentation. When his Shadow of the Glen wu.~first
produced m 1903, some attacks were made on it in the press. The stoly of a young wife who
goes away with a stranger evoked the charge that Synge had bonowed the story fi-om a
decadent Roman source, the stoy of the widow of Ephesus and given it an Irish dress. The
play was also attacked as a slur on the Irish womanhood. The Well of the Saints was not
adversely commented upon but then according to Lady Gregoly the audiences for it were
quite thin.

There was suspicion of trouble over The flrryboy even before the play opened on 26 Jan.
1907. While tfie play was in rehearsal, Joseph Holloway, the Dublin architect and an Abbey
Theatre buff wrote in his diary that someone he talked to felt "there is an organized opposition
present to his [Synge's] play" . . . According to him, others including Yeats, Lady Gregory
and William Fay had their apprehensions. Lady Gregory wanted a few cuts and she also made
some but only after the first production. Yeats said plainly that there was far too much "bad
language." Synge made a few cuts himself but they did not amount to much. The 1 1 1 story of
the reception of The Playboy at theAbbey Theatte during the first week is available in Our
Iruh Theatre, (1913),pp. 112-17.

The most obj-onable thmg in play was the reference by Chnsty to the ''drift of chosen
females, standing in their s h i h itself may be fiom this place to the eastern world." The feeling
was that Synge had slandered Ireland. The above account 1s qulte comprehensive but we shall
try to fill in the gaps. What was Synge's own reaction to the play and the disturbance? In a
letter to his beloved Molly Allgood who played Pegeen, he said: "I th~nkwith a better Mahon
and crowd and a few shght cuts the play would be thoroughly sound. . . ." About the row
Synge was prophetic.

It is better ahy day to have the row we had last night, than to have you play
fmling out in half-hearted applause. Now we'll be talked about. We're event in
the histom of the Irish drama. (Italics added.)

The reaction of the press was generally adverse. Here is an excerpt:

I
The play is an "unitigated, protracted libel upon h u h peasant men and worse
 still upon Irish peasant g v l h d The blood boils with indignation as one recalls Bat &ground to
the incidents, expressions, ideas of this squalid, offensive production, me Playboy
incongrously styled a comedy in three acts . . . No adequate idea can be given of
the barbarous jargon, the elaborate and incessant cursings of these reptlisive
creatures.
(The Freeman 's Joumao

The mattexs were compounded when Synge gave an unfortunate interview pubfished in The
Evening Mail. He denied that he wrote the play in order to represent Irish life as it is lived ". . .
I wrote the play because is pleased me, and it just happens that I knew Irish life best, so I made
my method Irish." His play was a comedy,an extravaganza, made to amuse and he did not care
a rap how the people take it. "I never bother whether my plots are typically Irish or not;but
my methods are typical." Yeats was absent when the play was first presented on Saturday but
when he came back on Tuesday the scene was full of fight. He announced that they would go
on until the play has been heard fllfticiently to be judged on its merits and also that on the
following Monday they would hold a debate about the play. (For an eye witness account by
Jahn Holloway of what happened cm the Tuesday night performance, see Greene, p. 245.)

Yeats actual words to the audience on the same night deserve to be quoted in 11I for they
beautifuliy rn up the whole issue of freedom to write and stage and to be read and secn :

We have put this play before you to be heard and to be judged, as every p i q
should be heard and judged. Every man has a right to hear it and condema it if,
I he pleases, but no man has a right to interfere with another man hearingar
playing and judging for b l f . The country that condescends either to bully or
1 to permit ikeK to be bullied soon ceases to have any h e qualities, and I
promise you that if there is any small section in this theatre that wish to deny
the right of others to hear what they themselves don't want to hear we will play
on, and our patience shall last longer than their patience.

The debate on the play was held as a ~ o u n c e dwith eyeryone in the Dublin literary world
present except Synge. Yeats came splendidly to Synge's defence. According to an eye
wifness, Mary Colum, she never "witnessed a human being fight as Yeats fought that night"
(Greene, p. 250). Lady Gregory was happy with their defence of the play-"it was spirited and
showed we were not repenting or apologizing" (Green, 251).

Among Synge's leading opponents was Arthur Griff~th,editor of The United In'shman a
weekly that voiced extreme nationalistic opinions. He later founded the organisation Sinn Fein
to h t h e r his political objectives.

He had attacked Synge for borrowing his story for In The Shadow of the Glen from Petmnius.
He described The Playboy as a "vile and inhuman story told in the foulest language we have
ever listened to from a public platform" (Green, 248).

The story of the Playboy's first staging in Dublin is interesting but for want of space must
come to a stop.

When The Playboy was taken to the USA, Synge had Qed and h s sweetheart Molly had
married and had gone off makmg it necessary for the Abbey players to look for a substitute for
her. Lady Gregoq then a c c o m p ~ e dthe Company on its tour to US that began in September
1911.

The Playboy's controversial reputation had reached America before the company did. The
reception that it received in America was mixed. It was generally fhendly but in Washington
some priests preached against the Company and a pamphlet denouncing the play was
published. In New York a periodical The Gaelic American said that The Playboy "must be
squelched." The play itself was duly disturbed. Among the things thrown on the stage were
me Phyboy of Ute In New York the play was seen by the ~&seve~ts.
w- World
In Philadelphia the entire cast Cas arrested and was tried but the players were rescued by John
Quin who demolished the arguments of the witnesses. In Chicago the Mayor was asked to
stop the presentation of thk p l y but l ~ refused
e to oblige.

Curiously not all the objectors $ere Irish American. One Englishman who was arrested
objected to British soldiers behg spoken of as "khaki cut throats."
I
The controversy over T h e playboy is long over and the play is now a permanent part of
repertowe of the Abbey Theatrq but the issue of the hedom of thought and expression it
raises is alive. As we said befoke, the controversy also provides another proof of the subver-
sive power of theatre. The power of the written word increases manifold when it is spoken by a
character from the stage. Should a play or a book co idered obscene or otherwise objection-
able by a section of the people /be banned? Ours is an age of permissiveness and many themes
considered taboo earlier are noiK routinely presented in books or on the stage. But, paradoxi-
cally, oui-s is also an age of increasing intolerance. Witness the latest example of the violent
protests against Salman Rushdit's T h e Satanic Verses. The whole issue is embroiled in
controversy and it is diEicult td adjuhcate between the two sides.

So far as T h e Playboy is conched, what we want you to do is to read the play again and
judge for yourself.
I

1.3 MODERN C O ~ E D Y
I

In modern times the comic for4 has been exploited in different ways. As a result there is an
extraordmary variety of comedy available in the twentieth century.

A most striking characteristic of modern drama is thens blurring of the boundaries between the
tragic and the comic, the saiods and the ludicrous. This blurring is nearly as old as drama
itself but it strikes the modern qeader with a new force. Such a distinction depends on the
existence of generally accepted standards of value within a society. These commonly shared
values or norms which provide the dramatist with a basis for communication no longer seem to
be valid. Without these values pll experience tends to become equally serious or equally
ludicrous. As the French dranl~tistIonesco said: "It comes to the same thing anyway; comic
and tragic are merely two aspects of the same situation, and I have now reached the stage
where I find it hard to distinguish one h m the other."

One result of the blurring of this distinction has been the use of comic means not to serve
comic ends as it was done in eelier times but for serious purposes. The comic has been
described by a critic as a tran+arency through which we see the serious. Laughter is one of
the resource of comic theatre but thls resource is now also employed for serious purposes.

'I'
Here I should like to illustrate e use of comic in serious drama today by giving the example
used by the Italian dramatist Pi idello. I quote fiom J.L. Styan's book T h e Dark Comedy:
I

Imagine, he [Pirandello in 19081says, an elderly lady: We are immediately

predisposed to be symgathetic. But she is overdressed, her face painted, her
hair dyed llke a girl's: *e find this comic and are ready to laugh. Yet suppose
she is aware of the figu)e she is cutting, and is behaving in thls way in order to
hold the affection of h d husband: we are sobered. The old lady seems pathetic
again, and the laugh is ';on us.' The comic may be no Iaughmg matter.

Our response to the lady is cohplex. We in the audience are first drawn to the lady, then
repelled and finally drawn a g q . This is one way in which the writer uses the comic to control
the responses of the audience +f modem times. This commingling of comedy and tragedy,
laughter with tears is frequent In modern drama particularly in the plays of Chekhov, Synge,
'This is a good point at which to ultroduce a new tenn for a modein comedy that d d e the
~r&onal pigeon-holes of tragedy and comedy and that combines laughter with tern.
lerm is dark come& which is the title of the book fiom whch the above quotation has been
cited. The old tragicomedy also continues to be used. Styan hlmself uses another term modem
comic tragedy in the sub-title of his h k . Terms are often useful as convenient l&b,
l~rovidedwe know how we define them and what they stand for. The term dark ca@&y stads
for 'modem comedy that not only amuses and entertains you but also teases and troubles you
imd can even be painful. Such a'play could end by raising questions or by sobering us. A
comedy whether old or modern in some way rearms its faith in li6e inspite of all the obstruc-
lions in it-and life's capacity to renew itself, But this resurrection is not always achieved
through the traditional union of young lovers.

1.4 LET US SUM UP

'The protesters against Synge's play have often been dismissed as "philistine fbols." But in
tiefence of their attitude, Synge's own ambivalence of aim has been pointed out. He defended
the play as an extravagant comedy. On the other hand he had reacted to the hostile reception
of The Well of Saints with the remark that "the next play I write I will sure annoy them"

Arm Saddlemyer has adduced several factors that help account for the riots. The downfall of
the Irish statesman, Charles Stewad Parnell was within easy recall, the figure of the 'stage
Irishman' was s6ll ridiculed on the English stage, there was still considerable prudery
regarding dress and sex, and Oscar Wilde's arrest a few years earlier had made I r i s h more
sensitive to their country's good name. That being so, it was "not surprising that a nationalist
audience should object . . . to the prksentation on the stage of their National Theatre, of a self-
confessed patricide who is glorified as a hero and encouraged as a lover by an entire
c m u n i t y in the West of Ireland."

I'art of the fault lay with the original production also, ujhich is said to have been extremely
realistic. It has been pointed out that "Pegeen was too sensual, Christy unpleasant-looking,
e(nd the bloody head of his father rather horrible." It was only later atter Synge's death that
the comic aspects started being emphasized.

- 1.5 GLOSSARY
(:EL.T One of the ancient people spealung Celtic. They originated around 1500 B.C.
in S.W. Germany and spread through France to N. Spain and the British Isles
and later to other parts of Europe. But in time only Brittany and the West of
the ~ r i t l s hIsles remained Celtic.'

(imrac a branch of the Celtic family of languages comprising Irish, Scottish Gaelic,
and Mamc.

1.6 QUESTIONS
1. How did Synge's meeting with Yeats change the former's career?
2. What place do tinkers, tramps and vagabonds occupy in Synge's plays?
3. Write a paragraph on Synge's role in the Irish Dramatic Movement.
4. Which words or sentences offended the fist audiences in Dublin most? Which
other remarks could possibly have offended audiences?
5. Go over the play again a d the objections of the critics and write an essay giving
your own opinion on the issue.
 I
The Plqboy of the
watinrr w w 1.7 SUGCESTE~READINGS
I
G r m , David H. AndE.M.Stephens. J&. *ge 1891-1909. Collier Bocks, 1959.
Lady Gregory,Our Irish 7'deah.e. New Yak G.P. Putnam's Sons. 1913,
This is indispensable W g ; contains ihree! hiportat chapters entitled "The Fight Over
the Playboy,"''d and "The Playboy in America."

f,
Styan, J.L. Dark Comedy: he Development of Modern Comic Tiwgedy. Combridge,
England, CUP,1968.
Comgm,Robert W.~ o m e b Meaning
: and Form. 2nd edition. New York:Herper and
I UNIT 2 CRITICAL ANNOTATIONS TO
THE PLAYBOY
I Structure
Objectives
Introduction
How to use the study material
Key Questions
Study Notes
2.4.1 Synge's Preface to the Play
2.4.2 The text of the play
Let u s sum u p
Olossery
Questions
Suggested Readings

- OBJECTIVES
2.0
The Primary objective of t h ~ sUnit is to enable you to assess the play by drawing your
athention to certain key questions on it and then providing study notes.
-
2.1 INTRODUCTION
The Playboy of the Western World is one of the finest plays of thls century by the Irish
plrlywright John Milliigton Synge (P'onounced SJ@. Remember there are two other drama-
tists of Irish origin in your course, Bernard Shaw and Samuel Beckett.
-
- HOW TO USE THE STUDY MATERIAL
2.2
@ A play is meant to be put on the stage. S+the best w'q to start your work on the
play is to see it staged first. But since that is not always possible the next best
thing is to read the play aloud with fellow stud,alts participating in the reading.
The r e a m behind this is that it is important to respond to the play directly before
turning to criticism or to an account of the riots over The Playboy's performance.
There is so much of wild imagination and poetry in it that you must let it come
through to you and work upon you. And the only way to do it is to read the play
aloud. You must remember that a play achieves its full effect only in a good
performance.
(ii) Your first reading of the play should be a general reading.
(iii) Please ensure that at least one of your readings of the play is a detailed reading.
When you do thls, you should make use of the notes provided in the mta-ial and
any other help that you can get frQm any other source.
(iv) We have tried to make this material self-contained. But you will need to look up
some other material on the play mentioned in the suggested readings.
(v) The text of the play that we have used in preparing this Study Material is
contained m The Plays and Poems of J.M. Synge, edited by T.R. Henn (London
Methuen, 1963) reprinted as a UmversiQ Papeiback in 1968. But you should feel
free to use any other text of the play.

2.3 KEY
- QUESTIONS
you begin to read, I would like to suggest several questions that are central to any
eaingful discussim of the play and that you could keep in mind as you read it.
 What is the play aboylt? This will lead you to the question - what kind of play is

+
Tkr -boy nf the 1.
wcs&m W o M it?
I
2. Does it remind you o some other comedy or comedles that you have read? Is it
different? In what w
3. Is it an 'extrav+gant fxmedy'? Does it have elements of farce?
4. Whk about the s r i o b elements in it?
5.
6. Why do you think
d
How do you r@pon to the language of the play'?
play offended its first audiences m Dublin and USA?

2.4 STUDY NOTES

I
-
&&g:
4
An eEort has been made to provide fairly exhbustive annotations to meet the
requirements of d i c e s dents as not all of them may have easy cekcessto libraries.

2.4.1 Synge's ~ru?faci

to the Play
I

1
Synge here explains how h has been able to combine realism with poetry in the play. He says
he has used only one or tw words in the play that he has not heard from the country people
of Ireland.
I

i
Lines 1-12 In writing The iayboy . . . compared with the fancies one may hear in any little
hillside cabin in k s a l a , Cmaroe, or Dingle Bay: Synge lived among the Irish peasants in
the Aran Island when he v' 'ted the islands for years from 1989. Synge had been in Paris in
1896 when Yeats met him d advised him to go and live among dw Irish people and 'express a
P
life that has never f d d e ression.'

1 have used one or bvo only rhat I haw not heard among the counhy people of Ireland
. . . : Qs, accodmg to biographer, was not an exaggeration and "it must have
angered him when accused him of foisting an outlandish vocabulary upon
the peasants of the

Lines 12-23 All art
in the kitchen: The
because in this case.
counts the Elizabe
in the use of 's
oration . . . -let me k a r what was being said by the sewant girls
ence here is : +l art is collaboration. It is a collaboration
guage used by the dramatist has been provided by the people. He
the happy ages of literature, happy in its use of language,
phrases' that the poet has heard from the people, that have
people's imagination.

I1
Lines 24-28 in co&ti+es here the imagination. . . in a comprehensive and'naturalform:
Notice Synge's emphasis on 'rich and living' language and 'reality,' which according to him is
the root of all poetry. He finds fault with modem litetature because it lacks this combination

M a h e Ste~hai~e(
18 2-98) Frenchsymbolist.

and critio, in his A Rebours (1884) translated as Against the

life of Des Esseintes, a dedicated aesthete who prefers

I 6) Nomgian dramatist geherally recognized as the founder of modem

ed Shaw (among others) who introduced his work to Engllsh theatre.

novelist and dramatist. He is the high priest of the naturalistic

Naturalism of the stage (1 880) was widely intluentid.
as no place in literature and that nnture is sacient .

cal entertainment that development in the USA during the

uvic and kpokrn dialowe. Shaw's Py~malion(1 902) was
/ adapted as a musical comedy as My Fair Lady (1956).

i1 2.4.2 The Text of the Play

Act I

set&: a bench with a high back and

turffire :fire fed wifhgrass.
-
shebcen: a house selling alcoholic Liquor in Ireland.
and often with a boi fitted below the seat.

creel cad: cart that has high movable sides, used for canying turf, pigs, sheep, etc.
Kate Cassidy 's Wake : Wake is a watch beside a corpse before burial. T.R. Henn gives this
description of the ceremony of a wake: 'The body, dressed in its shroud and "tidied" -
usually by some women not of the family, who has known skill in ibis-is laid on a table in a
tarrier of the room, candles burning at head and feet. As each visitor enters he lifts the cloth
fiom the face of the dead to make his farewell. The visitor kneels down to say a prayer. At one ,
time it was customary to place a conical mound of snuff on the navel of the corpse, from which
each took a pinch as he went by. Then, one by one, the callers pass to the grwp round the
fire. Each is given a new clay pipe, ready loaded with tobmo. There is whisky and srtout in
whatever quantity the means of the relatives allow, and tea for the women.
"h tall< round the fue develops, first, as a series of praises of the deceased, rem&axe
lu~danecdotes (always favourable) about b or her life; and fmally d g h t develop in@
something like an orgy. The whole ceremony is pagan, down to the symbolism of the new
claypipes, overluid with Christian ritual ' (From Introduction to The Shadow of the Glen in
The Plays and Poems of J.M. Synge, ed. T.R. Henn [London: Methuen, University Pnperbadc,
8 11681,p.29).
&-ruff of the hill ; slope below the summit.
Awn 't we afrer mahing a good bargain : Apparently dowry was prevalent.
Fother Reil&'s disp_emation : It is necessq because Pegeen and Shawn are marrying in the
month of Lent, i.e. the period of f&hg and penitence. The *ation finally arrives in Act
3.

i
Queer lot : the word recurs in the play several times.

/ Tho? like of Danren Sullivan Knocked the eyehorn a peeler : who knocked . . .
, Petnler a policeman-, originally a nickname given to the Royal Irish Constabulary, instituted
t uaclerthe Secremship (1812-1818) ofsir Robert Peel.
Maiming ewes : disabling ewes; a favourite way to settle grudges against one's n e i ~ ~ .
I Or landlord.

I He o g n a t warrant to tell : he is highly skiiled and famous for telling.

/ Father Reilly has small conceit : would not have allowed.

Is it the like of that murderer? : Pegeen's objection to Widow Quin is because she is 'a
m u r k . ' But ironically later she is to urge her father to employ Christy as a potboy because
he is a murderer and brave.

/ H i m s ~ eMaster
~ : of the house, i.e Pegeen's father.
When he sees you taking on : wheo he sees you getting frightened?
I'm tlfter feeling a kind of fellow : I have a feehg theri is a khd of fellow.
Well, p u 're a daring fellow : Pegeen is using these words ironically here. The same wards are
used for Christy Mahon also but in a positive sense.
don 'I let on : dont't reveal this secret.
Whiskt : (Scot & Irish ihalect) be quiet, hush.
God hless You! The blessing of God on this place : A customary greetmg used by an Irish
peasant. a neighbow or a stranger, on entering a cottage. The Irish peasant of the time used
these blessings h o s t without thought of their significance.
The PInybny of lthe Stooh of the Dead Women :I rocks on the sea-shore; a stook is a conical cluster of sheaves of
We.viem Wori~l
oat< set up to &>I. "Do you bee that sandy head, he said, pointing out to the east "that is
called the Stooks of the ~ e a Women;
d for one time a boat came ashore there with twelve dead
women on board her, big ladies with green dresses and gold rings, and fine jewelleries, and a
dead harper or fiddler along kith them" (jm Wicklow, West Ketty and Connemara, 191 I),
I
p. 119. I

Bad cess to them : bad luck 10 them.

Gripe of the ditch : hollow qf the ditch I
Leave me go : There is a lotiof horse flay in The Playboy. I
old Pagan : Shawn uses thq phrase for Nrchael probably because what he wants him to do is
something so unlike ti Chn$ian.
Penny pot-boy : a serving n)dn in a cheap public home.
I
Ionesome West : The crnpljasis throughout is on the "lonesome" West.
YOP '11 have no call :.you 41b v e no need.
Godsave all here : Cf. G
4 bless You? (P. 178).
A bonajide : a bonq fide hveller, so exempted from licensing "hours";here genuine.
You 're wanting, mdbe? : b6u are probably wanted (by the police)? This question by Michael
1
is the beginning of the s n ~ ~ b a l l i nthe
~ olie.
f
He did what any & ~ e n tmkn would do : probably attacked and lutled the man who came to

gentle, simple : Gentle heqe means of good social position as against common people.
He 'd heat Dan Dawies ciricusl : The exaggeration suggested is typical of the people here. Note
the vivid irnagmatidn of 4 e people.
~ o e r:s ~ u t ~friaan
h of butch origin.
Kmger : Full name - ~tephanusJohanees Paulus Kruger (1 825-1904). South Afn- roIdier
and statesman. He led thq Affikaners i.e. the whites esp. the whites of Dutch origin to victory
against the British 41the qirst Boer War in 1881. He died in exile in 1904.
With the help of Gbd I dik. . . : Notice comic incongruity of religious piety and murder.

I just lilthe loy : I just daised the loy; a b y is long thin spade.
Aye, I buried himlthen :)Note the force of the stage dirstion consi id^. Chnsty is now i
committed to circpmstdtial story and its ehboration;
Spuab : P~tatoes,
I
1 1
Oh, a distanc~place, . .;. a windy comer of high, distant hills : That Christy is now malung up ,
his story is clear from @e vagueness of his reply.
The sense of Solomon : wisdom of Solomon Solomon was the king of Israel c. 970-930 B.C.
known for his wisdom ma&~cence.

The peelers is fenring him : Note how others join in building up Christy's self-esteem.
i

I
I
 The walking dead : The phrase anticipates Old Mahon's reappearances later in the play at the
wrong time.
Ifthey're not fearing You : There is a reversal of situation here. At first Christy was afraid of
the police and asked if the shebeen was safe from the police. Now Michael believes that the
police would probably be afraid of Christy.
drouthy : thirsty.
Let You stop a shoit while anyhow: Pegeen has shifted her attentions to Chnsty now.
Himself in it too : The master of the house himself has no objection to his (Shawn's) staying
w;th Pegeen during the night.
I'm tired s~trely. . . waking fearful in the night : This is the real Chris*.
,a kind of quality name : aristocratic name. Christy promptly accepts thls suggestion that b
belongs to the landed gentry. The M a h s were a famous mil* family.
You've said the like of that, maybe : The eternal response of a womw in such situations.
,Streelen : chat.
.You 'd have us rrtuch talk and streelem : Pegeen attributes the qualities of a poet to Chnsty.
A' never killed n ~ father
y : Pegeen's apology for not killing her father is highly comic.
rt's most conceit you 'd how : Conceit here means personal vanity.
And I after, toiling, moiling, digging . . . : agmn the real Christy.
130aching : catch (game) illegally.
1 was a divil to poach : I was
St. Martin 's Day : 1 1 November:; St. Martin's summer means a penod of fine mild weather
s.bout this date.
Gaudy oficers : wearing the strrking Edwardian uniform of the militia.
ltanbhs : young pigs.
I a seemly fellow with g w t strength in me and bravery o f . . . : This intenuption of Christy in
rid-sentence is eloquence. His reac€ion to the knocking is highly comic. Contras? Christy's
tloasting with Old Mahon's account of his son in Act 11.
I'm in terror oj'the peelers : As soon as he h e m a knock on the door, all his veneer of bravery
goes and he appears as one who is &aid of the police.
Stringing gabble : continues tallung.
C'uriosiv man : inan who had mu,& the curiosity of others. What other titles are given to
Clhristy? Make a list.
Priesteen : little priest
I
pennypoets : selling ballads at fairs.
' A'ever overed it : never got over it, Widow Quin's murder "a sneaky kind of murder"
1 contrasted with the hero murder by Christy.
hrouseen : little house. The Insh suffu: - a n is used to form diminutive nouns. Make a list of
such diminutives.
U'ithout a tramp . It's true the Lord God formed you to contrive indeed : This match of abuse
batween women is highly comic.
A sop of grass tobacco : dried but uncured tobacco leaf.
[ I Nefer rtuy : I wuiuld prefer to stay.
There right tornrent will await you here . . . : Widow Quin's prophecy about Christy's
tc~rmentat the hands of P e g m comes true in Act 111.
me *boy of the
Wnlam World Act U
Counv Clare : in the prov&e of Munsta in the Republic of Ireland.
Cmceen (or kaockeem) : liqe hlll.
gamy : sensational.
~
I

"You squinting idio/, " s q he : Here find another evidence of the growth of the Christy's lie
about having killed his fathkr.

loads. I
+
He way letting o n . . . : he anted to give the impression.
I

Under a dray : dray is a lop, strong flat 4-wheeled cart without sides, used for auryng heavy

That's grand story. He tell+it lovely : These comments sum up the attraction Christy's story

4
ha3 for the people hem. y is it considered 'a grand story'? M a t makes it 'lovely' in the
telling? What makes C k s 'such a good or lovely narrator?
he gave a driw with the : Christy gives an immediate proof of his skill as a story teller.
He is iwenting detaib
Supeen : a little sup. ; 1
I I

You 're heroes : It wfiat are they 'heroes'?

1

odd assortment of people. 4

Drink a health to thd won rs of the Western world. . . : Sara is proposing a mock toast to an

a white shifr : a white und+gment.

l

hujjjJ: rudely proud. iI

Lepping the stones ; c r o s b g by stepping stones.

i
It's not three
+
That lot came over tbe riv r: The reference is to the girls who came to see Christy.
: pe h is a measure of length of land of 5 1 0 yards.

+
Frish+ash : froth-like sub(stancellre beaten egg.
Shut of jeopar4 : safe fko danger
It's queer joys they have :I Note Pegeen's sadistic description of hanging. This is her r d o n
to Christy's flirtation with khe girls.
Lonesome : k e y ~ o frm~ +sq.
, I
Coaxing fallow : flitterm+ persuasive.
Esau : the e l k sonof 14
and Rebecca in the Bible.
s Qdsm
Coin and ~ b e: i~ o n of
Ne$n : the name of a mohtain west of Loch Conn, between Newsport and Bollina.
En-is plain : Enis 3 a b&ny in northwest Mayo.
The n e e 4 fallen angel. be looking on the Lord : Note the biblical comparison made by
Chnsty to describe bs o need of a.woman.
T
i
What call have you : Yo don't have to7'
I'm thinking you 're an odd man : Pegeen is truly p d e d and also affected by the talk of
Christy.
Wattle : thin stick.
I1

~
I
mitch o f f : sneak away, p ay truant.

thvaneen :bit of thread,

F
Inveigle You o f f : to trick ou away fiom
ghred.
I
Ckeve : basket
I jail in Dublin.
Kilmainham : a notorio
"1
I
It's hard case to be an orphan : Shawn is sincerely lamenting his not having a father. Or else
he could lull him and be a hero like Christy. This is comic.
rye path : path by the side of a small rye field.
turbaly : right of cutting turf on a stretch of bog.
the long car : a kind of small waggon once popular in the West for postal sewices.
one blow 60 the breeches belt : Note how the stroke becomes magnified steadiIy as the dory
is re-told. Cf. "he split to the knob of his gullet" @. 197).
Where '11I hide my bodyfiom that ghost of hell? : Notice how Chnsty's pnde is pmdurtd at
the moment when it is most inflated, when he thinks he is most secure.
Did You see a young ladpassing this way . . . : Old Mahon does not use the customary
greeting "God save you." You can guess why not?
Streeler : rugged youth. The word is used mainly by city boys.
gob : mouth, hence the,whole face.
Divil a robber : The word is used to express strong disagreement. The phrase would
mean "far ftorn being a robber."
a dirty, stuttering lout : After the romantic build-up of Christy we have his father's version of
what his son was Ilke.
mortified scalp : wounded head.
A great shame when the old and hardened tonnent the young? : Widow Quin is vastly
amused at the widen turn of events. And she is delibwitely provoking old h4dmn.
a lier of walls : one who lies on walls or sits on or leans against them.
Finches and felts : birds
bit of g h s we had hung o n the wall : The looking glass plays.an important part in buikbg up
Chsty's self-esteem.
baronies : In Ireland a barony is a division of a county.
The laughing joke of every female woman : Here is the other version about Chnsty.
The spit o f p u : Your exact likeness.
Civil warrior : because he is not in the military.
You're the walking Playboy of the Westem world, and that the poor man you had divided to
his breeches belt : Widow Qum uses the term in its English meaning. hoaxer, fi-aud. The bune
has changed now and she sarcastic now.
Weasel tracing a rat : weasel is a type of small thin fur animal with a pointed face which can
lull other small animals. A weasel works quickly weaving ftorn side to side to pick up Ehe m t .
he a kind of carcass : dead sheep and cattle were not buried but pushed over cligs into the
Atlantic. ,

after the love-light of the star of knowledge shiningfram her brow : At moments Christy's
language becomes incandescent.
spavindy ass : lame with spavin, disease of the hock-joint.
It's her like is fitted to be handling merchandize in to heavens above : instead of selling
h g s at her small shop.
at the comer of my wheel : The old men come in to gossip while she is spinning.
Boreen : lane.
I6 '11 be great game : Fun is what Christy's coming has provided to the inhabitants of the
place-till such time it becomes serious in Act 111.
-
 I
I
I

me Pkgrbby of ihe
w m World I

gaffer : boss or man in chargq.

Roulette man : roulette is a gwbling game.
I

cockshot man : who allows sticks to be thrown at him, for money at fairs.
hobbled yet : hobble is to cape a person to limp.
he jlings up two halves of thwt skull : The discussion of the skull and the graveyard is
macabre and recalls Hamlet $nd Web*.
there was a graveyard. . . : bynge had heard the story in Kerry.
I doing nothing but tefling skories : Here is mother storyteller who wins clean beds and food .
for the other side of & stoqt of the murder.
I knew a party was ki&d d the head by a red mare : Note how the playWright has brought
the image of the horse and $ock together in the "metaphysi& fashim
Isn Y madness a fight : isn'tlrna%ness frightful?
I

Skalping them : slapping thein

1
mangy cue : diseased dog.
the champion Playboy oft$ Western World : Widow Qum had used the phrase earlier in Act
11. Find out where and in wbat context She now knows the reah? of Chnsty and so uses the
phrase konicdly.
winkered mule : mule With biinkers on the bride.
' brth : ha'J9or& is a c o n t r a o h of half penny worth; a small amount There
there isn 't a ha p
is nothing that he isn't winr$ng.
I

Who is he at all? : Old Mayon's question is really a questioh,that vocalizes his wonder at the
I
doings of his son.
I

I seen rats as big as badge* ~uckingthe hlfe bloodfrom the butt of my lug: '.'withteeth fixed
in the lobe of the e a r . " ' ~ e h k sthe h e g e is derived &om weasels or ferrets, who usually
fasten on rabbits at tbk base of an ear. &gis Britii slang of an ear.
brain pan : the case af bonb in which t
k brain is contained.
I

Parlatic : p-c.
Then IV best be to the union beyond : Old Mahon has b m convinced by Widow Qlun
that he is mad. I

darlinr boy : darling boy. 1

since striking my one sing$; blow : Chris@ now never forgets to mention his 'heroic. murder'
of his father with one blow.\
a kind of pity for the Lord b o d . . . : The image is also used in fiom Synge's o m p o ~ n
" Dread: I
I
Besides a cahpel I'd 0 r@ looked down,
Where all the women h m ithe farms md town,
On Holy-days and %nday$ used to pass
To marriages, and cb.ste&ngs, and to Mass.
I
Then I sat lonely matching1 s w e and scare,
Till I turned jealous gf the vord next door. . .
Now by the window, wherb there's none can see.
The Lord God's jealous of ourself
and me.
The image is said to have been taken from Douglas Hyde's
 "Lone Songs of Connacht":
I had rather be beside h q on a couch, ever
kissing her.
Than be sitting in Heaven in the chair of the
Trinity.
till we are astray in Erris, when Good Friday '.v by : A good Catholic does not make love in
Lent.
,nitred bishops : mitre is a type of tall pointed hat won1 by priests of high rank.
j'fthe mitred bishops : Christy has been truly transformed and is at his kloquent best in these
lines.
Such poet's talking, and such bravery of heart : Note the two qualities that appeal to Pegeen

, I
lsn 't there the light of seven heavens. . . : The comparison ofthe beloved with light is tradi-
tlonal.
paters : the Lord's prayer
tt9mpted to go sailing the seas till I'd marry a Jew-man : Yeats' ballad. Colonel Martin is
perhaps relevant here: "The Colonel went out sailing,/ He spoke with Turk and Jew."
And to think it's me is talking sweetly . . . : These lines bring out the transformation brought
about by love.
I R7r You 'd nevei-sw the match of it forflow of drinh .: Wakes were occasions for heavy
dxinkmg.
throw him on the cnrpper . . . the opportunity for drinks at a wake is not to be missed.
Crupper is a leather belt passing under a horse's tail and tied to the saddle to prevent it from

I sl~ppingforward.
i

gil'ded desperation : dispensation is the Roman Catholic permission to disobey a general rule,
cf.p 177.
no savagery orfrne words at all : Shawn doesn't have the acquisitions that Chrisv bas.
Cf p.218.
Pit:king up a dirry tramp up from the hrghays of the world : Note the rhythm and cadence.
And have You no mind : Shawn's speech is largely mataialistic and 1s in sharp contrast to the
sheer poetry of Christy's eloquence.
Drr'ft of heifers : Contrast h s with the reference to the'drift of chosen females' made by
Chlisty, which created a storm in the Abbey Theatre when the play was first presented in 1907
the plarns of Meath : the more fertile lands of the midlands and south-east are proverbla1 in the
I
west for their wealth.
s image of washing in Macbeth.
the rising tide will wash all traces : Pahaps this line r ~ d l the
( I

i Liej'er : rather.
Then I'll make you face the gallows : Chris9 tries to 'teenact his murder' of his father
I'll riot renege : break my promise. In a few moments she will forget all about her promise.
win an easy or a cruel end . Yeais's 'Lament for Mrs Mary Moore' is relevant hae. "A
Mwdy and a sudden end,/ G b h o t 0r.a noose.
that all should rear up lengthy families : Genesis viii, 17 is relevant here ["Bring out with you
every living thmg . . . so that they may abound on earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the
earth.]
He 's not my father : In his desperation Chty even denies his father.
You 're fooling, Pegeen : note how the crowd turns against Christy.
Atid to think ofthe coaxing glory we had given hirn : Pegeen is the first to turn against
Chmity and she is the severest.
Mum:ter liar . Christy who belongs to Munster. ,2 5
The Pt@oy of tbe Rule the roost in M a p : be h e leader in Mayo.
Wcslhrc World
state him now : attack h i t ' n w
the old hen : influenza
P.
I

cholera norbus : the peasa&y love to pick up bits of medical knowledge.

in the context. I
scorch my understanding a herflaming brow : an Elizabethanism that seems over-rhetorical
I
If them two set fightipg: scene now turns into a fight between the father and the son with
the crowd enjoying it. The only person distressed is Pegeen.
, ifyou 're a f i r makirag p m#ghty man of me @ the power of a I e : probably the heart of the
play. 1 I
m n /mm the idiot1 : The &wd that had cheered Christy now turns abusive.
a drijl of chosen females sbanding in their shtfij itself: These lines were considered u slur on
the Irish nation, particular@Irish womanhood.
There 're going to hong h$n now: There is some sympathy among girls for Christy.
hanging is on easy and aIspeedy end : Contrast stis with Pegeen's description of hanging to
scare c h s t y on p i99. 1
gallous story: gallobs is fian gallows.

d
there's a great gap; betw en a gallous stoly and a dirty deed : Christy's story of his 'heroic
murder' of his father is a proved so long as it is a mere story. The reversal comes when he
tries to turn the story intq reality.
scorch his leg : " I had dtfended the burning of Christy Mahon's leg on the ground that an
artist need not make his characters self-consistent, and yet, that too was observation, for
although these people a(e kindly towards each other and their children, they have no sympa-
thy for the suffer& mals, and little sympathy for pain when the person who feels it is
not in danger" and Intmduction, p. 326).

1
T

With ladies -in their silks and satins snivelling in their lacy kemhief : as in many popular
"hanging" ballads of th eighteenth century.
,
Picking cockles : ~ c c o f d i nto~T.R. Henn, the coldest, wettest and most ill-paid of work.
I'm master of allfightrkom now : There is a new Chnsty now.
Ten thousand blelrsings upon all that's here . . . : There is no bitterness in Chnsty towards the
people of Mayo, $hose h t~first l-ed him and then turned hostile towards him.
Romping lijetime : live11 years of life
Oh, my griej I've lost him sure& : The only person who has suffered a loss apart from Christy
I
is Pegeen herself
I I
I

2.5 LET US qUM UP -

Re- this play can i e a bewildering experience for some readers. Parts of it are sheer fun.
P
But there are sederal o er elements in it-wild imagination, picturesque language, love,
violence, p h w , o f rolyplaying and the element of the grotesque and much else. Also, the
play does not h v e a bappy ending usual in comedies.

farce :
d
A li t humorous play the objective of which is to provoke uproarious
lau a.For its effect a farce depends on exaggerated physical action,
a b d d situations and improbable events. The plot of a farce generally
'

,
mov? with s u r p ~ rapidity.
g
i
grotesque : The (dictionary defines it as strange and unnatural so as to cause fear or
lau&ter. In a literary context the word is used to denote ridiculous,
26
 bizme, extravagant. The grotesque element is used by writers for comic Critical annotations to
and satirical pups&. The Playboy
P~cturesque: charming and interesting; (of language) unusually clear, strong and
descriptive.

2.7 QUESTIONS
1. Answer the following questions;

(i) Which character in the play uses the word playboy first?
(ii) W?wh other characters use the same word?
(iii) Where is the action of the play located? In which part of Ireland?
(iv) How much time does the action of the play take?
(v) Which place does Christy belong to?
(vi) The word shebeen meam a small country pub or public house selling liquor.
There are several other words that end with the re.d5x-een which is used to
form diminutive nouns. Make a list of such words and find their meanings
with the help of a dictionary, if necessary.

! Iden* the speakers of the following lines and the situation in which these lines are

@ "Well it's a clean bed and soft with it, and it's great luck and company I've
won me in the end of &two fine women fighting fw the likes of 1-1
I'm thinking this night wasn't I a foolish fellow not to kill my f&br in the
years gone by?"
(ii) I know well it's the man; "I'm after putting him down in the sports beldw for
racing, leaping, pitching, and the Lord knows what."
(iii) "Take him on from h,or I'll set the young lads to destroy him here."
(iv) "It's Pegeen I'm seeking only, and what'd I care if you brought me a drift of
chosen females, standing in their sh& itself, maybe, from this place to the
eastern worldl"
(v) "Well, you're the walking Playboy of the Western World, and that's the

(vi) "Oh, my grief, I've lost him surely. I've lost the only Playboy of the Western
World."
(vii) "I'll say, a drange man is a marvel, -with his mighty talk; but what's a
squabble in your background, and the ,blow of a loy, have taught me that
there's a great gap between a gallous story and a dirty deed."

3. Write an essay giving your personal impression of the play.

2.8 SUGGESTED READINGS

C!omgan, Robert W. Ed. "Farce, S~tireand Tragicomedy," Comedy: Meaning and Form.
2nd ed. New York : Harper h Row, 1981. Pp. 191-227.
C!uddon, J.A. Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. 3rd ed. Penguin Books,
1992. [Read particularly the entries on comedy, farce and grotesque.]

27
UNIT 3 CLOBE ANALYSIS OF

Structure I
I
I
I
Objectives
Introduction ,
Germ of the play
Title
Actwise Analysis I
3.4.1 Act I
3.4.2 Act 11
~
3.4.3 Act I11 1
LetUsSumUp 1

Glossary
Questions
I

Suggested ~eadinbs
~

The primary aim of Ws unit is to help you to pay close attention to the text and analyse it and
dso see how the dramatist +hieves a variety of effects in it.

3.1 INTRODUC$ION
I

How are we to intapfet theIplay? Sy~lgehimelf said that p a of it were meant to be 'extrava- +

gmt comedy' but that there was much more in the play that was perfectly serious and that
there were "several sides" fo it. What are those sides? In order to v e r these questions, I
suggest that you tum'to the text and read the play once again with the help of comments and
questions on each &t, and on the play as a whole. These connnents and questions draw
attention to Me fhotion of (eachAct and the various scenes in it and suggest various points
of interest. I

3.2 GERM OF $HE PLAY

I
The germ of the play lay in a story that both Yeats and Synge heard during their respective
visits to the Aran Islands. Yeats who visited the Islands two yeus before Synge did, in 1898
with Arthur Symonds wrotp;

An old rnm on the L a n Islands told me the very tale on which Tho Ployboy is
founded beginning the words 'If any gentleman has done a crime we'll hide
him. There was a that killed his father, and I had him in my own house

(Essays andlnh.oductions,pp. 337-38)

I

An account of this was also left by antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp who had
visited Arm

Synge heard a similar s t 4 on the Iilishmaan ialad one of the Arm Islands, he visitad An
old man, the oldest on the pland told him.

who killed his father with the blow of a spade when he

fld to this island and threw himself on the mercy of
whom he was said to be related. They hid him in a
hole-which the 014 man has shown me-and kept him safe for weeks, though the
police came se&ched for hinz, and he d d hear their boots g r h b g on the
stones over his he&. In spite of the reward which was offered, q e island was
I
I
I
 i n m p t i b l e and a h much trouble the man was safely shipped to America. AarWs e l
*&v
(Four Plays and the Amn IsIana3, p. 216)

Synge then goes on to comment on the attitude of the islanders:

If a man has killed his father and is already sick and broken with remorse, they
see no reason why he should be dragged away and killed by the law.

Such a man, they say, will be quiet all the rest of his life, and if you suggest that
punishment is needed as an example, they ask, would anyone kill his father if he
was able to help it?'

The origin of the idea of the plsy and the attitude of fhe Island are an important element in our
making sense of the play

Apparently the idea of the play hd 8190 been suggested by the case of a man called James
Lynchehaun who had sssadted a woman and managed to conceal b l f from the police with
the help of peasant women. Lyncheluun also eventually escaped to America. But Synge
believed that the story in its essence was "possible" given the psychic state of the locality.
He also clarified: "Vthe idea had occurred to me I could and would just as readiiy haw written
the thing as it stands today without the Lynchehaum case or the Aran case . . . I UBbd the
cases atterwacds to contravene critics who said it was impossible."

3.3 TITLE
: m e ' s fust working titles for the play were "The Murderer A Farce," "Murder pvitl out or
Fool ofthe Family," and "The Fool of' Farnham" until he hit upon the present title.

Pmording to his biographers David Grenne and Edward Stephem, "Playboy is jmxd'bly the
banslation of the Gaelic phrase used in hurling or it may be the English word Plnyboy, a
hoaxer. It is in this sense that the Quin uses the full title for Chnsty a k discovering
tfmt the man he had boasted of killing is still very much alive: "Well, you are the waking
P 1 e o y of the Westem World and t&at's the poor man, you had divided to his bi.eeches
tn:lt," The tenn is used mom positively also and I am sure you have discovered w d uscs
I
of it in the course of your reading of the play.

The biographers' comment of the phrase "Western world is also intereshg: "The Westam
World" is a phrase Synge may never have heard an Irish countryman use, though he puts it
and its counterpart "easiem world" into the mouths of several of his characters in dp play.
B Lhe~ was undoubtedly aware that it occurs kquently in early Irish texts as tm epithet for a
hunpion. For example, a tenth century poem reads:

Where is the chief o f the Western world2

Whek the sun of @veryclash of arms?

Tht: phrase "Western World" refers to the west part of Ireland where the play is located but
wuld also be taken to refa to the lefge weste~1word. There is a similar ambiguity about the
i wold @ayboy because the hoaxer be~omesa real champion in the end. Apparently the
amlnguity weighed with Synge when h made his final choice for the title.
-
3.4 ACT-WISE ANALYSIS
- -- -

3.4,.1 Act I

Do look up the meaning of the Ploybay in your dictionary. According to the Oxfiord
Encyclopaedic English Dictionary. the word means "an irresponsible pleasure see.king man
especially a wealthy one." You need to see if the play supports this meaning. The ti*
 Wha /and of cw&y
I
do you expect this to be?

Also, what does the phrase refer to7 To Western Ireland or Mayo where
titeplayislocaasdartathe

r
1. Thekeyquestioarh : 6 Act

A ansarca is that 4 focus is on:

-
-
the scene *
the scene whcn
to a Wake
Pegeea ud shwn Keogh; ad
feer father
I
James and, his friends join them before going
I

What do these two scenes do7

@ The hFJt scene es&isk. the. cbsractm of Peggen (she is a sharp-tmped

'
(as a timid God-fearing youngman). It also sets the
-1

1- marriage.
4'
pkyfil tome to the play through Pegeen's teasing of k betmthed. Notice that
S h m hw Sou& hat he calls a 'bargain' with P e w ' s father suggesting a
. ,

~ 6 somc
c a * &es
~ us -io.
the fix* of d~ charsom~ tow^ nature. ('.I
g end sighmg in the stillness of the air . . .") on the

Janmes tqmg to &vent Shuwn h m escaping. Shawn escapes leaving his coat in
Mike's hands. ,
(3
(a) Notice that his tiontakespbaceintwo parts-to uncoverthenature ofthe
used to commit it.
part of the information is true or factual aod which is
*&believe. I
Example: Read the exchange between Michael anb Christy:

Christy (consi&HnetJ: Ib d him then. Wasn't I digging spuds in the field?

suggest about the truthffilness or othotherwise

(b) Tbk: clear that Clmdy is trylng to invent a suitable answer. The
scene also e theme of imagination and reality here. The crowd's
t
fesci.1.lation ve r e ~ ~ w ofo Christy's
n tnurder of his father is
UMtQW C w s W a e r s suggest and collabora~ein the grvwth of
the story1 I
(iv) Atter the deper-kwe of M i W l Jamnes and his fiends, there is a bnef exchange
between 1P-1 and her betrofbd Shawn Keogh. What is the point of the ex-
30 change7 It shows that Pegem is attraoted to Christy.
I
 -

(v) Pea- and Christv are left alone together. Notice how Christy's self-discovery d D s a AmsIysia of
under the admiring gaze of Fis listeners-here Pegeen--continues. There is a reversal ' l31e'Hayboy
of gender roles also. Traditionally, it is a man who woos and pursues the female.
Here Pegeen is more active.
(vi) Widow Ouin enters.
1. What is the effect of the Widow Quin's knocking on Christy?
The knocking comes while Christy is in the middle of a sentence boasting about his
bravery: ("It's time surely, and I a seemly fellow with great strength in me and
bravery of . . . "). But he forgets all about his 'bravery' and clings to Pegeen. This
is what he says : Clinging to Pegeen : "Oh, glory be! it's late for knockmg, and
this last while I'm in terror of peelers and the walking dead."
2. Recall what Pegeen said about Widow Quin ("a murderer," p. 177). Now she comes
as a rival to Pegeen fa3- Christy.
3, Notice that Pegeen dismisses Widow Quin's murder of her husband as "sneaky"
when compared to Chnsty's grand one-stroke "murder" of hls father.

How do you react to the language of the play?

For a lller &xussion read Section 5.3 on Language. But can you pick out you ccmsider
to be the three most poetic utterances in Act I? Also, in what way is the .syntax peculiar?

Notice how t r & t i d attitudes are reversed and this reversal is t r d d c a l l y .

A prime example of tlus reversal is the crowd's admiration and resped for the
patricide. He is also prpkled shelter. This comic reversal frames the play.
2 Notice the use of irony, both conscious and unconscious for comic effect.

Read the followmg dialogue:

PEGEqN with blank amazement : "Is it killed your father?"
CHRI$TY subsiding : "With the help of God I did, surely ..." Here the speaker is not
aware of the fact that the pious interjection does not fit in with his confession. The
result i incongruity and verbal which makes us laugh.
3. Notice that some of the situations are farcical. Michael trying to stop Sham fitan
escaping is farcical.
4. P s g m ~ ' sdowngrading of Widow Quin's 'sneaky' murder of her husband in
comparison to Christy's one-storke murder of his father is hilarious.
5. What other sources of comedy does the writer make use of in Act I?

One fmal a westion

people of Mayo? Or is it all just good

Keep this -on in mind as you read the play.

 I

The -boy of the

W& WoM
3.4.2 Act I1
I

Note: Act I takes place on thd evening of an autumn day. This Act takes place the 'allowing
morning. The key ques?ion is :
I
what is the principal function of this Act?

Read Act Il with this q ~ e s t i oin~mind and make your own notes as you I.ead op. Let us study
the Act in detail. I
I

The question is:

, the Mayo girls advanceathe action of the play?

2. Christy dm provides a reason for & anger against hls father--his father's plan to
force him to mwy W@ow C-.
I

&anmane : Choose at least three picturesque phrases/ sent- from this scene.
I
I

3. The girls propose a +on betwem Widow Qoin and Christy. What is in mmmon
between them? They #so drink a mock-toast for them.

( i What is the point of the rcns between Christy and Pegem?

I

I
(iii) What do we lean fidm the scene between Christy. and Shawn and Widow Qum?
I
I
1. ir/
Shawn sees a rival Christy for the hand of Pegem but Christy rejects his offas
to induce him 00 quit the scene.

2 Shawn promise$ ~ i & wQuin msvj things in lieu of her help to make Christy leave.

particulariy the way Jhe old man's story is elicited. What is the effect of Old
Mahon's story7 ~ h r i & hides herself while Qld Mahon is telling his stoq d bis
son Christy. -
(a) kww I

I
is the effect of Christy's hidmg on the piay?

The hidmg of a c+acter while others on the stage t& about him is a standard
comic device. It mak/es the scene even more humorous than it would have been
otherwise. I
I
I
32
(b) Notice also a parallel between the effect on Christy of Old Uahon's appearance and
Widow Quin's knochg in Act I.

The cleft caused by Chfisty's blow on his father's head travels down the latter's
anatomy. Look up C!hsfy's speeches for exact details.

After listening to Old Mahon's story, Widow Quin says: "Well, you'w the walking
playboy of the Westem world and that is the pow man you had divided to his
breeches belt."

Is Widow Quin praising Christy or is she being ironical?

Of course, she is being ironical. Look for other examples of irony in act II.
(v) The f d scene between Widow Qujn and Christy takes place on a new footing,
with Chrity's reputation -deflated in Widow Quin's eyes.
Notice it is Christy's turn to seek Widow Quin's help in dismissing Old Maltnn and
- mamying Pegcen. (Who was it who had sought her help earlier7 Sbwn, of course.)

Lan- Choose three excerpts that you find particularly fascinating.

Exercise*
1. Read the following ;
. Susan : "That's a grand story."
. Honor : "He tells it lovely."

Write a brief answer illustrating the points made in this exchange between the two
p i s . Base your answer on Acts I & 11.

2. What fresh light does this A& throw on Widow Quin's character7

There are several parallels between Act I & 11. What are they?

: Point 1 : Widow Qrun interrogates Old Mahon in Act I1 as the h4ayo men had interro-
gated Chnsty in Act I.

These paralleles bind the two Acts together.

3.4.3 AC~ m
0
What purpose is served by the scene involving
Jimmy, Philly, Widow Quin and Old Mahon7

1. The long scene has two major points of focus--one, Widow Quin tries to put Old
Mahon off the scent of his san and mislead Jimmy and Philly about the &&X'S
true identity; two, Jimmy, Philly, Widow Quin and Old Mahon give a Nnning
commentary as they watch Chriq's triumphs in the mule race below.
2 Notice the strategem that Widow Quin uses to dismiss the father's suspicions.
Does the strategem SUM Mark the point of Old Mahon's re-entry, and the
tmmg of it.
.3. Notice also in the form of discussion on graveyard and skulls with which the Act
opens, which shows Synge's preoccupation with death.
11. Christy's triumph in the games shows yet another surge in his reputation. Notice
the earlier surges and setbacks in Act I & 11.
 I
!
I

1. It is a scene of real ta&rness in which Pegeen and Chnsty overreach themselves.

Notice the poetic Ian lovers use.. Zn what way do you feel h s is different
c h ~ e s s ?N d c e also that the lovers are
nal way-the woman is expected to be b e a W and
the man both elo aad 111 of worship of his woman.
2. Notice too that love resented as a transforming experience. Do you agree with
this? If you do, find for your reading.

whai is the function of the scene involving

peg+, Christy, Michael J-B, and Shawn?

(I) Michael James his redived the Pope's permission to marry off Pegeen and Shawn;
) Pegeen has changed hk mind and switched he^ loyalties over to Christy; and
I
(3) Michael James blesseslthe new union between Pegeen and Christy.
I
(4)
. a)
There are two other v g s you should notice.
This scene looks backto Act I1 in some respects. Sara's toast as she links the
I
arms of Widow Quin Bnd Chnsty in mock engagement has its counterpart in the

b) This scene fmmbs tfie second instance when Shawn tries to escape tiom an
inconvenient siwtion. 1 Earlier in Act I he had escaped being forced to stsy the
night with Pegem by running away. This h e he escapes being forced to fight
wlth his rival Christy Ifor the hsnd of Pegeen, with% ssws results.

A Final Poht I I

The clrmax of Christy's apoheos~sis rea'ched with the father's blessing of hs daughter's
union wth the young pun. A fall is inevitable.

th& play7 What is the mood of the play fnnn

thls point onwards

(a) The play sud- tiecomes serious and remains serious till the end. Since this part 'I
of the play is crow@ with action, it will be good for you to be clear about the
sequence of &vents.(
(1) Old Mahod and starts beating Christy.
Q) Realising his story (o be .a lie, Pegeen becomes hostile to Christy
(3) Christy strike$ his Ather again off stage in order to appear a real hero in Pegsen's

down to the flmr.

!
 (6) Christy manages to bite Shawn in the leg. Close Analysis of
wvbv
(7) Pegeen bums Christy's leg.
(8) Old Mahon comes back 'alive' whereupon Christy is released.
(9) Before going away with his father, Christy blesses the Mayo crowd for turning him
into 'a likely gaffer. He is a new man with a new codidence.

Read this list and tick mark those events that show a reversal of earlier attitudes.

@) Go back to the list of events given here and tick mark the events that bring in the
element of the grotesque or gross Rabelaisian humour in the play.
(c) A comedy usually ends in the marriage of the boy and the girl or at least the
promise of it.

I Does The Playboy end like a traditional comedy?

I
-1
I
Well, unlike in most comedies, the boy doesn't' get the girl or rather the girl doesn't get
-. 1 the boy. On the contrary, the last line of the play is her cry at her lose of her man. There
is no feasting either at the end, though Mike James invites'his fiiend to drinks. There is
finally a reconciliation of sorts with Christy invoking "Ten thousand blessings upon all
that's here," for they have turned him "into a likely gaffer in the end of all." The be has
turned him into a man but he goes away. Notice also that Pegeen's anger and cruelty
d the last words that belong to her are a cry of
come out of her love for Christy, a ~ that
pain.

(c) Think of the most memorable lines of this Act. List at least two examples.

3.5 LET US SUM UP

This commentary and exercises were designed to help you discover the play and its
complexity of substance and style, and answer the question what is the plav about? And what
kind of play is it? As you have seen, it is about a number of things. And it' conveys its
meaning through various comic devices. This diversity and richness and unusualness have
made the play a continuing source of delight for readers. We can now address ourselves to a
discussion of the Merent aspects of the play.

3.6 GLOSSARY
Rabelaisian- humour :joyously coarse or gross humour. The adjwtive comes from Francois
Rabelais (c. 1494-C. 1553),French writer and scholar. Besides ribald
humour, the term Rabelaisian can be used for fantastical and exhubexant
writing.

Irony: involves '%he perception or awareness of a discrepancy between words

and their meaning, between actions and their results, or between appear-
ance and reality. In all cases there may be an eleinent of the absurd and
the paradoxical." The two basic kinds of irony y e verbal irony and
situational irony. For a Uler treatment look up the entry in Cuddon pp.
45762.

3.7 QUESTIONS
1. Write an essay bringing out Christy's role as a master story-teller.
2. Discuss The Playboy as a folk play.

35
 I
The P 4 b o y of the
Western World 3.8 SUGGESTED READINGS
Yeats, W.B. Essays and Introdbctions. New York : Maomillan, 1961.
Synge, J.M. F ~ u Plays
r and Aran island^. Ed, With an introduction by Robin
Skelton London : QUP,
Henn, T.R Ed. The Plays and Poems of J.M. Synge. London :Methen, 1968.
Cuddon, J.A. Dictionary of Litkrary Terms and Literary Theory. Third Edition. Penguin
Books, 1992. ~
 I
I

Another impomt Irishim dho has influenced Synge criticism is T.R. Hem whose edition of
Synge's plays (1963) iq i o $ the best avdable. Acc~dingto him The Playboy docs not
lend itself easily to c l d i f i c a ~ nahd briefly talks about its Werent interpretations.

The play has bem looked at v1/uiouslyf h n the point of view of its g-, its themes and its
central characters.

Synge himself said that it was not a play "with a purpose." Though parts of it were "extrava-
gant comedy," it was pt.edo&tly a "perfectly serious" play.
I

Yeats described it as "the stra$gest, the most beautiful expression in drama of. . . Irish

comedy." .

"the growth, like a Japanese pgper flower dropped into a bowl of water, of Chnstqher
Mahon's new self." Norman F/odhoretz (1953) attributes Christy's rntttwation throuefi the
myth of rebellion againd his f&er. According to Patricia Meyer Spackes (1%1), the play
presents "the visions of a constructing himself befare our eyes." He a h points to the
element of the fairy tale in it +ch according to him "solves the problem of relation between
realms and fantasy in it" and "suggests the sources of its strange power." Ann
Saddlemya (1 964) suggests in The Playboy" we see the power of the myth to create a
th$t
real@ out of the dream or illusion itself.

a Christ figure. Howard D. Pearce's essay "Synge's Playboy

ave himself, and not the world. Lrke M a c h earlier,

person'a persuasive, sincere and full-fledged analogue
I

There are those who do not take the r o d c view implicit in the essays mentioned above.
Howard Pearce as d r e w staw warns us against oversimphfjhg Christy's apotheosis.
Ronald Peacock gives a diss4ting view holding that Synge's "delicate self-mockery" is

There is another view q r e s E(llroy that the play "dramattizes the gradual develop-
ment of the poet's craft from
The play is also spoken d as
Christy is the central figure round which a great deal of criticism moves. But there are dissent-
ing voices also. Howard Pearce directs our attention to the role of the Widow Quin. He says:
"If Widow Quin lacks the sparkle and romance of Christy, nevertheless her actions are
grounded in actuality, in sharp contrast to Christy's points up Synge's ironic detachment."
Pegeen has been described as a "heroine-victim" " of the play. More recently scholars like
Ann Saddlernyer (1983) and Gail Finney (1987) have looked at the play fi-om the point of view
of women characters. Clearly the play is complex and lends itself to interpretation in many
ways, depending upon how one decides to look at it.

4.3 THEMES / GENRES

I take it that you have been able to read the play at least twice and also the background
material and have formed your own impressions about it.

I also hope you have enjoyed readmg the play and have laughed a great deaI over it. Many
people when they read it or see it on the stage for the first time find it puzzhg, even bewilder-
ing. Perhaps you have aIso been bewildered by some of the things in it. Whatever be your
fjrst reaction, do put it down on paper before you read on. You know ideas have a way of
escaping unless we catch them.

4.3.1 Theme of Patricide

An obvious theme of the play is patricide, Christy's killing of his father. This idea is linked
with the idea of ihe growth of his personality.

To the ancient Greeks, patricide was the most dreadful of sins. Witness Sophocle's \Oedipus
Tyrunnus. But in The PI+y the subject is treated with comic irony, indeed with comic
r e v d of values and is presented as a metaphor of emancipation and achievement. in this
reedrng the play could be seen as an example of bildungsmmun (a Gennan term for a 'forma-
tion' novel or an 'upbringing' or 'education' novel) in drama with the murder of the father as a
necessaFy step to Christy's maturity and his assumption of manhood.

Chrisfy d t s two 'murders' of his father and is.prepared to 'kill' him a third time. The Rrst
time he hit him and thought he had killed hun was when he F s father] tried to force him to
many a rich old widow. He strikes him a second time to win back Pegeen's respect, which he
lost aRer the reappearance of his father.

The chief interest of the play seems to be in the expandmg consciousness of Christy &
the influence of the adulation of Pegeen and other Mayo women and men. The rewards of the
murder are so palpable that Christy wonders why he had not killed his father earlia.The
laughing stock of a l l women becomes their darling. But the more real reward is the growth of
his personality and his poetic eloquence that accompaneis it.

As against Chnsty's achievement in 'murdering' h s father his rivaI Shawn lamtne that he has
no father to kill. Till the end he remains under the authority of a father figure, the priest, Father
Reilly.

The Christy who makes his triumphant exlt fi-om the play is unrecognizably diffmmt tkm the
frightened runaway young man who seeks shelter from the law in a Mayo she- He has
finally subdued his father, has become a "likely gaffer in the end of all "and he w& out
determined to be "master of all fights from now."

However the theme of patricide is only part of the total story.

43.2 Theme of Fantasy versus Reality

The expansion of Christy's consciousness is accomplished through a lie-a lie that snowballs
and in which Chnsty's audiences are his enthusiastic collaborators. As he him&' acknowl-
edges at the end, the Mayo crowd has made 'a mighty'.man of him by the power of a lie." Is
the play then an example of a dream or fantasy or myth becoming a reaIity? Una Ellis-Fermor 39
 I

The paslboy of &c says the play is about the f a n t h in a mind or a p u p of minds. AM Saddlemyer goes M e r
Wkdem World and has suggested that The p1bboy shows tke power of the myth to create a reality out of the
I
dream or illusion itself.
I
The Insh love of fantasy and +yth-making is well known. In The Playboy Synge uses what
has been called the "incMligitj1e Irish genius for myth-making." The play puts fantasy or
romance against h t y . k2hris$'s lie of murder grows to heroic proportions at each telling. The
growth of the lie is made clear in the extent of the split caused by the blow of the loy on the
father's anatomy. I

Christy begins ;Mdestly eno&:

I just riz the loy and let ball the edge of it [the loy] on the ridge of his skull and he
went down at my feet 4 e an empty sack. . . (Act I).

The story expands whenlChris$ tells it to the admiring girls Susan and Honor and others in
AC~ n. 1
I

1 hit a blow on thi: ridge! of his skull, laid him stretched out, and he split to the
knob of his gullet.

The split travels h t h e r down $hen he talks to the Widow Quin in the same Act :

. . . a gallant orphan cleh his father with one blow to the breeches belt. '

To the admuing Mayo .crowd qhristy's fantasy is welcome so long as it remains distant, a
'gallous story' beaubfdly told but becomes disgustful when it comes too close for comfort

never gets out of hand. Whene$cr Christy s w s too high on the wings of his imagination,
Synge punctures his flight and brings him back to solid earth. When for instance Christy is
boasting about his brave$ to Pbgeen, a knock on the door sends him cowering to Pegeen.
Later, when he is at his boastful best, telling Widow Qum how he cleft his father to his
breeches belt, Synge d d & s 9 by showing him a glimpse of his unsplit father. There are
any number of other examples of this k i d . Even so the fact that the fantasy does become a
reality, it transforms the man. Bbt this theme by itwlf does not do justice to the multiplicity of

4.3.3 Theme of Role-plhying

The PIayboy is also about roleBlying which is what Christy does in living his big lie.

As Thomas Whitaker has s& "drama has long used disguises, plays-within-plays, and other
metaphorical gestures integral tq the medium; it has long seen life as this stage, where each
man plays many parts." But it only in the past century that drama has become more aware of
itself, become more ''irvnkrtlly klf reflexive." Lie itself has become a performance. Role-
plying, as he points out, has q o m e an obsessive theme of modern drama. Synge's treatment
of it makes his play strikkgly *ern. It is one of those plays where role-playing sm early
and continues till just befm th4 end.

The role-playing in The Playbq involves a boaster, a milk gloriousus figure of Roman
comedy, who IS supposed to be a man of words rather than deeds. But though Christy begins
as a braggart and continues to bp one for quite some time, he proves to be a man of deeds in

For Christy role-playing is at firq essential to his survival. But later it becomes a means to self-

I
1
Since he himself is the raconteur, Christy's role-playing requires improvisation, a task that he
accomplishes with aplomb. Two examples of it could be given. When in Act I Michael asks
Christy if he buried his father, he does not reply straightaway. Here is the exchange:

Michael (making a sign to Pegeen to $11 Christy's glass) : And what way weren't you
hanged, mister?
Did you bury him then?

Christy (Considerin@ : Aye. I buried him then.

Wasn't I digging spuds in the field?

The stage direction considering clearly indicates that he is trying to improvise, to give a reply
that would be consistent with what he has said earlier and that would at the same time impress
his listeners.

My second example is hm Act 11 When Christy is boasting about his murderous deed to the
Widow Q u h

Chnsty : From this out I'll have no want of company when all sorts is bringing me
their food and clothing (he swaggers to the door, tightening his belt),
the way they'd set their eyes upon a gallant orphan cleft his father with
one blow to the breeches belt.

Again the stage didon-he swa&ger.sto the door, tightening his belt-is important. Earlier
he had said that his father 'split to the knob of his gullet' but now the split has gone further
down to the breeches belt.

Chnsty is indeed a naive braggart who does not lie grossly and whose fantasies are more a
sign of his own growing self-esteem. Ths brings us to the recognition that Christy's role-
playing proves to be educative and leads to self-discovery; it results in the creation uf a new
personality. The transfoxmation in Christy could be explained with the help of Yeats's doctrine
of the mask Yeats held that "all happiness depends on the energy to assume the ma& of
some other self; that all joyous or creative life is a re-birth as something not oneself. . . ."
'

("The Death of Synge" (1909), p. 121). Christy's self-&mve~yis made possible by his
pursuit of his opposite. By imagining himself to be a daring man who is undaid of his father,
he does become one.

Each of the foregoing thwz readings taken by itself is a valid reading in a limited way but does
not do full justice to the complexity and multiplicity of the play. Each is intimately connected
with the other and only together do they come close to giving a truer picture of the play. Also,
they have the disadvantage of focussing more or less on Christy alone. For instance, they do
not give due importance to the character and role of the Widow Quin or to Peggen who has
been seen as a victim-heroine of the play. Clearly we cannot get a fuller idea uf the play unless
we are able to find a more adequate answer to the other important question we started with-
What kind ofplay is it? We have no doubt referred to the writer's use of comic irony, comic
inversion of values and repetitive comic deflation of Christy. But the themes and the comic
devices need to be seen irf relation to the form that the writer has employed. Only then can we
have a comprehensive view of the play and the writer's vision embodied in it.

4.3.4 The Hayboy as an extravagant comedy and bildungsroman in drama

I suggest that the best way to arrive at an answer to two questions-what is the play about
and what kind of play is it?-would be to try and determine the basic structure of the play and
see how Synge has used it to communicate his comic vision.

As stated in the section on Title the play was originally meant to be a farce. The adion of the
play was to begin with the fight between father and son in the potato garden in which the son
was to hit the father with a loy and rim away and to end with his exposure just as he is elected
Country Councillor in Mayo. The central situation was the growth of a monstrous lie and the
exposure of the braggart.
41
me boy of ihe In the course of its evolution, play saw many changes and revision and went much
Wed&. WorLI beyond its ori@ int&tion. hands the play has become an extravagant comedy of
situation that shows the grow& of its centrul characters. Even so Synge retain4 the substra-
/
tum of a farce. This is clear ii&his characterization and plotting and some of the comic
devices used in the play. ~
I

Eric l3entley says that ''outrag4 of family piety is certady at the heart of a f a . ' ' This is true
of The Playboy, the obvious sqbject of wech is the murder of the father and the approval of it
by the Mayo crowd. The ab involved in this situation as also in others to which it leads
is central to The Playboy much of the laughter in it. Synge also takesthe figure of
an alazon or an impostet in farces and makes it central to his play. There is also
much of knockabout As far plotting Synge uses the device of what Bergson
calls the lie to monstrous proportibns. We find it used in ~ a d y
for instance, and other farces. Improvisation is
of it have been noted earlier in this Unit. The
lie expatads with surprising rapidity.
all along in a farce. This is true of
the final unmasking comes only at
a point at which it is exploded
but with a noticeable and
structure which means
But he breaks the
and makes his

.
4.4 CHARACTER

4.4.1 Christy
S
I

4.4.2 Pegeen 1
 . . . it is Pegeen who is the heroine-victim She has found her man, made hun, won l%.cHaybq:
him in the teeth of opposition from her own sex. The marriage has been ap- A Dfrcusien
1 proved, in a superb drunken half-parody of the traditional blessing by her father.
I
I
The Playboy is an exuberant comedy that leans towards irony and at the end towards tragedy

I
4.4.3 Widow Quin
Synge has used the Widow Quin as a counterweight to the romantic, highflying Christy and
other characters. If the play is likened to a ship, she is the ballast to it keeping it stable aqd
close to reality.

I In the beginning she is one among a group of curious ieighbours, who comes 'racing the hills
beyond to look on his [Christy's] face and tries to win him over by claiming an identi5 with
I
him (I'm your l~ke)but once she comes to know Christy's preference for Pegeen, she accepts
his &mice and in fact strikes s hard bargain with him and tries her best to further his prospects
with Pegeen.
i
However, her role as a realist begins quite early. Her firs* reaction to Christy is more
cornmomensical than that of others : ". . . it'd soften my heart to see you sitting to be saying
your catechism than slaying your da" (p 190). She also warns him to beware of the fate that
C
I
.awaits Chnsty at the hands of Pegeen : ". . . Do you hear the way she'll be rating at your own
:elfwhen a week is by?" @. 191). Even more important is her ironic awareness of the gap
I
between Christy's extravagant praise of Pegeen and the reality : "There's poetry t& for a girl

II
you'd see itclung and scratching, and she with a stale stink of poteen on her fiom selling in
the shop" (p. 208). Towards the end after the turnabput, she senses danger to Christy and
tries to save him fiom mob fury by asking h n to go away. But when she finds her eftbrts
unavailing Synge lets her disappear fiom the play much like Lear's Fool. There are several
f
0th i
-
discover for vourseIf.
I
4.4.4. Other Characters

1I Shawn Keogh

r' In the morally topsy-turvy world of The Playboy Shawn's conservative morals are in sharp
ccmtrast to Christy's amorality and are a source of a great deal of comedy in the play. When he
senses dmger to his morals, he invokes the aid of Father Reilly and escapes leaving his coat
in Michael J-5' hands.' When his mamage is in danger he unromantwlly refuses to fight
thi: 'usufper' and tries first to bribe Christy himself to go away and then the W~dowQuin to
get rid ofhvn

Michael James.
Mchael jaqes is a fat and jovial publican whom nothing can keep away fiom cfilnks. His
alnlost pagan joy in life and sex comes through in his d e e n blessing of Christy and Pegeen,
where he exalts marriage and virility. He joins everyone else m lionizing Chris- but when he
r&uns to reality, he remembers his responsibilitiesk a law-abiding citizen and father, and
tuns against the playbuy.

Old Mahon

Though fond of drink like Michael James, Old Mahon is by far the most eccentric character in
the play. He is besides, a tyrant determined to force his son Christy to marry Widow Cssey.
And when Chnsty runs away after giving him what he calls a 'tap' with a loy, he chasm him in
or&r to punish him. In the end however he is reconciled to him and agrees to follow him when
he discovers that the loony of Mahon has &er all becdme a man.
l%e Playby of the
W d a n World

'Of the things thqt nodsh the imagination humour is one of the .most n
&,
and it is dangerous to l b t or destroy it. '

(Synge in his Preface

I
The Tinker's Wedding) 1
The Playboy, we said, id at on& an extravagant comedy with the substratum of a farce and a
dramatic bildunmomq The &ombining of these two elements was an artistic feat that Synge
was able to achieve by the UXI of his richly itonc style. Bqause of hls Angl6-Irish ascen-
dancy background and his aqosticism, his attitude towards Ireland and the Irish peasantry
was highly ambivalent. He l o ~ the d peasantry dnd understood them but he was also able to
view them with detachdent ar$l mockery. As a result the play achieves a delicate, even,
precarious balance bet$- Tposing attitudes, a balance which it has not always been
possible to maintain in the prpuction of the play. Synge's comedy leans heavily @wards
irony. If at times it is close to $atire, the satire is never harsh or ill-tempered.
I

The play offers a feast of comiedy showing an exceptional range of &ects. fiom broad farce to
subtle irony.
I

4.5.1 Farcical elirnenls

I
I I

Some general features @ff a r e in The Playboy have been mentioned in Section 4.3.4. T h i ~
discussion is more ?spe@ific. I
I
A great deal of humollr in ithe play is the d of absurd situations and incidmts. The
play has many web sbenes. Two of these may be pointed out :
I. Shawn Kmgh strugglihg to escape and managing to flee leaving his wat in
I
Michael James' lux&.
2. Pegeen and Widow quin qudrling over Christy.
I

Notice that thefirst same ' kolves the characters in an undignified physical situation and
belofigs to the categov of &d farce. But its appeal is not merely primitive and visual-it has
an undertone of subtler comyy in its refimme to Shawn's subservienceto Fatha ReiUy.
I

The other scene also has a of subtle comedy because it reverses the comic convention
and shows two woma

There are other m p l e s in Fct I1 and A d 111.

I

3. Sara putting op Christy's boots.

4. christy *ying to conI,ai the minor eom ttr girh.

4.5.2 Irony I
I

I
t I
I
Synge's comic vision requires the use of irony in its different forms, particularly verbal irony The *bog :
and irony of situation. At times both kinds work together. Here are some examples. A l>lscussion

Verbal 8,mny:
The Playboy furnishes examples of both conscious and unconscious verbal irony.
1. -
When in Act I Pegeen tells Shawn "You are a daring fellow," she is using the
words ironically, meaning that he is not a daring man.
2. When in Act I1 the Widow Quin finds Christy cowering in terror at seeing his
father come back 'alive,' she bursts out laughng and says :

'
"Well. vou're the wallcine: vlavbov of the Western World. and that's the poor
man YOU had divided to hts breeches belt."

Again she is being consciously ironical. She now knows Christy for what he is.

You should look fbr other examples of this in the play.

The examples of unconscious irony are far more numerous. Here are some examples

I. Christy is being q u e s t i d about the use of weapon with which he killed his
father. When it is suggested that he perhaps shot him dead, he says :

'The incongruity or oddity in Christy's response lies in his being a patricide and yet claiming
lhat he is a law-abiding citizen. But he is totally unaware of it.

! "Is it killed your father?"

"With the help of God, I did, surely, and that the Holy Immaculate Mother
- may intercede for his soul."

Here the oddity arises because of the habit of the Irish peasant to use pious and holy bless-
ings, interjections and expletives without thought of their signiticance.

3. "Or Marcus Quin, Ood rest him, got six months for maiming ewes and he a great
warrant to tell stories of holy Ireland . . . "

A.gain the normal pious expletive-God rest him-- is at odds with his crime. Moreover both God
n:st him and holy Ireland is at odds with 'maiming ewes.

You should be on the look out for similar examples of the incongruous conjunctions of pious
expressions in dation to what happens in the play. Such usages provide grounds for attack
on Synge on charges of bang anti-Catholic and blasphemous.

bonv of situation

A good example of this is Christy's reaction to the Widow Quin's hocking m Act I. The
knocking has the effect of deflating Christy. Similarly Old Mahon's appearance in Ad I1 at
which Christy hides behind the door makes the situation highly ironical.

There is another example of situational irony in Act 111. Can you find it out?

4.5.3 Balancing through parallellcontrastingsituations

Sylge's comic effect depends on ti delicate halanc~ngbetween laughmg at Christy for his
excesses and sympathy for him. His tall claims are ironically undercut continually. So Chrisq's
progress is jerky i~ndhis surges of contidence are balanced by setbacks. But he never seems
to lose the sympathy of the audience entirely
The F&bq of the (I) Synge also uges and contrasting situations to maintain the balance. e.g ,
waam WorM Act I is balanced by his father's 'resurrections' in Act I1
and Act 111. More par$cularly, Pegeen's interrogation of Christy foreshadows the
father's questioning byl the Widow Quin. That means the structure of &e ~ h y
requires us to weigh dhristy's version of the story against the father's version of
it. The parallel &end4 to the use of the same expression even.
i
In Act I when Christy finds pdgeen athibutirlg to him 'a quality name' and praising him for
being a fine, handsome iyoung(fellowwith a noble brow, he is surprised :

"1s it me?"
I
1
I
I

The same surprise- "Is it me/?"--is experienced by the father in Act I1 when he is accused of.
provoking his son to hit hun bn the head. The difference is that while one is delighted, the
other is shocked and wgerq.

(2)
I

i
Chnsty-Widow Quin' mock union and the girls' proposing a toast to the two
"heroes" in Act I1 is contrasted with Christy-Pegeen engagement' blessed by
I
(3)
Michael James.
1
Christy's epic blow t his father grows rapidly in narration. This is counterpointed
by Pegeen's anfi-herob account of how Widow Quin killed .her man :

1
I
Christy : "I just riz the loy d let fall the edge of it on the ridge of h s skull, and he went
down at my feet 1'1 e ah empty sack, and I never let a grunt or groans from him at all"
(Act I)

(b) "I hit a blow on the lndge of his skull laid him stretched out, and he spilt to the
knob of his &let." (Act 11)
(c) . ". . . a gallant orph clett his father with one blow to the breeches belt" (Act 11)
I
Pegeen : "She hit him wi a worn pick, and the rusted poison did corrode his blood the way
he never overed?, and died &a.That was a sneaky kind of murder did win small

i
glory with the bc y itself."

from which we may possibly view The Playboy and the

sought to achieve through hls comic strategies have made
veritable kaleidoscope. The play's comedy acts at several levels
and yet it looks beyond a comedy. The section on characters
makes manifest delight in charactets who step outside the beaten track or

Alazon: the briggut in Greek comedy. According to Nulhmp Frye "the Greek
word eans imposter, someone who pretends or tries to be something
more fan he is." His counterpart in Roman comedy is miles gloriosur.
I

1
Bindungsroman : The errnan word means 'formation novel.' Widely used by German critlcs,
it refe s to a novel which is an account of the youthful development of a
hero r heroine. "It describes the processes by which maturity is achieved
throu the ups and down of life." (Cuddon, 88-89)

Miles Gloriom : The orginated in a comedy by Plautus where the miles gloriosus was
soldier. It stands for a character who is basically a coward but
of his valour a i d is made a fool of by olher characters.
Parody : Imitation of the characteristic style of a writer with the intention of
ridiculing it. The inlitation could extend to words, tone and even ideas.

4.8 OUESTIONS
I. Pick out the farcical situations in the play and describe their effect.
2. Write an essay on the use of irony.
3. Examine the different levels of comedy in the play.
4 Discuss the view that Pegeea is the victim-herolne of the play.

-
4.9 SUGGESTED READINGS
Gj-eene, David H. & E.M. Stephens. J.M.Synge 1871-1909. Collier Books, 1959, pp. 145-
46.
Synge, J.M. Four Plays and The Aran Islands Ed. Robin Skelton. London : OUP, 1962,
pp. 216-18.
Hem, T.R. Ed. The Plays and Poems of J.M. Synge. London : Methuen, 1963; rpt. 1968.
(The Introduction to The Playboy pages 56-67 is v q important.)
Wlutaker, Thomas R. Ed. Twentieth Century Intelpretations of "The Playboy of the
Western World. " Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prenbce-Hall, 1969. (The Introduc-
tion pages 1-20 is indispensable.)
Grcme, Nicholas. Sjmge : A Critical Study of the play.^. London : Macnlillam, 1975; rpt.
1979. (Chapter entitled "Approaches to The Playboy" pages 132-45 is particularly
important.)
UNIT 5 THE PLAKBOY : A DISCUSSION
(CONTD.)
Structure
Objectives
Introduction
Some Other Im$rkant Aspects of the Play
5.2.1 Love Interest
5.2.2 Violence
5.2.3 The Ending
Language
5.3.1 Synge on Language in Theatre
5 3.2 Synge'~Language in The Playboy
5.3.3 Same Critics on Synge's Language
The Playboy a5la P e r f o m & Text
Let Us Sum Up
Glossary
Questions
Suggested Re@ings

5.0 OBJECTIVES
This final unit continueb the discussion of the play initiated in Unit 4 and focuses particularly
on language and some @heraspe& of the play. The Unit also looks at The Playboy as a
perfomance text.

5.1 INTRODUCTION
Synge's use of Irish Ealish is a accomplished as it is distinctive and accounts for an impor-
tant part of his qutation And we need to pay as much attention to it as we have paid to his
themes and his use of /the comic mode. In this unit besides elaborating on certain'other
aspects of the play we shall look at the text in theatre, as it is transformed into what Keir Elam
has called the performhce text.

PLAY
5.2.1 Love intekest
:
3
As a well-known cri c Northrop Frye says, the presiding genius of comedy is Eros Inevitably
love and maniage arq a major motif in The Playboy.

Marriage actually frqh~esthe play. It begins with Peg- writing out a list of articles of dress
that she would need for her mamiage with Shawn Keogh and it closes with the latter express-
ing life, &r the departure of Christy, &at they would soon be married. Much of the interven-
ing space in the play is occupied by Pegeen's growing admiration and love for the outsider
Christy who wins her over with his tale of having murdered his father and with Shawn's
attempts to have hsl rival removed from the scene

The formula that hsys become the basis for most comedy is that a young man wants a young
woman, that his desire is resisted by some opposition, usually paternal, and near the end of
the play some twist in-the plot enables the hero to have his will. In The Playboy this pattern is
complicated by the presence of the Wi&w Qum who initially tries to win Chnsty over for
hersew. But when $at fails, she agrees to further Christy's prospects with Pegeen. Also the
major obstruction in the union of the lovers is not parental-but of the lovers' own making. l%c PIqhog : A D k c u ~ a h
Truly enough the turnabout in Pegeen's feelings takes place at the appearance of Old Mahon (Contd.)
but the final decision to give up Chisty is her own. Chty's desperate attempt to win back
Pegeen's favour by 'killing' his father a second time fails. But he reconciles himself to his loss,
going away as a sadder, but a wiser, and assuredly a more confident man

The play proves yet again the truth of what Byron has said about the asymmetrical nature of
the love of man and woman: 'Love is of man's llfe a thing apart/ 'Tis woman's whole exist-
ence.' Love is important for Christy but even more important for him is his selfesteem. But for
Pegeen love is everythmg and so she realizes her loss and is inconsolable at the end. Lke
Shaw, Synge reverses the convention and makes the woman chase the man. That apart, his
-
concept of love is traditional because it is romantic his lovers are ready to stake everyttung
for it, for the moment. Besides, their love has the elements of uniqueness and fatality that are
seen to be essential to romantic love in the West.

Pegeen radiantly : ". . . I'U . . . be burning candles from this out to the miracle of God
that have brought you from the south to-day."

Christy : "It's mbacles, and that's the truth. Me there toiling a long while, and wlking a
long while, not knowing at all I was drawing all times nearer 40 &is holy day,"

Pegeen : ". . . and I not knowing at all there was the like of you drawing ZXZUW,like the
stars of GQd"
(Act Ill. P. 219)

Besides, Christy compares Pegee~to 'the Lady Helen of Troy' and to 'an angel's lemp,'
conpatisans that are entirely in the romantic tradition. Pegeen feels strangely mwed and is
also strangely awed by this eloquence and can only mange to acknowledge the &mge that
love has wrought in her :

Aad to thnk it's me is tallwng sweetly, Chnsty Mahon, and I the fight of seven
townlands for my biting tongue. Well, the heart's wonder . . .
(Actnr.P.219)

Love is highly functional in the play. The flowering of Christy's personality becomes possible
through the admiration of women, particularly through the admation and love of Pegeen.

This great love scene introduced appropriately when Christy is at the peak of his glory is one
of the greatest in modern drama, where the language Cquires a fiesh splendour and an
elevated beauty that are rare.

Synge is aware of the extravagance of language to which love leads. Particularly when he
makes the Widow Quin remark on lus "poetry talk for a girl you'd see itching and scratching,
and she with a stale stench of potem on her from selling in the shop" (Act II, p. 208). Bukthe
love scene is truly rapturous while it lasts, withbut the shadow of und2rcutting.

What I want you to do m w is to look for the several stages through which Pegeen's curiosity
passea rrnd develops into bve for Christy.

5.2.2 Violence
'The play moves round violence to father which is a most heinous crime but this viokrm does
IIO~shock as it otherwise should because Synge treats it within the ambit of comic
tmventions. As a result we not only do not feel outraged but actually laugh at Christy's &ed
without feeling guiity. The comic intention becomes clear in the first few minutes.

Pegeeen in mock rage : " W d d you have me knock the head of you with the butt of the
broom?"
me &boy of the C h r i q twisting round on her with a sharp my of horror : "Don't strike me. I killed my
Walem Wwld poor father, Tuedday was a week, for doing the like of that"

Pegeen with blank amaze)nent : "Is it lulled your father?" 4

I
I

Christy subsiding : "~ith!thehelp of God I did, surely . . . ''

I

This exchange makes the cornid htentions of the playwright clear. The coexistence of pious
invocation to deity and murder is not only laughable. It iS,also a clear signal that what we are
watching is a comedy. Thk d c convention'delinks vidlence from pain : "I just riz the loy
and let fall the edge of it on the]ridge of his skull, and he went down at my feet like an empty
sack, and never let a gnmt or w a n from him at all" (Act I, p. 184).
I

4
Again, what Pegeen says of th patricide-"That'd be a lad with the sense of Solomon to have
for a pot . . ." is abmd'but, Nicholas Grene has pointed out, the very absurdity of the logic
makes it impossible to take thib seriously.
I
I

Synge reiuire his readers to cpntinue to maintain the same attitude as Christy's story snow-
balls and as the split caused I$his stroke travels down Old Mahon's anatomy. In other words,
Christy's violence is treated as'mock violence and 1s acceptable so long as it is part of a story
and a fantasy. But Synge shows the people reacting differently when the violence becomes 1
real. The transition fiod fantab to reality is always difficult and projectmg it on the stage is no
easy task. Part of the trouble bver the play on 'its first Dublin production was probably due to
this transition. The instrurnentlof murder which Christy used to 'kill' his father- a Ioy--becomes
in the course of the play a co+c prop. But when Chsty rushes out with a loy to lull hls father
a secopd time, the illusion is \broken, and the comic prop becomes an instrumht of murder.
This is one moment m&e plhy when our comic attitude towards violence gets unsettled. The
second example of real violdce comes when Pegeen forces herself to scorch Chsty's f&.
Her final wail at the loss of Qer playboy shows that she did what she did out of frustration.
Violence also comes into the play along with the setting. The Irish peasant community of the
West among whom the play 4s set live close to the earth at a primitive level with something

!
savage and untamed in their ' ature. This latter element 1s reflected in the psychological make-
up of the chid characters, C L , Pegeen and Widow Quin who are all violent as well as
gentle, one quality setting o$ the other. This also accounts for the many incidents of reported
violence in the play relating fo the killing of animals, hanging and treatment of macl men. Here
1s a sampling : I
I
I

1. Pegeen with scorn : "Where now will you meet the like of Daneen Sullivan knocked
I
the eye itom a peeled; or M ~ U ~Su i n ~, o rest
d him, got six months for maiming
ewes, . . ." (Act I)
2. Pegeen: "It's queer j ys they have, and who knows the thing they'd do, if it'd make
the green stones crypitself to think of you swaying and swigghg at the butt of a
rope, and you with 8 h e , stout neck, God bless you! The way you'd be a half an
hour, in great angui5h, getting your death," (Act 11)
3. Widow Quin : "If &u are a wonder itself, you'd best be hasty, for them lads
caught a maniac ond time and pelted the poor creature till he ran out, raving and
foaming, and was downed in the sea," (Act 111)
The picture that emergks i i no doubt hush but these, incidents re taken only half seriousb
because they are said in a b i c context. Also because of this background Pegeen's violent
behaviour at the end seem$ entirely credible.
I

I
I

I
5.2.3 The Ending The P1n)bo.v : A DLwussion
(Contd.)

The ending of the play has evoked sharp comments. This is particularly so in regard to the
butning of Christy's feet by Pegeen.

At least two questions are iinportant here :

1. Is it a satisbing endmgr?
2. Is Pegeen's sudden turnabout and biuning of Christy's legs in character?
Two contemporaries of Synge were not quite satlstied w ~ t hthe ending Padnac Colum (1881-
1972), an Insh dramatist who was a younger contemporary of Synge disapproved of "the girl
putting a redhot coat on Christy" and fclt that Pegeen would have "stood by her man when
he was attacked by a crowd." George Moore who otherwise admired the play found the
burning "quite intolerable'' and unacceptable. Actor Willie Fay who along with his bmther
Frank Fay was part of the Abbey Theatre also pleaded with Synge to take out the "torture
scene" saying that -'while a note of comedy was admlrable for heightening tragedy, the
converse was not tiue."

Chief among those who defended the burning was Yeats who held that "an artist need but
make his characters self-consistent."

Synge himself was not quite sati ed with the ending and admitted to Molly Allgood that ?he
thlrd act wants pulling together." In the end he left it as it was.

The burning however distasteful it may have been to some people is entirely in character. As
Yeat? was qulck to recognize, violence was a part of the life of the community Synge was
portraying 111 the play. In his Aran Islands he said that "although these people are kindly
towards each other and their children, they have 110 synpatlly for the suffering of animals, and
little sympathy for pain when the person who feels it is not in danger." Pegeen who embodies
the fickleness of the mob is deeply fn~stratedand disillusioned at the sudden d~scoveryof
what she considers Christy's truth. So it should not suil~riseus when she makes a sudden
turnabout and talies recourse to the grotesque action and tries to scorch the legs of her
erstwhile lover.

Synge's notebooks show him having tried to work out a satisfactoiy ending by means of
sev&al permutations and combinations. "Pegem hesitates between Christy and Shawn:
Marries Shawn, m a m a Old Man, goes out with Cluisty." Or again : "Pegeen scoRs Christy
and the Widow Quin takes him into her care." There are several other pairings off that he gave
thought to. Finally he settled for Christy's triuinphant exit leaving a disconsolatePegeen
behind. This muonlantic yet ambiguous ending is more in keeping with the ambiguous spirit of
the play.

The ending may be violative of the comic spiiit. But the literary categories have to expand or
'
l3e redet-med to fit a play that ends on a note at once of triumph and defeat. A different term
like tragi-comedy or dark comedy would account for the manysideness of the play.

i5.3 LANGUAGE
sfi
!iyngeYslanguage has 1-eceiveda @eat deal of attention from critics. It has been praised as
being close to the idiom of the people of Ireland and for being poetic and exhuberant. On the
other hand, he has been cirticized as being 'a faker of peasant speech. '

The vanety of English that Synge has used In hls plays has a strong Irish flavour. It is based
cn the English speech of the counby people of Ireland of his time. While English had been
spoken in Ireland, Irlsh remained the first language of the people in the countryside, at least ti11
well into the eighteenth century. As a result it is iiltluenced by the native Irish language in its
qintax, its vocabulary and its idiom. The resultiilg digerence from the standard English
language gives it the charm of the unfamiliar and also accounts for the difficulty it p o k s to the
readers.
me Psayboy of the Synge holds strong views on la~~guagc in theatre agd has, also said a few things about the
wedem WnrM sources of language that he has used in his plays. So any discussion of his language must
take these into account.

We shall discuss the whole subject in the following three sections:

Section 1 : will deal with Synge's vims on language in drama, particularly in The Playboy.

Section 2 : will focus on features of syntax, idiom and vocabulary that make Synge's language
distinctive and also sometimes dificult for the reader, and that also give it the charm of the
unfdar.
I

Section 3 : will conclude the duscussion with quoting some comments on Synge's language by
critics.
i'
5.3.1 Syageon language i9Theati-e

In hls preface to The Playboy Synge spoke of an organic link between the imagination of a
people and the language they speak He valued rich and poetic language in theatre and
believed that such a language qould come only from people whose folk-imagination is still rich
and alive. The country people of Ireland of his time were one such people where, he said, "we
have an imagination that is f i q , rnamcent, and tender," and where the people have not
"shut their lips on poetry." A Mter working in such a situation was a privileg&person who
could produce rich anc! copious language '"full of striking and beautiful phrases" that he had
probably just heard.

Synge was critical of the lindstic fare provided by writers llke Ibsen and Zola because they
presented reality in what he caled ''joyless and pallid words." bn the contrary he insisted
that theatre should offer reafi$ together with joy and that in a good play "evely speech
should be as fully flavoured & a nut or an apple."' Obviously the joy that he wanted theatre to
give was to come from the writer's own delight in the use of language. The obvlous
implication is that he h e is4 to achieve in The Playboy what he found wanting in Ibsen and
Zola.

5.3.2 Synge's Language $I The Playboy

I

Another implication of the preface is that Synge's language in The Playboy is authentic. There
he claimed that he used "one or two words only that I have not heard among the country
people of Ireland." What doe$ this mean? Does ~tmean that his characters talk the ordinary
language of Irish country pwple? Or does it mean that though the characters fkequently use
the very words of their real-life originals the language they use is a 'reinvention' of the
peasant dialect? The answer k that Syge's language is really a re-creation of peasant speech
that he had heard from boyhW in the different countrysides of Ireland He spent his
boyhood in Wiclow and lated visited the Aran Islands and West Kerry among other places for
varying lengths of time. The idioms and phrases that he had heard and had noted down in his
J

notebooks during these visid or later recalled came in handy when he started writing his
plays. (Besides these idioms; there were those that he had invented.) But he &d not reproduce
the dialect simp& because it was spoken by the people. He was prepared to reshape the
dialect usage to make it m d egective and serve his dramatic purpose. Here 1s one example :

One entry in a notebook used on Synge's visit to ~erry'in1905 reads: "That

seven thousand + seventy devil may play goals with your skull."
(Nicholas Grcane,61)

Synge refers to the devils drpring the course of Christy's cursing of his father in Act I but he
reduces their number there69 making his Ianguage more effective.

Christy . "May I mebt him with one tooth and it aching and one eye to be seenip
seven and seventy dfvils in the twists of the road " (Ad 11,208)
 Another element in hls language consists of those plu-ases that he had invcnted. One example The Playbqv : A D h ~ ~ s i ( m
of this occun in a sentence where Christy describes his ft~ther'sdrunken behaviour. He would (Contd.)
go out into the yard.

as nuked as an ash-tree in the moon of March

The invented phrase moon of May instead of Montlr of hiay is inore effective because it recalls
the origm of the word nzonth which gives it an archaw flavour and also because it gives us tm
image of the ash tree shining white under the moon.

These are but two instances of the way in which ,Synge reworked or reshaped phrases and
idi'~msto suit his dramittic purposes.

We shall now mention the main characteristics of Synge's Irish English and note the kind of
efixt he was aiming at.

(i) The Omission of the Relative Pronoun

-&

,* Synge is apparently excessively fond of omitting rclativc pronoun ('that' 'who' 'which') from
the sentence. He derived this habit fiom Irish Gaelic in wluch there is no true relative capable
- of mdectioil.

Exiunple 1. Pegeen while writing down articles of dress for her wedding says -

a hut i . suited
~ for a wedding-day (Act I)

-
Tht: standard English usage is a hat [that] is suited for a wedding-day

Sorne other examnles :

I

2. 'The likes of Daneen SulIivan [who] knocked the eyc,' (Act I)

3. 'With a man [wllo] killed his father . . .' (Act I)

4. "I brought you a little laying pullet - boiled and till she is -[that] was crushed. . ." (Act
*- IT>
5. "Would you have me think a man [that] never talked with the girls would have the
words . . ." (Act 11)
r*
6. "It was my o m son [who] hit me." (Act 111)

7. 'They are mounting hun for the mule race [that] will be nm upon the sands.' (Act III)

8. "That's man [that] is going to make a marriage with the daughter of this house . . ."
I - (Act 111)
i
Thk, omission of relative or what we call e l h ~ a has
s the etYect of adding pace to the language.
i Look for other examples of ellipsis in the play
I- (ii) Use of a su~bordinaieclause with and but no finite verb

T h ~ s'and' ujnsbuction followed by a noun ilnd pu~liciplcis const+antlyuqed by Synge.

Pegeen :'. . . and I p~llingthe tu-fwith the dogs barking . . . ' (Act I)

2. Shawn : ' . . and I going home loncsoinc . ' (Act I)

Sometimes the participle 1s omitted.

I Pegeen : .And you without a white shiit. ' (Act 11)

The I'hybqv I/the 4. Pegeen : 'and yop with a fine, stout neck . . .' (Act 11)
Western Work[
5. Christy : 'and 1a1loncsame kllow' (Act 11)
6. Michael : 'and hiwet and crusted with h ~ father's
s blood' (Act 111)
- - - -

Look for other examples from the text

(5) Im~aativeformed with 'let'

Examples:
1. Shawn : 'Let yod not be tempting me, . . . ' for 'Dont tempt me.' (Act I)

2. Michael : 'Let y4u come up then to the fire.' (Act I)

3. Christy : 'Let ychwalk down now and tell the priest'. (Act IT)
4. Christy : 'let yojsave me fiom the old man. ' (Act 111).
I

(iv) The 'Atter' CorGstruction ;

~
This is a translation of a11 Irish construction-'after' + gerund. In Irish it often replaces the
standard English p c d ~ c t ~

1. Widow Quin : 'I'm after putting him down . . .' in the sports below:

Standard Engli& version: 'I have just put him down' . . . (11)

2. Pegeen : 'I'm &er going down and reading the fearful crimes of Ireland' . . . (11)
I
3. Christy : 'I'm* tailing, moiling.. .'
I

4. Jinuny : and he'& bringing banlaupt ruin on the roulette man (111)

(v) Inversions

Examples:
1. crossroads he is . . .'
version : He is above at the cross-roads.

2. 'Isn't it long d e nights are now, Shawn Keogh . . .?' Shawn Keogh?'

Notice the use of it's c4nstruction for the sake of emphasis. This again results from the
Influence of Irish consti;.ction.
I
I

) T
I

Examples : 1

1. 'You'd see the( like of them stories.'

S E. You'd se$ stories like these (I, 182).

2. A sofi lad the qike of you . . . (I, 183).

3. for the like of &m would get small mercies (Ii, 199)
I

Playboy.

(vii) 1
J
According to one corn,the phrase 'the like of and its variations occur 63 times in The
I

Synge also prefers usiijg continuous or progressive forms-'

usage 1s again c o n ~ m oIris11
~ j English.
s

I an1 saving' for 'I say ' This

II
 Evamples: The P b b q : A Witmaion
I. Shawn : :l'hen I'm thillking himselfwill stop along' (. . . I think. . . (I, 177-78) (Contd.)

2. Shawn : 'I'm afread of F d l m Reilly, I'm saying' (. . . I say. . . ) (I, 179).

1

3. Pegeen : 'What nght have you to be making game of ,f'a poor fellow' (. . . to make . . .) (I.,
IN)

4. Sara : 'Don't be talking' (. . . talk. . .) (11, 194).

5. Pegeal : 'What is it you're wanting?' (. . . you want? . . .) (11, 198).

6. Michael : 'You'll be wedding them this day, is it?' ('You'll wed them . . .) (111,220).

(viii) Use of certain words. &rases and exuressions

1. Have a right to : should know.
w
Example : Pegeen : 'Ifyou're a dunce itself, you'd kave a right to know that larceny's
t robbing and stealing' (I, 181)

+ 2. The,wav that with the result that or so that.

L

Example
(a) Christy : 'but you're decent people, I'm thinking, and yourself a kindly wofnan, the way
I wasn't fearing you at all ' (I. 186).

(b) Honor : 'Well, it'll be a hard case if he's gone off now the way we'll never set our eyes
on a m m killed his father, . . ' (-so .that we'll . . .).

Other words : b.ooteen -a&,

3. Use of diminutive forms of words

In Insh diminutives are f& by adding the sflix-een. Synge uses many diminutive forms in
The Playboy.

Examples:
Shebeen : public house (I ,
176,191)
priesteen : little priest (I,190)
houseen : little house (I, 191)
boreen : track
Cnuceen : little hill @, 194)

Some other words : suveen (II,197), thraneen (111,202)

4. The Use of 'fbr to' for 'to'; Thls is a survival of Elizabethan English. An example
m u m in the first line spoken by Pegeen on the stage :

Pegeen : Six yards of' stuff for make a yellow gown.

The wot-d for is redundant here.

-..
There is another example near the end of Act I. Find it out. There are other examples too later
in the play.

Clearly Synge's language in The Piqvhoy is marked by frequent use of certain S~vourite
n . these u~nstmctionsdeviate from standard English they make his language
~ ) ~ t r u c t i oSince
unfarn~harto the non-lrish speaker. But because of the fiequmq of repetition and the limited
number of such constructions. the unfami1i;ility weans oil' and the reader 'gets used to them. In
addition, these rqet~tiveusages also help to establish c a t a ~ nstaple rhythm which recur
~elwiiarlyso that the ear gets accustomed to h e textul-e of the dialogue.
Poetry

'Such poet's talking.' That is how Pegeen compliments Chuty's eloqucuce in the great hve
s e n e in Act 111. This mtnplirnent can be applied to The Pl~~vhov
as a whole. Syng's language
has rightly been called prxtic and exhchuherant.

It is the language of people &ose imagination is stili'wild and unf&m.ed and whose speech.
as T.S. Eliot points out, is "naturally poetic" Synge was a meticulous c r b a n who worked
hard on hls speeches before he achieved the effect of musical, rl~ythrmcprose that he wanted
Here is one of the two examples of his verbal revisions in the play which David H. Greene
gives. It relates to the opcaing Cnes of act one where Pegeen is shown writing aloud items fkr
her maniage. The first dratt of the speech with which he was not satisfied reads :
I
Two dozens d P o w r y Whiskey. Three barreb of porter, two bottles of hopes.
To be sent by Timmy Farrel's Creel-cart on the evening of the coming fair to
Mister Michael B a s Flnherty. With the best compliments of this season.
Margaret Flahaty.

"The latter part of the according to Greene, " ~ e the s right note at the very start;
but the first part is all w m g (xcause the three items &is urdering the whiskey*porter, and
bottles of hopes are s h k andl jumpy and delay the lync take-off which follows with "To be
.sent by Timmy Farrel's creeltart . . ." So in the margin Synge had written, "Try making her
order her trousseau." On the Pack of the page is an attempt at the trousseau: "Six yards of
yellow silk ribbon, a pair of Idng.boots, bright red hat suited for a young woman on her
wedding day, a fine tooth comb to be a .. . The lmg h o b he changes then to "pairs of
shoes with English heels," but still isn't satidid, sn ke mosses out English and s~Mtutes
in rmccession the words big, long and lemgthv. The passage finally reads:

1
Sir yard of s&iJ for make a garn A pak of t w boo&with lenahy
heels on them and b m s y eyes. A hat is suitedfir a weddingday. tooth
comb. To be seat with fhme b a m b ofporter inJknmy F k d k m e 1 curt on
the evening the coming Fair to Mister Michael James' Flaherty.

The rhybmc e&cb th& Sydge achieved tfirough such w&i& woximm&p were however
noteacgrtoac~~ehfheatre~andmade~demsnds~theactoPsPvhohadtospeak~
lines. Wiliie Fay, the first dkebtm of the Abbey TtKatre, rennadcs on the d i f f i d e s of
masteriogtherhythmrrfSynge'sJines. "Thqrhadwhat I call abdance oftheir own cnrd went
a kind of lilt." I

Synge's lanpge is capable bf varied effects.His sensitiveness to the world of nature often
shows i t d i n language that ib at once sitnple and vivid :

I could hear the cows breathing and ighhg in fhe s t i h .of the air, and not a
step moving any place f b m this gate to the bridge.
I

In the famous love scene of ect I1 his lrmguage is at its hest His skilful orchestration of
metaphor, cadence end.rhyW enables him to rise to bights d eloquence and lyrkirmn that is
perhaps unrivalled in modem Pama.
I
I
BSssEL I

A word about imagery in The Playboy. Syn@s images from two -os md
literary. Here aresome examples:
I
Fetkfas.oee
I

-and m she'll be %ur&g again, anb-ixpdckq bard words to me, like an old
woman with a sptiw& she'd heve, urging oa a hill. (Act EI, 208)

I
 h a e The Hqhay : A D M o n
(Cnntd.)
Synge I s +uws the traditional image of the Helen of Troy in his love duet.

If the mitred bishops seen yeu that time, they'd be the like d the holy prophets,
l'm W i n g , do be straining the bars of paradise Lo lay eyes on the Lady Helen
of Troy . . . (Act 111-218)

The phrase 'The star of knowledge' has been taken from Ijyde's Low Songs ofConnuught, as
a traditional image ot'the beloved.

A serious criticism of Synge is that he sometimes strains after rhetorical effect.

. . . till you'd find a radiant lady with droves of bullocks on the plains of Meallt,
and herself bedenizened in the diamond jewelries of Pharaoh's ma.

d
. (i) 'Synge wrote in a prose that sets him high among the poets.' (Maurice Bourgeois)

(ii) 'He went to A m . . . listening also to the beautiful English which hhas grown up in Irish-
speaking districts,and takes its vocabulary from the time of Malory and ofthe
translators ofthe Bible. but itq idiom and its vivid metaphor from Irish . . . He made word
and phrase dance to a very strange rhythm, which will always, till his plays have created
thek own tradition, be difficult to acqors who have not learned it from his own lips.'
(W.B. Yeatq)
C
(iii) 'The play of John hk~hgtonSynge form rather a special case, because they are based
npon the idiom of a t-rrrtl people whose speech is naturally poetic, both in imagery and
in rhythm. I believe that he even inco~poratedphrases which he had heard kthese
country people of Ireland. The language of Synge is not available except for the plays
set anrong,thatsame people.' (T.S.Elliot)

5.4 THE PLAYBOY AS A PERFORMANCE TEXT

Asamts of p&.ormances of plays particularly by those who have acted in them often furnth
valuable clues to Qe play's mewing and also tell us what it means to transform a dramatio text
into a performance text.
* L
Two slrch aaamis are avdabk, both by Irish actors who have played the lead role of Christy
Mahon. William Fey's account deals with the f ~ s 1907
t prtduction which has already b e a
refend to. 'fhe other account is by Cynl Cusack who joined the Abbey Theatre after the Fays
- had left a d who had a long innings of twenty years ultli the play h r n 1936 to 1955. Both
fhese ~~ are avahlde in the Casebook volume on .J.M. Synge: Four P I 9 (1992) ed. By
Ronald Ayling. There are also .stray references to some other production of the play. Hourever
.*- the amount of evidence available with this writer does not quillitjr him to study The PIayboy ss
a-
a performawe text as thoroughly as he would have liked to. But two pints could be noted. I
M put t f i a points in the fbrm d question.
- 1. Docs the play require to be presented naturalistically'? Or should it be staged as an
7- extravagant comedy? W d d , for example, the presentation of Old Mahon with a
"horribly bloodied badage" detract tiom the extravagance of high comedy?

2 How should Pegem be presented? Should she be presented with a 'touch of fury' in
her? Or should she be ~RSC?&XI
as 'a decent likeable country girl,?
As for the first question, Cynl Cusack says that m !is elyort to present the real Synge he at
I combined the purely theatrical with a form of naturalism that came perilously close to the
i
I& repsmtationrtl. He a1.w admits that it was only atter 1954 when he moved out of his 'Yoo
, natur&+c style* into a wider acting orbit nearer to ex3rtivaganza, that he came to enjoy "the
 I

Padriac Colurn pointed out thbt the "hombly-bloodied bandage" on Old Mahon's head "t(~)k

i
the whole thing out of the at1 )sphere of hidl comedy." He prefa~edthe Abbev Piduction
of 1909 when Old Mahim '-ws made a less bloody object." I-Ie also lelt that the somewhat
"sardonic" Christy detructd om "the extravagance of the comedy" and that Fred
O'Doilovan's Chr~styifi the lp09 product~tmhad more innocent "cham end gaiety "
What about Pegwn? I

11
Willie Fay "begged Slnge, s he put it, to m t e Pegeen "a decent likeable country girl" but
with little result. The p+ut ha. been presented di&ently in diflerent productions. 111 the
Ashley Duke's production in ondon, for example, Pegeen was played as "a limpid voung
girl;" when according t'b a c 'tic, she should have had a "touch of fury" in 11~7.But the
Cusack's production in 1954 ~dthe Dublin Theatre Festival of 1960 returned to Pegeen's role
"a necessary vibrant 9 t h qhd wildness"
,
I
You should try and lodk up blne other reviews of the production of the play including thi)se
in India. This should help yod to get closer to t
k play.
I
I
I

5.5 LET US $u1\1 UP I

relevance to our times'? ,

I
Our exploration of The Play y is now corning to a close. The plav is now an tlckno~ledgd
masterpiece not only of the I 'sh Dramatic Movement but of midem drama As Cyril Cusack
says, it belongs to the large estern world. Haw does m e acctm~tfor its wntlnuing

a
\

The Playboy is neitha e co- nor a tnt& but a bit of both. Beca~seof its utltcluc
combination of dErmation despair, of the romantic, the Rabelaisian md Ironic elements, it
refuses to fit into my l m t aditional category.
Y
Like all classics it is thanatiblly rich snd lends itself to multiple intapretations But ax
Thomas Whitaker ha. poin* out, it "most fully engages what seems the obsessive subject
of modem drama: life us a qgestion of 'role-pleymg."' A character in Shew's Araz anti the ,Uan
spoke of six persona of his d he himself was not sure which of them was the real man. As
9'
Whitatker continues, life ha.. become more inascapably histrionic: Words like ttrask and
pe~ormance have become dart of the modem man's vu;abulary Ttre PIqhoy is a plav where
the mask literally creates or k-creates the man.

The Playboy taps another s&ce of great power-it touchcs something very deep In human
nature-the instinctive k i r k to rebel against tradtion and the tyranny of the older generation.
The play brings this subco&ious desire to the swface and treats the dread subject of
patricide in a l i g h t - h e w bnner. In this sense the play shows us an image of ourselves
which we both dread w+h to see at the same time.
I

5.6 GLOSSARY I
I
Ellipsis whch means leavine out. Leaving out of a word
the meaning can be understood without them to ach~eve

Er~s : Cbek diod of Love, the power to produce and reproduce.

I

h43e1y for .images collectively. The term covers use of' lwgw~geto
actions, feelings, thoughts and states of mind.

Motif

Perspective
t idea, part of a main theme; also a subject, pattern. or an idea
that So s the main base on which a literary work is based.

: the wai in which a matter is judged.

I
I
58 I
 m e pa4~bqp: A D(cmtd.)
5.7 QUESTIONS
1. Discuss the c h m c features of Synge's language in The Playboy.
2 Write an essay on imagery in The Playboy. -

5.8 SUGGESTED READINGS

Dictionary of Litemty T e r n and LIteraty Theoty by J.A. Cuddon (Thud Edition). Penguin
Btwlcs,1992.
Yeats. W.B."The Death of Synge" in Autobiographies. London Macmillan, 1955.
Wem, David H. And Ebward M. Stephens.J.M. Synge: 18 71-1909. New York: Macmillan,
1959,~.321.
Biography of Synge interslpersed with criticism Bf his work. The authors include a
diycussion of the riots owr The Playboy and critical reception and reviews of his
pIays both from Dublin and abroad.
rsSs;-

Synge, J.M.Four Plays and the A m Islandc. Ed. With an I n W d i o n by Robii Sklton.
/I Landon:Oxford University Press, 1962, Pages 155-327 contain the intdudon
and four parts of the book The Amn Islandc.

Hem, T.R.Ed. The Plays and Poem of J.M. Synge with an Introduction and Notes. London :
Methim, 1963; rpt. 1968.
Contains General Introduction which has three section: The Pla Wright, the
Lunguage of the plays, Rhythm; a separate introduction to The Playboy; conhim
annotations to each pIay and a bibliography also. Essential reading.
Wbitaker, Thomas R.E d fientieth Century Interpmtdtions of the Playboy of the Western
World: A Collecfion ofcro'tical Eksays. Ehgjewood Cliffs. N.J.: Prentice Hall,1%9.

Cantaim essays by W.B.'deats,Una Ellis-Fermor, T.RHen& Norman Pcxibmtq

David H. Greem, and several others. Highly desirable. Whitake's 20- long
k introduction should be essential reading.
P

&- *
F~ye,Norbop "The Myth@ of Spring: Comedy'' in Anatomy of Criticism. New J w:
Prinoeton Univdty Press,1971, pp. 163-86.
Also available in Comedy :Meaning and Fonn. Ed. Robert W. Corrigan. Scad
E&ian.NewYork:Harper&Row, 1981.pp.84-99.
&
C an analysis of the mytluc structure of comedy, r category that
'
.trunsoends drama. Frye's aim is to establish universal stnrctures of all likmture.
lbential r e .
W i l l i m Raymond."J.M.Synge" in Dmma: From Ibsen to Brecht. Penguin Books, 1973; rpt.
1978, pp. 139-52. Section 4 of the essay deals with The Playboy. U&.
Gmne, hlicholas. S ' g e :A Critic& Study of the Plays. London: Macmillan, 1975 rpt 1979.
Detailed discussion of each play, viewing the prose work as source material. Three
chapters are particularly useful: "The Development of Dialect" dealing with
Spge's language "Approaches to The Pl&oy and "Unhappy C d e s . ' . "
Essential reading.
&won, Eugene. J.M.Sjmge. LoadonMacmillan, 1982, p. 167.
--
Contains a u s 4 essay on The Playboy; also contains several pictures including
fhose of the productions of plays.
Atyia& Roslsld Ed. JM. W g e : Four Plays: A Selection of Critical Essays. A Casebook.
London:Mdan, 1922,pp.137-87.
There are three essays on Synge's dramatic art The portion on The Playboy
includes contemporary comments, reviews and nine critical studies.
NOTES
 UNIT 1 BACKGROUND OF ENGLISH DRAMA
FROM THE RESTORATION PERIOD TO
BERN §HAW
Structure
Objectives
Introduction
English Drama from 1660 to Shaw and its
European Background.
Shaw's Ideological Background
The life and plays of Shaw
Let Us'Sum Up
Questions
Suggested Reading, for the History of Drama

1.0 OBJECTIVES

After reading this unit, you should be able to have an overview of the growth of
English Drama fi-om the Restoration till Shaw's time and also a broad acquaintance
with Bernard Shaw's life and plays, his background, the important events in his life,
the literary and intellectual influences on him and his own development as a
playwright.

1.1 INTRODUCTION

I
In England, the comedy of manners reached its zenith in the Restoration period but
1 after the middle of the 18" century it entered a phase of decline. The lesser
achievements of the heroic tragedy were also not sustained. After a comparatively
barren period, drama in England was revived mainly under the influence of Ibsen.
We shall first trace this process of the development of English drama and
1
I
subsequently focus on Shaw's own career and the formative influences that shaped
his philosophy and dramaturgy.
I
I

I
i 1.2 ENGLISH DRAMA FROM 1660 TO SHAW AND ITS
I EUROPEAN BACKGROUND

The closing of the English theatre in 1642 ended a glorious phase of English Drama,
and its reopening in 1660 marked a decisive break with the past. However the
Puritan repression of 1642-60 had not fully succeeded in snuffing out the spirit of the
theatre and in some form or the other surreptitious performances and popular forms
of entertainment continued during the interregnum. The dominant influence in the
Restoration theatre came from France where Corneille had already created a grand

I
1
tragedy and Moliere had achieved unrivalled success in comedy, but the pre-1642
tradition also had a revival, and some of the trends from the era continued to
penetrate the spirit of Restoration drama.

The first twenty five years of the period i.e. the reign of Charles II (1660-85) were
clearly marked by the spirit of Reason, Empiricism and license. Influenced by the
I
i
1
Pygmalion Inductive method of Bacon, the anti-idealistic political theory of Hobbes's Leviathan
and the revolutionary astronomy of Copernicus and Galileo, the new age dispersed
with faith, mystery and intellectual authority. It mistrusted the supernatural and
denigrated Imagination. It discarded the old Ethic and called for a practical and
pragmatic value system which ridiculed the notions of chastity and marital fidelity.

The theatre itself following the French model underwent a perceptible change. In the
French theatre, the auditorium, an enclosed place, was long and narrow with the stage
surrounded on three sides by the audience. Artifical lights, sets and properties were
introduced, and women invaded the stage as actresses. Following the contemporary
French theorists, the plays meticulously observed the unities of time, place and
action. So in England also, in place of the open Elizabethan theatre bereft of light
and sets, there was an enclosed theatre with artificial lights and some sets and
rudiments of properties. Now the actresses played the female roles with no need for
any one to "boy" Cleopatra's "greatness". Women did not have to be given male
disguises as in As You Like It or The Twelfth Night and plays with dominant
female roles could be written and performed.
The main Restoration tragedians were Dryden, Lee and Otway, all associated with
the heroic tragedy. They were inspired by the French neo-classicists, Corneille and
Racine, who in their contrasting manners dramatized the conflict between honour or
reason and passion. Rhymed couplets furnished them with the appropriate format to
adequately handle historical and mythical themes - in the grand manner in Comeille
and with subtle psychological insight in Racine. Dryden, however , opted for blank
verse in All for ~ o v although
e he had employed rime in his other heroic plays like
The Conquest for Granada, All for Love, his adaptation of Shakespeare's Antony
and Cleopatra, which represents the Restoration tragedy at its best, had, like other
-
plays of its kind, grand characters Emperors, Kings Generals - who were larger than
life, exaggerated emotions and bombastic speeches. Its great theme was the clash of
honour and passion-dramatizedso effectively earlier in Corneille's Le Cid.
In contrast, Restoration comedy was a more popular and artistically superior genre.
Here, the great French model was Moliere. Although he built his plays around
central characters with marked eccentricities - a miser (The Miser), a misanthrope
(The Misanthrope), a hypocrite (Tartuffe) or a hypochondriac (The Imaginary
Invalid), he also combined the exposure of these characters with probing social
criticism. The Restoration comedy of manners likewise provided a critique of the
manners and morals of the contemporary society and used many comic devices
employed by him such as disguises, intrigues, farcical action. Written primarily for
the urban upper class, it reached its zenith in the plays of Dryden (The Wild Gallant,
Marriage a la Mode), Etherege (The Man of Mode, The Comical Revenge),
Wycherley (The country Wife, The Gentleman Dancing Master, The Plain
Dealer) and Congreve (The Old Bachelor, Double Dealer, Love for Love, The
Way of the World), In the Orange period, Farquhar (Recruiting officer, The
Beaux Stratagem) and Vanbrugh (The Provoked Wife, Relapse) carried on the
tradition with some modifications. These plays had a contemporary setting with a
number of gallants and belles from the London aristocracy, upper class witwouds,
fops and country cousins, jealous and niggardlly middle class traders and several
servants including the clever valets. The plot was built around intrigues and
seductions, often involving disguises and role playing. What made the plays really
lively was the witty and polished dialogues and repartees. The successful lover was
an urbane aristocrat with plenty of wit, grace, tact and shrewdness. The conventional
morality was jettisoned as the ridiculed cuckold rather than the unscrupulous seducer
became the target of satire.

After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, leading to the successful culmination of the
attack on King James and his Royalist supporters who believed in the Divine Rights
of Kings, there emerged the new order under King William, theoretically based on
the idea of governance as a kind of contract between the ruler and the ruled, Locke
became the new political theorist of this order "women's Liberation Movement"
 partly under the influence of the precieux movement in France and partly becase of Background of English
Queen Mary surfaced in a tangible manner. The voice of the "Feminists" against the Drama
casual promiscuity and the depiction of women as sexual objects in the plays was
joined by a resurgent clergy protesting against the "immorality" and "indecency" of
English Drama. Bishop Jeremy Collier's tract entitled Short View of the
profa~ienessand Immorality of the English Stage virtually ended the career of
congreve and led to the demise of Restoration comedy after Vanbrugh and Farquhar.

Georgian England was Whig dominated with Walpole and his ilk rather than the
nnonarchyas the real powers, and with their middle class orientation, the plays also
ulldement a transformation. The "immoral" comedies of intrigue had to give way to
sentimental drama: Addison and Steele represented the new Age. Nevertheless, John
Gay wrote The Beggar's Opera, an immensely popul.,. musical about the
with all its corru~ption,crimes and license-adapted later by Brecht as
Tllree Penny Opera. Henry Field~ngwould have been a worthy successor to Gay
especially in the parodic mode of plays like Tom Thumb, The Great, but his ill
advised and imprudent attacks on Walpole ushered in the Censorship Act and the end
ofa scilltillating career in drama. Althougl~Dr. Johnson thought of himself as a
tragic poet, his Irene was anything but a stage success. After a lean phase of four
decades which was quite a contrast to the rich French theatre of Voltaire and
Beaumarchais, theatre in England flickered for a while in the plays of Goldsmith
(The Good Natured Man and She Stoops to Conquer) and Sheridan (The Rivals,
The Critic and The School for Scandal). The basic format of these plays was
embedded in the Comedy of Manners but the license and the permissiveness of the
Restoration era were missing. Romantic love, which had made a late appearance in '
Congreve in Millamant's attachment to Mirabell was extolled and glorified as the
plays became morally simpler and narrower.

A century of Romantic and Victorian theatre (1790-1890) witnessed no resurgence of

great drama in England. There were, as in the Elighteenth century, nunlerous
Shakespeare revivals and various forms of theatre, but no great dramatists. During
the same period, Germany and surprisingly France gave birth to great Romantic
plays. Although Goethe's magnum opus, Faust is not quite stageable, he did write
stageworthy plays like Eqmont and Goetz von Berlichingen. However, the great
German Romantic playwright was Schiller whose masterpieces William Tell, Mary
-
Stuart, The Maid of Orleans and The Robbers presented larger than lifesize
rebels, non-conformists and outcasts, struggling valiantly against authority. I-Iugo,
the pivotal French Romantic playwight followed Schiller in depicting grant
, characters in exotic settings in works like Cromwell and I-lernani. In contrast, all
I
the English Romantic poets who tried writing plays - Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron,
Shelley and Keats failed as playwrights. Shelley's The Cenci was the best of these
I
plays, closely followed by Byron's pieces like Manfred and Cain. The accent in
i them is on grand characters, rebels against authority, exotic and historical settings,
lofty and poetic dialogues, a declamatory style of acting and a clear separation from
the contemporary reality.

In the Victorian period, romantic drama degenerated into melodramas with black and
white characters and sensational last minute rescues. In them, the divorce from
contemporary life was complete and total. At the other end of the spectrum was the
so-called "well-made play" popularised in France by Scribe, Sardou and Feydeau.
Their intercepted messages, miscarried letters, central misunderstandings and twists
in plot led to a highly contrived and artificial theatre.
I
However, the real break through came from Europe in the form of Realistic drama
I that Ibsen ushered in. Realism in a sense went back to the Wordsworthian Romantic
I
concept of writing about low and humble characters in the language of common man.
Its dominant concern was, of course the middle class, which it did so much to expose
and satirise. This was partly because the period was clearly dominated by the middle
l class. In England, the First Reform Bill of 1832 had decisively shifted political
 Pygn~alion power to the whigs representing the shopkeepers, traders and industrialists. The
repeal of the Corn laws in 1846 even more unmistakably undermined the economic
base of the landed aristocracy and sealed the middle class control of the economic
and political life ,of the nation. Across the channel, the uprising of 1830 in France
was succeeded by the deposition of King Louis Philippe in 1848 and the revival of
Bonapartism which was drenched in the middle class ethos. Central Europe had gone
further in the overthrow of the old feudal class with violent revolutions in 1848.
To return to the plays, although Ibsen, continued the romantic predicament of the
artist as alien and was often self-reflexive like them, his was primarily a revolt
against romanticism. In his post 1876 plays i.e. in his realistic pieces, he aimed at
verisimilitude, at the creation of the illusion of reality on the stage. Beginning with a
belief in objective reality, he sought to embody its details in his choice of characters,
events, plots, dialogues, imagery, music, lights, sets and the style of acting. Thus in
plays like A Doll's House, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm and Hedda
Gabler, the characters resemble real people and nothing happens to them which
cannot take place in real life. Following the Greak models of Aeschylus and
Sophocles, Ibsen also aimed at the unities of time, place and action. As the unity of
time required the action to begin at a late point of attack, it posed the problem of
exposition which Ibsen usually solved by beginning the play with a visitor who came
after a long time. In informing him, the residents acquaint the audience with the
background of the past events. Otherwise, the play begins with servants who gossip
about the secrets of the house. Ibsen's characters use prose and try to speak like real
people. The realistic dialogues are matched by realistic imagery and symbolism as
all the images and symbols have some meaning at both the literal and the
metaphorical levels. ~imilarl~'sets, properties and lights are realistic. The plays have
lamps on the stage to indicate the source of illumination, and consequently fisen
builds a rich symbolic pattern of light and darkness in many of his works. Sets also
are photographic and the play has all the properties that the "original" in "real life" is
supposed to have. Likewise the source of music is known to the audience, and it is a
part of the story, Finally, the acting style is natural and subdued. The stage and the
auditorium are like watertight compartments and the actors are supposed to be
completely oblivious of the presence of the audience. In fact, the premis, is that the
actor is not acting at all but just leading a real life.
Anton Chekhov in some ways went beyond Ibsen in modifying his realism. Thus he
dispensed with some of the sensational actions in Ibsen - especially the suicides and
-
violent deaths at the end of the plays that are, to use Aristotle's words, "possible" I

but not "probable". In fact, Chekhov progressed through the d r m a of "indirect I

action'' to the drama of "inaction". He also rejected the unity of time on the ground
that too many events happening in a short span of time did not.convey a sense of ,
genuine reality. Chekhov also questioned Ibsen's idea of dialogue. As in real life,
Chekhov's characters, unlike Ibsen's, do not listen to each otlier, and they change the
I
topic of conversation frequently, Unlike Ibsen's drama of psychological intensity,
Chekhov aims at the depiction of a social panorama. I

In England (and Ireland), the resurgence of dramatic literahlre began in the late 19"
Century with a few writers of well made plays and comedies including Oscar Wilde.
Wilde's comedies of wit with sparkling dialogues and ingenious paradoxes, revealed
at their best in The Importance of Being Earnest certainly prepared the,way for the
other great Anglo-Irish comic genius and master of paradox, George Bernard Shaw
although Shaw's concept of drama for the sake of social-economic-political
transformation of the world differed radically from Wilde!s.dictum of art for art's .
sake.

1.3 SHAW'S IDEOLOGICAL BACKGROUND

I
Shaw had absorbed a variety of philosophical and ideological influences in his early
years. Henry George, the author of Progress and Poverty converted him to the
1
A ,$,
 s
leftist cause wit his lecture. Trade unions surfaced then on the scene in a notable
way especially a ter the third refonn bill of 1884. Around this time, the Fabian
society with a so ial Democratic outlook emerged with thinkers and organisers like
William Morris, Sidney and Beatrice Webb and H.M. Hyndman associated with it.
Shaw discovered them by reading their tract, Why are the many poor? They
Bacltground of English
Drama

advocated gradual social-economic reforms within the framework of democracy.

Shaw, however, soon realized that institutional changes alone could not bring
fulfilment,justice and prosperity to mankind. What was needed was a change in the
very nature of man. So he turned to Creative Evolution which could lead to the
emergence of superior human beings or supermen. The idea of evolution was very
much in the air in the 19' century and the intelligentsia was familiar with the theories
of Darwin. Shaw, however, wanted to go beyond Darwin to those who felt that
Evolution could be willed. Lamarch was an important forerunner in this respect.
Another major influence was Samuel Butler who felt that Darwin had "banished mind
from the universe". Butler "identified mind with design" with "intention". A
contemporary of Shaw who developed the concept of Creative Evolution was Henri
Bergson whose book The Creative Evolution appeared in 1907. On the other hand,
the idea of a "will" which guides the growth of animals had been muted by
Schopenhauer, the writer of The World Considered as Will and Idea.
Schopenhauer thought of the Will as blind and the element of chance governing the
movement of the universe. Nietzsche, the German Philosopher had conceived of the
superman in an anti-Christian moral framework. By a rather interesting coincidence,
Dostoievsky, the Russian novelist, had projected in Raskolnikov of Crime and
Punishment, a young man, who following the exploits of Napoleon had decided to
rise above ordinary humanity by killing a frail old woman. Whereas Dostoievsky
resolved the moral conflict in Christian terms, Nietzsche condemned the teachings of
Christ as a gospel of weahess and effeteness. When he envisaged a transcendence
of Christianity he contemplated an ethic that would reject notions of good and evil,
look down upon c h h t y and compassion as indicators of effeminacy. Pronouncing
the death of God, Nietzsche in books like Thus Spake Znrathustra, Beyond Good
and Evil and The Will to Power, conceived of a superman who could be superior to
normal humanity by virtue of his strength. Shaw, however, realized that not brute
strength but intelligence is what the life force is driving at.

Nietzsche found a "consanguine" spirit in Wagner, the great musician, Wagner's

operas similarly celebrated heroes of exceptional strength. Shaw as a great lover and
connoisseur of music - in fact, he was a music critic for quite some time - thought of
himself as a "Perfect Wagnerite" and that further linked him with Nietzsche,

However, Nietzsche's male chauvinism was something that Shaw could not stomach.
-
Partly as a result of the influence of Ibsen's New Woman as presented in A Doll's
House and Ghosts - and partly out of his own convictions, Shaw saw a woman as
active and dynamic, a fighter for her rights. Shaw, in fact, emerged as an early
feminist of sorts. Also, in a remarkable study, Whitman points out that the Shavian
ideology ultimately derived from flegel.'

For some of Shaw's ideological roots, we need to go back to his birth and upbringing.

1.4 THE LIFE AND PLAYS OF SHAW

George Bernard Shaw was born in a family of impoverished Irish Protestant gentry in
Dublin on July 26,1856 and he spent his first twenty years there. The monumental
biography by Michael Holroyd suggests what earlier studies by Colin Wilson and
others had not discounted that perhaps George Bernard Shaw was the son not of
George Carr Shaw but of George John Vandeleur Lee, a music teacher and
conductor, who stayed with the family and formed some kind of menage a h i s with
Qgnialion George Carr and Lucinda Elizabeth Shaw ( nee Gurly). George Bernard acquired his
love of music in early childhood - it was a part of the family life with both Lee and
Mrs. Shaw earning their living from it. The drunkenness of Mr. Shaw, which had
disastrous consequences for the family created in the boy a strong revulsion for
alcohol and contributed subsequently to his "Puritanism".

George Bernard Shaw was miserable in Dublin before he moved to London to join
his mother and sister Lucy - the other sister Agnes having died of tuberculosis - and
Lee there. His early years in London were marked by struggle and failure. He wrote
five novels which flopped miserably - I~nrnaturity,The Irrational Knot, Love anlong
the Artists, Cashel Byron's Profession and An Unsocial Socialist. The first two of
these written in 1878 and 1880 had autobiographical elements and along with Sixteen
SelfSketches, written much later, provided insights into his early life. However, his
work as a professional reviewer and critic of music and drama for the Pall Mall
Gazette, The Dramatic Review, Magazine for Music and The Star provided hiin with
economic support, and more important than that, a platform for expressing his ideas.

Shaw's first exercises in dramatic writing resulted in three "unpleasant" plays - The
Widower 's Houses, The Philanderer and Mrs. Warren 's Profession. In each one of
these, he boldly engaged a contemporary issue in the manner of a discussion play -
respectively the exploitation of poor tenants by landlords. Man-woman relationship in
the context of the New Woman and organised prostitution. Even as he finally took
one side, he also gave the "wrongside" its say. Thus Sartorius in Widower's Houses
could justify himself, and Mrs..Warren could deeply move her daugher Vivie. The
Philanderer had the added dimension of autobiography. Charteris was a self-portrait,
Jullia Craven was Mrs. Jenny Patterson, the first woman to "seduce" Shaw and Grace
Tranfield, the actress Florence Farr who was his mistress for several years in the
1890's. Although Mrs. Warren's Profession shows a deep grasp of the issues, these
plays were too grim and bitter to appeal to the English audiences and they were not
critical successes either.

However, the next four plays i.e. the "Plays Pleasant" - You Never can Tell, Candid@,
The Man ofDestiny and above all, Arms and the Man - achieved great successes as in
each of them, Shaw gave full vent to his comic genius along with his serious
engagement with major social-ethical issues. Candida, as Christopher Innes points
out in his book Modern British Drama, 1890-1970~takes off from IbsenlsA Doll's
House, Here the woman, Candida instead of walking out of the house chooses to
remain with her husband Morel1 in preference to the idealistic poet Eugene
Marchbanks. Here, Shaw also introduced the triangle that often recurs in his plays - a
woman who has to make a choice between the rational thinker and reformer and the
sentimental poet, modelled here after Shelley or perhaps Yeats as Colin Wilson
suggests in Bernard Shaw: A ~eassessment.~ Arms and the Man, the famous "anti-
romantic" comedy has a similar triangle involving Raina, Sergius and Bluntschli.
The play attacks both romantic warfare and romantic love. Another important theme
is snobbery an awareness of class - distinction, which remained Shaw's perennial
concern.

Before completing the "Three Plays for Puritans", Shaw got married in 1898 to
Charlotte Payne-Townshend who in many ways resembled his own mother. Rich but
sexually unattractive and puritanical, Charlotte, perhaps never consummated her
marriage with Shaw. Except for his "diversion" with the great actress, Mrs. Patrick
Campbell, Shaw remained :loyal1' to Charlotte inspite of the rather insipid marriage
he had with her.

Among the "Three Plays for Puritans" Captain Brassbound's Conversion was a minor
piece, and although The Devil's Disciple was a considerable commercial success in
the U.S.,it was Caesar and Cleopatra that was the great work of dramatic art,
-
Caesar and Cleopatra, Shaw's first major "historical" venture, presents Cleopatra
v i s - h i s Caesar an ti not Antony as in Shakespeare and Dryden. He drew upon
 Background of English
MommsenqsHistory of Rome and Plutarch, but Caesar is also to some extent, a self- Drama
As distinguished from the romantic and superstitious Egyptians he is a hard-
headed, down to earth, practical man who refuses to be swayed by romantic notions
like love, revenge, heroic gestures etc. The play also has several anachronisms which
give it a touch of contemporaneity.

Man and Superman, an ambitious and artistically consummate dramatisation of

Shawls concept of the Life Force recreates his favourite triangle - this time with Ann
Whitefield, the "mother-woman", John Tanner, the "philosopher" - man and Octavius
Robinson, the poet-lover. As is usual in Shaw, the mother-woman heads for the
philosopher-man, Tanner - partly a self-portrait, who tries in vain to &cape from her,
in preference to the languishing and sighing lover-Octavius. Out of this union of Ann
and Jack will emerge the Superman. This theme is supplemented by a medley of
-
topics/motifs such as the datedness of the 19'' century liberalism embodied in the
-
respectable Roebuck Ramsden socialism and the new working class, represented
differently by Mendoza, the President of the Brigands and Henry Straker, the smart
chauffeur and also parent-child relationship depicted through Whitefields and
Malones, the Irish-American tycoons. The play follows the conventions of comedy,
with variations on stock devices such as the clever valet, verbal deflations and
inversions, father-son conflict over the latter's choice of a bride.

However, this is punctuated by the dream sequence in Act I11 involving John Tanner
(Don Juan), Mendoza (The Devil), Ramsden (The Statue - The Mayor) and Ann
(Dona Ana)a,whichmarks a clear departure from conventions of realism. Shaw also
makes extensive use of classical music in the play, especially that of Mozart.

John Bull's Other Island, which appeared in 1904, was a perceptive study of
theEnglish and the Irish characters through the contrasting portraits of the English
Tom Broadbent and the Irish Larry Doyle -''partners in an engineering business" -
and Peter Keegan the unfrocked priest. Nora Reilly, Lerry's early sweetheart
completes the picture in an extremely humorous work which rejects Irish sentimental
nationalism even as it denounces the business efficiency of the Englishman.

Major Barbara (1905), another "anti-romantic" play of Shaw dramatizes the conflict
between the practical and ostensibly devillish Andrew Undershaft and his idealistic
daughter Barbara (a major in the salvation Army) and her fiance, the Greek scholar
and poet Adolphus Cusins, based to some extent on Gilbert Murray. Barbara's
mother, Lady Britomart, her brother Stephen Undershaft, her sister Sarah and Sarah's
fiance Charles Lomax all living away from Andrew are comparatively insignificant in
the moral conflict. Instead of Barbara converting her father to the cause of the
salvation Army, it is the latter who converts her and Cusins to his cause. Cusins will
take over the Cannon factory from him. The solution to the world's problem is that
the enlightened and sensitive iiltellectual must acquire power through practical
means.

Besides the many minor plays, during the next ten years, he also wrote The Doctor's
Dilemma (1906) The Dark Lady of theSonnets (1910), Androcles and the Lion: A
Fable Play (1912), and, of course, Pygmalion (1912). fie Doctor's Dilemma
encapsulated Shawls almost obsessive attack on the medical profession in the form of
the choice that Dr. Sir Colenso Ridgeon has to make-a choice between the painter -
Louis Dubedat - a scoundrel, though a genius, based upon the unscrupulous socialist
Edward Aveling - and Blenkinsop, a mediocre but honest general practioner The
situation is further complicated by the fact that Ridgeon is in love with Mrs, Dubedat.
Ridgeon with his limited resources can save only one patient and he opts for
Blenkinsop, letting Dubedat die, but ironically Mrs. Dubedat, the widow refuses to
many Ridgeon, What gives life to the play is the liveliness of the dialogues and the
sharp edge of the satire.
Pygm alion The Dark Lady of the Sonnets was Shaw's most sustained engagement with
Shakespeare as a character. Although Shaw is full of allusio~~s to Shakespeare in
many of his plays, it is only in The Dark Lady that he has William Shakespeare and
MaryFitton as characters. The play in one act clearly deflates Shakespeare and his
achievements.

Androcles and the Lion was a reexamination of Christianity in its early years tb.r130ugh
the story of Andnrcles, his wife Megaera, and a bunch of Christian prisoners and
martyrs, victims of "the Roman persecution of the early Christians." However, as he
said again in his postscript to the play, "my matlyrs are martyrs of all time, and my
persecutors the persecutors of all time.l14

Heartbreak House, written over a period of six years (1913-19) dramatises the
of the decadent aristocracy in Enland. The play subtitled a "fantasia in the Russian
manner on English themes" shows Captain Shotover, his elder daughter Hesione and
her husband Hector Hushabye as representing the Heartbreakers - the englightened ,
but effete aristocracy - in contrast to the younger daughter Ariadne, married to Sir
Hastings Utterword, who embodies the Imperialist Class - the ~orsebackers- and
Boss Mangan, a Napoleon of Indusby, a vulgar and crude business "magnate". The
Heartbreakers are worth saving, but drifting and without will, they spend their time in
dilettantism and flirtation, unconcerned with the business of money and management.
Mazzini Dunn, a liberal, and his romantic daughter Ellie who is disillusioned when
she discovers the unreality of Hector's tigers, Mangan's millions, Hesione's beautiful
black hair and Shotover's "seventh degree of concentration" represent another social
set along with the working class people - Nurse Guinness and her villainous
"husband", Billy Dunn, a former boatsman of Shotover and now a "burglar". The
bombers that destroy the rectory and the gravel pit complete Shaw's picture of mass-
destruction, even Apocalypse if the englightened upper class does not wake up to its
responsibility of governing England. The house, built like Captain Shotover's ship
effectively symbolizes England, and in a larger sense, "cultured, leisured Europe
before the war". The distintegration of form in showing major variations on the
comic structure and mode is punctuated by pointed references to Othello, King Lear - ,
and a scattering of quotations from other Shakespeare plays. Thus Ellie is the
romantic Desdemona and Hector (Marcus Darnley) early Othello who captivates her.
In contrast, Randall is the jealous Othello. On the other hand, Shotover is Kiqg Lear
and Hesione and Ariadne, his two worldly daughters - Goneril and Regan. Hector is
like Albany and Ellie, a parallel to Cordelia. The "drumming" in the sky at the end is
like the storm in the heath and Mangan offering to take off all his clothes resembles
Lear stripping himself. The Chekhovian manner is shown in the creation of an
atmosphere through the country house setting with its weekend visitors, all the
characters behaving strangely here like people going off to sleep, women
"fascinating" men, the burglar getting deliberately caught etc. The season of autumn,
the "scene" of the garden and the field beyond, the sound effects such as the
drumming in the sky, Randy's flute and the visual effects of different shades of light
all contribute to the creation of "mood".

Back to Methuselah, a "Metabiological Pentateuch" (1920) which Shaw regarded as

his most ambitious work did not quite achieve the level of artistic success Shaw
aimed at? The five parts are entitled, "In the Beginning", "The Gospel of the Brothers
Barnabas", "The Thing Happens", "Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman" and "As Far as
Thought can Reach," and there is also a "Post script after Twenty Five Years". They
take us from the Garden of Eden to a point in time 30,000 years in the future,
demonstrating and explaining Shaw's idea of Creative Evolution. Here Shaw
reiterates that the Life Force in moving in the direction of superior brains and
envisions a world in which people would live long only in order to transcend the
physical body and lead a life of the mind. In the first part, Adam who finds life
somewhat boring does not want to live very long, but in the second play, the brothers
Barnabas expound their view that man should will to live for three hundred years.
And in "The Thing Happens", Franklin Barnabas's housemaid and his son-in-law do
 Background of English
turn out to be long livers. In the next play, there are numerous long-livers now Drama
inhabiting what was once Ireland. Finally in the last part we observe how intellectual
pursuia have supplemented material comforts and physical enjoyment. A baby is
delivered out of an egg and it is fully grown like a person of twenty and the phase of
pleasures lasts for barely five years before people turn to intellectual
contemplation like thinking on the properties of numbers. Thus the Ancients are also
disembodied minds spending all their time in pure thought. It is aimed at "complete
mastery of matter" and it represents the highest stage of human evolution.

Saint Joan (1923), the most "moving" of Shaw's plays is a "Clronicle" that provides
the mical modem treatment of historical material, highlighting the parallel between
the past and the present, focusing issues of contemporary significance. Thus the
conflict of Joan with the Chucll arid the Feudal order becomes symbolic of the
antagonism between individual genius and centralized authority. The rise of
nationalism in the 1 5 century
~ France parallels that in the 20"' century Ireland; Joan
who dresses up as a man and fights like a soldier represents the modem feminist - the
New Woman. The issue of visions is carefully skirted by never showing Joan with
her voices as she is always viewed in others' company. The play covers the entire
I
military-political career of Joan and adds the epilogue to provide the typical Shavian .
touch. Although Saint Joan is a rare example of a Shavian play with an emotional
appeal, Shaw repeatedly brings in comic elements to puncture the tragic and the
I
emotional build up. The Epilogue makes sure that the play does not end on a
crescendo of feelings, but it also provides a perspective and a corrective. The dream
1 sequence in it pertinently universalizes the predicament of saints in the human world
and it also enacts a confrontation of the past and the present. The "clerical looking
j
/ gentleman in modem dress" enters the play to announce Joan's canonisation, and in
I
the sharp dichotomy between his dress and that of the other characters, we observe
1 the contrast of the 1 5 ' and
~ the 2othcenturies. At the same time, Shaw makes it clear
1 that the world is not yet ready to receive its saints.

The: last plays s f Shaw, on the whole, show a clear decline in his powers and the only
ones worth mentioning are The Apple Cart (1 929), Too True to be Good (1932), On
the Rocks (1 933), The sinlpleton of the U~lexpectedIsles (1 934) In Good Kirtg
Charles's Golden Days (1 939), Buoyant Billions (1947) and finally the "Playlet" (a
debate in dialogue form) - Shakes verszrs Slzav (1949).. The Apple Cart was often
seen as an attack on democracy and a defence of monarchy. However, it contains an
objective scrutiny of the limitations of popular democracy showing how King
Magnus, who is far more cultivated and intelligent then all his ministers including the
Prime Minister, Proteus, can easily beat his opponents at their own game by offering
to abdicate and contest the elections for the parliament. He clearly emerges as the
political victor. The play also has a rather interesting interlude showing the King
with his mistress which distinctly echoes Shaw's relationship with Mrs. Patrick
Campbell but is not of much relevance to the political theme. Too True to be Good
goes back to the Wasterland theme in its attempt to present boredom and despair, but
the treatment is mot unreal and the dreamlike atmosphere is far from convincing. On
the Rocks return to the metaphor of the ship of state to show how the cabinent
government of the parliamentary system is unable to cope with the imminent crises
facing the state. Shaw highlights the contradictions of the political parties and the
system as the labour ministers reject the revolutionary plan of nationalization and the
conservatives welcome it for their own reasons. At the end, however; nothing is
resolved and there is no hope for the state. The Simpletion of the Unexpected Isles
has a lighthearted vision of the Final Judgement but the play is far from artistically
consummate. In Good King Charles's ~ o l d ; ?Days n is set in the period of Charles I1
with Sir Isaac Newton. George Fox, Sir Godfrey Kneller and the King himself as
characters. The play has no plot but the dialogues, which are powerful, carry it
through. Buoyant Billions, although a rambling play, emphatically re-affirms the
Shavian optimism and Idealism. Finally Shaker versus Shav presents a rationale and
a defence of Shaw's dramatic career as measured against the achievements of the
Pygmialiolr Bard of Avon. As expected Shaw glorifies his own works and intersperses curious
judgements such as pointing out that Heartbreak House is superior to King Lear.

A lonely and bored man in his last years, Shaw had a fall on September 10,1950 and
soon after coming back home from the hospital, he died in his sleep on November 21,
1950. f i u s ended a rather uneven career. A man of immence vitality, Shaw became
a great public figure through sheer force of will and intellect. Although he wrote
much that was pedestrian, he had a phase of great creativity starting from mid 1890's
and subsequently there were many isolated perks of excellence such as Heartbreak
House and Saint Joan. If we also recall his great achievements as a writer o'f non-
fictional prose - which we have not rightly considered here - we have to admit that he
deserved to be acknowledged as the Grand Old Man of English literature of the
twentieth century.

-.

31.3 LET US SUM UP

In this unit, we have first surveyed the developments in and influences on English
Drama from 1660 till Shaw's time. The Restoration Age was one of reason,
empiricism and license, and the new theatre following the French model was less
primitive than the earlier one. The heroic tragedy had grand characters, exaggerated
emotions and bombastic speeches. In contrast, Restoration comedy was characterised
by intrigues, disguises and role playing, witty and polished dialogues and stock
characters such as wits and witwouds, cuckolds and gallants, belles and fops and the
clever valets. Things began changing after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and
Collier's tract attacking the profaneness of the English stage. The Eighteenth century
was a barren phase in dramatic literature with the exception of Gay's, Goldsmith's and
Sheridan's comedies. Similarly in the succeeding age, all the Romantic poets failed
as playwrights. The revival of drama began with the influence of Ibsenite realism
which aimed at verisimilitude or the illusion of reality. His drama represented the
details of reality in his choice of events, characters, plot, dialogues, imagery, music,
lights, sets and the style of action. Chekhov modified Ibsenite realism to make it less
"dramatic" and sensational and dispensed with the unity of time and the neatly
structured dialogues. In England the new drama was centred round writers of well
made plays and witty comedies like Oscar Wilde.

Shaw's ideological antecedentsinitially came fkorn Henry George and the Fabian
society. On the other hand, his sustained interest in Life Force emanated from his
encounter with the ideologies of Lamarck, Butler, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Nietzsche
and Wagner.

We have also seen how Shaw's struggles in his early life led to his dramatic career,
beginning with the "Unpleasant" plays, then the "Pleasant" Plays and "Three Plays
for Puritans". Man and Superman with its devastating satire on the conventions,
manners and beliefs of the age embodied Shaw's philosophy of the Life Force
evolving in the direction of superior intelligence. John Bull's Other Island with its
humorous exposition of the Irish character and Major Barbara which showed the
triumph of the Armament manufacturer over his idealistic daughter in the salvation
Ar* registered the zenith of Shaw's achievements in this phase. After The Doctor's
Dilemma, Shaw struggled to regain the earlier artistic heights, but in the process, he
wrote three of his greatest plays: Heartbreak House, Back to Methuselah and Saint
Joan. Back to Methuselah is somewhat dragging even as it contains the quintessence
of his philosophy of the Life Force, but both Heartbreak House and Saint Joan reveal
impressive powers of technical innovation. The last twenty five years of his life
finally indicated a sharp decline in his artistic talents although The Applecart has
. some claims to excellence.
 References Background of English 1
Drama i
1. Robert F. Whitman, Shaw and the Play of Ideas (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1977) 107.

2. Modern British Drama 1890-1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1992).

3.

4.
Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment (1969: London: Macmillan, 1981).

George Bernard Shaw, Complete Plays with Prefaces (New Uork: Dodd,
1
mead & Co, 1962), V.472.

1. How did the Eighteenth Century Comedy differ from the Restoration
Comedy?

2. What were the main features of the theatre of Realism?

3.

4.
How did'chekhov go beyond Ibsen's realism?

Trace the major influences'on the Shavian philosophy of the Life Force and
I!
Creative Evolution.

5. Describe the development of Shaw as a dramatist from Widower's Iiouses to

Caesar and Cleopatra.
I
6 Which institutions and beliefs did Shaw satirise in his plays of the middle
I
I
I
phase?
1 7. What are the major technical innovations introduced by Shaw in Heartbreak
House and Saint Joan?

8. How did Shaw's own background contribute to his view of man-woman

relationship?

9. Why was Shaw called an iconoclast?

I

r 10. Mention some of the comic devices used by Shaw in his plays.
I

, 11. What were Shaw's political views as expressed in his plays?

T
I

1
I 1.7 SUGGESTED READING FOR THE HISTORY OE4

1 ~rustein,Robert. The Theatre of Revolt. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1964.

Leech, C,and T.W. Craik, eds. The Revels History of Drama in English London:
I
Mcthuen, 1975.
Nicoll, Allardyce. Histoy o f the English Drama 1660-1900. Cambridge: Cambri
UP,1952.
t . X O ~ COxford University
Williams, Raymond. dlmrnafiom fisen !O R t ~ ~ hNew
Press, 1.969.

(The list of books on Shaw will hc given at the cncl of fflc units 0x1 Pygnzalion)
Pygmalion
Nicoll, Allardyce. History of the English Drama 1660-1900. Cambridge: Cambrid
UP, 1952.

Williams, Raymond. Drarnafioapz dbseaz to Brecbzt. New Xnrk: Oxford [Jniversity

Press, 1969.

(The list of boob 011 Shaw will be given at the end o f the mits rial Pygnzalion)
 Structure
2.0 Objectives
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Pyginulion as a play about phonetics
2.3 Class distinction, snobbery, kinds of manners, middle-class inorality and the
character of Doolittle
I
2.4 Man-woman relationships in the play: Higgins's mother-fixation and Oedipus
I
complex; Higgins-Eliza equation; Eliza, trle fighter and the Feminist
2.5 Let Us Sun1 Up
I
2.6 Questions

This unit will offer you perspectives on the themes in Pj~gvzalionand the salient
features of the inajor characters and their relationships.

Pygmalio~zis primarily a play about speech and phonetics, but related to it are Shawts
social concerns - class distinction, good manners and middle class morality. The
"romance" of Higgins and Eliza does not culminate in matrimony but a complex
network ofmail-woman relationships with Eliza marrying Freddy, and Higgins
unwilling to get out of chronic bachelorhood engendered by his mother-fixation, In
this unit, we shall first explore the theme of English speech and the related cluster of
subjects in the play. Subsequently we shall engage various facets of man-woman
relationship with special reference to the characters of Eliza and Higgins.

2.2 PYGMALION AS A PLAY ABOUT PHONETICS

1 Pyg~nalionis overtly a play about phonetics or English speech. Shaw says in his
I preface to the play. "The English have no respect for their language, and will not
'i teach their children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no man can teach
himself what it sounds like. It is impossible for an Englishman to open his inouth
without making some other Englishman hate or despise him".' So in the play, he
I

I
emphasizes the need to speak the language properly, and Higgins, the phonetician is
the one who can teach people how to do so. Professor Higgins, as Shaw again points
out in the Preface has "touches of Sweet" (p. 193), a brilliant but unpleasant
phonetician at Oxford. In Act I, Higgins is able to place all the bystanders simply on
the basis of their accents. He tells Colonel Pickering "you can spot an Irish-man or a
Yorkshire mat1 by his brogue. I can place any man within six miles. I can place him
within two miles in London. Sometimes within two streets.'' (p.205). He denounces
Eliza for her speech:" A woman who utters such depressing and disgusting sounds
has no right to be anywhere -no right to live. Remember that you are a human being
with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the
language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible: and don't sit there crooning like a
. bilious pigeon." (P.206).
 In fact the play is built around the professional life of Higgins as a phonetician, and
its main action consists of the successful attempt of Higgins to convert Eliza, a flower
girl into a duchess by giving her a new speech: "I shall make a duchess of this
draggletailed guttersnipe.2(p.215). and Eliza with her impeccable accent-acquired in
a few months of "learning how to speak beautif~lly"(p.220)- does pass off as a
duchess, affirming Shaw's undeniable view that speech is one way of dividing class
from class and etnphasizing class distinction. Higgil~scan similarly bridge this gulf
in Alfred Doolittle's case: "if we were to take this man inhand for three months, he
could choose a seat in the Cabinet and a popular pulpit in Wales."(p.230). He tells
his mother, "But you have no idea how frightfully interesting it is to take a human
being and change her into a quite different human being by creating a new speech for
her. It's filling up the deepest gulf that separates class form class and soul from soul."
(P.248).

2.3 CLASS DISTWCTION,SNOBBERY,

KJNDS OF
MANNERS, MIDDLE CLASS MOMLITY, AND THE
CHAWCTER OP DOOL,HTTLE

Shaw also attacks snobbery in a more general way. In the opening scene itself, Eliza
protest against social and ecopomic sobbery by refusing to be cowed down by her
social superiors. Her repeated protest "I'm a good girl, I am." Is to assert her dignity
in the face of those, who, she (mistakenly) thinks, are trying to trample upon her.
Nonetheless, she has her own brand of snobbery. When she rides in a taxi, she wants
to show it to everyone. At Higgins's house she wants Mrs. Pearce to tell him that she
came in a taxi. When the arrangements for Eliza's stay there are finalized and she is
initiated in her new life, she says: "I should just like to take a taxi to the comer of
Tottenham Court road and get out there and tell it to wait Ibr me, just to put the girls
in their place a bit. I wouldn't speak to them you know." Higgins rightly reprimands
her: "you shouldn't cut your old friends now that you have risen in the world. That's
what we calls snobbery." (p.234).

Mrs. Pearce is so contemptuous of Eliza and her father because they belong to the
working class. She tells EIiggins about Eliza, "She's quite a common girl, Sir. Very
Comn~onindeed. I should have sent her away,.. ."(p.210). When Eliza says to him,
"don't be silly," Mrs. Pickering rebukes her "you mustn't speak to the gentleman like
that."(p.213). Later, as Doolittle leaves, "He takes off his hat to Mrs. Pearce, who
disdains the salutation and goes out.. ."(p.234). Even the polite man, Pickering asks
him to sit on the floor: "the floor is yours, Mr. Doolittle," (P.228).

It is on account of the conventions of the class system that Eynsford Hills have to
endure a shabby existence in genteel poverty. Mrs. Hill has "the manners and habits
that disqualify a fine lady fiom earning her own living without giving her a fine lady's
income"(p.250). Freddy and Clara cannot have suitable jobs. Clara's situation "had
prevented her fiom getting educated, because the only education she could have
afforded was education with the Earls court green grocer's daughter. It had led her to
seek the society of her mother's class: and that class simply would not have her,
because she was much poorer than the green grocer." (p.228). Certain professions
and jobs are below their social class, and when Clara does take up a position, it is in
defiance of the class system.

Similarly, Eliza also faces the larger problem of education-what to do after it-in a
sense, the problem of the end result of liberal education. She, like them, has not been
provided a vocational education, and once she moves up the social ladder by
successfully winning the bet for Higgins, she cannot go back to her work of selling
flowers on the pavement. What can she do? Mrs. Higgins reiterates the problem that
Mrs. Pearce had noticed earlier: "the problem of what is to be done with her
 Bgmalion: Themes
afterwards" (p.250). Eliza herself asks Higgins after her success: "What am I fit for? and Issues
What have you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What arn I to do? Whats to

After Eliza and Freddy get married and set up a flower shop-after much prevarication,
they are unfit to run it. "Freddy, like all youths educated at cheap, pretentious, and
thoroughly inefficient schools, knew a little Latin"...unfortunately, he knew nothing
else:" (p 291-92). He did not have the slightest knowledge of accounts or business:
"Colonel Pickering had to explain to him what a cheque book and a bank account
meant" (p.292).

The play also highlights the fact that there are certain things that the working class
people are deprived of, which affect the quality of their lives. Thus Higgins
observes: "a woman of that class looks a worn out drudge of fifty a year after she's
married." (p.216). As Eliza points out, working class women do not ''clean"
themselves because bathing is no joy for them: "Now I know why ladies is so clean.
Washing's a treat for them. Wish they saw what it is for the like of me!" (p.232)
When she first comes to his house, Higgins exclaims, "she's so deliciously low-so
horribly dirty"(p.215). Her transformation is paitly one from a dirty slovenly
"baggage" to a clean, well-groomed woman.

Related to class distinction is the question of manners and discrimination in our

behaviour towards people of different classes and stations. Higgins treats Eliza like
dirt. She appropriately tells.him: "Well, if you was a gentleman, you might ask me to
sit down," and Higgins responds by asking Pickering: "shall we ask this baggage to
sit down, or shall we throw her out of the window?" (p.212). In fact, he wants to put
her in the dustbin. Even after her grand success at the party at which people mistake
her for a "Duchess", when he rails at her, he calls her a "guttersnipe." Surprisingly,
he tells Pickering: "Here I am, a shy, diffindent sort of man. Ive never been able to
feel really grown up and tremendous like other chaps." (p.224).

Swearing is also a part of Higgins's bad manners. When he asks Mrs. Pearce "What
the devil do you mean?" she responds: "[stolidly] That's what I mean, sir. You swear
a great deal too much. I don't mind your damning and blasting, and what the devil
and where the devil and who the devil." (p.223). His mother tells her that his
language "would be quite proper - say on a canal barge" and Pickering supports her;
"I haven't heard such language as yours since we used to review the volunteers in
Hyde Park twenty years ago." (p.247).

In contrast the manners of colonel Pickering are uniformly pleasant. Eliza is deeply
touched when he calls her "Miss Doolittle" and extends to her the courtesies normally
I reserved for ladies. She aptly remarks; "it was from you that I learnt really nice
I manners: and that is what makes me a lady, isn't it?" (p.269). She reiterates, "you
\ thought and felt about me as if I were something better than a scullery - maid; though
of course I know you would have been just the same to a scullery-maid if she had
I been let into the drawing room." (p.270).
T'
I The following discussion about manners not only sums up the contrast but also
1
I
I provides another important twist to it.

"HIGGINS.. .My manners are exactly the same as Colonel Pickerings's.

I
LIZA. That's not true. He treats a flower girl as if she was a duchess.

HIGGINS. And I treat a duchess as if she was a flower girl."

He reiterates "the great secret Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or
any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human
I souls." (p.274).
So Shaw extends the discussion to the larger issue of equality and social differences.
Implied in Eliza's transformation is the premise that given the opportunities, anyone
can cross the class barriers.

There is also an assumption that this social climbing is not always desirable as the
working class life style is not invariably inferior to that of the middle class and the
upper class. In fact, Doolittle implies that the "middle class morality" is
inappropriate for the lower class poor: "what is middle class morality? Just an excuse
for never giving me anything."(p,230). When he comes back transformed as a
"respectable' man, he blames Higgins for his miserable plight: "Ruined me.
Destroyed my happiness. Tied me up and delivered me into the hands of middle
class morality."(p.263). He elaborates; I' I was happy. I was free. I touched pretty
nigh everybody for money when I wanted it, same as I touched you, Henry Higgins.
Now I am woiried: tied neck and heels; and everybody touches lne for money."
(p.264). Now he and Eliza's "step mother" are forced to marry each other.
"Intimidated, Governor. Intimidated Middle class morality claims its victim.''
(p.272). He was never married to Eliza's mother because "that aint the natural way,
colonel: it's only the middle class way." (p.272). He has lived with numerous
women without getting married to any of them. None of Eliza's six "step-mothers1
was married to him till he is forced by his new station to many the last one,

He also attacks the so called morality of the affluent thriving on the family savings
without doing any work:. "Don't you be afraid that I'll save it and spare it and live
idle on it. There won't be a penny of it left by Monday: I'll have to go to work same
as if I'd never had it." (p.230-31).

Doolittle as a character is far from a stereotype and in many ways a very "Shavian"
creation. He is the uniquely shavian character who has the capacity to subvert all our
traditional ways of thinking and make all our conventional beliefs-especiallyour
moral ideals-stand on their heads, giving us exactly the opposite of what we expect as
he does with middle class morality. When he first enters the stage, he "seems equally
free from fear and conscience." At the same time, he has a A habit of giving vent to
his feelings without reserve. His present pose is that of wounded honour and stern
resolution."(p.225). when non-plussed by Higgins's response, he shows the full range
of his "natural gift of rhetoric" as he says "I'm willing to tell you. I'm wanting to tell
you. I'm waiting to tell you." (p.226). It is his eloquence that partly accounts for
Higgins's approbation and his enduring popularity with the audience.

His family surname "Doolittle "provides a clue as much to his character as to his
daughter Eliza's. If he does little by way of hard, constructive work, she can do little
by way of earning her living after her transformation.

2.4 MAN-WOMAN RELATIONSHIPS IN THE

PLAY;HIGGINGSfS MOTNER-FIXATION AND I

OEDIPUS COMPLEX: HIGGINS -ELIZA

EQUATION; ELIZA, THE FIGHTER AND THE

The moral issues in the play include Shaw's views on man-woman relationship and
the attitudes of several characters towards the opposite sex. As usual Shaw has his
share of witticisms and paradoxical statements on the matter. When Pickering asks
Higgins, "are you a man of good character where women are concerned?" he replies:
"[moodily} Have you ever met a man of good character where women are
concemed?"(p.221). Higgins is a confirmed bachelor who resists the erotic incursion
of any woman in his life. He comments: "women upset everything. When you let
 Pj,~maCinrr:Tllcrnes I
them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you're driving and Iswes
at another.' (p.221). He elaborates, "I suppose the woman wants to live her own life;
and the mail wants to live his; and each tries to drag the other onto the wrong track.''
(p.221-22) In fact, he is totally indifferent to their sexual charm: "I'm seasoned.
They might as well be blocks of wood. I might as well be a block of wood."(p.222).
Shaw in his description states, "But as to Higgins,the only distinction, he makes i
between men and women is that when 11e is neither bullying nor exclaiming to the
heavens against some feather weight cross, he coaxes woinen as a child coaxes its
nurse, when it wants to get anything out of her."(p.2 11).
I

The clue to Higgins's bachelorhood lies in his mother-fixa11l)a. When Mrs. Higgins
says, "Well, you never fall in love with anyone under forty=iive. When will you
discover that there are some rather nice-looking young women about?," her son
replies, "Oh, I can't be bothered with young women. My idea of a lovable women is
something as like you as possible." (p.237). It is this mother-fixation that prevents
him from having a "normal" relationship with a woman. Shaw corroborates this:
"when Higgins excused his indifference to young women on the ground that they had
an irresistible rival in his mother, he gave the clue to his inveterate old-bachelordom,"
(p.282-83). He adds: "If an imaginative boy has a sufficiently rich mother who has
intelligence, personal grace, dignity of character without harshness, and a cultivated
sense of the best art of her time to enable her to make her house beautiful, she sets a
standard for him against which very few women can struggle, besides effecting for
him a disengagement of his affections, his sense of beauty and his idealism fiom his
specifically sexual impulses." (p.283).

This aspect of Higgins which the Freudians would call his "oedipus complex" also
has parallels in Shaw's own life-a fact which Colin Wilson in his book, Benzard
Shaw: A Reassessment~corroborates.It has been well known that George Carr Shaw,
the father of Bernard Shaw, hardly mattered in the family and the children had
centered their lives round their mother Mrs. Lucinda Elizabeth Shaw. Colin Wilson
writes: "Percy smith has argued convincingly that he not only idolised his mother, but
that all the women in his play from Candida on are mother figures."3 His first
mistress was Jenny Patterson, a widow fifteen years his senior and a friend of his
mother. In his wife, to quote Wilson "What Shaw wanted was a mother figure." At
the age of forty one, in July 1897 says in his letter to Ellen Terry that he wants to
marry "a reasonably healthy woman of about sixty" who "must be plain feat~red."~ It
is also widely believed that Shaw's own marriage to charlotte Payne townshend who
very much resembled Lucinda Elizabeth Gurley was never consummated. Whereas
Shaw as a bachelor found sexual release through atleast two women, Jenny Patterson
and the actress Florence Farr (who was the "right age"), Higgins remained a
confirmed bachelor.

/ Higgins's relationship with Eliza has engendered a variety of responses from critics,
i directors, viewers and readers. Maurice Valency, says in The Cart and the Trumpet
that Pygmalion like Caesar arid Cleopatra-and Man and Superman-shows the tension
' . between the man who is devoted to his work and the woman who is interested in
emotional ties. Shaw adds a long afterword to the play to suggest that Eliza, instead
1
i of marrying Higgins, chooses Freddy and lives happily ever after with him. The film
version, on the other hand, ends with Eliza's return to the Professor. Many readers
also feel that Shaw is mistaken in separating her from Higgins. Is our playwright
justified in his conclusion? Are Higgins and Eliza Compatible?

We observe that Higgins is "Careless about himself and other people, including their
feelings." (p.210), and Eliza is too sensitive and selfirespecting to tolerate this
attitude. She insists on being treated with respect. When she encounters Higgins for
the first time and observes him taking notes, she incessantly asserts that she is a good
girl, repeatedly saying "I'm a good girl, I am."In Act 11, whcn she goes to Higgins's
place, she has her'' innocent vanity and consequential air" (p.211). Naturally she
resents the brutal treatment she receives from Higgins and she never allows him to
Pygmalion walk over her. Her protest becomes quite pronounced after she wins his bet, and he
responds to all her efforts by simply expressing his sense of relief that everything is
over. She explodes by throwing her slippers at him and trying to scratch his face with
her nails. She cannot accept the fact that she is merely a common ignorant girl to hinl
and there cannot be any feeling between them.

Higgins cannot understand that she has violently retaliated because she is deeply hurt
by his and colonel Pickering's indifference to her. He tells her: "It is you who have
hit me. You have wounded me to the heart" (p.259). Eliza has a sense of triumph
and the power equation now changes with her acquiring a better status and never
letting go her new position of strength. She is crystal clear: "I won't be passed
over"(p.275). Surprisingly Higgins appeals to her emotions: "I shall miss you, Eliza"
... "I have grown accustomed to your voice and appearance. I like than, rather."
Eliza replies coolly: "Well, you have both of them on your gramophone and in you
book of photographs. When you feel lonely without me, you can turn the machine
on. It's got no feelings to hurt." (p.275).

At the same time, Higgins would not play the sentimental lover and Eliza does not
want him to:-

"HIGGINS. In short, you want me to be as infatuated about you as Freddy? Is that

it?

LIZA. No I don't. That's not the sort of feeling I want fiom you." (p.278).

She goes on to add: "I want a little kindness. I h o w I'm a common ignorant girl,
and you a book-learned gentleman; but I'm not dirt under your feet." She reiterates:
-
"I come-came to care for you: not to want you to make love to me, and not
forgetting the difference between us but more friendly like." (p.278). This, however,
makes no impression on Higgins. He simply says "That's just how I feel. And how
Pickering feels. Eliza: youre a fool." (p.278). They are not after all going to many
each other.

At the same time, Higgins is quite jealous of Freddy. When he objects to Freddy
writing love letter to Eliza three times a day, he is being quite possessive of the girl.
Tracy c. Davis traces another parallel in Shaw's life-his relationship with Mrs.Patick
Campbell: "He functioned as Higgins, the self-styled benef~ctorof CampbelVEliza,
thwarted by her preference for a younger, less intellectual inan, Cornwallis-
wes#Freddy. "'
Shaw is not altogether wrong in his epilogue: "Eliza's instinct tells her not to marry
Higgins. It does not tell her to give him up." (p.282). He goes on to refer to "her
resentment of Higgins's domineering superiority, and her mistrust of his coaxing
cleverness in getting round her and evading her wrath when he had gone too far with
his im*petuousbullying." (284).

Most readers with their conventional ideas of man-woman relationship say that
Freddy is too weak to attract the strong-willed Eliza and she would much rather have
Higgins. Shaw, however feels: "Eliza has no use for the foolish romantic tradition
that all women love to be mastered, if not actually bullied and beaten."(p.284). He
further says: "the man or woman who feels strong enough for two, seeks for every
other quality in partner than strength." (p.285). So Eliza is not thrown overboard by
the strength of Higgins, and yet, Shaw concedes that "she has even secret
mischievous moments in which she wishes she could get him alone, on a desert
island, away fiom all ties and with nobody else in the world to consider, and just drag ,
him off his pedestal and see him making love like any common man. We all have
private imaginations of that sort. But when it comes to business, to the life that she
really leads as distinguished from the life of dreams and fancies, she likes Freddy and
she likes the Colonel; and she does not like Higgins and Mr. Doolittle. Galatea never
 does quite like Pygmaliorz: his relation to her is too godlike to be altoge,ther Pygrtraliorr: Themes
agreeable." (p.295). and Isslaes

~liza-Higginsrelationship also has ovel-tonesof an oedipal situation. When he tries

to bully her on her first arrival at his place, she reacts by pointing out: "One would
think you was my father." Higgins replies. "If I decide to teach you, I'll be worse
than two fathers to you" (p.214). Much later, he tells her: "I'll adopt you as my
daughter and settle money on you if you like. Or would you rather marry Pickering?"
In response, Eliza explodes; "I wouldn't marry you if you asked me; and youre nearer
my age than what he is." (p.277). There is a gap of atleast twenty years between
them and those readers/syectators who want Eliza to many Higgins are aware of the

II possibility of the young girl falling for a father figure.

To an extent, Eliza also represents the Shavian Life Force and moderate kind of
Feminism. We have already seen how assertive she is and how she refuses to be
treated as "dirt under anyone's feet." She asserts: "I won't be called a baggage when
Ive offered to pay like anybody." (p.212). She is also impelled by the driving energy
that leads life upwards. She has the will and the ambition to go up in the world and
she learns things with an astonishing rapidity.

Eliza, moreover is not willing to accept the humble subservient position that a woman
is normally assigned in the human society. As we observed earlier, Shaw denies the
view that women love to be mastered and bullied, even beaten. Eliza prefers the
weaker Freddy, who adores her and whom she can dominate to the masterful Higgins
when it comes to marriage. On that fateful night after the party, once she refuses to
cany Higgins's slippers and act as his persoital secretary, his own attitude towards her
changes. Now he encourages her to play the assertive role He may not sound very
convincing when he says: "I think a woman fetching a man's slippers is a disgusting
sight: ... I think a good deal more of you for throwing them in my face.. . who cares
for a slave?" (p.276). Nevertheless everything changes that night, and Eliza seldom
reverts to the earlier situation. Later "he storms and bullies and derides: but she .
stands up to him so ruthlessly.. ." (p.294). So in a way she represents a feminist who
would not play the subservient role to any man, let alone accept the position of a
doormat.

2.5 LET US SUM UP

In this unit, we initiated our analysis of the themes in Pygmaliolz with a glance at
Shaw's concern with English speech and phonetics, observing Higgins's abilities in
phonetics and his transformation of a flower girl into a Duchess by creating a new
speech for her. As we noticed, one's speech and accent are indicators of one's class,
Subsequently we engaged Shaw's critique of snobbery, and the snobbish variation in
our manners for people of different classes. He also finds faults with other
manifestations of class-consciousness such as non-vocational liberal education for the
upper class and those upper class conventions that prevent one form earning one's
living.

In our study of man-woman relationship, we observed how Higgins's mother fixation,

which comes close to Oedipus complex, prevents him from getting erotically
involved with any young woman and thus accounts for his lack of interest in Eliza.
Moreover, Eliza cannot accept his rough treatment of her and marries Freddic, who is
much nicer. We also saw how Eliza's determination to fight for her rights against
Higgins, the male bully can suggest the feminist angle in her make up.

References

1. George Bernard Shaw, Complete Plays with Prejioces (New York: Dodd,
Mead, 1962), I 191.
 All the quotations from the play are from this edition (Volume I), and
subsequently page numbers are given in parentheses.

2. Colin Wilson writes: "L,eecaused something of a scandal among his upper

class pupils in Lor~donwhen he tried to pass off his l~ousemaidas one of
them- an incident that sounds like the origin of Pygrnaliolz."

See
Bernard Shaw: A Reassessmei~t(1969; London: Macmill~n,1981) 09.

3. Bernard Shaw: A Reas,sessment-28.

4. As quoted in Colin Wilson, Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment 127. The

quotation form Wilson himself is on the same page.

5. George Bernard Shaw and the Socialist Theatre (Westport, Conn: Preager,
1994) 93.

2.6 QUESTIONS

1. What according to Shaw are the social implications of different accents and
modes of English speech?

2. Can Higgins effect a transformation in Doolittle similar to the one he has

brought about in Eliza?

3. How does Shaw denounce social snobbery and class distinctions?

4. What are the views of Shaw on the relevance of liberal education and its
practical utility?

5. How do the Eynsford Hills suffer on account of their superior birth i.e. their
upper class background? Z

6. Do you approve of the manners of Henry Higgins? Do you feel that because
he is exceptionally talented, he has the right to ride roughshod over other
people's feelings

7. Is Doolittle an attractive character? Are you in substantial agreement with

his critique of middle class morality?

8. Give arguments for and against the view that Higgins is a case of Oedipus -
complex.

9. Who in your opinion should marry Eliza? Higgins or Freddy? Justify your
answer.

10. In Eliza- Higgins conflicts, who has your sympathy and why?

11. Is Eliza's assertiveness ridiculous, or does it strike a chord in the reader?

 UNIT 3 DRA TIC f3TRUCTURlEAND
MINGLING OF GENWES
Structure
3.0 Objectives
3.1 Introduction
3.2 The Dramatic Structure of Pygmalion
3.3 The genre of the play; Elements of Romance, Comedy and Novel
3.4 Let Us Sum Up
3.5 Questions

3.0 OBJECTIVES

This unit will acquaint you with two crucial aspects of the "forum" of the play: its
dramatic structure and the mingling of the genres of comedy, romance and novel.

3.1 INTRODUCTION

Pyg~nalion,which drarnatises a Greek myth has an apparently unconventional form

but certain structural principles can be perceived here such as a "thematic" division of
the play into five acts and their neat sequencing, and comparison and contrast of
parallel characters and events. The preface is more relevant to Pygmalion than the
typical Shavian preface, but the epilogue is to a great extent an imposition on the play
and contrary to the rules of dramatic composition. The play has the framework of a
romance but it is interspersed with unromantic elements. At the same time, it uses
several comic conventions and introduces novelistic element. In this unit, we shall
initially examine the structure of the play and then explore how Shaw combines
features of the conventional romance with certain comic conventions and a few
typically fictional devices.

1 3.2 THE DRAMATIC STRUCTURE OF PYGMALION

1 Pygmnlion is a Shavian reworking of the myth of Pygm~lionand Galatea. In the

original myth, Pygmalion, the king of Cyprus, also a sculptor created the ivory statue
of a lovely woman which was so beautiful that he fell in love with her. At his
I request, aphrodite, the Goddes of love and beauty transformed the statue into an
I
actual woman, Galatea by breathing life into her. The two got married and lived
happily ever after. Shaw's Pygmalion, Professor Higgins similarly "Creates" his own
, Galatea as he transforms Eliza, a common, ignorant, slovenly flower girl into a
I! marvellous duchess by creating a new speech for her and with the help of Pickering
I and Mrs. Pearce giving her new manners and a new life style. So she is his creation -
/ the new Eliza is the Galatea that Pygrnalion has sculpted. However in Shaw's
version, Pygmalion does not fall in love with her and she marries someone else - the
i typical Shavian twist. $Jaw, as we shall see later, has the habit of giving us the
1 reverse of what we expect. In unit 11, we observed at length Shaw's reasons for
Higgins not marrying Eliza. Nevertheless the parallel with the myth makes the play
more resonant by introducing another frame of reference.
 All the quotations from the play are from this edition (Volume I), and
subsequently page numbers are given in parenfheses.

2. Colin Wilson writes: "Lee caused something of a scandal among his upper
class pupils in London when he tried to pass off his housemaid as one of
them- an incident that sounds like the origin of figrrtalion."

See
Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment (1969; London: Macmillan, 1981) 09.

3. Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment-28.

4. As quoted in Colin Wilson, Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment 127. The

quotation form Wilson himself is on the same page.

5. George Bernard Shaw and the Socialist Theatre (Westport, Conn: Preager,
1994) 93.

1. What according to Shaw are the social implications of different accents and
modes of English speech?

2. Can Higgins effect a transformation in Doolittle similar to the one he has

brought about in Eliza?

3. How does Shaw denounce social snobbery and class distinctions?

4. What are the views of Shaw on the relevance of liberal education and its
practical utility?

5. How do the Eynsford Hills suffer on account of their superior birth i.e. their
. I
upper class background? ->

6. Do you approve of the manners of Henry Higgins? Do you feel that because
he is exceptionally talented, he has the right to ride roughshod over other
people's feelings

7. Is Doolittle an attractive character? Are you in substantial agreement with

his critique of middle class morality?

8. Give arguments for and against the view that Higgins is a case of Oedipus -
complex.

9. Who in your opinion should marry Eliza? Higgins or Freddy? Justify your
answer.

10, In Eliza- Higgins conflicts, who has your sympathy and why?

11. Is Eliza's assertiveness ridiculous, or does it strike a chord in the reader?

 UNIT 3 DWMATIC STRUCTURE AND
MINGLING OF GENRES
Structure
3.0 Objectives
3.1 Introduction
3.2 The Dramatic Structure of Pygmalion
3.3 The genre of the play; Elements of Romance, Comedy and Novel
3.4 Let Us Sum Up
3.5 Questions

3.0 OBJECTIVES

This unit will acquaint you with two crucial aspects of the "forum" of the play: its
dramatic structure and the mingling of the genres of comedy, romance and novel.

3.1
-
INTRODUCTION

Pygmalion, which dramatises a Greek myth has an apparently unconventional form

but certain structural principles can be perceived here such as a "thematic" division of
the play into five acts and their neat sequencing, and comparison and contrast of
parallel characters and events. The preface is more relevant to Pygmalion than the
typical Shavian preface, but the epilogue is to a great extent an imposition on the play
and contrary to the rules of dramatic composition. The play has the framework of a
romance but it is interspersed with unromantic elements. At the same time, it uses
several comic conventions and introduces novelistic element. In this unit, we shall
initially examine the structure of the play and then explore how Shaw combines
features of the conventional romance with certain comic conventions and a few
typically fictional devices.

3.2 THE DRAMATIC STRUCTURE OF PYGMALION

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Pygmalion is a Shavian reworking of the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea. In the
original myth, Pygmalion, the king of Cyprus, also a sculptor created the ivory statue
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of a lovely woman which was so beautiful that he fell in love with her. At his
i request, aphrodite, the Goddes of love and beauty transformed the statue into an
actual woman, Galatea by breathing life into her. The two got married and lived
happily ever after. Shaw's Pygmalion, Professor Higgins similarly "Creates" his own
I Galatea as he transforms Eliza, a common, ignorant, slovenly flower girl into a
marvellous duchess by creating a new speech for her and with the help of Pickering
and Mrs. Pearce giving her new'manners and a new life style. So she is his creation -
I the new Eliza is the Galatea that Pygmalion has sculpted. However in Shaw's
version, Pygmalion does not fall in love with her and she marries someone else - the
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typical Shavian twist. $haw, as we shall see later, has the habit of giving us the
reverse of what we expect. In unit 11, we observed at length Shaw's reasons for
Higgins not marrying Eliza. Nevertheless the parallel with the myth makes the play
more resonant by introducing another frame of reference,
 Shaw has used the five act structure common to English drama from the renaissance
to the Romantic period to dramatize his version of the myth. There are no
subdivisions of the Acts into scenes and each Act marks a stage in Eliza's .
transformation. In Act I, Higgins observes in Eliza's presence that by giving her a
new speech he can convert her into a Duchess and this creates the desire in her to
transfom herself. So with Eliza approaching IIiggins in Act 11, the process is
initiated. He takes Eliza to his mother, Mrs. Higgins in the third act to observe how
she interacts with others in polite society - a test case. The fourth act is the
culmination of the process and its immediate fall out: Eliza is seen with Higgins and
Pickering after the successfid party. Finally in the last act, Eliza, who had "bolted", is
retraced at Mrs. Higgin's place where she works out new terms and conditions with
Higgins and Pickering about her future.

The play has certain structural patterns. Thus the scenery alternates from a location
outside Higgins' house to its interior. We move from Covent Garden to his laboratory
in Wimpole Street to Mrs. Higgins's drawing room in Chelsea, back to the laboratory
and finally again to Mrs. Higgins's room, thus constantly relating the work in
phonetics to the larger world. Again within each Act, there is a pattern of arrivals
and departures except for the fourth act which is set indoors late in the evening and
naturally therefore cannot involve visitors. In each act, usually the characters at the
beginning stay till the end, thus imparting unity and continuity to the scene even as
the others come and go. Shaw also intermingles the two three characters' intense
interactions of Acts I1 and IV set at Higgin's house with the more social group scenes
of Acts I and I11 providing us with the larger picture of society. There is also a
careful time arrangeinent with Acts I and I1 in continuatioil, showing the beginning of
the process of transformation, Act III coming a little later to indicate its middle and
Acts IV and V which sl~owthe end of the process again in continuation.

The characters are also neatly arranged in parallel to highlight their distinctive
features. Thus Higgins and Pickering constitute the central pair of the plot. They are
both phoneticians, both confinned bachelors, both rich gentlemen interested in
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experimenting on Eliza her possible transformation into a "duchess". However, as
we have seen whereas Higgins is rude and unbearable, Pickering is polite and
g'entlemanly. EIiggins is inconsiderate and rough, whereas Pickering is kind and
generous. Higgins is also, as we have seen a parallel to and contrasted with Freddy.
Between these two possible husbands for Eliza, Higgins, a bully and a tyrant is
contrasted with Freddy, a "softy" and a weakling. Moreover, Higgins's indifference
to her is opposed to Freddy's loving adoration for her. Furthermore, Higgins is at the
pinnacle of his profession, whereas Freddy fails to even earn his living.

Their mothers also are studies in contrast. Mrs. Eynsford Hill is basically a "soft"
person who tolerates her daughter Clara's rude and ungracious behaviour almost as a
helpless onlooker. She appreciates her son Freddy but is unable to do anything for
him. Essentially she is an ineffective mother who cannot give a sense of direction to
her children's lives. Mrs. Higgins, who has an independent life of her own, lives
away from her sons, partly because they are grown up and settled. It is interesting
that although Henry Higgins mentions to Doolittle that he has a brother who is a
clergy man, his name never crops up at his n~other'snor is he ever seen there. Mrs.
Higgins is unfailingly critical of her son Henry's ill manners but she has failed to
impart to him proper manners and to make a real "gentleman" of him. Her
dominating personality and her son's adoration of her has only resulted in his
remaining a bachelor, as we have seen in an earlier unit. Both these mothers also
serve as foils to the third parent in the play i.e. Alfred Doolittle. There is no love lost
between the father and the daughter. To Doolittle, his daughter Eliza is immaterial:
he is utterly indifferent to her, and he only uses his relationshi8to her to "touch"
people for money.

The only siblings presented on the stage are also opposites of each other. Whereas
Clare is rude, unbearable and ill-mannered, Freddy is sofr; polite and pleasant. Clara
 is looking for a matrimonial prospect, but Freddy falls in love with Eliza at first sight Dramatic Structure and
without weighing and considering the pros and cons of marrying her. Mingling of Genres

~ 0 t Higgins
h and Pickering are contrasted with Mrs. Pearce, the other inmate of the
house. The housekeeper, who is prim, proper and snobbish, disapproves of Henry
Higgins's unkempt behaviour and unconventional ways. She is opposed to social
,quality and has a "practical" way of looking at the whole experiment on Eliza,
unlike the dreamers Higgins and Pickering.

Eliza herself is contrasted with her father. She has the ambition to rise socially and to
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improve her economic status unlike Doolittle who resents being catapulted into the
, class of a "gentleman" against his wishes. He enjoys his working class situation,
I habits and mores unlike Eliza who finds them degrading.
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In fact, in the play, there is a structural parallel between the two transformations and
also the reactions of the persons transformed in the process. 111a larger sense, the
implication is that social climbing is not exceptional as it occurs here in more than
one case-one woman and one man-one young woman and one middle aged man.
However, it may not be desirable in every case.
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The play has a significant absentee character in the form of Eliza's "step-mother" a -
I lady who never appears on the stage but who is mentioned every time Doolittle
comes or every time Eliza talks of her life with her "parents". Making her a character
in the play, would have meant introducing a sub-plot and lengthening the already
long five act play, making it more diffuse. Mrs. Doolittle could also have brought her
1
I own point of view to the play and either increased.or reduced the sympathy for Eliza,
I depending, of course, on the way in which Shaw conceived her character. Her being
~ an absentee character preserves her mystery and the audience's curiosity about it. At
the same time, one cannot do without all the references to Mrs Doolittle, which do
make us aware of the larger world and broaden the social references and range of the
play
Shaw has also deleted scenes from an earlier draft. In one of the editions, there is a
garden party scene where we meet several interesting social lions, pubic figures and
an expert in phonetics. Shaw has omitted this scene from the later edition of the
plays. What has S11aw gained in the process, and what has he lost? Obviously the
gain is, first of all, in economy. Secondly, he shows Eliza in "social" scene may be
unnecessary. Moreover, Eliza's transformation may be difficult to show on the stage
and is better reported. It is also interesting that Shaw does not dramatize the actual
lessons. Perhaps that has been done to prevent tedious scenes which may get quite
dull and technical for an audience of non-specialists.
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Our play is incomplete without the preface and the epilogue. In general, a preface
explains the meaning of a work of art, or points out the origin and the sources of the
play. Often it comments on the reception of the play by the audience and the critics.
1 It also provides the details needed to appreciate the play fully. However, a Shavian
play frequently pursues a line of argument that is quite tangential to the play.
I Nevertheless, here Shaw is careful enough to take up in the Preface issues which are
1 developed in the play. Thus he begins with comments on English speech, then he
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dilates on the career of Henry Sweet, who is partly a model of Higgins.
1 Subsequently, he makes a statement about Pygmalion that leads to his philosophy of
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playwriting. "It is so intensely and deliberately didactic and its subject is esteemed so
dry, that I delight in throwing it at the head of the wiseacres who repeat the parrot cry
1 that art should never be didactic. It goes to prove my contention that art should never
be anything else".' Finally he points out that transformations like Eliza's are not
impossible in real life. So the preface, which performs the traditional roles expected
a of it and contains Shaw's credo, is carefully related to what happens in the play.

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The epilogue obviously i s aimed at convincing us that Eliza should not rna?.Ty
Mipgins. In the process, it also narrates what happened stibsequently to not only
Eliza an,d F~ed(3.yhut also Clara. ; l i ~our disanssim o f n~an-womanrelationship in the
p!ny in the earlier unit, we have already obsnvcd lo what an extent, Shaw is justified
w F,liza, s'nrpiiild 1-naP.r-jFretddy rather khan Wiggins. A. pojxzt which
in his ~ e that
sho~ddbe made here is tilat a play ilsun1l-y does not lzavo an epilog~~e of this kind. A
dramatist rnrlst convey ttlsough i;11,edialogues what he has to say. O b ~ ~ o u s lSg 1, . n ~
feels thw~;he has fai1,ed t~ do so thoragh th.e five acts and consequently he has to write
e poir~t.Moreover, the epilog," of an earlia, say all
the epilogue to m ~ k his
eighteenth cerrtm:y English play 1i.k The ,School,forScandal can he spoken to the
audience by an actor or BE).actd'e~s~vhi(:his imp~ssiblt:in Pygmalioiz. So clearly only
the reader and not tlrc ai,~dienceca.il benefit fic~rmthe epilogaee. In this sense, it is a
stmctural flaw in the play.

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3.3 THE GENR-E 6 P THE PLAY: ELEMENTS F
ROMANCE,_ COMEDY AND NOVEL- - --- -....-,..,--. l-.
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m e fonn of the play is pax-tly governed by Shaw calling it a "romance in five acts'.
Shaw begins his epilogue by saying "The rest of the story need not be shown in
action, and indeed, would hardly need telling if our imaginations were not so
enfeebled by the ready-made and reach-me-downs of the ragshop in which Romance
keeps its stock of 'happy endings' to misfit all stories. Now, the history of Eliza
Doolittle, though called a romance because the transfiguration it record. seems
exceedingly improbable is common enough."(p.281). The statement does not really
negate what we concluded just now that the epilogue is a "structural flaw" in the play,
but it does support the view that several other elements id the play can be better
appreciated in the light of the conventions of Romance, although it does not have he
traditional happy ending. AsColin Wilson wrote, Pygrnalion is perhaps his frankest
use of romanticism - disguised as anti-r~manticism,''~ We naturally have at the heart
of the story the transfiguration of Eliza and the parallel change in her father.
Interestingly each of them reacts with great shock at observing the change in the
appearance of the other. Doolittle mistakes his daughter for a "lady" to whom he
shows deference, and Eliza is completely taken by surprise and utters those sounds
which she thought she had left behind her after her education began. The element of
romance and fairy tale - Eliza's transformation providing a somewhat O ironical parallel
to that of Cinderella imparts to the story elements of coincidence. Thus it is a
coincidence that Eliza. Higgins, Pickering, Mrs. Eynsford Mill and her two children
meet at the Covent Garden under the portico of St. Paul's Church on a summer
evening on which it is raining heavily. It is also a coincidence that Eliza meets Mrs.
Eynsford Hill, Clara and Freddy at Mrs. Higgins's at home. It is another coincidence
that Doolittle visits Eliza and Higgins precisely on the days on which she starts her
"education" and on which she "bolts" after winning the bet for Higgins but being
ignored and neglected by him.

Lightning and thunder orchestrate Freddy's first meeting with Eliza, again in the
manner of a romance. As he collides with her, "A blinding flash of lightning
followed instantly by a rattling peal of thunder, orchestrates the incident." (p.198).

There is a magical element also in Higgins placing everyone in his or her "locality"
and accurately construing the person's background by listening to a few sentences
spoken by him or her. He appears a wizard to these people. In fact, it further
contributes to the very dramatic beginning of the play, created by "." (p.197), thus
torrents of heavy summer rain, cab whistles blowing franctically in all directions.
Pedestrians running for shelter adding to the sensational element of romance, all
reinforcing the view that we get here an ironic parallel to the story of Cinderella - the
poor girl with a vicious "step-mother" and an indifferent father suddenly acquiring
wealth and marrying a Prince.
comic conventions Dramatic Structure and
Mingling of Genres
The miraculous conversions in the play are also related to the use of comic
conventions. As Not-throp Frye mentions in his essay on comedy, 'Wythos of
SpriilgM,imnlfkely conversions miraculous transformatiom and providential assistanr:e
. ~as to bring about the expected happy ending.
are inseparable from ~ o m e d yso
However, there is a twist here as the sudden. cnn;rioh.naentof E1i.z~or her f~.tl,~er
dlses
not bring about the desired. effect. As we have seen in aan1t 2,I-looliltlr: is geav,inely
unhappy about his new social status and the responsibilities it enlt~ils.Sitnilarly Eiiaa
does not acquire the wealth or the social sl:at~~.s
of a duchess or even a rich comxrones.

Sha1r.r also makes use of the convention. o f comic reversal.. Tlixlns Dsolittle is
introduced as fin eminent dustman. I1'01;al.ly amors.lby corrventional standards, l1e is
declnred hy Riggins to a rich An~erican50 b~ 9h.e most original moralist at present in
England' (p-263). People helieve that a mistress fi2el.sjoyow wherr her lover marries
her but Eliza's "Step-mother" i.e. Doa1iii;le's '%ve.,i.nmistxess" is cx.tremely miserable
at the prospect of 1na1:~yi~ig.him. Doo1.ittt.e se3j~.
of her: "'she's been very low, thinking
of the happy ds?y..;that are izo more'"p.273). Earlier, he had canfilmzed this lanusual
power equation by saying: "I'rn a slave tr?that woman governor just because I'm not
her lawful husband" (p.23 1). Similar1.ywl~eiaDool.ittle comes to Higgins to bl.aclua~ail
hiln about Eliza, it is Higgins who bullies him rather than IDoolittle bullying Higgins.
In fact Doolittle, nituch against the conventional. expeckations refbses to take Eliza
back. So there is the typical Shavian comic inversion: we get the reverse of what we
expect. Thus Doolittla, when talking to Higgins, says: "I'll have to learn to speak
iniddle class language from you, instead of speaking proper English." (p.264).
Similarly wlzeil Mrs. Pearce trying to prevent Higgins from doing anything unusual to
Eliza, tells Pickering: "I do hope sir, you wont encourage him to do anything foolish,"
Higgins responds: "What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to
find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn't come every day" (p.215). Similarly
Elizt, tells Higgins and Pickcring "I don't want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a
lady" (218). Soon Mrs. Pearce says "she should think of the future" and. Higgins
responds: "At her age! Nonsense! Time enough to think of the future when you
haven't any future to think of .I' (219) In the same scene, when Pickering tells
Higgins: "she must understand thoroughly what she's doing," he disagrees and
rhetorically asks: "do any of us understand what we are doing? If we did, would we
ever do it?" (p.220) In a sense, each one of these statements contains a grain of truth,
but essentially all of them fit into the larger pattern of comic rever~als.~ Ironically,
however, Shaw even reverses the typical comic ending- the hero does not marry the
heroine. The Shavian twist to the ending, nevertheless, harks back to another comic
convention that of the triumph of youth. Freddy the young man marries Eliza rather
than Higgins or.an olderman marrying her. In a loose sense, the play also provides a
variation of the theme of the comic foreigner. In a conventional comedy the
foreigner is comic partly because of his strange accent and grammar. Shaw by
carefully recreating different accents and ungrammatical structures in Act I and
showing them in a comic light invites laughter that arises from an insight into the
nature of English speech and grammar.

The comic element in the play is mainly verbal but it also includes the comedy of
situation. Thus in Act I, humour arises from Eliza's misunderstanding that Higgins is
a policeman who is taking notes because he is out to arrest her on charges of making
indecent advances to men to solicit them as customers or clients. Similarly in Act 11,
Eliza's washing rather badly: its mousy color can hardly be natural. She wears a
shoddy black coat that reaches nearly to her h e e s and is shaped to the waist. She has
a brown skirt with a coarse apron. Her boots are much the worse for wear. She is no
doubt as claean as she can afford to be, but compared to the ladies she is very dirty.
Her features are no worse than thiers, but their condition leves something to be
desired; and she needs the services of a dentist] (pp. 198-99). It is true that in the
modern period, many dramatists describe the scene, the setting and the appearance of
Pygttr aliott characters at length, for example Ibsen in plays like The Wild Duck and E?edda
Gaher, However, Shaw probes deeper in his own voice and analyses characters in
the stage descriptions, something quite rare in drama. Thus the following description
of Higgins is unusual for a play, especially an earlier play :
"He is of the energetic, scientific type, heartily even violently interested in
everything that can be studied as a scientific subject, and careless about
himself and other people, including their feelings. He is, in fact, but for his
years and size, rather like a very impetuous baby taking notice eagerly and
loudly and requiring almost as much watching to keep him out of unintended
mischief. His manner varies from genial bullying when he is in a g&d
humour to stormy petulance when anything goes wrong; but he is so entirely
frank and void of malice that he remains likeable even in his least reasonable
moments." (pp. 209-10)

Shaw even examines the thoughts of Higgins: "hearing in it the voice of God,
rebuking him for his pharisaic want of charity to the poor girl" (p.207) Finally we
observe the long epilogue which is not characteristic of a play but closer to a part of a
novel.

Thus Shaw has combined in Pygmalion the elements of comedy, romance andnovel
and naturally created a work whose structure cannot follow the conventional
symmetry and neatnes of a "pure" genre.

3.4 LET US SUM UP

In this unit, we initially took cognisance of how Shawls play has a parallel with the
myth of Pygmalion: Higgins is Pygmalion and Eliza is his creation Galatea though
with an altered ending. The myth is couched here in a five act structure with each act
marking a stage in Eliza's "transformation". One organisational scheme is the
alternation'of scenery. We also observed how time is handled here according to a
plan, and there are certain structural patterns in the play. Moreover, the plot is based
on a cont~astof parallel characters such as Higgins and Pickering, Higgins and
Freddy, Mrs. Eynsford Hill and Mrs. Higgins and Mr. Doolittle, Clara and Freddy,
Higgins and Pickering and Mrs. Pearce, Eliza and her father. The play also has a
significant absentee character in Eliza's step-mother. Shaw wrote more than one draft
of the play, and on the whole, the changes in the last draft were for the better. The
preface to the play, unlike the typical Shavian preface is related to the play, but the
epilogue seems to be imposed on it.

The genre of the play includes the element of romance in Eliza's "magical"
transformation, the parallel to cinderella story, the presence of coincidences and a
form of "pathetic fallacy" - nature orchestrating the human mood. On the other hand,
the comic conventions of comic reversal and the comic foreigner are combined with
the unconventional ending. The verbal comedy is interspersed with the comedy of
situation. Finally the play also introduces novelistic techniques such as extended
descriptions of characters, the absence of a list of dramatis personae, and detailed
narration in the writer's own voice at the end that is in the epilogue.

References
1 George Bernard Shaw Compete Plays with Prefaces (New York: Dodd,
Mead, 1962) Vol I 194. All the other references to the text are from this
edition and page numbers are indicated in parentheses.

2.. Colin Wilson, Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment,(l969; London: Macmillion,

1981).
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3. Anato~nyof Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton: prince tot^ Univ. Press, 1957). Dramatic StrWture and
Mingling of Genres
4. Peter Kemp writes in his review of Michael Holroyd's biography Bernard
Shaw Volume I: The Search for Love 1856-1898: "to cope with an
upbringing in which everything seemed topsy-turvy, he adopted paradox as
panacea." See The Listener, 15 September 988, p.29.

3.5 QUESTIONS

1. Does Shaw's use of myth contribute to the enrichment of Pygmalion? Justify

your answer.

2. How do the five acts of the play mark different stages of its plot?

3. What does Shaw achieve through his change of scenery in each act of
Pygmalion?

4, Write an essay on the contrast of characters in the play?

5. Was Shaw justified in dropping scenes like the garden party one fiom
Pygmalion? Would you have liked to see the party on the stage?

6. What impression have you formed of Eliza's "Step mother"? Answer in

detail.

7. Are you.in substantial agreement with what Shaw says in the Epilogue?
Justify your answer. '

8. Do the comic conventions in Pygmalion take away fiom the authenticity of

the characters and the situations?

9. Was haw a romantic? Is the element of romance in the play in harmony

with the "ideology" of Bernard Shaw?

10. Does Shaw's habit of describing and analysing characters and events in his
own words go against the grain of the play by imposing something alien on
.the flow of events?
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UNIvI' 4 LANGllAGE AND STYLE

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Ubjectives
Iritroducfioil
Shaw's Prose style slid dialogues: 'effectiveness of assertion": recreation of
actua, speeches; speech rhythms of characters; literary and ~nusicalallusions;
verbal humour
Critical approaches to Shaw and Screen Responses to Pygmalion
Passages fi*onnihe play for Annotation
Let Us SUIT^ Up
Questions
Suggested Readirig

This unit will f~rsta~~alyse:Shaw's prose style and dialogues in Pygracrlion ii~cluding
individual speecl~rhythms when noticeable of nrajar characters. Subsequenrtly, we
shall look at the reception sf Pygnzalion including film versioiis and significant
criticismi, observing in the process major critical approaches to the play.

4,l INTRODUCTION

Shaw marshals tlie resources of his prose to aim at 'effectiveness of assertion." He

also recreates the actual speeches of his characters by reproducing their granlinar and
pronunciation. Within limits he gives distinct speech rhythms to many of his
dramatist personae, Literary and musical allusions and verbal humour further
contribute towards Shaw's goal.

Shavian criticism has been diverse but a pattern of approaches can be traced there.
With the audience, Pygmalion itself was a modest success, but its "unauthorised"
musical adaptation My Fair Lady was an astonishing box office hit. We would like
you to keep these in mind as you look at Shaw's style and his reception.

4.2 SHAW'S PROSE STYLE AND DIALOGUES:

EFFECTIVENESS OF ASSERTION: RECREATION
OF ACTUAL SPEECHES; SPEECH RHYTHMS OF
CHARACTERS: LITERARY AND MUSICAL
ALLUSIONS; VERBAL HUMOUR

Bernard Shaw in his famous " Epistle Dedicatory to Arthur Bingham Walkley" which
serves as his preface ofMan andsuperman, wrote, "Effectiveness of assertion is the
Alpha and Omega of style. He who has nothing to assert has no style and can have
none: he who hassomething to assert will go as far in power of style as its
momentousness and his conviction will carry him. Disprove his assertion after it is
made, yet its style remains."' Years later, Shaw commented, "I have never aimed at
style in my life: style is a sort of melody that comes into my sentence by itself. If a
writer says what he has to say as accurately and effectively as he can, his style will
 take care of itself, if he has a style."2 Nevertheless, Shaw striyves for this Language and style
ueffectivenuesssf asseriiomn" in a variety of ways. It is smx~cthlethrough a sheer
c ~words;. Thus he describes Clara ila his "epilogue" ("sequel") as
a b u n d a ~ of
follows," she was, in shoit, an utter failwe, an ignosa~lt,incompetent yr~etenitiorns,
unwelcome, pelmiless, useless lit& sslsb" (p289) Sometimes, Shaw shows an
abundance of words of negation. Thus if we look at the first page of the play, we
observe ncgatiorls in the s e e s ~ ~speech
d - the Mother says "Not so longt'- , the third
speech - a bystar~derspeaks, "He won't get no cab not until halfpast elevenw-, , the
fourth speech -the Mother says, "We can't stand h a e until half-past eleven. It's too
bad"-, and the fifth speech -when the bystander retorts, "Well; it aint ilngr fault, missus'
(p.197).

Consider the beginning of Shaw's sequel to the play: "'Fhe rest of the story need not
be shown in action, and indeed, would hardly need telling if our imaginations were
not so enfeebled by their lazy dependence on the ready-mades and reach-me-
downs..."(p.281) Let us look at the beginning of Act 1V:-

HIGGINS [calling down to Pickerind I say, Pick lock up, will you? I shan't be
going out again.

131CKERING. Wight. Can Mrs. Pearce go to bed? We don't want anything more, do .
we7

HIGGINS. Lord, no! Ip.252)

Both the passages are replete with negations.

Ohmann rightly refers to the "pattel-11of negation that gives structuse to Shaw's
arguments". They also contain what Ohmann calls "a number of other forms of
denial and opposition."4 Expressions like "too bad" (p.197) and "so enfeebled" (281)
cited above illustrate these forms of denial.

Sometimes, Shaw reveals a special fascination for certain sounds. An apt example
comes from his description at the very beginning of the play:-

"Covent Garden at 1 1.15 p.m. Torrents of heavy summer rain. Cab whistles blowing
frantically in all directions. Pedestrians running for shelter into the market and under
the portico of St. Paul's Church." (p.197) one can notice here the preponderance of It1
and (dlsounds conveying the harshness of rain, the confusion engendered by it and
the sad plight of those seeking shelter. Another telling illustration occurs at the
beginning of Act 111.

"It is Mrs. Higgins's at-home day. Nobody has yet arrived. Her drawing
room, in a flat on Chelsea Embanlanent, has three windows looking on the
river; and the ceiling is not so lofty as it would be in an older house of thp
same pretension." (p.236)

Here, too, the same sounds are repeated and the effect is one of a prosaic, dry manner.
. Perhaps it even goes with the personality of Mrs. Higgins, a formidable character.

Shaw paid special attention to the printing of his plays, often carefully using different
kind of types and spaces between them for emphasis. Thus, when Higgins asks "The
Gentleman" Do you know Colonel Pickering, the author of spoken Sanscrit7" He
answers "I am Colonel Pickering" (p.206), emphasising his identity. The speech of
Mrs. Pearce categorically telling Higgins not to swear before Eliza and citing
instances of his swearing is printed as follows: "what the devil and where the devil
and who the devil -" (p.223) Later as Higgins meets Freddy at his mother's (Mrs.
Higgins's) at home, he tells him, " I've met you before somewhere", clearly stressing
the word "you" (p.240) After Eliza leaves, Higgins asks his mother, "Do you mean
that my language is improper?" (p.247) He is evidently shocked at the possibility of
anyone regarding his language, unlike more common people's as improper.

Shaw deviated from the standard spellings of several words, justifying his departures
from the conventional "correct" spellings on the ground that he was trying out a more
"logical" and "scientific" spelling of the word by approximating to its actual sound.
Thus he spells "Shakespeare" as "Shakespeare", "Show" as "Shew", till as "Yil". Here
one can see the point of "Shakespeare" but not of "Shew". He replaces "you are"
with "youre". He also omits apostrophes from such expressions as "haven't" "can't,
"wasn't and don't " respectively. Here perhaps Shawls contentions that in real speech
we are not conscious that we are dropping the letter 'lo" from "not".

Although Shaw acknowledged that his characters had the "power of expression". .."
that differentiated me (or Shakespeare) from a gramophone and camera", he in his
own way in Pygrnalion tried in his dialogues to recreate the speeches of people in real
life, thus ignoring the "correct" spellings and instead spelling the words as characters
pronounce them. An example is the flower girl in Act I saying "Will ye-oo py me
fthem?" (p.199) instead of "will you pay me for them?" Shaw goes on to explain.
[Here with apologies, this desperate attempt to represent her dialect without a
phonetic alphabet must be abandoned as unintelligible outside London] (p.199) The
dialogues also contain expressions such as "I knowed" (p.204), "A Copper's nark"
(p.201), "a tec" (p.202), "toff' (203) etc., each one aiming at a recreation of exact
speech.

In his attempt to faithfully reproduce the "actual" speeches of characters, Shaw also
writes dialogues which are replete with the common grammatical mistakes of spoken
English. Thus a bystander tells the Mother at the beginning of the play, "He won't get
no cab not until half past eleven" (p.197). The above sentence contains not only
double but triple negatives. Double negatives can also be found in Eliza's sentence,
"I don't want to have no truck with himU.(203)Later on a bystander tells Eliza "of
course he aint" and asks Higgins: "what call have you to know about people what
never offered to meddle with you?" (203) Eliza also uses the tenses wrongly e.g.
"But I done without them" (p.217). She combines double negative with wrong use of
pronouns when she talks of her father's drunkenness "It never did him no harm what I
could see" (p.244) Her father Doolittle himself uses expressions like "You and me is
men of the world aint we?" (p.228), misusing the numbers.

Although, it cannot be said of Pygrnalion that every character has his own speech
rhythm, one can disceni certain distinguishing features in the speeches of some of the
characters. Thus Higgins - as Mrs. Pearce and his mother coroborate -swears a lot
and use expressions that show his peremptory, impatient manner. One of his
favourite expressions is "By Georgy" which he utters frequently in his dialogues. To
take up a few examples, when he tried to tempt Eliza to learn proper English speech
from him in order to pass off as a Duchess, he tells her, "By George, Eliza, the streets
will be strewn with the bodies of men shooting themselves for your sake before Ive
done with you". (p.217) Later when he runs into Eynsford Hills at his mother's place,
he finds them useful for experimenting with Eliza's social skills and says, "Yes, by
George" We want two or three people. You'll do as well as anybody else." (240)
Soon after this, when he suddenly realizes where he had met Freddy, he says, "By
George, yes: it all comes back to me! (They stare at him). Covent Garden!
[Lamentably1what a damned thing! (p.242) In the very last Act, when his mother
tells him, ''She says she is quite willing to meet you on friendly terms and to let by
gones be by gones," Higgins is indignant and says "Is she, by George? Ho! " (p.267)
Just before the end, when he wonders at the transformation in Eliza's personality, he
says, "By George, Eliza, I said I'd make a woman of you: and I have. I like you like
this." (p.280) In all these five examples, culled out of many, "By George" is an
exclamation indicating Higgins's surprise or excitement or sense of discovery or
anger.
Higgins's expressions are strong, fitful and often exclamatory. Thus after Eliza utters, Language and style
ttAh-ah-ah-ow-ow-ow-oo",he responds with "Heavens! What a sound!" (p.206)
Earlier, he tells Eliza, "Oh, shut up, shut up. Do I look like a policeman?" (p.201) He
is generally quite direct. He tells Mrs. Hill, "Ha! ha! What a devil of a name! Excuse
me. [To the daughter1 you want a cab, do you?" (p.204) once in a while, this
directness turns into picturesque, colourful expressions which describe people vividly
e.g. "I shall make a duchess of this draggletailed guttersnipe" says he to Pickering and
Mrs. Pearce (p.215).

Higgins generally prefers simple and compound sentences to complex oil(,?, He tells
Pickering "simply phonetics. The science of speech. That's my profession: dso my
hobby' (p.205). When Eliza comes up to his house, he simply exclaims, "Be off with
you: I don't want you." 9p.211) He says to his mother,.when his is looking for Eliza,
"Of course. What are the police for? What else could we do?" (p.261) soon afey; as
Doolittle surprises him with his accusation, he retorts, "Youre raving. You'w drunk.
Your mad." (p.263). However, Higgins can be longwinded or complex, when he
wants to be e.g. he tells Eliza, "And you shall marry an officer in the Guards, with a
beautiful moustache: the son of a marquis, who will disinherit him for marrying you,
but will relent - when he sees your beauty and goodness (p.219) His rhetorical
manner can easily include a sentence like "I should imagine you won't have much
difficulty in settling yourself some-where or other, though I hadn't quite realized that
you were going away." (pp. 256-57)

In contrast, Pickering tends to have more indirect and convoluted expressions. e.g to
the notetaker (HIGGINS), "Really, sir, if you are a detective, you need not begin
protecting me against molestation by young women until I ask you" (p.202) The
indirectness usually indicates his courtesy and politeness. Thus he asks Higgins,
"May I ask, sir, do you do this for your living at a music hall?" (p.203) When Eliza
uses the word "bloody", Pickering talks about "something to eliminate the sanguinary
element from her conversation." (p. 247)

Eliza with a different background has another "mode of speech'. Sometimes, her
lingo is extremely colourful e.g. when.talking about the death of her aunt at Mrs.
Higgins's "at-home", she says, "my father he kept ladling gin down her throat till she
came to so sudden that she bit the bowl off the spoon." She continues, "What call
would a woman with that strength in her have to die of influenza? What became of
her new straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it; and what I
say is, them as pinched it done her in." Immediately Mrs. Eynsford Hill has to ask,
"What does doing her in mean?" (p.243)

As an assertive person, Eliza invariably repeats certain words and phrases for
emphasis e.g. she says to Higgins, "your a great bully, you are .. ..I never asked to go
to Buckham Palace, I didn't. I was never in trouble with the police, not me." (p.221)
she ends this speech with "I'm a good girl-" a statement that she must have repeated
several times in the play. In fact in Act 11, Higgins gets so exasperated with her that
he has to say, "Eliza, if you say again that youre a good girl, your father shall take
you home." (p.233)

Her father, Doolittle, on the other hand, can be quite rhetorical as Higgins points out
by saying "this chap has a natural gift for rhetoric" (p.226) He tells Higgins and
Pickering "What am I, Governors both? I ask you. What am I? I'm one of the
undeserving poor: that's what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that
.
he's up agen middle class morality all the time. .. I don't need less than a deserving
man: I need more. I don't eat less hear hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I
want a bit of amusement, cause I'm a thinking niah. I want cheerfulness and a song
.
and a band when I feel low. .. Will you take advantage of a man's nature to do him
out of the price of his own daughter what he's brought up and fed and clothed by the
sweat of his brow until she's growed big enough to be interesting to you two
gentlemen? Is five pounds unreasonable? I put it to you; and I leave it to you: (pp.
229-30) Andrew Kenney refers to Shaw's "Comic-didactic bravura speech for a
'ventriloquist' like Doolittle.. . .'16 Shaw himself compared Doolittle's oration on
middle class morality to Falsteff s speech on honour.'

However, when Doolittle gets very excited, he uses like Higgins very short sentences
e.g.
... see here! Do you see this? You done this.
HIGGINS. Done What, man?
DOOLIITLE. This, I tell you. Look at it. Look at this hat.
Look at this coat.
PICKERING. Has Eliza been buying you clothes?
DOOLITTLE. Eliza! Not she Not half! .Why would shy buy me clothes?" (p.262)

Ogmalion, like many plays of Shaw, is replete with literary allusions, in fact
references to not only literature but other arts as well. Thus Higgins, who admires
Milton and writes "a little as a poet on Miltonic lines," quotes from Milton when he
tells Pickering about Alfred Doolittle, "observe the rhythm of his native woodnotes
wild" (p.226) In his "epilogue" or "afterward" to the play, Shaw, when referring to
H.G.Wells writes, "Age had not withered him, nor could custom stale his infinite
variety in half an hour" (p.291) The allusionhere to Cleopatra of Shakespeare's
Antony and Cleoptra not only describes Wells but also parodies Shakespeare. A
comparison with the captivating Cleopatra shows how Wells looks by contrast and it
also deflates Cleopatra, the last phrase "in half an hour" clearly adding a touch of
bathos to the entire description and undermining both. Pickering talking of Eliza's
perfect musical ear, alludes to Beethoven and Brahms or Lehar and Lionel Monckton
(p.249) Here he not only refers to Eliza's sensitivity but also enriches the texture by
bringing in the context of musical history. A similar effect is produced when at the
beginning of Act IV, after returning from the successful party, Higgins !begins half
singing, half yawning an air from Le Fanciulla del Goden West1'- ( a piece by
Pucccini) (p.252). A little different is the description of the response of the Director
of the London School of Economics to the appeal of Elizaa and Freddy to
"recommend a course bearing on the flower business." Shaw writes, "He, being a
humorist, explained to them the method of celebrated Dikensian essay on Chinese
Metaphysics by the gentleman who read an article on china and an article on
Metaphysics and combined the information. He suggested that they should combine
the London School with Kew Gardens" (292-93). Here the added dimension from
Dickens, not only enriches the texture but also mildly deflates the Director. The fact
that the original is comic certainly reduces the possibility of parody but it does not
altogether abolish it.

As briefly mentioned in unit 3.3 a great deal of humour in our play is verbal and
Shaw exfiibits great ability to play with language to evoke laughter. To take up a few
examples, when Mrs. Pearce tells Higgins not to "swear before the girl," the dialogue
proceeds as follows:-

HIGGINS [indignantlyJ I swear! [most emphatically] I never swear. I detest the

habit. What the devil do you mean? MRS. PEARCE [stolidly] That's what I mean,
Sir. You swear a great deal too much. I don't mind your damning and blasting, and
what the devil and where the devil and who the devil- HIGGTNS. Mrs. Pearce: this
language from your lips! Really!" (p.223).

Then she indirectly tells him not to continue using the word "bloody."

MRS. PEARCE. Only this morning, Sir, you applied it to your boots, to the butter
and the brown bread.

e, natural to a poet." (223)

 Language and style
In Act 111, when Higgins opens the door violently and enters his mother's drawing
room, Mrs. Higgins scolds him, "what are you doing here to-day: you promised not to
(p. 237) The humour here arises fiom someone being told thatxd isgot
i el come on the at-home day. A little later, when Eliza begins talking of the weather,
she says "The shallow depression in the West of these islands is likely to move
slowly in an easterly direction. There are no indications of any great change in the
barometrical SitUation."

Responds FREDDY "Ha! ~ a How ! awfully humy!" @. 243) %fact, Eliza's

reference to her father pouring gin down her aunt's throat and then her drinking gin
like "mother's a milk" makes the entire conversation extremely humorous. Freddy "is
in convulsions of suppressed laughter" (p. 244) A little later, after Eliza leaves,
Higgins and Pickering talk about her to Mrs. Higgins:-

I
"PICKXRING. We're always talking Eliza.
HIGGMGS. Teaching Eliza.
PICKERING. Dressing Eliza.
Mrs. HIGGMS. What! " (pp. 248-49)

In the last Act, as Doolittle condemns Higgins for writing to Ezra D Wannafeller
about his (Doolittle) being "the most original moralist at present in England" and thus
making a gentleman of him, He says: "And the next one to touch me will be you,
Henry Higgins. I'll have to learn'to speak middle class language from you, instead of
speaking proper English." (261) Higgins, reacting to his mother's view that Doolittle
can now look after Eliza, exclaims, "he can't provide for her. He shant provide for
her. She doesn't belong to him. I paid him five pound for her". (p. 265) He implies
that he could buy an adult female for five pounds! Soon, as Mrs. Higgins tells her
son, "If you promise to behave yourself, Henry, I'll ask her to come down. If not, go
..
home;". He replies, "Oh, all right. Very well. Pick: you behave yourself". (267)
Obviously, Higgins cannot realize that he is the only person whose behaviour is
improper. After Eliza comes down, he tells her "Don't you dare try this game on me.
I taught it to you; and it doesn't take me in. Get up and come home; and don't be a
fool." (p.268) His mother responds, "Very nicely put, indeed, Henry. No woman
could resist such an invitation." (p.269) She of course uses irony. Interestingly the
media personalities, the audiences, the critics have been unable to resist the invitation
to respond to Pygmalion.

4.3 CRITICAL APPROACHES TO SHAW AND SCREEN

RESPONSES TO PYGMALION

There have been phases in the reception of Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion: if we ignore
many theatre reviewers and journalistic critics, much of whose criticism was
E ephemeral, rather than long lasting, we encounter first of all eminent contemporaries:
men of letters, theatre personalities and social, political, ethical thinkers writing on
his plays. They are followed by more "academic" critics. Later, there were two
revivals of Shaw, one after his death and the other at the time of his centenary, The
more recent criticism has been more ideological, embracing Feminist and Post-
colonial approaches as well-much of it following the publication of Halroyd's
monumental biography of Shaw.

The major contemporaries writing on Shaw included G.K. Chesterton (1909) and
Frank Harris (193 1). A detailed account of the early criticism can be found in T.F.
Evans, ed. Shaw: The Critical Heritage (1976), which traces critical responses to
Shaw over a period of time, In the 30s and 40s the notable studies were by H.C.
Duffin, The Quintessence of Bernard Shaw (1920: rev.ed. 1939) Maurice Colbourne,
The real Bernard Shaw (1930) which approaches him from a performer's angle,
P'gmalion S.C.Sen Gupta, The Art of Bernard Shaw (1936) and Edmund Wilson, "Bernard
Shaw at Eighty," Triple Thinkers.(l939). Slightly later appeared Eric Bentley, Shaw:
A Reconsideration (1947), C.E.M.Joad, Shaw (1949), A.C.Ward, Shaw (1950).
A.C.Ward also edited and wrote useful introductions to many Shaw plays.

The significant biographical studies written before Shaw's death were by Archibald
Henderson Shaw: His lfe and Works (1911) and Bernard Shaw: Play boy and
Prophet (1932) and Hesketh Pearson, Bernard Shaw: His Life and Personality
. (1942). William Ervine's The Universe of G.B.S. (1949) is a worthwhile critical
biography.

There was a spate of studies following his death and later his centenary. To begin
with the relevant biographical studies, Archibald Henderson added to his earlier
writings George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Centuly (1956). Hesketh Pearson
brought out the enlarged edition in 1961. St. John Ervine's Bernard Shaw: His Life,
work and Friends (1956) was received as a standard life. These book admirably
supplemented Shaw's autobiographical work Sixteen Self-Sketches-which appeared
only a year before his death. Stanley Weintraub not only came out with Private Shaw
andPublic Shaw: A Dual Portrait of Lawrence ofArabia and GBS-(1956) but also
edited Shaw: An Autobiography 1856-1898 (1969). A fine study of Shaw in his
historical, social, political background was by Ivor Brown Shaw in his own Time
(1965)

Major books on Modern Drama that contained chapter's -oRen perceptive chapters -
on Shaw included Eric Bentley's The Playwright as Thinker (1946), Ronald Peacock,
Poet in the Theatre- (1946) Francis Ferguson. The idea ofa Theater (1949),
Raymond Williams, Dramaporn Ibsen to Eliot (1952) revised as Dramaporn Ibsen
to Brechtin (1968) T.R.Tenn The Harvest of Tragedy (1956), J.L. Styan, the Dark
Comedy (1962) and Robert Brustein, the Theatre ofRevolt-(1964). However, many
of these have not even touched upon Pygmalion, let alone devoted a few pages to the
analysis of our text.

The significant full length studies of Shaw's drama to appear during this period ,

included L.Kronenberger George Bernard Shaw: A Critical Survey (1 953), H.

Nethercot, Men and Supermen: The Shavian Portrait Gallern(1954) - a discussion of
Major Shavian characters, Richard Ohmann, Shaw: The style and the Man-(1962) - an
analysis of his style as the vehicle of his attitudes and goals, Martin Meisel, Shaw and
the Nineteenth Century Theatre-(1963) - a landmark study, Audrey Williamson,
Shaw: Man and Artist-1963, R.M. Roy, Shaw's Philosophy of lfe (1964). Colin
Wilson's Bernard Shaw: A reassessment (1 968), a remarkable study of his life and
works analysed him to an extent from an existential perspective.

The most important critical anthoIogy of the 50s and 60s was R.J. Kaufmann's
G.B.S/taw: A Collection of Critical Essays (1965) in the 201hCentury view series.
Among the contributors, it had the playwright Bertolt Brecht, the psychologist Erik
H. Erickson and distinguished critics like Eric Bentley and G.Wilson Knight.

R. Mander and J.Mitchensonts (edited) Theatrical Compansion to Shaw (1954)

provides perspectives on Shaw on stage. C.B. Purdom's A Guide to the Plays of
Bernard Shaw (1963) performs a similar function, although it is written by only one
author. In addition to describing the life and Time of Shaw, it also surnmarises and
comments on individual plays.

This generation of Shaw criticism ended with Leion Hugo's Bernard Shaw:
Playwright and Preacher (1971) and Maurice Valency's The Cart and the Trumpet:
7he Plays of Bernard Shaw (1973). The new studies that emerged with novel
approaches comprised of Margery Morgan The Shavian Playground: an Enploration
of the Art of Geo,.ge Bernard Shaw (1972). Alfred Turce, Jr; Shaw's Moral Vision :
The Segand Salvation (1 976), Robert F. Whitrnan, Shaw and the Play of Ideas
(19771, C.D. Sidhy, The Pattern of Tragicomedy in Bernard Shaw and J.L.Wisentha1,
the ~ a r r i a g of
e Contraries: Shaw's Middle Plays-(1974). A separate mention must be and me
made of Rodelled Weitsaub, ed. Fabian Feminist: Bernard Shaw and Women (1977).

Later on, the Feminist Approach to Shaw was continued in J.Ellen Gainer's Shaw's
Daughters: Dramatic and Narrative Construction of Gender (199 1 ) and Sally Peters,
-
~ernardShaw: The Accent of the Superman (1996) a biographical study. However,
the monumental biography of Shaw was Michael Holroyd's Bernard Shaw in four
volumes, Bernard Shaw 'The Search for Love' (I), Bernard Shaw 'The Pursuit of
Power' (II), Bernard Shaw 'The Lure of Fantasy'_(III),The Last Laugh which also
forms part of Vols IV and V The Shaw Companion-(I 988-92).

The other major books fiom new perspectives were Arthur Ganz, George Bernard
Shaw (1983) and David J.Gordon, Bernard Shaw and the Comic Sublime (1990).
Among the seminal critical anthologies were Harold Bloom, George Bernard Shaw:
Modern Critical Views (1987), Daniel Leary, ed. Shaw's Plays in Pe$ormance (1983)
and Christopher Innes, ed. The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw
(1998) - the last one including articles also fiom the perspectives of Feminism and
Post-Colonial Theory. ~ r a C.c Davis
~ George Bernard Shaw and the Socialist
Theatre (1994) locates the plays in the wider social, cultural, historical and
ideological context. The critical response, to Shaw, as we have seen, has remained
alive and vibrant and there may be a spurt as we approach the Fiftieth year of his
death.

Written in 1912, Pygmalion was first staged (in German) on Oct 16,1913 at the
Hoftburg Theatre, Vienna. It was first presented in England on April 11,1914 by
Herbert Beerbohm Tree at His Majesty's Theatre, London. The play had several
revivals in both England and the U.S. The cast at one time included Mr. Patrick
Combell (Stella) as Eliza. In later years, it was produced in 1974 at the Albert
Theatre, directed by John Dexter with Diana Rigg and Alec Mccown in the title roles.
In the early 1980's Peter O'Toole's "theatre of comedy series included Pygmalion. It
has also been produced at the Annual Shaw festival in Niagera on the Lake.

There have also been many film versions of Pygnzalion. It was first screened in
Germany on September 2, 1935 at Berlin with Erich Angel as the Director and
Heinrich Oberlander and Walter Wassermann as the screenplay writers. The first
dutch screening was at Amsterdam in March 1937. Ludwig Berger directed the play
and also wrote the screenplay. Shaw was unhappy with both the versions as they
hinted at Higgins and Eliza romantically coming together at the end. The first
English screening was at London on October 6, 1938 followed by the New York
screening of December 7, 1938. This Gabriel Pascal production was directed by
Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard and the screen play was by Shaw himself (with
additional dialogues by W.P Liscornb and Cecil Lewis). Arthur Honegger composed
the music, Wendy Hiller played Eliza and Leslie Howard acted Higgins. The film
was a great success and it bagged several Academy awards. Shaw was given the
award for the best screenplay, the film was adjudged the best film of the year. Later
Alan Howard and Frances Barber staged a "complete representation" of Pygmalion
"conflating the theatre and film" at the Oliver.

When Franz Lehar proposed a musical version of Pygmalion to Shaw, he firmly

rehed. As holroyd points out, he rejected all appeals to 'downgrade' Pygmalion into
a musical. In 1948, he wrote "I absolutely forbid any such outrage."g However,
Pygmalion's musical adaptation My Fair Lady (cockney slang for "Mayfair Lady")
opened at the Mark Hellinger Theater on Broadway on Maroh 15, 1956. It contained
fifteen numbers composed by Frederick Loewe with lyrics by Alan 5. Learner, and it
was directed by Moss Hart. Julie Andrews played Eliza, Rex Harison was Higgins
and Stanley Holloway acted as Alfred Doolittle. An astonishing hit with songs like
"Wouldn't it be Lovely," With a Little Bit of Luck" and "I Could Have Danced All
Night," the musical had 2,717 performances on Broadway over six and a half years.
Pygmalion At the Drury Lane Theatre London where it opened in the spring of 1958, it had a run
of six years encompassing 2,281 performances.

First screened in October 1964 at New York by CBS~Warner,the Film Version

retained Rex Harrison as Higgins, but replaced Julie Andrews by Audrey Hepburn as
Eliza. Alan J. Lerner wrote the screenplay. For the film, Oscars were presented to
Andre Prev in for his musical adaptation of the original score by Frederich Lowewe,
to Rex Harrison for the hero's role, to George Cukor for direction and to Cecil Beaton
for costumes. Thus ironically, Bernard Shaw acquired enormous posthumous,~ealth
and popularity through a musical, he did not want to be produced.

4.4 PASSAGES PROM THE PLAY FOR ANNOTATION

ACT I
"THE NOTETAKER. Simply phonetics. The science of speech. That's my
profession: also my hobby. Happy is the eman who can make a living by his bobby!"
(p. 205).

"THE NOTETAKER. A woman who utters such depressing and disgusting sounds
has no right to be anywhere - no right to live. Remember that you are a human being
with a should and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the
language of Shakespeare and Milton and the Bible: and don't sit there crooning like a
bilious pigeon." (p.206)

ACT I1
"Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the
woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another." (p.221)

"Here I am, a shy, diffident sort of man. I've never been able to feel really grown-up
and tremendous like other chaps." (p.224)

"I'm willing to tell you. I'm wanting to tell you. I'm waiting to tell you." (p.226)

"What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything."
(P-230)

"A few good oil paintings from the exhibitions in the Grosvenor Gallery
thirty years ago (the Burne Jones, not the Whistler side of them) are on its
walls. The only landscape Cecil Lawson on the scale of a Rubens. There is a
podrait of Mrs. Higgins as she was when she defied fashion in her youth in
one of the beautiful Rossettian Costumes" (p.236)

"MRS. HIGGINS. Well, you never fall in love with anyone under forty-five. When
will you discover that there are some rather nice-looking young women about?''
(p.237)

"But you have no idea how frightfully interesting it is to take a human being and
change her into a quite different human being by creating a new speech for her. It's
filling up the deepest gulf that separates class from class and soul from soul." (p.248)

ACT IV
"What am I fit for? What have you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What am I to
do? What's to become of me?" (p.256)
C :.
 "I'm only a common ignorant girl: and in my station I have to be carehl. There can't Language and style
be any feelings between the like of you and the like of me." (p.258)

ACT V
TIDOLITTLE. No: that aint the natural way, Colonel: It's only the middle class way.
My way was always the undeserving way," (pp. 271-72)

"The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or nay other
particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls:" (p.274)

THE EPILOGUE (THE SEQUEL)

"If an imaginative boy has a sufficiently rich mother who has intelligence, personal
grace, dignity of character without harshness, and a cultivated sense of the best art of
her time to enable her to make her house beautiful, she sets a standard for him against
which very few women can struggle, besides effecting for him'a disengagement of
his affections, his sense of beauty, and his idealism from his specifically sexual
impulses." (p.283) "Eliza has no use for the foolish romantic tradition that all women
love to be mastered, if not actually bullied and beaten." (p.284).

"But when it comes to business, to the life that she really leads as distinguished from
the life of dreams and fancies, she likes Freddy and she likes the Colonel: and she
does not like Higgins and Mr. Doolittle. Galatea never does quite like Pygmalion: his
relation to her is too godlike to be altogether agreeable." (p. 295)

4,.5 LETUSSUMUP

In this unit, as we analysed facets of Shaw's prose style and dialogues, we noticed his
abundance of words, especially words of negation, use of harsh consonants, leaving
space between letters for emphasising certain words, modifying spellings to make
them more "phonetic" and reproducing faulty grammar and pronunciation of
characters. Higgins, Eliza, her father and even Pickering are given within limits their
,own speech rhythms. Literary and musical allusions enrich the texture of the play by
bringing in another context and sometimes, they serve a parodic purpose. The style is
also embellished by abundant verbal humour.

Shavian criticism had different phases: There was a gradual development from the
somewhat impressionistic reviews of the earlier period to the more theoretical and
ideological approaches of the 1980's and 90's. On the stage, although Pygmalion was
only a modest success, it was screened and after Shawls death, the musical My Fair
Lady proved to be an extraordinary commercial hit.
t

4.6 QUESTIONS

1. Give an example of Shaw's "pattern of negation" in any dialogue or stage

description in Pygmalion (other than the ones cited here)

's "s~acine"of letters in words an effective device for

3, -
Is it justifiable on Shaw's part to reproduce the wrong grammar and
pronunciations of his characters or should he use only "correct" English? Is
his habit especially relevant to a play about phonetics?

4. It has been said that Shaw's characters are mouthpieces, who sound alike.
Can you distinguish Mrs. Higgins's speech rhythms from say Mrs. Pearce's?

5. Do you enjoy literary allusions in Shaw, or do you find them irritating?

JustifL your answer.

6. Is Shawls verbal humour only funny, or is it also instructive? Give reasons

for your answer and provide suitable illustrations fiom the play.

7. How did the critical response to Shaw change over the years (actually
decades)?

8. Why do you think My Fair Lady-has been so popular with the audience when
Pygmalion was never a great commercial success?

9. ow is Pygmalion an early 20" century English play set in England

meaningful to you in India at the end of the millenium?

4.7 SUGGESTED READING

Out of a few hundred books *tten on Shaw, it was difficult to separate the major
ones from the less seminal ones. From our select list, I give below a smaller
bibliography of books especially important for you and I add the names of few
journals.

References

1. George Bernard Shaw, Complete Plays with Prefaces (New York: Dodd,
Mead, 1962) Vol. III514. As mentioned in Unit 3, all the references to the
text of Shaw is from this edition and page numbers are indicated in
parentheses (Pygmalion is included in Volume I).

2. George Bernard Shaw's "Preface" to Immaturity (1921) Prefaces as quoted in

Andrew K.Kennedy, Six dramatists in search of a language: Studies in
dramatic language (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1975) 47-48 note 15.

3. Richard M. Ohmann refers to "one of these Colossal series,.. The syntactical

.
heaping up.. such superabundance.. . the language of
exaggeration...Hyperbole.. . the Shavian catalogue "Shaw's purpose is to '
"smother the audience and confront the opposition" As he M e r says
"Shaw frequently compounds the smcture of a whole piece fiom a set of
negations" See "Born to set It Right: The Roots of Shaw's Style," from Shaw:
The Style and the Man (Middletown, Coon: Wesleyan University Press,
1962) rapt, in R.J. Kaufinann, ed. (G.B.Shaw: A Collection of Critical Essays
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.;Prentice -Hall, 1965) 33.

4. Ibid - 34-35.

5. Shawls letter to Alexander Bashky (1923) published in The New.

York Times*12 June 127 as quoted in Andrew K Kennedy, Six dramatists in
search of a language 53.
 -i

6, Six drahatists in search of a language. 54. Language and style

7, Shaw on Theatre. ed. E.J.West (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1956) 132 as
cited in Andrew Kennedy, Six dramatists in search of a language 54.

8, Andrew Kennedy says, "In Eliza's mechanical parroting of the cliches and
noises of upper-class speech there was just a suggestion, within the comedy
of manners, that social speech is synthetic, laboratory induced." See Six
dramatists in search of a language 78.

9, Michael Holroyd, The Shaw Companion (London: Chatto & Windus, 1992)
56-57.

Books
Entley, Eric. Shaw: A Reconsideration (1947)
Bloom, Harold. George Bernard Shaw: Modem Critical Views (1987)
Brown, Ivor Shaw in his own Time (1965)
Davis, Tracy George Bernard Shaw and the Socialist Theatre,(1954)
Evans, T.F. Shaw: The Critical Heritage ( 1 976)
Holroyd, Michael Bernard Shaw,,Vols I and I1 ( 1 988-92)
Innes, Christopher The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw-(1998)
Kaufinann, R.J.ed. G.B.Shaw: A Collection of Critical Essays- ( 1 965)
Meisel, Martin, Shaw and the Nineteenth Century Theatre (1963)
Pundom, C.B. A Guide to the Plays of Bernard Shaw ( 1 963)
Valency, Maurice The Cart and the Trumpet: The Plays of Bernard Shaw (1973)
Weintraub, Rodelle ed. Fabian Feminist: Bernard Shaw and Women-(1977)
Wisenthal, J.L. The Marriage of Contraries: Shaw's Middle Plays (1974)
Wilson, Colin Bernard Shaw: A reassessment (1968)

Journals
The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies,ed. Stanley Weintraub.
-
Modern Drama 2 (Sept 195 9) A Shaw number
The Shavian
The Shaw Review
-
LTNIT 1 T.S. ELIOT'S ESSAYS AND OTHER
WORKS RELATED TO THE PLAY

Structure

1.0 Objectives
I

1.1 Introduction: Life and Works of T.S. Eliot

1.2 Dramatic Experiments : Sweeney Agonistes and The Rock

1.3 Eliot's essays relevant to his plays

1.4 Eliot's Poetic dramas

1.5 Exercises

1 . 0 OBJECTIVES

This Unit will familiarise you with T.S. Eliot's:

a. Life and works

b. Dramatic experiments : Sweeney Agonistes and The Rock
c. Essays relevant to his plays; and his
d. Poetic dramas

1.1 INTRODUCTION : LIFE AND WORKS OF

T.S. ELIOT

Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on 26'" September, 1888.
William GreenLeaf Eliot (Eliot's grandfather from his father's side) was one of the
earliest Eliot settlers in St. Louis. I-Ie was a Unitarian minister. Unitarianism arose in
America in the mid eighteenth century as a wave against Puritanism and its beliefs in
man's innate goodness and the doctrine of damnation. Unitarianism perceived God
as kind. In 1834 William GreenLeaf Eliot established a Unitarian cliurcli in St.
Louis. He was also instrumental in setting up Washington University there.

Of the fourteen children born to William GreenLeaf Eliot and his wife, only four
survived. Henry Ware Eliot, Eliot's father, was the second of the surviving children.
He graduated from Washington University and worked for a grocery business for a
short while. Later, he joined a brick making firm of which he eventually became the
chairperson.

In 1869 T.S. Eliot's father, Henry Ware Eliot, married Charlotte Champe Stearns
who was a school teacher in St. Louis. She was involved in social work and
advocated women's rights. T.S. Eliot was the youngest of the six children born to
Henry Ware Eliot and Charlotte Cl~ampeStearns. The first four were girls and nine
years separated Thomas and his brother, Henry. T.S. Eliot's mother was profo~~ndly
infuencecl by her father-in- law, W i I l iarn GreenLeaf Eliot. She raised her children
Murder in the accordilzg to his values. He was a strong believer in self denial and public service.
Catitedrnl W11en T.S. Eliot was sixteen his mother published a biography of William GreenLeaf
Eliot and dedicated it to her children, "Lest They Forget."

T.S. Eliot started school late - at the age of seven or eight - because he was a sickly
child suffering from "congenital hernia." Eliot went to a school in St. Louis until
1905. Later, he went to Miller Academy at Massachussetts f i r a year. He joined
Harvard at the age of eighteen. By the time Eliot was in Harvard lle had broken away
from the strong Unitarian influence at home and had become indifferent to the
church. While at Harvard from 1906-1910 Eliot began writing. In 1908 Eliot read
Arthur Symon's book, The ,~vrnbolistMovemefit in Literature which introduced him
to the poetry of La Forgue. From La Forgue Eliot learnt to confess tl~roughvoices
and to dramatise irrational thoughts. He was struck by Symon's call for a spiritual
vision to eclipse the realistic tradition,

It was in a student magazine, The Harvard Advocate that Eliot ~ u b l i s h e dhis first
poelns at the age of twenty. Later, Eliot said that the form he adopted in 1908 and
1909 was directly derived from his study of La Forgue as well as fi-om Elizabethan
drama in its later phase. Between 1909- 1912 Eliot wrote a group o f poems, later
published in the collection, Prufiock and Other Observations. These poems dealt
with the "New Boston" of Eliot's youth. Unlike the "old Boston" of Puritan values
%withwhich Henry James was associated, Eliot's Boston was decadent and corrupt. It
was very unhealthy, highly commercialised with an influx of immigrants. Failing to
find life among equals Eliot went into slum areas. He deliberately moved in squalid
places. His poeins pick up the images of "cigaretes butts," "broken glass" ''dirty
windows" etc. "Preludes" written about 1910 picks up several sordid images. St.
Louis had been a peaceful phase in Eliot's life. In a certain way, the move fiom St.
Louis to Boston had changed Eliot.

In his last year at Harvard Eliot wanted, to get away from his life there, and his
family's persistent questions about his career. He went to Paris. Through Syinons,
Eliot had already developed an interest in French poetry. While at Paris, Eliot
attended several lectures by the French philosopher Henri Bergson a t the College de
France. By Febn~ary1911, Eliot was disillusioned with Paris. He felt the city was
drab like London. Many of his poeins pick up the drab appearance of modern cities.

In 191 1, Eliot returned to Harvard and entered graduate school in Philosophy. I11
1 91 3 he had become the President of the Philosophy Club. A year later, in 1914,
while Eliot's doctoral thesis was still incomplete he went to Oxford on a travelling
fellowship to study Aristotle for a year under Harold Joachim, at Merton College.
The first world war broke out in 1914. Eliot took up a school teacher's job at I-Iigh
Wycornbe Gratnmar School at Oxford to supplement his income.

Eliot met several important literary personalities in England. An introdilction from

Conrad Aiken had ied him to meet Ezra Pound. In 1916, Eliot met Clive Bell and
through him the Bloomsbury group. Eliot's stay in London was important in his life
for another reason too. It was here that he met Vivienne Haigh-Wood whom he later
married. They were both twenty six when they met.

I11 19 17 Eliot gave up teaching and entered the foreign department o f Lloyd's Bank
where he worked u~itil1925. In 1921, Eliot wrote the draft of his most fmnous poem
The Waste Lar~d The poem was edited by Pound and published in The Crilevion in
1 922.

The year 1927 was a turning point in Eliot's life, in that, it was in this year that he
became a British citizen and also joined the Anglican Church of England. Cle was
drawn to the CIILI~CII of England because Anglicanism acknowledges that the trutll of
the scriptures is only dimly traced and must be verified by individual judgen~ent.Of
course, Eliot's growing attachment to the English past was yet another reason for
 T.S.Eliot Essays
joining the Churcb. At the time af Eliot's conversion he was 39 years of age. In his and other worlts
preface to For Lancelat Pndrewes Eliot stated that he was "a Classicist in literature, related to the play
Royalist in Politics and Anglo-Catholic in religion."

After 1927 Eliot's poetry was different. Altt~oughthe first phase of his poetry also
talked of the spiritual world implicitly, in the second phase - after his conversion -
his poetry became more religious. Poems like "Journey of the Magi," "A Song for
Silneon" and "As11 Wednesday" express this. In this same group of religious writings
also fall Murder in the Cathedral and The Rock. Much Later, in 1939, Eliot
his essay on the idea of a Christian Society to communicate his views on
the subject of religion.

Eliot returned to America in 1932 for the first lime (since a brief visit in 1915) to
lecture at Harvard and Virginia. These lectures were later published in The Use of
Poetry and The Use of Criticism and After Strange Gods. Around this time Eliot was
also developi!lg an interest in drama. Of course, he had earlier helped in publishing
11is mother's long dramatic poem, Savonarwla and in 1920 was persuaded by Pound
to translate the Agamentnon by Aeschylus.

The year 1933 was a difficult year for Eliot. He left his wife Vivienne Haigh-Wood.
Her neurotic, sickly condition which started a few months after their marriage made it
impossible for Eliot to contiilue with the marriage. Vivienne died in 1947 in an
asylum. Several years later in 1957, Eliot met Valerie Fletcher and married her.
Eliot v a s happy in this marriage.

1111936, three years after Eliot left Vivienne, his second collected poems appeared
containing the first of the Four Quartets "Burnt IVorton." With The Four Quartets
(1935-1942) Eliot reached the peak of his llistorical, spiritual works. Since then, he
seeins to have devoted himself above all to dramatic poems and to essays in Social
and Christian pl~ilosopl~y.

Five plays followkd Four Quqrqtets: Murder in the Cathedral (1 935), The Family
Reunion (1939), The Cocktail Party (1949), The ConJdential Clerk (1953) and The
Elder Statesnten (1957)

In 1948 Eliot was awarded the order of merit and the Nobel Prize for literature. He
died in London in 1965 and as desired by him ,his ashes were buried in the village or
East Coker in England from where his ancestor Andrew Eliot had emigrated to
America. On his grave is a plaque saying, "In my End is my Beginning."

1.2 ELIOT'$ EARLY DRAMATIC EXPERIMENTS :

SWEENEYAGONISTES AND THE ROCK

Sweeney Agonistes : Fragments of an Aristophanic Melodrama

Sweeney Agonistes is a long poem in dramatic form. It was first published as two
fragments. The first, "Fragments of a Prologue" was published in the New Criterion
of October 1926 and the "Fragment of at1 Agon" in January, 1927 under the general
litle of FVanna Go H o r ~ eBaby?. The title picks up the language of the English pubs
in Lhe 1920s. Sveeney Agonistes contained two epigraphs from Aesch~lus'
C'horphoroi and St. John of the Cross'pointing to the Greek and Christian focus of the
work. The first one dra~natisesthe hero's haunting by the furies. The second refers
to the soul's need to divest itself of the love of created beings. Both these themes
appear in Murder in the Cathedral. Whet1 the fragments were published in 1932 in a
book form, the two epigraphs were retained but the title had changed into, Sweeney
Agonistes : Fragments of an Aristophcmic Drama,
Murder in the By combining Sweeney with Agonistes Eliot w m trying to interface Milton's S ~ ~ ~ t s a t z
Carbeclrnl Agonistes with Sweeney 's situation in modern times. Samson Agonistes is in exile in
an alien world, who brings that world down around his own head to destroy evil.
Sweeney is also a spiritual exile in an alien world and he too destroys part of'himself
in attacking the world. Eliot's readers are familiar with Sweeney who has been used
in several contexts to suggest man at his most elemental level.

In a sense the play is a commentary on the postponement of religious awakening in

modern times. The world to which the audience of Samson Agonistes would retma to
was world war shocked London but seen through the eyes of the "sensational press."
The view of humanity is like reading News of the World, a Sunday weekly, which
catered to popular taste. In the early twenties, News of the World specialised in
graphic accounts of crimes in Britian at that time.

Sweeney Agonistes has been called "Aristoph~nic" in the sense that it combines
comic surface satire with the ritunlistic celebration of birth and death. It is
melodramatic in the sense that it uses music hall tradition and flat characters, inflated
emotioils and overdramatised situations,

Interestingly, although the Sweeney fragments had a title of their own, Eliot felt that
they could not really stand alone, When he gathered his poems together for the
Collected Poems volume 1936, he placed Samson Agonistes in a section called
"U~~finished Poems" and it still remains in that state today.

Sweeney Agonistes is based 011 life in modern times. Doris and Dusty are two lower
middle class London prostitutes. W11e1lthe dramatic poem begins Doris and Dusty
are debating about whether they should invite Pereira - the one who pays the rent for
the apartment - to the card party that they are giving that night. They decide not to
invite him, because he can't be trusted, When the phone rings Doris and Dusty panic
because they know who the caller is, Dusty informs the caller Pereira, that Doris is
sick and can't attend to the phone. Pereira insists, I-Iis iilsistence in meeting Doris
and Dusty suggests his identity as a spiritual pursuer. These people are viewed
negatively in Eliot's works because they can't accept the agony of purgation.

At the party two other characters show up "Cap" Horsfall and "Loot," Sam
Wauchope with their former war friends Klipstein and Krumpacker - Ainerican
business men visiting London. The party is fraught with doubt and distrust as the
card game continues. We get a foreboding of death and violence, The party guests
decide to go to a nearby pub. Sweeney Agonistes is the pub keeper. Ilnlike the other
characters, Sweeney is not a flat character, He introduces the dimension of tragic
horror into the world of Dusty and Doris and others. He heightens their feelings of
distrust by narrating a story about the murder of a girl. Slowly all leave the pub with
the exception of Doris and Sweeney asks her "Wanna Go Home Baby?" She goes
back home with him and is later found murdered in a baih fulfilling the forebodings
of the card game. Later, Sweeney too is discovered murdered.

Sweeney Agonistes may have been the first dramatic venture by Eliot but it is an
important experiment:

a. It is the first dramatic version of the theme of spiritual pilgrimage, a recurrent

theme in his plays,

b. It introduces contemporary rhythms and diction into poetic drama. Jazz and
telephonic conversations are used. This is in keeping with Eliot's beliefs that
the new drama should combine poetry with entertainment. In the 1920s in
England, a popular mode of entertainment was the vaudeville. It was here
that Jazz was heard. He also felt that Jazz was an important art because it
still kept a social unity in the relationship between the performers and the
audience that had disappeared in other forms of dramatic art. I

I
 Jazz had a special appeal to Eliot because it not only sy~nbolisedthe T.S.Eliot's Essays
and other works
superficial elements of a modern materialistic society but it also touched the
realted to the play
primitive side of man's nature in its throbbing rhythms,,

c. It stresses the agony of saints.

d. It introduces a chorus to voice communal feeling and deals with one of his
central themes -that of spiritual conflict; and growth in an exceptional l~iiinan
being and its relations and repercussions i n the lives of ordinary people.
Relationships are worked out in terms of spiritual awareness.

The Rock

This was a pageant play which opened on May 28'", 1934 at Saddler's Wells Theatre,
London, It was written to raise fi~ndsto build new Anglican churches for the
growing suburbs. The therne of the pageant is the building of the church. Eliot was
writing under the direction of E, Martin Browne whom he had already rnet in 1930
when he was staying with Bishop George Bell at Chichester. The play's versification
is nod el led on the medeival English play Everj)~won.For form he was indebted to
Greek tragedy.

The scenario for the pageant was outlined for Eliot by Browne and Webb-Odell. In
his essay, The Three Voices of Poetry Eliot states that he merely filled in the words.
When Eliot publislled his poetic collections, he included only the choral passages of
T/7e Rock.

The play opens with the Cllorus latnenting the temporal order gaining ascendancy
over the spiritual. I11 modern times, the church is seen as having a linlited value. A
group of workers enter and point out that building a church is a different experience
froin building a bank, There is sl. certain colnrnit~ne~~t
tltat is emotional which goes
with the former. Tlle Saxons enter at this point and explain the history of Christianity
and its introduction into Englaad. Tlle Chorus reminds the congregation of
conte~nporarytimes to keep the flag of Cllristianity up by building churches,

Soon we conle to know of the varioirs challenges facing the church. For one, the land
given for church building is not good. For another, a Marxist comes and creates an
uproar by stating that the funds given for Clt~~rch
building s h o ~ ~go
l d into building
homes for the needy. We are also reminded about the Danish invasion of England
and the persecution of early Christians. Hearing about all this the Chorus almost falls
into despair but the character, Rock, brings them out of it by pointing to the power of
the eternal over the tentporal.

In tlte final scene, the construction of the church is shown as completed, throwing
ligltt upon darkness.

Eliot was involved with some aspects ofthis play's production as he was witli all his
later plays.

Importance of Tlte Rock as a Dramatic Experiment

Although, in his Three Voices of Poetry, Eliot slated that the Chorus in The
Rock did not have any voice of its own, the Chorus in this work is important,

a. The Chorus consists of seven inen and ten women wearing half masks to
emphasize their "impersonality,"The "Rock" is a character. The Chorus was
trained and coordinated by Elsie Fogerty, principal of the Central School of
Speech arid Drama, and her colleague, Gwynneth Thurburn.
Mrrrtler in Ilre b. , The Chorus is both a vehicle of social com~nentaryand a dramatic instrument
Crtth edrml for piercing through the level of philosophic and theological implications of
the actions.

c. The idea of suffering of the person who acts, the need to perfect one's will,
and the conflict between eternal and te~nporalorders, are things seer1 in
Murder in the Cathedral which was written a year later in 1935.

1.3 ELIOT'S ESSAYS RELEVANT TO HIS PLAYS

T.S. Eliot's essays on drama can be divided into three parts: First, the Elizabetb~11
essays which discuss the criteria for drama. Second, his assess~nantsf the situqtio\~
in conte~nporarytheatre and third, Eliot's statenzents about his ideal of poetic d r ~ n i ~ .
It is important to remember that most of Eliot's essays were wrltten before tlie first
performance of his first play. Only a few were written after Ile had established a ,
reputation as a dramatist.

Shakespeare is a central focus in Eliot's essays on the Elizabethans. He I-ecognisecl

Shakespeare's genius and he found his use of the blank verse particularly innovative.
Shakespeare's verse rhythms picked up the colloqirial speech of his age. 11)The
Music of Poetry (Glasgow: Jackson, 1942), Eliot states that '"hakespeare dicl more
for English language than any other poet adapting drama to colloquia! s p e ~ ~ h . "
Shakepeare's verse rhythms, he argues, reflected a world in wbicl? 1-ea1it.ywas not
fragmented. But, Eliot remarks, that in tlie for~illessnature of rnoder~lage,
Shakespeare's verse rhytlims do not apply. In The Wmte L ~ n Eliot d had statsd t!iat
writers after Shakespeare should evolve their own verse styles instead of imitating
Shakespeare. The failure of verse draina in the nineteenth century, Eliot argues, GS
because their verse rhythms were not tied to colloquial speech of the time. His view8
on this subject are expressed in his book Poetry and Dra~?ze(Cambridge, MA : HUP,
195 1). About Eliot's own struggles to get away fro111 Sliakespeare he discusses in his
essay,."The Need for Poetic Drama." (Listener 16-41 1, 25 NOV.1936 : 994-995).

Apart from his comments about tlie Elizabetha~is,Eliot also wrote several essays
assessing the state of contemporary theatre. One of the major proble~nsin
ciontemporary theatre Eliot states in "A Dialoglie on Poetic Drama," (Eliot Selected
Essays 3 1-45) was tlie fact that unlike the Elizabethan and Restoration periods ( ~ r
even earlier), where there was a moral code that the dramatist shared with the
audience, in tlie modern age there was no such moral code. This distanced the
modern dramatists from their audience's sensibilities. Moreover, the fact that the
standard modern plays were made for the actors, Eliot felt, made it difficult for poetic
drama to be effective. In his essay on "The Duchess of Ma@ : and Poetic Drama,"
(Art and Letters 3.1 Winter 1919120 : 36-39), he says, "the si~ccessflilpresentation of
a poetic play like Webster's or Shakespeare's demands that the actor not try to
improve or interpret the script - rather, that he efface his personal vanity.

While advocating the need for a poetic drama in modern times, Eliot stated that "A
new dramatic literature cannot come about until audiences and producers cqn help
poets write for the theatre ("Audiences, Producers, Plays, Poets" New Verse 18 Dec.
1935 : 3-4). The actor, Eliot said, sliould be selected and trained early for the purpose
of speaking verse drama. Similarly, "Poets wlio write for the stage cannot simply
learn about tlie theatre and f i l l scripts with poetry: they must learn to write a different
kind of poetry, in wliich the implicit speaker is not the poet himself - as is the case
with ordinary poetry - but someone else" ("The Future,of Poetic Drama." [Journal of
British Drama League, London] 17, Oct. 1938 : 3-5). Eliot was at pains to point out
that poetry should not be merely ornamental in drama and that style and matter
should be suited to each other in poetic drama. He says : "Good poetic drama is not
 T.S.EliotYsEssays
S i ~ ~ ~applay
I y translated into verse but rather a play wholly conceived and coinposed and other works
in terms of poetry, embodying a pattern like that of music" (Poetry andDrama related to the play
Cambridge, MA : HUP, 195 1). For Eliot the highest aim of poetic drama is to bring
us to the border of those feelings which can be expressed only in music without
leaving the everyday world of dramatic action.

T]le reason why Eliot found poetic drama important was because he believed that
"Poetry is the natural medium for drama, providing the intense kxcitement that the
abstractioils of a prose play cannot offer" ("The Need for Poetic Drama," Listener 16-
41 1,25 Nov. 1936 : 994-995). Eliot credits Yeats and the Abbey Theatre for the
revival of the genre. In Eliot's view, Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekov were good poets
who were coi~strainedby the limits of prose. He also believed that if modem
dramatists used verse for their works the mundane world would be transformed,
giving meaning and order to its chaos.

Eliot's Other Essays Relevant to his Plays

a. "Tradition and the It~dividualTalent"

This essay has raised great debate and controversy. In it, Eliot says, that the
contemporary reader praises "a poet, up011 those aspects of his work in which
he least resembles ally one else." Eliot protests against such an approach to
literature. He argues that it arises from a inisuilderstanding of the concept of
originality. For Eliot, the best part of a poet are those parts where his
predecessors "assert their immortality most vigorously." What Eliot means
here is that when a poet goes by a past tradition, his individuality is shown
more through the unique manner in which he incorporates sometlling which
is of the past tradition to his work which is of conteinporary value. Hence his
statement, "[a new work of art is not] merely valuable because it fits in; but
its fitting in is a test of its value.

b. "The Three Voices of Poetry"

Eliot describes the three voices of poetry as follows:

1. "The first voice is the voice of thepoet talking to hiinself - or to

nobody."

2. "The secoild voice is the voice of the poet addressing an audience,

whether large or small."

3. "The third voice is the voice of the poet when he attempts to create a
dramatic character speaking in verse; when he is saying, not what he
would say in his own person, but only what he can say within the
limits of one imaginary character addressing another imaginary
character.)'

Eliot adds that "Tile distinction between the first and the second voices . .. points to
the problem of poetic communication; the distinction between the poet addressing
other people in either his own voice or an assumed voice ... points to the problem of
the difference between dramatic, quasi-dramatic and non-dramatic verse."

1.4 ELIOT'S POETIC DRAMAS

a. The Family Reunion was published in 1939. This play is based on the Greek
inyth of Orestes, but transformed into a contemporary setting. Orestes was
pursued by the fiiries for the murder of his motiler. Here there is no real
 murder, only the suggestion that for the Christian to contemplate a curse was
to coln~nitit.

b. Tlie Cocktail Party published in 1949 was written for the Edinburgh
festival. The play ]nay appear to be a comedy but beneath its humour lies the
decadence of any large city in a disillusioned age, like the modern age.

c. The Confidential Clerk written in 1954 was inspired by Euripides' ION.

The story has a complicated plot and is set in inodern times.

d. The Elder Statesman (1958) In this some of the themes of Sophocles'

Oedipus a t Colonus are transformed into a modern setting. The play was
performed at the 1958 Edinburgh festival.

1.5 EXERCISES

a. . What were the important influences 011 Eliot's life that had an impact on his
worlts?

b. Give an account of Eliot's views on Poetic Drama.

C- , Understanding key concepts:

- What is Eliot's notion of Tradition and the Individual talent.

- What are the three voices of poetry that Eliot talks about in his essay by
the same i~ame?

d. What are the titles of the plays written by Eliot? What strikes you as
significant in these titles?

e. Write a note on the significance of Eliot's early dramatic experiments:

Sweeney Agonistes and The Rock.
 murder, only the suggestion that for the Christian to contemplate a curse was
to commit it.

b. T l ~ Cocktail
e Party published in 1949 was written for the Edinburgh
festival. The play may appear to be a comedy but beneath its humour lies the
decadence of ally large city in a disillusio~iedage, like the modern age.

c. The Confidential Clerk written in 1954 was inspired by Euripides' ION.

The story has a complicated plot and is set in inodern times,

d. The Elder Statesman (1 958). In this some of the themes of SophocIes'

Oedipus at Colonus are transformed into a modern setting. The play was
performed at the 1958 Edinburgh festival.

1.5 EXERCISES

a. What were the important influences on Eliot's life that had an impact on his
works?

b. Give an account of Eliot's views on Poetic Drama.

C- , Understanding key concepts:

- What is Eliot's notion of Tradition and the Individual talent.

- What are the three voices of poetry that Eliot talks about in his essay by
the same name?

d. What are the titles ofthe plays writteiz by Eliot? What strikes you as
significant in these titles?

e. Write a note on the significance of Eliot's early dramatic experimeilts:

Sweeney Agonistes and The Rock.
 UNIT 2 BACKGROUND, PRODUCTION AND
ANCE HISTORY .

Structure

2.0 Objectives

2.1 Historical background to the play

I
2.2 General summary of the play

I 2.3 Production History of Murder in the Cnthedral

1I 2.4 Explanation and Critical cominents of the lines from the lStChoric entrance
upto Becket's arrival in Part I of the play.
I
2.5 Exercises

2.0 OBJECTIVES

The aim of this unit is to acquaint you with the

a) Historical background to the play,

b) Production History of the play : and to provide
c) Explanatoiy comments of the lines from the 1" Choric entrance upto Becket's
arrival in Part I of the play.
I
1
2.1 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND TO THE PLAY
I
George Bell, Bishop of Chichester saw The Rock-and admired it. He asked Eliot to
write a play for the Canterbury festival of 1935. Murder in the Cathedral was a
product thereof. The play premiered in 1935 and was directed by E. Martin Browne.

I
I I~lterestingly,it was the wife of Martin Browne who gave the play its present title.
Eliot had considered calling the play Fear in the Way.
i
I The play deals with the martyrdom of Thomas Becket-one of the greatest of English
i saints -who was the Archbiship of Canterbury from 1162-1170. He was murdered in
his own Cathedral by knights who claimed to be loyal to the king.
j
1
I
For his historical source, Eliot used the eye witness accounts of eleven monks who
wrote down their versions of the murder at Canterbury. Since Murder in the
I
Cathedral is not a chronicle play, Eliot offers little about the constitutions of
I
Clarendon or the corollation ceremony which created the rift between Henry I1 and
Becket.
I
I
The year of the compostion of the play (1935) is also important because in Europe
I
there was a lot of tension building up which finally erupted in World War 11,
I
Murder. iti tlte
Cntlr edrnl 2.2 GENERAL SUMMARY OF THE PLAY

CHARACTERS : A Chorus of Women of Canterbury

Three Priests of the Cathedral
A inessenger
Archbishop Thomas Becket
Four Tempters
Four Knights
Attendants

SETTING: The first scene is the Archbishop's Hall ,011 December 2, 1170. The
second scene is in the Cathedral, on Dec. 29,l 170.

GENERAL SUMMARY : The play begins i n early December,l170 with the

Chorus, which coinprises of the poor women of Canterbury. They fear something
terrible is going to happei~with the return of l'hon~asBecket - Archbishop of
Canterbury - from exile. The Archbishop was returning after seven years of exile in
France (1 164-1171). Disagreements with his friend and King, Henry I1 over the
authority of the church v i s - h i s the state had led Becket to his exile. Earlier, as
Chancellor, Becket was on the King's side. However, when he was also made into ail
Archbishop by King Henry I1 (in the hope that the church and state could functioi~
together under the king's control), Becket made it known to the king that his loyalties
were first to God and only then to the King.

The priests are confused about the way the state is run without the guidance of the
Archbishop's autl~ority.A messenger arrives and states that Becket is returning from
France. The priests get curious about the terms of his return. They feel that even if
Becket's return is a "patched up affair" with the king it is better for the people than his
absence for the past seven years.

Becket enters in a peaceful way yet aware of the dangers involved in his return to
Canterbury. Soon four tempters come to tempt him. The first tempter, tempts Becket
with the time in his past when he was friends with the king. He tells hiin to go back
to those days and forget about his spiritual intensity. Becket overcomes this
temptation, which he considers as no temptation because it comes " twenty years too
late." The second tempter comes and tempts Becket with the time when he was the
Chancellor to the king and enjoyed secular and political powers. He tells Becket that
real power is in this world and not in the next. Becket turns away from him too. The
third tempter is a little different. He tells Becket to team up with the Church and the
Barons against monarcy. Becket overcoines this temptation saying, "no one shall say
that I betrayed a King." Becket finds the temptation of the fourth tempter most
difficult to overcome. He is an uilexpected visitor.' He tempts Becket with his own
pride the pride of achieving martyrdom. Thomas tells him "who are you tempting
with my own desires?" It is after this last temptation that Becket allnost sinks into
despair: "Is there no way, in my soul's sickness,l Does not lead to damnation in
pride?"

The Chorus in part I reflects the sick nature of the state. The tempters talk about the
unreality of human kind and even the priests begin to fear Becket's strong position.
Part I ends with Becket rising above it all. He places himself in God's hands and
becomes more clear about the nature of his struggle and what he should do.

The Christmas sennon, is a prose interlude. In it Archbishop Becket talks of

Christian paradoxes relating to birth and death and sets the stage for his own
martyrdom.
Part I1 begins with the Chorus in a more optimistic mood. The priests are still '
Background,
miting For the eteinal pattern to emerge. The four knights come from France Production and
claiming that they have urgent business with the King. They accuse Becket of Performance History
ingratitude to King Henry I1 who made him the Archbishop. This ingratitude is
expressed in Becket insisting on the power of the church over the state. Becket
politely defends himself against these accusations arguing that loyalty to God does
not imply disloyalty to the King. The knights ask Becket to leave England but he
refuses saying that he has the sanction of the Pope in Rome.

Becket leaves and the Chorus talks about the church / state conflict and the tragedy
that will ensue. The priests request Becket to hide in the Cathedral in case the
knights return again. Becket refuses but the priests drag him in. The Chorus prays
for him. The knights return in a drunken state and accuse Becket of
treason,disobedience and embezzlement of funds among other issues. The priests try
to block their entrance but Becket states that God will protect him. The knights
murder Becket and the Chorus laments along with the priests. But they feel that the
church is strenghtened by Becket's martyrdom. The knights address the audience
arguiilg that their loyalty to the king made them implement their act. The priests
dismiss the knights as "lost souls'' and the Cl~oruspraises God for making them
understand the divine pattern of action through Becket's martyrdom. They ask for
forgiveness for not submitting their will to God earlier, They ask for the mercy of
God and Christ and for the prayers of Becket who is now Saint Thomas.

2.3 PRODUCTION HISTORY OF ELIOT'S MURDER IN

THE CATHEDRAL

The play premiered on 15 June, 1935 at Canterbury's fourteenth century Chapter

I-louse. This was about fifty yards fro111 the spot where Thomas Becket was killed in
1170. There were seven performances. The Canterbury productions were
community affairs, with local businesses, SC~IOO~S, and Cathedral personnel all taking
part.

Robert Speaight, who starred as Becket, describes the Chapter House : "The buidling
has a certain Gothic bleakness, which was suitable enough to the play but wl~icli
somehow forbade enjoyment" (Speaight, Robert. "Interpreting Becket and Other
Parts. " In T.S. Eliot : A Symposium for His Seventeenth Birthday. Ed.Nevi1le
Braybrooke. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries P, 1958: 70-80. This book recounts
experiences of acting in Eliot's plays).

The play was directed by E. Martin Browne, who also played the fourth tempter and
one of the knights, Browne revised Eliot's text slightly to enable the four tempters to
double up as the four knights, for production reasons. George Bell, who had seen and
adinired The Rock comrnissioned the play for the Canterbury Festival of Music and
Drama. This festival also produces other versions of Becket's martyrdom: Laurence
Binyon's The Young King which depicts the reign of Henry I1 after Becket's death
and Tennyson's Becket.

Kenneth W. Pickering in Drama in the Cathedral examines the twenty year old
tradition of Canterbury plays. The chapter on Murder in the Cathedral presents a
basic overview of the play and details about its original performance. Other chapters
examine the history and context of the play's sponsor, the Canterbury Festival and
explores the background of Modern Christian drama.

Browne recalls decades later that to the theatre as it then was, the play was a non-
event. It was religious and so no scout or manager came. "The only English theatre
inan interested was Ashley Dukes, owner of the tiny Mercury in Notting Hillgate."
Murder in tile Stella Mary Pearce, who had also worked on The Rock designed the costumes. Since
Cntl~efIral the walls of the Canterbury Chapter House were painted in cold colours, strong
designs for the costumes were used. They were not always historically accurate. The
Chorus in sight for the whole play, was ''given garments which provided for as much
variety of appearance as possible. They had unshaped robes divided vertically into
two shades of green and decorated with strong patterns in deep red and blue, giving
the effect of figures of early stained glass." (E.Martin Browne The Making of
T.S,Eliot's Plays Cam bridge : CUP,1969).

The knights wore traditional medieval dress based on a reconstruction of the heraldry
on the Black Prince's tomb of the actual murderers. Priests wore Benedictine habits
and Becket wore a habit and a travelling dock. The tempters' costumes were
domirzated "by bright yellow colours and included a suggestion of a modern-day type
of each temptation, combined with the necessary medieval flavours." (Browne,1969).

The Canterbury production was an abridged version of the text Faber & Faber first
.published in 1935. This was so because the original performance had to be limited to
ninety minutes. The only stage property was a simple throne. The tempters entered
from screens on both sides of the stage and all other entrances were through the
audience from the large oak doors at the back of the Chapter House. After the
murder Becket's body was carried out in a procession through the audience.

During World War I1 the play was quite popular in England and was presented in
makeshift venues-- cathedrals and churches, schools and an air raid shelter. In 1959
Eliot stated that he wrote the play as "anti-nazi propaganda" expressive o f " the desire
to save the Christian world from the attacks of rival secular ideologies."

In 1970 Browne produced the play within the actual cathedral at Canterbury to mark
the 800 year anniversary of Becket's mai-tyrdom. Modern sound equiupments made
this possible.

Eliot wrote the screeilplay for George Hoellering's 1952 film version of Mzirder in
the Cathedral and spoke the role of the fourth tempter(as an off-screen presence).

The play's performance reviews were good. Conrad Aiken wrote about the
Canterbury premiere under the pseudomyn Samuel Jeake,_Jr.in The New Yorker : [It
is possibly] "a turning point in English drama-one felt that one was witnessing a play
which had the quality of greatness.. . one's feling was that here at last was the English
language literally being used, itself beconling the stuff of drama, turning alive with its
own natural poetry."

2.4 EXPLANATION AND CRITICAL COMMENTARY OF

THE LINES FROM THE IST CHORIC ENTRANCE
UPTO BECKET'S ARRIVAL IN PART I OF THE PLAY

PART I CHARACTERS
A Chorus of Women of Canterbury
Three Priests of the Cathedral
A Messenger
Archbishop Thomas Becket
Four Tempters
Attendants

SCENE ,

The Archbishop's Hall. December 2, 1170.

Chorus: The play begins with the Chorus standing near the Cathedral. They are very Background,
apprellensiveabout Becket's return from France. As poor women of Canterbury, Production arid
Performance History
tiley have already gone through a lot of suffering yet they don't feel safe. They feel
that soinething ominous is about to happen and they have been forced against their
will to bear witness.

Wit11 the passage of time from autumn to winter and the collecting and storing of
apples, the New Year waits, whispering about the destiny awaiting Becket. It is
allnost seven years since Becket left them. He was very kind to the people and yet
they feel that his return is not going to be a good sign. Whether the king rules, or the
Barons rule, these women have gone through a lot of oppression. But in general they
are left alone and they prefer it. They are content doing their domestic chores. Life
goes on with the merchant making his money, the labourer toiling on earth. All
prerer to be unobserved. With the arrival of Becltet they rear disaster. Everything is
going to be upset. They wait just as martyrs have also waited. God alone knows
their destiny. They claim to have seen all what they know about the future in a "shaft
of sunlight." All that they can do is to wait.

Critical Commentary on t h e First Choric Speech

The play opens at a critical moment with the unexpected arrival of Becket after seven
years of exile in France. The Chorus which co~nprisesa group of "poor women" of
Canterbury and who also represent humanity in general, expresses "fear." One of the
choric functions is to create the atmosphere of doom -akin to Greek tragedy. The
original title of the play was Fear in the Way. The "fear" that the Chorus expresses in
a sense also relates to the political moment of the play. Eliot wrote Murder in the
Cathedral in 1935 when the tensions leading to World War I1 and Nazism was
already strongly felt. ,I .

The Chorus who has gathered together like the congregatioil attending a Christian
nlass use the term "wait" in its opening speech in various ways, For example, the
New Year waits, Martyrs wait and the Poor Women of Canterbury wait "Waiting" is
an important concept in Christianity. The "Holy SpiritM-- which is part of the Holy
Trinity'of God the Father,the Son, and the Holy Spirit-- appears often in the form
of a breeze. If you are prepared and ready and waiting, this breeze will have an
impact on you. In a sense, these Women of Canterbury are waiting without
preparation like the five foolish virgins in the Bible (Refer to the parable of the ten
virgins in the Gospel of St. Matthew in the New Testament of the Bible). What
draws these "poor women" to the Cathedral is physical safety rather than any spiritual
ties.

Ironically, although these "poor women" of Canterbury keep saying that no one
bothers about them, Thomas, does bother. The reason why the Chorus is forced to
bear witness against its will is because it takes both parties to complete a sacrifice.
The saint and those he saves. Those whom the martyrdom benefits must accept the
fact. This is what the Chorus has to learn. They must not "deny their master." The
second verse of the Chorus speech picks this up. Christ died for the sins of humanity,
in order to save it. Unless human beings realize this, we are not saved and Christ's
sacrifice has' no meaning.

The reference to the seasons in verse 2 of the Chorus refers to the temporal dimension
in which human beings live a meaningless existence without any relation to the " still
point" that is God. The first draft of Murder in the Cathedral started wit!! :kir line ,
which paralleled the opening lines of The Waste Land("Apri1 is the cruellest
month... .")

When the Chorus talks about remembering the martyrs and saints who wait and
question as to who will acknowledge them, they are talking about the Feast of St. ,

Michael and All Angels (All Hallows).When these feasts were celebrated did the
 Murder it1 the people of Canterbury really reinember them?. Peter (One of Christ's twelve disciples)
C[rtltellrrrl too denied his master, Christ. In the Gospel of St. Mark-- in the New Testament of
the Bible-- we are told that Peter stretched out his hand on fire and denied Christ.

We are next given the historical background. The Archbishop is returning after seven
years of exile in France (1 164- I 170) The Chorus' statements about being left alone
to do its own things parallels The Waste Lurid where the characters do not want to be
disturbed from their inertia by spring. Later, the attitude of the Chorus changes. It
learns that spiritual regeneration involves sacrifice. It learns that the monotonous kind
of lire that they are living at the temporal level is going to be changed by Becket's
mai-tyrdom which will give their life a new meaning. Through out this choric speech
we get the feeling that the "poor women" are living at the temporal level only. They
follow the linear concept of time. Statements like "What shall we do in the heat of
summer" refer to their emptiness. Yet the Chorus knows that "Destiny waits in the
hand of God." It is God who controls everything and not the statesmen at the
temporal level. 'The Chorus is also very prophetic. They state that death will corne
from the sea. The knights who killed Becket did come from the sea across France.
Compare the intuition of the chorus of having seen things in a "shaft of sunligl~t"with
Becket's stateinent that they speak better than they know.

Towards the end of their speech when they mention Christ and the notion of
regeneration, they are comparing Becket with Christ. A Christ like figure has to
perish in every age to save humanity.

By the end of the pIay the Chorus progresses from fear in the opening passage to
glorifying God at the end. TheJuctuations of the Cl?orus are the true measure of
Thon~as ' spil-itual conquest.
Conversation among the Three Priests and the Messenger following thc Chorus'
first speech.

The first Priest says that it is seven years since the Archbishop left England, The
second Priest asks what the Archbishop and the Pope can do about the conflict and
intrigues between King I-Ienry I1 and the French King which have been discussed in
endless meelings and deferred conferences? The third Priest cornrnents on the state
of temporal government which is full of duplicity and thrives on appropriation of
wealth. The first Priest wonders why people cannot remember their God in heaven
and forget such violence and duplicity. Soon a messenger enters and states that the
Archbishop has arrived on the shores of England and that he had been sent to prepare
the Priests to welcome him. The first priest asks the messenger if the feud between
the King and Archbishop--two proud men, has ended. The third Priest wonders what
peace can be expected between "the haminer and the anvil." The second Priest wants
to know from the messenger if "old disputes" are at an end and whether it is "peace or
war?" The first Priest is still not clear whether the Archbishop is corning with the
consent of King Henry I1 or because of his spiritual support from the Pope in Rome
and t h e love of the people in England. The messenger states that the Priests are right
in asking these questions and that the Archbishop comes not with any consent from
the king of England but with support from both the Pope in Rome and the king of
France and most importantly, due to the "devotion of the people." Again, the first
Priest inquires "Is it war or Peace?" and the messenger says that it is not peace but a ,
"patched up affair." He also states that he has heard that when the Archbishop left
France he told the French King "I leave you as a man 1 whoin in this life I shall not
see again." This does not augur well. The lnesse~lgerexits after stating this.

The first Priest fears for the Archbishop and the Church. He says that he has seen the
Archbishop as Chancellor working closely with the king. People loved him but he
was "always isolated." His "pride" was "always feeding upon his own virtues." He
had contempt for earthly power and wanted to be subject to God alone. He ends his
18
 Background,
by saying that if King Henry I1 had been weaker or greater, perhaps things Productio~~
and
would have been different between him and Becket. Performance History
f
The second Priest states that whatever it is, the Archbishop has returned to his people
who have been waiting for a long time for 1iim.The Priest then goes on to say that the
Archbishop who is at one with the Pope and the King of France would give them
orders as to what sllould be done. He would give them all directions. Therefore, they
should welcome and rejoice his coming. The third Priest says whether the outcome is
good or bad it is better that the Archbishop is coming. At least the wlieel is now
turning.

Critical Commentary on the Passage Summarised Above.

I

I
The Priests are numbered and not named. This is significant in that they become
representatives of a class. Ironically, even though tlle Priests stand for the Church,
the they lack the vision of tlle Cllorus and discuss munda~lestate / church issues. Is
I
Eliot trying to associate tlietn with institutionalized religion? The speeches of the
Priests (especially the secoild Priest) expose us to tlle historical situation in tlie play
wliicl~is necessary for our understanding of the conflict between Henry I1 and
Becket. However, since Eliot's play--unlike Anouillh's--focuses on Becket's
martyrdom, the King does not appear in the play at all. Becket's "pride" is discussed
by the Priests. This is iinportant. One of tlle tlliligs that Becket has to shed in his
move towards martyrdom is "pride." Tl~oniaswas not born a saint. He has to get rid
of his pride. The last temptation is the most difficult one. Wlien tlie first Priest tallcs
about Becket's "isolation," we have to keep in mind Kierkegaard's category of the
individual as the comrnunicator of truth. The com~nunicatorof truth can only be an
individual and it can be addressed only to the individual. For truth consists precisely
in tliat conception on life which is expressed by the individual. Tlie crown is
"untruth." Truth is subjective. This could be one reason wliy Becket does not even
listen to institutionalized religion as symbolized by the Priests. Even when tlie
Priests shut the door against tlie Kniglits, Becket opens tl~em.I-Ie must bear witness.
He must validate his owl1 truth even if it pcrsonally destroys him.

The messenger's description of the welcolne that tlie Arcl~bisliopgets 011 arrival in
England echoes Christ's triu~nplialentry in Jerusalem when people hailed him saying
"alleluiah, Icing ofthe Jews," and 'strewed his path witli palm leaves.

The messenger's remark that Becket told the French King tliat lie would not meet him
in this life again is close to the historical statement. Eliot, like Shaw in SI. Joari is
careful to use words actually spoken bjl the historical character wherevc~+possible.
Becket's other remark, '!not if I were to be torn asunder, limb by limb would I
relinquish this jouniey . . . " makes us realize that tlie third telnptation is really no
temptation because Becket is already willing to die for the cause of tnartyrdo~nand
lie knows what he is doing.

The second Priest's remark that we slionld rejoice in tlie Archbishop's arrival since "I
am the Archbishop's man" echoes the four Knights, who murder Becket and claim to
be the King's men. The second Priest is a little too optimistic. He llas to learn that
peace and security come through suffering. Tlie third Priest is not so hopeful.
Neither attitude is correct. Reconciliation involves conflict between good and evil,

The third Priest is important because he is tlie one who states the epitaph on the
Knights, "Go, weak sad men, lost erring souls, homeless in earth or heaven." In tlle
third Priest's s ~ e e c hthe iinage of the wlieel is also used. Uilless man's will is in
harmony with God's will, can the wheel turn smoothly aroulid the still point. If this is
not the case then the. wheel is at a standstill. Eliot's theory of depersonalization in
poetry explained in his essay, " Tradition and tlie Individual Talent" fits in with the
process of martyrdom in w l ~ i c one l ~ surrenders one's will t o God.
 Murder irr the The last few lines of the third Priest before the second choric entrance is a quotation
Crlthedritl from the Ecclesiastes, (Chapter 12, verses 3-4, Bible) which talks about the end of
things.

Summary of the second Choric Speech

In this Choric speech, the Chorus tells Becket to return to France and leave it "to
perish in quiet." It fears cataclysmic changes if Becket continues to stay in England.
The time is not right as yet for Becket's return. The Chorus wai~tsto continue to live
the way it has in the past seven years. It has gone through ups and downs when crops
have failed and droughts have occurred. However, it carried on with life observing
the religious feasts and has seen "births, deaths and marriages." Even in these seven
years these woinen of Canterbury have had fears of various kinds but nothing like the
fear they now sense and can't face. It is a "final fear which none understands." They
tell Becket that he is not aware of the implications of his return to England and its
impact on their lives: "do you/realise what it means/To the small folk drawn into the
pattern of fate,/the slllall/folli who live alnong sinall things."

They plead with the Archbishop to leave and say that he will be their Archbishop
even in France.

I Critical Commentary on the Chorus's second Speech

The Chorus begins its' speech quoting fiom St. Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews in the
New Testament: Chapter 13, Verse 14. Their speech is full of morbid images and
colours "evil the wind," "grey the sky," "rotten the year' etc. In this speech the
Chorus emerges as very selfish. It fears for itself. Later on it grows and learns to
express concern for Thomas. The phrases " we do not wish anything to happen" and
"Living and Partly living" echo Eliot's The Waste Land. These poor women-- who
are so poor both econoillically and spiritually-- do not wish anything to happen. They
never come to grips with their lives which makes for greatness. They are also not in
communioi~with the still point which gives one identity. They live at the linear,
temporal level of time. Christ had said that "man can't liveby bread alone." This is
precisely what these wonlen are doing. The einpty routine of their lives is recaptured
as in "East Coker" of The Four Quartets. There is an inner emptiness, a death march: ,
"Silent funeral nobody's funeral for there is no one to bury." As in "East Coker" here
too the poor women of the Chorus have not lived at all. They have existed only on a
superficial tenlporal level.

To the women of Canterbury "death" is frightening. This can only be so if death is

not seen as part of a larger pattern. The Chorus has to learn the fact that Becket's
death through martyrdom is necessary for their birth. What the Chorus fears is
beyond their comprehension, In this second speech of the Chorus we see a change in
it. It recognises its ow11 guilt I' tarnished frame of existenie." When the Chorus
states: "Archbishop, secure and assured of your fate," they have fear and no
understanding of what is to befall them. It is important to note that the Chorus refers
to itself as small folk who live among small things at the temporal plaia and do not
want to be drawn into the eternal pattern of fate.

I
The Chorus here is like the Chorus in Greek drama. Like the Chorus in Sophocles'
Antigone which fears the conflict between state and the individual, act, inspired by
divinity, here too the Chorus fear the church /state conflict.
'
Summary of Second Priest's Speech

The second priest chides the "poor women" of Canterbury for babbling foolishly. He
tells them that the Arcllbishop is about to arrive at any moment and the crowds in the
streets will be cheering. He tells the chorus not to "croak" like frogs and to put up
20
 Background,
1 pleasallt faces whatever their "craven apprehension" may be and to give a hearty
I welco~neto the Archbishop.
Production and
Performance History
.

1
,I Critical Commentary on Second Priest's Speech

The second Priest uses a lot of anillla1 imagery when he scolds the "poor woment' of
i
I Canterbury represented by the Chorus. This is significant. These wornell are leading
an aniinal like existence away from the "still point" that is God. In the Christian
hierarchy animals are lower down in the scale. Human beings are at the top of God's
creation. Lower down are animals and still lower, is vegetation. The Chorus has -
to spiritually evolve into higher levels of existeilce to be'one with the "Still Point."

-
1 2.5 EXERCISES

1
1. Outline the historical background of the play.

2, Critically cornrneizt on the i~nportailceof the first two clloric speeches.

3. Discuss the significance of the conversation among the Priests between the first
two choric speeches.

4. Is there any development in tlie first two speeches of the Chorus?

I
 UNIT-3: CRITICAL APPROACHES TO THE PLAY
PART -1

Structure

3.0 Objectives

3.1 Explanatory and Critical Notes on Part I of the play from Becket's first
appearance upto the temptation scene in Part I

3.2 The Significance of 13ecket1ssilence after the temptations.

3.3 Explanatory and Critical Notes on Part I of the play from the Choric passage
following the exit of the fourth Tempter upto the end of Part I

3.4 Important aspects of Part 1

3,5 Exercises.

3.0 OBJECTIVES

The aim of this unit is to provide you with

a) Explanatory comments on Becket's first appearance in the play upto the end of
the temptations in Part I.
b) It also highlights the significance of Becket's silence after the temptations, and
provides
c) Explanatory comlnents from the Choric passage following the exit of the fourth
Tempter upto the end of Part I.

3.1 EXPLANATORY AND CRITICAL NOTES ON

BECKET'S FIRST APPEARANCE IN THE PLAY UPTO
THE END OF THE TEMPTATION SCENE IN PART I

Thomas7 Dialogues with the Priests before his Temptations

Thomas enters with the word "peace" and tells the Priest to let the Chorus alone
because it "speaks better than it knows," and what it says is beyond the
understanding of the Priests. He then goes on to say that the women o f Canterbury
do not know about action and suffering except the fact that "neither does the agent
suffer /nor the patient act" T l ~ ewomen are fixed in the wheel of eternal action in
which all must consent to the will of God for the wheel to move in harmony.

The second Priest apologises to Becket saying that he did not see him coming
b because he was hvolved with the chatter of the "poor women." He says that he
would have been better prepared otherwise. However, seven years of Becket's .
absence has already prepared him for his arrival which seven days in Canterbury
would not have done. He then tells Becket that he will light the fires in Becket's
room to ward off the December cold and that Becket will find his rooins as he lefi
them.
Thomas thanks the second Priest and says that 11e will leave the rooms the way he got Critical Approaches
tllem. But these are all "small matters," he says. He informs the Priests that there are to the play - Part-1
ellemiesall around. Eve11 his arrival in Englaild could hive been prevented by
l l ~ e b e l l i bishops,
o ~ ~ York, London, Salisbury." All of them had helped in the
corollation of Henry 11'ssuccessor without the permission of the Archbishop of
Canterbury. Warenne, and the Sheriff of Kent tired to oppose Becket's return and
B ~ O Cwas the one in whose ]louse the Knights stayed before and after the murder.
ljecket says that it was the Dean of Salisbury who helped him cross the sea
~~~mmolested."

To the first Priest's question whether the enelnies are still followi~~g,
Becket replies
that this peace is temporary and that they will attack at the first opportunity. The
"end will be simple, sudden, God-given, " he observes. Meanwhile, he says that one
has to overcome other probleins in preparing for thc event. ,

Critical Commentary on the abave passages

Becket's first word "Peace" as he enters is very significant. In the play all the
characters strive for "Peace" in different ways. The knights think that by killing
Becket they can obtain "pease", the Priests think that tiley can obtain it by escaping.
The Chorus feels that it can obtain "peace" by avoiding witnessing Becket's
martyrdom. Becket is the only sharacter who achieves true "peace" by conscious
submissioil to the "Still Point."

Becket's speecll about acting and suffering is very important in understai~diilgthe

Christiwl process of martyrdom:

They know apd do not know, what it is to act or suffer

They know and do not know, that action is suffering
And suffering is actian, Neither does the agent suffer
Nor the Patient act But both are fixed
111 a11eternal action, an eternal patience
To wllich all must consent that it may be willed
And which all must suffer that they inay will it,
TIwt the pattern {naysubsist, for the pattern is the action
And the suffering, that the wheel inay turn and still
Be forever still.

What Becket means by this is that in the long run there is no question of deciding to
either act or to suffer passively., There is no distinction between making a decision
and passivity. Becket's very passivity is action and even that does not belong to him
but is one with God's will. It is the divineputlern that is important not individual
acting and sufSeri~lgsince God is ultin~atslyin control. This control is not to be
cov&rses' with predestinption. Marl hcls thej-ec will to accept or to reject God's plan.
Becket is tempted t s do the latter but he overcomes the temptation. Human beings
must submit to God's plans for thern. Becket's role in this pattern is to accept
~nartyrdomwhile the role of lesser mortals as well as the Cliorus is to humbly
recog~iisethe need for that sacrifice. Only when man's will is in complete harmony
with the divine will can tlie wheel turn smoothly around the "Still Point." Suffering is
not silpply qndergoing misery and pain. It is also permitting, coiisenting and
subnlitting. He who consents to an actioli must suffer for it and accept responsibility.
The ~hor$, like the common man, understands no sucb responsibility. At the point
In the play the Chorus says, "for U S the poor, there i s no action." But during the
coilrse of the play it learns tn participate in the actian, "I have consented Lord
Arcllbishop.''

When Becket says, "Neither does the agent suffer/nor the patient act," he is the agent
in one sense. He sets the wheel rolling. In another sense he also suffers to be killed.
But yet at another level, he is neither the agent nor the patient since action and
Mzrrder ill tlrc suffering proceed from God's will and not his owti. This is again the reason why
Cntlrerlrnl Becket, referring to his enemies says, "For a little time the hungry l~awk/Willonly
soar and hover, circling lower,/Waiting excuse, pretence, c)pportunity./Endwill be
simple, sudden, Gocl-given." He refers to his murderers a; "hawlts" highlighting tlie
animal nature of this being. Becket is aware that no plotting can succeecl until God
wills his death. Becket's awareness parallels Christ's response, "My hour is not yet
come." Like Christ, Becket too must first face temptatior,. He says this is more
difficult than death. Meanwhile, "All things prepare the event. Watch."

Explanation of t h e Temptation Scene

The first Tempter calls Becket, "Old Tom, Gay Tom, Becket of London," and
reminds him of his past when he was friends with the King. Now tliat Becket has
again patched up with the Icing, he asks him whether the "Clergy and laity may
return to gaiety" of flirting in the meadows and enjoying life with all its pleasures.
Becket responds by saying that the Teinpter speaks of past seasons and that "in the
life of one man, never 1 The same time returns." The first Tempter insists that the
good times have come again with Beclcet's peace with the King. Becket chides him
saying, "look to your behaviour." The first Teinpter says that earlies Becket was
kinder on sinners and that he should take friendly advice Trom hiin and choose a
comfortable life and forget ~nartyrdoin.Becket tells him tliat he comes twenty years
too late. To this the first Tempter says that he will leave Thomas to his "higher vices"
and leaves. After the Tempter leaves, Becket comments that if one hoped 11iat the
past will return then one gets distracted from one's clilties in the present.

The second Telnpter enters suggesting a compromise with H e n 9 and reminds Becket
of their amity. He refers to the l~istoricalcontext when the constitutions were
presented to Becket at Clarendon and he faced the full force of the telnptation of
compl-omise with the Icing. In Northampton the King sum~nonedhim to account for
money spent during Becket's Chancellorship. Here too Becket could have done the
easier thing and submitted to the King. At Montinirail, another attempt was made to
coax Becket to surrendes to the King's point of view. The second Teinpter states that
if ohe weighs the balance between the "not too pleasant memories," and the "g~rod
memories" in his position as the ~haiicellokthe "late one's rise!" He states that
Becket, whom all acknowledged sl~ould"guide tlie state again." Becket is intrigued
by his meaning and asks the Tempter to clarify. The second Tempter continues t6
stress the point that Beclcet should regain his "Chancellorship" and tliat it was a big
mistake to liave given it LIP. AS a Chancellor, Becket will gain power and glory over
men. To this Becket states "To the man of God what gladness?" The Tempter states
that it is "sad" that the man who bad real power on earth should fight for spiritual
power in the next world by "giving love to God alone. " To this Becket enquires
"Who then?" and the second Tempter states if he take back his chancellorsl~iphe and
the King can work together. They can help the poor, strengthen the laws of the
country, dispense justice. What niore can man do on earth for God? Becket asks
"What Means?" The Tempter states that this could be achieved by compromise. This
is because "Real power1 is purchased at the price of a certain submission.' Becket
rejects it ard tlie Tempter tells him that by choosing the position of Archbishop and
serving God, Becket is a "realmless ruler" bound to a "powerless Pope." I-Ie carries
on by saying that men have to manipulate and manoeuvre. Even Kings need loyal
friends to work with at home.

Becket ;eplies by saying that he had excommunicated the Bishops for assisting King
Henry I1 in his son's coronation which was the prerogative of the Archbishop. To this
the second Tempter says that "Hungry hatred I Will not strive against intelligent self-
interest." Becket responds by asking, "What about tlie Barons?" The Teinpter
respo~ldsby saying that the King and chancellor have to work together against the
barons wlio are their enemies. Becket dismisses the second Tempter by saying that
why should he "Descend to desire a punier power" by serving the King over God.
The second Telnpter also leaves unsuccessfully. He recognises that Thonlas is
 from Pride in his own spii-itual position. He says to him, "Your sin soars, Critical Approaches.
sunward,covering King's falcons." After he leakes, Becket ponders over what he has to the play - Part-I
said and says that maintaining order at the temporal level is to arrest disorders and to
descend to the temporal level "would now only bc mean descent." At this point the
third Teinpter enters who is a representative of the Barons. He enters saying that he
is not a courtier or a politician but a "rough straightforward Englishman, "a" country
lord" who knows what the country needs." He even alleges that they are "the
backbone of the nation." Becket asks him to proceed with what he has to say and the
Tempter continues by saying that friendship should be convenient "unreal friendship
illay tiirn to real / But real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended." Becket replies
by saying that for a countryman lie speaks like a courtier. The third Tempter
continues by saying that since Becket's friendship with King Henry I1 cannot be
mended, he should now form new alliances. Becket who dearly loved the King, his
friend feels the loss of the friendship and exclaims : "0Henry, 0 my King!"

The Teinpter carries on by saying that the King in England is not at all powerf~il.His
Frellch link with his wife makes him susceptible to his sons stealing his kingdom,
We the barons, he says are for England. Both Becket and the Tempter are Normans,
~llllikethe King, who is froin,Anjou in France. "Let the Angevin I Destroy himself,
fighting in Aiijou." he suggests a "happy coalition/ of intelligent interest." For
llim,(who represent the Barons)Churcli favours is an advantage and Pope's blessing
"Powerful protection / In the fight for Liberty." The third Teinpter says that if Becket
joined their powers then they could put an end to "tyrannous jurisdiction" of the
King's court over the Bishop's and the Baron's court helping both England and Rome
in one stroke. Becket claims that he helped to form it. The Tempter states that it is a
new coalition that is needed now. Becket states that if he cannot trust tlie King then
why would he trust the King's undoers? The Tcinpter says that the King will trust
only his own power and no one else's. The church ancl those against him have every
right to come together to fight the king. In this case, Becket says that if he cannot
trust the Icing then it is better to trust God alone. Me recalls that when lie was a .
cl~ancellor,these very people waited on him even in the "tilt-yard,"(Becket was a
great horseman in llis early days ). Becket argues why lie who ruled like an "eagle
among doves" now rules as "wolf atnong wolves? I-Ie dismisses the third Tempter by
saying, "no one shall say that I betrayed a King."
I
The third Tempter leaves saying that he hopes the King will acknowledge Becket's
I
loyalty to hiin. After the third Tempter leaves, Becket says that the thought of
breaking the power of the King has crossed his mind before but he has rej,~ted it
because lie dearly loves the King and he trusts God. I-Fe further says, that to break the
, King's power at this point he would like what Samson achieved in Gaza when he .
pulled down the pillars of the house in which three thousand Philistines had gathered
to watch him perform feats of strength: and so pulled down the same destruction on
1
himself. If Becket were to act against tlie King now it would fall short of Samson's
triumph, and would only destroy liitnself.
I
I
i The foiourth Tempter enters. Becket does not expect him "Who are you? I expected 1
Three visitors, not four.'' The fourth Teinpter says that lie always "Precedes
expectation"'and that the King will never trust "twice" the man who was his friend
and betrayed him. He warns Becket about the offer made by the third Teinpter who
represents the Barons saying, "Kings have public policy / Barons private profit." He
. advises Becket to "fare forward to the end," because kingly power is more
pleasurable than power under a king. T11e kind of spiritual power that Becket strives
for is greater than temporal power "War, plague, and revolution, / New conspiracies,
broken pacts: / To be master or servant within an hour, / This is the course of
temporal power." He taunts Becket by saying that he has made a clever choice in
privileging the eternal over the temporal because "When King is dead, there's another
king" but "Saint and Martyr rule from the tomb." Unlike the political fears Kings
may have Becket will have long lines of pilgrims waiting to see his tomb. Becket
admits of these thoughts. The fourth Tempter says, that is why he is saying these
things. He lulows that Becket has thouglit about it all very carefully while praying or
early in the morning. Becket ltnows that nothing at the temporal level lasts and that
only the spiritual world triutnphs so he should go towards martyrdom. Becket
exclaims, "Who are you tempting with my own desires?' He feels trapped and says,
"Is there no way, in IVY soul's sickness, / Does not lead to damnation in pride?" Tlle
fourth Tempter leaves echoing Becket's first speech about actio~land suffering.

Critical Commentary on the Temptation Scene

Nevill Coghill provides a good note on this scene. He says that there is no stage
direction stating the exit of the Priests and the Chorus. This is because the Chapter
House where Eliot staged the play had only one exit, therefore, it was difficult for the
characters to enter the exit frequently. Becket's line, "All things prepare the event.
Watch" demonstrates this problem very effectively. Viewed from another
perspective, the characters presence on the stage is important because the Tempters
could be merely figments of Becket's imagination, an internal conflict. Eliot, in this
play, has brilliantly used his theory of "de-personalization" in poetry to his advantage.
He has used a character whose spiritual growth demands a surrendering of his will to
God--a depersolialization of the self. The Temptation scene is also important in that
it introduces the morality play pattern in M~rrderin the Cathedral. As in the Morality
plays there is personification. Eliot states that he was influenced by Everyman in his
use of metre for the play.

Becket's first temptation refers to his good times in the past. Becket was known for
his good living. At a more significant level the first Tempter is asking Becket to
move away from the still point, God. Technically, the first temptation is no
temptation for Becket. Christ's temptation, which came after he had fasted for forty
days and was alone in the wilderness, were genuinely difficult to overcome (See
Gospel of St. Matthew Ch. 4). In a sense Becket's first three Tempters are more akin
to Job's comforters in the Book of Job of the Old Testament in the Bible. lnfact,
Becket's remark to the Tempter proves that the first te~nptationis no temptation: "But
in the life o f one man, never / The sane time returns."

One of the problems that Eliot faces in his portrayal of Becket is to make a good
character attractive. Milton faced a similar problem in his creation of Christ in
Paradise Lost. Often these characters appear as a little priggish and stilted. The
essence of tlle first Tempter's speech is that he wants Becket to choose a comfo~.table
life on earth and forget martyrdom and its rewards pro~nisecfin the next world. The
Tempter exits saying "I leave you to the pleasures of your higher vices." This is
significant. Spiritual pride is a vice that Becket must fight.

The second Tempter provides a brief historical context for the central conflict
between the Icing and Becket--representing the State and the Church, respectively.
The Second Tempter appeals to Becket's love for power and cleverly tells Becket
about the good that he can do 011 earth far God with earthly power. Becket's response
"What Means?" points to the Key question in Christianity viz. that means and end are
important. Later, Becket refers to the danger of doing the right tiling for the wrong
reason. When the second Tempter tells Becket to join ]lands with tile King to unite
against England's enemies at horne and abroad, Becket says : "No! Shall I, Who keep
the keys 1 of heaven and hell, supreme alone in England / who bind and loose, with
power from the Pope I Descend to desire a punier power?" This response of Becket
shows that he is not free from spiritual pride. The second Tempter's reference to
"bind and loose" refers to Christ's saying to his disciple, Peter, in the Gospel of St.
Matthew Cli. 16 V. 19 "And I shall give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven:
and whosoever thou shalt bind on earth sllall be bound in heaven: and whosoever
thou shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."

The first two Tempters play upon Becket's love for power and pleasure: and his love
for the King. Becket overcomes both these weaknesses during the course of his
 Critical Approaches
temptatio1ls. It flzzcst be noted that although the Tempters are numbered they hal~e
to the play - Part-1
very distinct persorzalities.

-j-lle fourth Tempter is totally unexpected. He is the most kightening of the

Tempters. In a sense, the earlier three temptations were really no challenge to
Becket. The fourth Tempter taunts him about his spiritual pride. Becket overcomes
this lelnptatio~lbefore.us in the play. Becket says of the fourth Tempter, "Who are
you tempting me with lny own desires?" The fourth Tempter tempts Becket with the
glories of eternal sainthood as compared to the transient glories at the temporal level.
He tells Becket that his choice for the eternal over the temporal, is clever. The aim of
the fo~lrtl~ Tempter is to undermine Becket's faith. His goal is achieved if Becket
surrenders to despair or aspires to pride. Infact, Becket comes close to this when he
says, "Is there no way, in my soul's sickness, 1 Does not lead to damnation in pride."

It ,nust be noted that tbe fourth Tempter appears when Becket's rejection of time is
complete. He advocates perception from the vantage point of the foul-th dimension of
eternity. Becket now fee!s trapped. His "near despair" after the fourth Tempter
leaves, is reflected in the speech of the Chorus. Becket is almost in danger of being
&sorbed into the abyss of despair. He has to actively overcome this temptation. It
involves considerable internal conflict mirrored both in his Christmas sermon and the
second part of the play.

In 1934 Eliot said, "with the disappearance of the idea of intense moi-alstruggle, the
hllman being presented to us both in poetry and prose fiction today.. . tend to become
less real. It is iniact during moments of moral nndspiritilal struggle--that me11and
women come nearest to being real'' (After Strange ~ d d s ) The
. characters in Murder
in the Cathedral are real froin this point of view.
The fourth Tempter leaves echoing Becket's opeiling speech in the play about acting
and suffering.I1MartinBrowne states that when the foi~rthTempter talks of the turning
of the wheel: he is refering to it as sometl~ing~nechanicalwhich makes action and
suffering meqingless. Becket feels trapped af3er the fourth Teinpter tempts him and
tl~isis reflected in the ironical repetition of Becket's own speech by the Tempter.
Becket, the teacher, has now become the pupil. He has to learn the true meaning of
martyrdoin, Respair and pride are see11 only in relation to man's will not God's.
~ e c k eist forced to find a way out of his paradox. The stillness of the wheel is later
contrasted wit11 tlle "restlessness in the house" expressed by the chorus in'their
outburst following the temptations.

3.2 BECKET'S SILENCE AFTER THE FOURTH

TEMPTATION

After the fourtll Tempter leaves, Becket remains silent while all the other character
speak. This certainly dramatises the intense conflict in Becket. It is through this
silence that Becket overcor?zesthe fourth temptation viz. attack on his pride. This
silence is also significant because it makes us realize that Becket goes through
conflict anci suffering before he becomes a martyr. If this process had not taken place
his death would have been misread as the "self slaughter of a lunatic."

It is i~nportantto examine the nature of the dramatic strategies used by Eliot to show
how Becket overcomes his last temptation before lie is ready for martrydon]. In
doillg this one shoiild keep in mind the particular kind of audience the play was
catering to, Eliot's use of language and metre to create dramatic effects, and the"
constraints both religious and theatrical within which Eliot had to operate.

ASstated earlier, the play was written for the Canterbury Festival of June 1935 and it
catered to a specifically Christian audience. It was performed in the Chapter House
Murder it1 flze of the Cathedral. The architectural and acoustic peculiarities of the place inlposed
Cntlt erlral some dramatic constraints on Eliot. For instance, the al~nostponderous and heavy
effect of some of the speeches in i\hrder it/ ?he C~rtlzedralis deliberate, so that words
could be enunciated and not lost in transmission. The simultanous presence of
several characters on the stage is also a direct consequence ofthe architectural
peculiarity of tlle place. The Cliapter House as we know had only one door for the
characters to enter and exit frorn. Could this be one of the reasons for the
simultaneous presence of the Tempters, the Chorus and the Priests on the stage after
Becket's last temptation? Or, is Eliot not willing to present God, even for a religious
audience? In other words, rather than showing God Eliot chose the conlbined effect
of the Cllorus, Tempters and the Priests to dramatize the whirlwind whicli signifies
God's presence in the Book of Job.
4
The central problem which Eliot faced in dra~naticallyportraying the resolution of
Becket's conflict was to convincingly exteriorize Becket's interior conflict. As Helen
Gardner rightly says:". ..the last te~nptationis so subtle and interior that 110audience
cal? judge whether it is truly overcome or not." If we are to believe Becket when he
says "Temptation shall not come in this kind again," what are the dramatic strategies
used by Eliot to lead us to this belief?

I t may be noted that ~ l i owas

i working against a dramatic tradition which was
essentially naturalistic. Therefore, to put words of humility in Thomas'own mouth
would make him appear the opposite of humble. Perhaps this accounts for the long
silence between Becket's words after the last Tcmpter tempts hi~n,and his expression
of the resolution of his conilict ill his speech "now is my way clear, now is the
meaning plain."

Referring to the difficulty of judging whether the last temptation has been overcome
Helen Gardner says: "we have to take it for granted that Thomas dies with a pure will,
or else, more properly, ignore the whole problem of motives as beyond our
competence and accept the fact of his death" (The Art of T.S.EliotP.134).
, Interestingly, Eliot's essay on "Poetry and Drama" offers a possible interpretation to
the dramatic strategy used by him, in dramatising Becket's resolution of the conflict.
In the essay he says: "It seems to me that beyond the na~neableclassifiable e~notions
and motives of our conscious life when directed towards action, the part of life which
prose drama is wholly adequate to express there is a fringe of indefinite extent, of
feeling which one can only detect, so to speak, out of the corner of the eye and can
never conlpletely focus; of feeling of wliich we are only aware in a kind of temporary
detachment from action." Could Becket's silence after the fourth Tempter tempts him
be that "feeling of which we are only aware in a kind of temporary detachment from
act ion?"

3.3 EXPLANATION OF THE CHORIC PASSAGE

FOLLOWING THE EXIT OF THE FOURTH
TEMPTER UPTO THE E'ND OF PART 1

The c11oric outburst that follows after the fou~-th"'rern~ter

exits conveys the
restlessness of the people. There is restlessness, these "poor women" of Canterbury
say, in the "house" and in the "street." The air is oppressive and clarnmy; the sky
"thick and heavy." Images of the earth birthing "issue of hell" contribute to the
general sense of horror.

Following the choric outburst, the fo~ourTempters collectively talk about the unreality
o f all things. Any award or prize on earth in the ultimate analysis is not worth
winning not even the hope of martyrdoin. It is like "hankering for the cat in the
Parztomime, which isn't a cat at'all, but just ano.ther cheatN(NevilleCoghill). The
 Critical
Telnpters want the audience to adopt their point of view i n condemning Becket's Approaches to the
l n a r t y r d ~ nas~ an illusive and childish act that is "out of touch with reality." They play - part-I
refer to Becket as "obstinate, b l i ~ ~intentd, 1 On self-destruction," someone who is
l'lost in the wonder of his own greatness, 1 Tlle enemy of society, enenly of hin~self."

The three Priests--like the four Tempters--collectively tell Becket not to fight the
forces against him. They ask him to wait iiiltil things sitbside.

Following the collective plea of the Priests to Becket, the Chorus, Tempters and the
Priests alternately highlight "Prowling presences" like "rain that taps at the window, "
"wind that pokes at the door" and the "mastiff' prowling at the gate. Images of death
and violence are also picked lip by them. Phrases like "a sudden sllock on the skull,"
"(lrowned in a ditch" and "feel the cold in his groin" intensify and atmosphere of
anxiety.

The C~IOSLIS now enter and tell Beclcet that they are not happy about tlie present
situation. They state that they are not "ignorant women" and know "what to expect
and not expect." In life they have known surfering, "extortion and violence,"of "the
old without fire in winter" the "child without milk in summer,"young men
"mutiliatedMand"thc torn girl trern bling by the mil I-stream." Despite all these
problems, the "poor women" state that they have carried on with life by "picking
together the pieces."

'They s:iy that they carried 011"Living and parlly living" because they felt that God
gave them some rcason to hopc. But now with the new develop~i~c~its they feel very
frightened. They sense a terror enveloping them "which none can avert, none call /
avoid, flowing under our reet and over the sky / Under doors and down chimneys,
flowing in at tlie ear and / the mouth and the eye." These "poor women" express
despair which is encapsulated in their words, "God is leaving us, God is leaving us,
Inore pang, 11101.2 pain / than birth or death." 'Their despair is highlighted tlirough the
animal imagery that they use: "Puss-pun. of lcopard, footrall of padding bear, / Palm-
pat of nodding ape, square hynena waiting." They plead with their archbishop Beclcet
to save t1iem.b~saving himsclf. IShe destroys himself, they too will be destroyed.

After a long s/lence (in which he u~ldcrgoesintense conflict and struggle over the
temptations) Becltet speaks. I-lis internal struggle, as explained earlier, was
dl.amatized by Eliot through the collective presence and speeches of tlie Chorus,
,Tempters a ~ l dPriests on tile stage.

Beclcet is now clear about the meaning of his life. No longer will any temptation
upset the peace and u~~derstanding that lie now has. I4e admits that "The last
temptation is the greatest treason: / 'To do the right deed for the wrong reason."
Becket recalls his life in the last thirty years and says that he has '!semrched all the
ways 17'hat lead to pleasure, advancement ancl price" at the temporal level. To
become a "servant of God" was never his wish. It is difficult to serve God because
one can fall into spiritual arrogance by doing tlie "right deed for the wrong reasons."
111other words, by resisting sins you may open your heart to the pride of having
resisted it and clevelop contempt for those who are i~nilbleto do so. Becket says tliat
he can forsee how llistory will interp~.ethis death as tlie"sense1ess self-slaughter of a
lunatic, / Arrogant passion o f a fanatic." The fourth Knight's words at the en4 of the
play corroborates it, viz. tliat Becket conlrnitted "Suicide while of Ilnsouncl Mind."
Becket, continues by saying tliat all those who are implicated in evil will be punished.
As for himself, he says that he shall not "act or suffer" and surrender hi~nsclfto God.
This is reflected in the selmon that he gives soon afier.

Critical Commentat-y on tlie above passage

7 7

I he "rest'lessness" of tlie Chorus express the anguish of Becket after the fourth
Tempter leaves. Their "restlessness" is also in contrast to the stillness oftlie "still
point." Terrible images like that of the "withered tree" and "sickly smells" clo~ninate
Murder in the not only the tone of the passage but also the state of the country and its people..
Ccrtherlml
There is a general sense of decay. Eliot's contenlion that human nature shares in the
Evil which befell all nature after the Fall is seen in this speech. In a sense, the
dismal picture that emerges from this passage clearly points to the need for Beclcet's
martyrdom to save the world.

In the collective speech of the four Tempters there is a sudden shift from the 12"'
century to the 20"'. The Tempter-- like the Knights later--try to persuade the audience
to see things from their point of view. They deliberately use images from the 20"'
century to bridge the distance between them and the audience. This speech by the
four Tempters clearly points to their stand regarding Becltet 's mal-tyrdoin. However,
the irony lies in the fact that it is people like them who necessitate Becket's
~narlyrdornto cleanse the world from sins.

The three Priests in collectively persuading Becket to give up his battle demonstrate
their lack of religious strength. They too need to grow and understand the meaning
of manrydom. These lalnerltors fear death because they see it as sudden and
unprepared. Becket's attitude is different. He sees his death as being in God's hands.
It is never an accident but planned. 9

The speech alternately spoken by the Chorus, Priests and the Tempters resembles the
Liturgy during a Christian mass service. This technique of alternation is also akin to
"stichomytl~ia,"in Greek tragedy.

The choric speech that follows foregrounds the extent of the terror and disease that
has set in. They speak of terrible images of rape, violence, deprivation and death.
The oppression and torture" that the "poor women" speak of refer specifically to the
days of King Stephen ( whom King I-Ienry I1 succeeded) when Inally were tortured by
"brigand barons" for information regarding hidden wealth. It is important to note that
the Chorus too must learn that death is frightening only if one sees it as individual
annihilation and not as part of God's plan. The Chorus claim not to be "ignorant
women" yet they don't seem to realize that they are living at the te~nporallevel of
linear time. They do not have a totality of existence, "Living and partly living, 1
Picking together the pieces." They have to learn that "sleeping and eating and
drinking" is not adequate to realize the Full potential of one's being. In the Gospel of
St. Matthew, Christ had said that "man does not live by bread alone" to his tenlpter
who tempted him with food while he was hungry (see Matthew Ch 4).

The terror depicted by the Chorus in this speech is the kind of despair the Tempters
wanted Becltet to fall into. The Chorus can only understand private catastrophe and
personal loss. They cannot comprehend that which is out of time and yet they are not
at ease with the old dispensation (like the magi in Eliot's poem, "The Journey of the
Magi.") Rebirth is always painful. It may be noted that Becket's lines before he
surrenders to his death in Part I1 of the play, strike a contrast to the function of the
Chorus at the linear level of time. He says :

It is not in time that my death shall be known:

It is out of time that my decision is taken
If you call that a decision
To which my whole being gives entire consent.
I give my life
To the Law of God above the Law of Man.

Critical Commentary on Becket's Speech after his Temptations

Becket" opening words "now is my way clear, now is the ~neaningplain" tells us that
he has indeed overcolne the fourth temptation. The clarity of his belief that is
revealed here is later shown in Becket's sennon on Christmas day. The
process through which he overcornes, is seen in llis lorlg silence--discussed earlier.
 Becket admits that the last temptation was the toughest "To do the right deed for the Critical Approaches
-
to the play Part-I
I

I
wrong reason." His recapitulating his past thirty years cluring which he explored all
forlns of pleasure at the linear level and his distance from it all now, shows that the
I
fil-stthree temptations were no real challenge to him. He has now achieved a real
I sense of calm expressed in "I shall no longer act or suffer." He is ready to face death
when it comes. In this speech, Becket's address to the audience "you and you"
the Knights address to them later in the play.

3.4 IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF PART I

The Chorus is very timid and fearful, worse still, it is content to live lives of spiritual
stagnation. But there is hope for them because they know their own weaknesses.
Part 11 sl~owstheir growth.

The Tempters althougll individualized could be viewed as aspects of Becket's

personality.

We get the historical background of the play. Eliot never lets us lose our grip on
, historical facts. There are constant references to ~neetingsand treatises.

What the Chorus perceives as a sense of doom, Becket sees as peace before death,

The idea of martyrdom is developed. Man must subinit to God's will.

3.5 EXERCISES

1. Delineate the nature of the four temptations that Becket undergoes.

2. Critically coinnlent on the significance of Becket's silence after the fourth

temptation.
UNIT 4 CRITICAL APPROACHES TO THE PLAY -
PART II

Structure

4.0 Objectives

4.1 Eliot's Christian Perspective

4.2 Becket's Cllristrnas Sermon: Explanatory and Critical Notes.

4.3 Murder in the Carhedral as a Christian History Drama

4.4 Explanatory and Critical Notes on Part I1 of the play fro111the First Clloric
entrance in P a ~I1
t upto the entry of the Four Knights

4.5 Explanatory and Critical Notes on the section from the Entrance of the
Knights upto their exit

4.6 Exercises

4.0 OBJECTIVES

The aim of this unit is to make you aware of

a) Eliot's Christian Perspective

b) Explanatory comments on Thonlas Becltet's Christmas Sellno11
c) Murder in the Cathedral as a Christian History Drama
d) Explanatoiy Comments on the lives from the First Clioric entrance in part I1
upto the entry of the Four Knights Comments
e) Explanatory Comme~ltson the Section from the Entrance of the Knights upto
their Exit

4.1 ELIOT'S CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE

'As stated earlier T. S, Eliot was raised in a family which had very strong Unitarian
beliefs. However, he did not find Unitarianism sufficient for his own spiritual needs.
Contrary to the opinion of many critics, Eliot did not invent his own version of
Christianity. He was an c'IncarnabionalChristian," that is, he believed that the coining
of Christ was the most important evhnt in history and that "Sacramental Worship"
reaffirmed this.

Eliot coilverted to Anglican Catholicism in 1927-but it was only a year later that he
made this fact public. In his preface t o o r Sir Lancelot A n d r e ~ ~ (published
es in
1928) Eliot declared that he was "a Classicist in literature, Royalist in politics and
Anglo Catholic in religion."

The year of Eliot's conversion was also the year that he published "The Journey of
the Magi" (an-Ariel Christmas poem), The poem is based on a Christmas sernlon of
the seventeenth centary Anglican divine, Bishop Lancelot Andrews. Interestingly,
although the devotional prayers-of Bishop Andrews were published after he died, it
 I
: Eliot who showed tbe world that Bishop Andrews was also a significant Critical Approaches
to the play - Part-I1 .
I preacller.,Eli~t
was introduced to the works of Lancelot Andrews through William
I Force Stead whom he had met at a party in 1923. He was an American diplomat in
land but had resigned his job to get ordained in the Church of England. Both
Stead and Eliot shared a common interest in the study of seventeenth centuiy
i Anglicall Divines particularly Sir Lancelot Andrews.
1

i Eliot was particularly lured by Bishop Andrews' ability to temper his emotions with
I1 his intellect. He liked his "medieval temper" which was balanced as compared to the
flaslly brilliance of John Donne. It was through the worlts of Bisllop ~ n d r e w that
s
1 Eliot discovered not onlythe importance of "Orthodox Christianity" as a medium
1 between sltepticisnl and isolation, but also the doctrine of the incarnation of Christ. In
:
1
his essay, For Sir Larzcelot Andrews (1928), Eliot describes Andrews' appeal for him.
i He felt that Aildrews in his sermon was "alone with the alone." He was not like'
( Dollne who was combating a strong elnotional personality. Andrews became one
i wit11 the subject.

Ironically, it is while Eliot was getting acqiiainted with the doctrines of Lancelot
Andrewes that he wrote the poem, "The Hollow Men." This poem exposes the
spiritiral aridity of the modern age. But it also marks the turning point in Eliot's life.
Following this in 1930, Eliot publislled llis next major poem "Ash Wednesday"
written after his conversion in 1927. Tlle poem is seen as the story of Eliot's
conversion with all his skepticisn~and d o ~ ~ b tIts .is perceived as a poem which charts
Eliot's spiritual ascent from the ~neaninglessworld of "The Hollow Men," "Ash
Wednesday" was structurally built on a phrase about "Two Turnings" which Bishop
Andrewes had declared were necessary for conversion. The one looking to God and
the other to the sinfill past.

After his conversion, Eliot loved a life yl~iclchwas responsible to the doctrines of the
Church. Infact, when Eliot finally decided to separate from his first wife, Vivienne,
he did not have divorce in mind. Nor did he illtend tb remarry until she died since that
was the official position of the Church of England.

What established Eliot as a "Defendant" of the Church of England was the pageant
play, The Rock. He was colnmissioned to write this play. The scenario for .this
pageant was given to him by Brown and Webb Odell. However, the ten choric
passages that Eloit wrote were what made the pageant a success. In The Rock Eliot
was learning how to use a chorus for drainsltic exposition. Bisl~opBell of Chichester
came to see The Rock and was very pleased by it. It was the success of The Rock that
inade Bishop Bell co~n~nission Eliot to write a play for the Canterbury Festival. This
play was Murder in the Cathedral. Tllus Eliot's first two plays are both religious
verse dramas.

, Eliot Ielt that preserving Christianity was iinportant for civilization. In his essays,
"The Idea of a Christian Society" Eliot described the kind of Christian society needed
I to be built in "England's green and pleasant land." For llim the disappearance of
I Christianity was the end of wester11 civilization. Eliot believed that a Christian elite
would head an ideal co~nrnunitybecause for him a neutral society would not live
I long. He felt that the Church needed to intervene and point out what was right and
wrong. But, for the Church to be effective, he felt there must be a Christian
community studying and supporting these ideals. He also claimed that Christian
views could not be private because it is hard to be a Christian in a non-Christian
society. This is why he felt that Churches and Christian institutions were impoi-tant.
I

In 1948, Eliot's Notes Toward the Definitiorr of Culture was published. This was his
first book length study in which he spoke about his social and spiritl~alconcerns for
! "Christendom," in a post World War world. The maill aim of this book was to show
the relation between religion a ~ l dculture. For peace in the post World War age a
I co~n~noil faitli was needed. That faith for Eliot was Christianity.
Murder iri the
Cfltl~erlrcrl
4.2 BECKET'S CHRI
EXPLANATORY AND CRITICAL NOTES

The sermon begins with the 14"' verse of Ch. 2 of the Gospel of St. Luke. Becket
addresses the congregation which has gathered for the sermon in a vet?/ loving way as
"dear children of God." He tells them that his Christmas sermon is going to be a short
one and asks them to meditate upon the mystery of the Christmas mass. He says that
whenever mass is celebrated, Christ's death is celebrated. What he means by this is
since Christ died to save human beings from sins, his death becomes a celebration.
Becket then goes on to say that on Christmas day mass has a special meaning because
that was the day Christ was born. So when one celebrates mass on Christmas one
celebrates Christ's birth and death simultaneously. He then goes 011 to say that it was
on the night before Christmas that Angels appeared before the shepherd at
Bethlehem, saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good
will." The fact that the Christmas mass is both a celebration of Christ's birth and his
death on the cross, Becket points out, may appear strange to the world. This, he says,
is because no one mourns and rejoices in the same moment. In the Christian mystery,
however, to mourn and rejoice at the same time is possible. Becket then goes on to
ask the congregation whether it seems strange that the angels should have spoken of
"peace" considering the fact that the world has had ceaseless wars or the fear of war.
Becket presents the congregation with a rhetorical question. Could it be that the
angles were mistaken or was the promise "a disappointinellt and a cheat?"

Becket asks the congregation to reflect on how the Lord (Christ) spoke of "peace."
He said to his disciples "peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you." He
questions whether by peace Christ meant what we lnean by it? That is, England at
peace with its neighbours, the barons at peace with the king, the householder
counting over his peaceful gains etc. He further adds that Christ's disciple did not
know of these things. They gave up everything to spread God's words through land
and sea. They faced torture, imprisonment and disappointment to "suffer death by
martyrdom.'' What did Christ mean by peace? Christ had said "not as the world gives,
give I unto you." So the peace he gave his disciples is not the peace the world gives.

Becket asks the congregation to note the fact that on Christmas not only is Christ's
bilth and death celebrated together, but on the very next day we celebrate the
martyrdom of his first martyr, the blessed Stephen. Is it a coincidence that this should
happen? By no means. That is, Becket says, just as we celebrate the birth and death of
Christ, similarly we do the same for the martyrs. We inourn for the sins that led to
their lnartyrdo~nbut we also rejoice in these martyrs becolning saints in heaven "for
the glory of God and for the salvation of men."

Becket once again addresses the congregation with affection as "beloved" and says
that we do not view a martyr "simply as a good Christian because that would be only
to mourn. Nor do we see the martyr as only saint because that would be to only
rejoice." Neither our mourning nor our rejoicing is as the world sees. "A Christian
martyrdom is never an accident, for saints are not made by accident" nor is a
Christian martyrdom the will of a man to become a saint because this would lead him
to be a ruler of men. "A martyrdom is always the design of God," to lead Inen back to
God's ways. It is the ability of inan to surrender his will to God, to desire nothing for
himself, not even the glory of being a martyr. Just as on earth the church mourns and
rejoices at once which the world cannot understand, so in heaven the saints are
honoured for having made theinselves low on earth. They are seen not as we see them
but in "the light of the Godhead from which they draw there being."

Becket concludes his sermon by referring to the congregation as the "children of

God" saying, 1.1ehas asked them to remember the martyrs of the past especially the
 UNIT 5 GENERAL COMMENTS AND OTHER
READINGS

Structure

5.0 Objectives

5.1 Critical Explanation of the Choric Outburst after Becket Exits upto his
Murder.

5.2 Critical Explanation of the Knights, Prose Passages upto the end of the Play.

5.3 The Chorus in Developillent in Eliot's Play's.

5.4 plays by Other Dramatists on Thomas Becket.

5.5 Greek / Medieval Models for Eliot's Play, Murder in the Cathedral.

5.6 Different Readings of Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral.

5.7 Select Bibliography with Critical Comments

1 5.8 Exercises

5.0 OBJECTIVES

This Unit will:

!I a. Complete the critical explanatioi~ofthe play from the choric outburst upto
Becket's murder.
I b. Critically explain the section starting with the Knight's prose passages upto
!
the end of the play.
I c. Trace the development of the Chorus
I d. Discuss other dramatist's plays on Becket
e. Point out the Greek 1 Medieval model'
I f. Give an account of other Readings of Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral
g. Give a select bibliography with critical comments.
I

I 5.1 CRITICAL EXPLANATION OF THE CHORIC

I OUTBURST AFTER BECKET EXITS UPTO HIS
1 MURDER
i
I In this speech the Chorus perceives evil in the world through images like the "putrid
1 flesh" of lobsters and oysters living and spawning in the "bowels," of death in the

1I rose and the l~ollyl~ock. Animal iinages abound in their speech: rat, jackal, jackaw ,
jackdaw and ape. They see chaos in the universe. This is expressed througll tlie fact
that the order of time and creatures are abolished. The animal, food bird and sea
imagery in their speech point to the widespread corruption in the world. 111 short, evil
is contained not oilly in the knights. This is important because it points to the fact that
I Becket's nlartyrdom has cosmic dimensions. This is reinforced by their statement: "It
I
Murder in the was here, in the Kitchen, in the passages, / In the news in the barn in the lyre in the
Catl~erlral
market-place / In our veins our bowels our Skulls as well." The "Poor Women" of
Canterbury say that they have tasted death and now it is too late to repent and act.
Finally, these women state that they have coilsented ta their "animal powers" and
have been "dominated by the lust of self-demolition." They plead with Becket to
forgive them so that they can pray for him out of sense of their shcune, They now
acknowledge their collective guilt. This shows that they have grown. Before they had
blamed Becket for the chaos but now they blame themselves.

Critical Explanation of Becket's Speech

Becket's first word, "Peace" parallels his use of the word in his first entrance in the
play. But the word has a new dimension to it now. Peace now, no longer means
silence, but a calm that emanates froin being in touch with the "still point" which is
God. Becket's lines:

These things had to come to you and you accept thein,

This is your share of the eternal burden,
The perpetual glory.

Touches upon the basic Christian paradox. That is , it is through accepting suffering
and pain in this life that you get power and glory in the next. Becket further tells the
Chorus that all the suffering and pain that they go through will fall into a pattern
"When the figure of God's purpose is made complete." Once this happens, he tells
the "poor women" of Canterbury, that all the "toiling in the household" will appear
".unreal." He ends his speech by saying that "humankind cannot bear too much
reality." This is a line from "Burnt Norton" which is part of The Four Quartets.
What Becket means here is that human beings can only have a glimpse of the eternal
truth. "Reality" stands for truth. We are not able to sustain our vision of reality
because it is too overwhelining to us.

When the Priests tell Becket to hide near the altar because the Knights will be
returning armed to attack him, he tells them that he has been waiting all his life for
this moment. He tells the Priests that "Death will come" not when he wills it but
when God thiilks that he is "worthy." Since this is the case, Becket says, "there is no
danger. / I have therefore only to make perfect my will.?' The Priests in a panic tell
Becket that the Knights are coming and tell him to "make haste." They fear for
themselves saying, "if you are killed what shall become of us?" The lines spoken by
the Priests demonstrate that they have not understood the meaning of Becket's
martyrdom. Spiritual rebirth is individual. Becket has reached a stage of
individuality. The Priests still function collectively as is expressed in their line to
Becket: "What shall become of us?" In this context, the crowd represents "untruth"
and the individual represents "truth."

The Priests who represent institutionalized religion tell Becket to go Vespers which is
a Church Service in the evening. They are still very ritualistic. Unlike Becket they
have not understood Gad. Becket tells the Priests to go to Vespers and pray fur him.
He tells them that the Knights will find: the shepherd ( that is him) and will spare the
flock (that is the priests, Chorus etc) Becket says: "I have had a tremor of bliss, a
wink of heaven a whisper, / And I would no longer be denied; all things / Proceed to
a joyful consummation." It is important to like Becket's phrase "I would no longer be
denied" to the line in the first speech of the Chorus when they say, "Remember the
martyrs and saints who wait and who shall 1 stretch out his hand to the fire, and deny
his master?" Becket is saying that he will no longer be "denied" the role that he has to
play. He says "all things? Proceed to a joyful consummation" which is his death by
martyrdom. The Priests who are operating at a very different level, drag Becket away.
They see Becket's approaching death as murder, Becket however, views it
differently. At this point the Ci~orusspeaks and a Dies Irae (the day of wrath) a hymn
 is s~lngin the background. This hymn is one ofthe greatest masterpieces of Medieval Genera!
Comments and
lyric poetry.
other readings
The Choric speech at this point expresses the horror of the "poor women" which
results from their sin of living in the void in a itate of "emptiness, absence, separation
from God." In the cathedral,-lhe Priests tell each other to bar the door and that they
will be "safe." The Priests here are like the Chorus in their opening speech in the play
when they hide in the Cathedral for physical safety. What they have to learn is that
physical safety has no meaning unless they are protected by God. This is the reason
why Becket insists on the doors of the Church being left open. He tells the Priests
$at he does not want the Church to be turned into a "fortress." Becket, who has
understood the true meaning of God says that "The Church sl~allprotect her own, in
her own way. "The first Priest responds by saying that the Knights are not corning
like people who will "ltneel to the body of Christ / but like beasts." The beast image
iq important. It shows that the klights are far removed from the still point, that is
God. They have a long way to go to reach Becket's state of understanding. Infact, the
beastly nature of the Knights make us aware of the greater need of Becketyssacrifice
illrough martyrdom to redeem people. Becket tells the Priests to unbar the door. He
chides them saying that they may think that he's "reckless, desperate and mad" this is
because they apply earthly standards and argue by "results" as this world does. He
tells them:

It is not in time that my death shall be known;

It is out of time that my decision is taken
..............................................
To yl~icllmy whole being; gives cdnsent.
I give my life
To the law of God above the law of Man.

It requires a very special person to face a vision of nothingness on earth, Becket has
achieved this. He privileges God's order over man's. His entire body, and soul have
surrendered to God. Eliot believed that the values for which Becket gives his life are
in essence permanellt and therefore relevant to all times. Nevi11 Coghill gives a good
com~nentaryon these lines. He says ccTI~ornas's argument is that when ail act is
looked at time, it can be assessed relatively to its motives and consequences, that is, it
.is a human action that partakes of both good and evil, as the world judges. To murder
a man, not to say an Archbishop, is judged evil by the world, and therefore it would
. seem wrong for Becket to make such a murder possible by opening the doors. But if
' a martyrdom is "made by the design of God," it is an act made beyond Time, and

bears an eternal witness. It is absolute and cannot be judged relatively. Becket's will
is only involved in that he has identified it with or surrendered it to, the will of God."

Becket once again tells the Priests to "unbar" the doors of the Cathedral. He tells
them that "we are not here to triumph by fighting, by strategies, or by resistance, not
to fight with beasts as men." He then tells them that the beast in them has already
been conquered. I-Ie perhaps refers here to his own temptations. He says that death
which follows it is "the easier victory." It is perceived as the fruit of all the suffering
and pain.

The Knights enter humiliating Becket the way Christ was humiliated before his death.
I They refer to the "mark of the beast" on him and the "blood of the lamb." This is a
mockery of Revelation XIX, 20 and VII 14. Their line "Come down Daniel and Join
in the feast" is again a mocking allusion to Christ's last supper.

Becket does not argue with the Knights but tells them that he is ready to shed his
blood to pay for Christ's death. As the Knights tell Becket to make amends for the
wrongs that he has done to the Bishops and the King, Becket says that he is "ready to
I
die" for God, he tells them to do what they want with him but to spare his people.
The Knights now collectively call him a traitor. To which Becket says to one of the
i Knigl-lts,Reginald, that he is thrice traitor. That is, to Becket whose man he was, to
L
Murder in tlre God and to the Church. Becket's last words express a total s~irrenderof hitnself to
C(ltlt eclrol God. I-Ie says that he gives himself up to God, the Virgin mother and all the prophets
and saints. When the Knights kiIl Becket they do so by forming a circle with Becket
at the centre. This is sylnbolic of the wheel and the still point.

Tennyson in his play Becket, adopted the legend of a violent storm after the murder.
Eliot gave the storm a symbolic treatment by introducing the Chorus' cry, the Priests
speeches etc. The Chorus, in its speech, protests wildly at the pollution of the natural
order. All sense of time and place is lost, there is cosmic cacophony. They say that
they can no longer go on living quietly as they had done before. Although they have
gone through suffering, "the personal loss, the general misery" they have never seen
such chaos before. They say, this is out of life, this is out of time, 1 An instant eternity
of evil and wrong." They now state that the whole world is clouded in "filth."

5.2 CRITICAL EXPLANATION OF THE KNIGHT'S

PROSE PASSAGES UPTO THE END

After the Knights murder Becket, they address the audience in prose. Eliot follows
history upto the martyrdoin of Becket and then he makes a jump into the hventieth
century. He says that he deliberately did this to shock tl~eaudience out of their
complacency. In his prose passages, Eliot was influenced by Shaw's St. Joan. In a
sense, the Knights by addressing the audience politicise the murder of Becket.

The first Ibight, Reginald Fitz Urse, is the leader of the group. He tells the audience
that since they are English they will listen to both sides of the story which is in
keeping with their long established principle of trial by Jury. This was introduced by
Henry 11. Reginald asks Baron William de Traci the eldest member to speak first. We
are given various angles to the m ~ ~ r dthrough
er the Knights speeches. The third
Knight, who is the eldest, says that whatever they have done they have done so,
"disinterestedly." By this they do not mean surrendering of their will to God but
being "non;partisan." The second Knight, Sir Hugh de Morville, speaks next and tells
the audience that he agrees with William de Traci and that they did what they did for
the good of the country. He says, "Had Becket concurred with the King's wishes; we
should have had an almost ideal state: union of spiritual and temporal administration,
under the central government." He tells the people to ''appeal not to [their] emotions
but to [their] reason." He concludes his speech by saying that the Knights "have
served [the] interests" of the people. But it is important to note that Becket has also
served their interests in his death. He has died to save the people from sins. The
fourth Knight, Richard Brito, speaks next. His speech is important because he refers
to Becket's death as the senseless self slaughter of a lunatic, an egotistic man who
llad " deternlined upon a death by martyrdom." It is this Knight who renders the
verdict on Becket of "suicide while of Unsound Mind." Obviously, the Knights
perceive Becket as one conquering the last temptation of pride.

The closillg lines of tlle first Knight's speech which advises people to go home
quietly and not to "loiter in groups at street corners" point to their fear of public
outbreak against the Archbishop's murder. Perhaps this is why the Knights find the
need to give an explanation to the audience. The first Priest's lament after Becket's
murder about the church lying "bereft / Alone, desecrated, desolated," expresses the
fact that he has not ~~nderstood the meaning of Becket's death. The third Priest on the
other hand says "the Church is stronger for this action." He then tells the Knights:
"Go, weak sad men, lost' erring souls, 1 homeless in earth or 1heaven." It is this third
Priest who thanks God for giving them another "Saint it1 Canterbury."
 I

, The Last Choric Speech General Comments

and other readings
The last Cl~oricspeech celebrates the meaning life has obtained through Becket's
I
I martyrdom. We see a sea change in the Chorus from fear to glory recognising God's
i ways. Their earlier outburst which spbke about polluted images in the cosmos is now
: all cleansed through Becket's death. They see a comic pattern now:
I

"Thy creatures, botll the hunters and the hunted / For all things exist only as seen by
thee, only as known by / Thee, all things exist / Only in thy Light." The "poor

I
I womeny'of Canterbury have understood the meaning of the still point. They have
l~nderstoodthat human beings whom God has made "must co~isciouslypraise thee, in
( thought and in word and in deed." That is, they must surrender tl~emselvestotally to
I God. In the light of this understanding, the activities of cleaning the hearth" and
' "scrubbing" and "sweeping" all become meaningful. That the chorus has developed
is seen in their accepting responsibility for Becket's deatli. "We acknowledge our
trespass, our weakness, our fault; we acknowledge / That the sin of the world is upon
our heads: that the blood / of the martyrs and the agony of the saints / Is upon our
heads." They end their speech by asking God for mercy and Thoinas to pray for them.

I 5.3 THE CHORUS IN DEVELOPMENT IN ELIOT'S

I PLAYS
I
I

! It is necessary to note at the outset itself that Eliot's use of the choral passages were
I
linked with his own voice. That is, the first voice (See Eliot's Three Voices of Poetry)
I viz, the poet talking to himself.
i
I

Eliot's use of the C h o r ~ can

~ s be Traced back to "Fragment ofthe Agou" which was
published in 1927. It forms part of Eliot's Samson Agonistes now. But, it was his
eight choral speeches in The Rock - -which he was commissioned to write for the
Canterbury Festival-that demonstrated Eliot's talent in innovatively adapting the
Greek Chorus to modern times. About this Chorus, the critic of The Church Times
said "The great achievement of The Rock is the Chorus. Mr. Eliot is greater as a poet
then he is experienced as a dramatist, and he has put the best of his writing into the
poetry of the choric comments on religion and life." (1 June, 1934)

The Chorus in The Rock consisted of males and females. They wore masks and were
very stylised in their movements. Eliot relied entirely on Elsie Fogerty, Principal of
the Central Scl~oolof Speech and Drama, and her colleague Gwynneth Thurburn for
coordinating the Chorus. Thurburn, infact, succeeded Miss Forgerty as the principal
of t h e school. She was the person who did most of the voice work in the school. She
said, "It so happened that we had a particularly good set of girl speakers who had that
year done very well at the Oxford Verse-Speaking Festival. ...They responded well
and I think Eliot was impressed; anyway we decided that was what he wanted. ... ."
Thurburn further adds that in those days drama schools were not there. it was only
after world war I1 that formal training centres in drama sprang up. Due to the war
years men who joined these schools had a much shorter course, sometime as short as
two months as compared to the two year required course that women attended. The
results were obvious. Women were much better voice trained than the men.
Thurburnsays, "The girls had a longer and more secure background of training to
rely upon, and they therefore constituted a better team." Eliot's use of the all women
Chorus in Murder in the Cathedral is entirely due to the fact that in asking for girls
from Fogerty's school, he would get the best.

In The Family Reunion the chorus comprised of two sisters and two brothers-in-law.
Their role in general is static and they do not advance 'the action in the play.
a
Murder in tlre The Chorus, in Murder in the Cathedral, according to Pieter D.Williams "suggests
Cutlzctlrtrl the collectivity, the generality of mankind, as distinct from its outstanding individual
members --- Thomas Becket or Henry 11." He adds, "the stasis of the chorus,
compared with the movement, sometime violent, of other characters and groups of
characters, help to isolate them visually in the kaliedoscope of power politics and
reillforces another salient theme: the permanence of common humanity, the
impermanence of political systems .. . The Chorus has learned a stoical submjssion to
life,.,. . something which Thomas when the play begins has yet to learn." He has to be
submissive without the fear of the Chorus. Williams also talks of the impoi-tanceof
the vocal role played by the Chorus that it provides a symphony of female voices, a
balanced antithesis to male voices of the Priests, Messenger, Archbishop, Tempters,
and Knights. . .. The other functions of the Chorus is to give details of time, place,
action co~nplementingabstract situations. William says, the Chorus "is used to
telescope into ninety minutes the last twenty seven days of ~ e c k e t ' slife by
suggesting the passage of time."

About the C h o r ~ in
~ sM u r d e ~in the Cathedral, Mcgill says, "In staging of Murder. in
the Cathed'ralthere are interpretive problems of the presentation of the chpral
speeches. Textually they appear as odes with no specific instructions to itidicate
differentiation of voices. But the first starting of tlie play set the precedent for
assigning parts within the choral odes to individual voices or varying ensembles."

It is important to note that in the first part of the play, we the audience einpathise with
the Chorus in the Interlude we become one with them and in the second part they lead
us and guide us as to how we should respond to Becket's murder. They invite us to
join them in tlie Te Deuin.

5.4 PLAYS BY OTHER DRAMATISTS ON THOMAS

BECKET

Alfred Tennyson, T.S. Eliot, Jean Anouilh and Christopher Fry have all written on
Thomas Becket. All four writers use the same llistorical facts but write about them
from different perspectives. What all these writers exploit in their works is the
friendship that Becket 11ad with King I-Ienry IT when 11e was a Cilancellor. Anouilh
uses this perspective in his play, Becket (1959). 111this play , Henry I1 is h~irtby
Becket's behaviour after lie becomes the Archbishop. He emerges as strongly as
Becket for sy~npathy.He cannot understand why Becket has assumed a new
allegiance, the honour of God, which is also the subtitle of the play. Cliristopl~erFry,
in his play Cz~rfnzarztle( I 961) gives even greater prominence to King Henry 11. One
of tlie themes listed by Fry as treated in his play is "a progression toward a portrait of
Henry." King I-Ienry I1 is portrayed in this play as a Inan who is surrounded by
anarchy and chaos and wants order in his Kingdom. The "crown / and tlie croney" are
seen to be working together towards that end. In this play Becket is not as militant in
his approacl~to the King as in Anouilh's play. In fact, he works for the King humbly
acknowledging the fact that "there would be no Becket, without the King" and that he
is "the King's representative." The King too, in appointing Becket as Archbishop is
not influenced by his friendship with him but by the fact that he will be able to
stabilize the realm. When Becket after becoming the Archbishop cliooses God over
the King, Henry is hurt not so much by personal betrayal but for the cause of the
nation. 111mailitailling the stability of the nation he feels that eve11 powers that
traditionally belonged to the church should be used which the Archbishop does not
accept. Eleanor, King Me~~ry's wife says tliat issues and personalities have got
intertwined. Eleanor's role in Fry's Curt~llantleis interesting. She is the former
French Queen now ~nlarriedto a British King. She has respect for Becket at a personal
level alid as a statesman. She is different from Tennyson's Eleanor who is directly
responsible for the murder of Becket. Tennyson's play Becket was written in 1879
but was staged only in 1893.
 General
In Tennyson's Becket the conflict between Henry's I1 and Becket is given focus. Comments and
Becket's insistence on privileging God before King becomes almost an obsession. other readings
Tennyson's plot is complicated by a sub plot involving Henry's mistress Rosamund.
Tliis sub plot intersects with the main plot in the animosity that Eleanor, tlie Queen,
shows to Rosarnund and also by Rosamund's own spurning of the attention she gets
from the four Knight's who later murder Becket. However, Rosamund's role in
prompting the King to declare what he says about Becket whicli brings on the
murder is clearly seen in Tennyson's play. The Rosamund sub plot confuses the main
issue between the Icing and Becket unlike in the otlier plays by Fry, Anouilh and
Eliot.

Eliot's handling of the Becket issue is different. He focuses on the events that took
place in Decelilber. Tliis enables him to focus on an issue rather than have a
panoramic view of history. Eliot's handling of the Cho~usand llis theme of
maltrydom are also noteworthy.

Again, it is important to note that all these four writers go to different models for their
work. Eliot, for instance, uses Classical Greek and Medieval Morality plays. These
plays were very ritualistic. Fry is Shavian in his panoramic and historical view.
Anouilh says that Pira~idello'sSix Characters in Search of an Author had an impact
on his work. His work is more musical. Interestingly, both Eliot and Fry are
Christians and do not appear as existentialist as Anouilh whose Becket refuses to
accept any standard other than his own: "I was a man without honour" he says, and
"suddenly I found it." If Eliot's play ends with the Chorus understanding the meaning
of Becket's martyrdom, Fry's Ctrrtmantle ends with the terror of destruction of
Henry's realm and family. Anouilh's Becket ends with the ironic comprotnies, the
union of King's and God's Ilonour. Abouilh is more secular, and more radicaI in his
treatment of Becket than Eliot and Fry.

5.5 GREEK AND MEDIEVAL MODELS FOR ELIOT'S

MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL

Eliot was acutely aware of the fact that his play was to be performed like Greek
tragedy. His play was celebrating a cultic event near tlie site of the murder of Becket.
Eliot aimed at writing a "neutral" verse like the kind used in Everyrilan but he also
made modernist use of an abrupt transition to modern dialogue like G.B. Shaw's last
scene in St. Joan when Eliot's four Knights defend themselves to the audience.

Tliougl~Eliot did not conscio~islydevelop this play of a Greek dramatic model (as he
did each of his subsequent plays), Leoaylen calls the play "most near in spirit to
Greek tragedy, of all the plays written in English or French this century. It is for~nally
similar; it uses a myth in the s a n e way as the Greek tragedies did, and the myth bears
tlie same relation to the religion of Eliot's audience as the myths of the Greek poets
did to their audience's religion. It is based 011ritual, and tlie action is carried out
principally by the Chorus, not by an actor. It was performed at a festival, not before a
theatre going public."

Eliot has openly stated that for the versificatioli of his play lie used the medieval play,
Eve~j)mar?. Nevill Coghill says:

Everyn~anis a version, from the late fifteenth century, of a Dutch original

called Elckerlijc. It tells of how God, perceiving that 'all people be to me
unkind,' sends death to surnmon.Every~nanbefore him: he is to bring his
Book of Accoui~tswith him, Eve~ymanbegs for a respite and tries to '
persuade his friends his Kinsmen and his Goods to go with him, but they all
refuse. His Good-Deeds, however, are willing to stand by him, through death
Murder in B e and after. Everyman confesses his sins, takes the last Sacrament, and creeps
Cailt edrd into the grave to die. Thereupon a Angel announces 'great joy and melody'
above in Heaven, 'where Everyman's soul received shall be.'

Its versification is extremely irregular, at least in comparison with that of the

earlier Miracle and Morality plays which, nevertheless, it partly imitates.

The lines are of varying length and have a varying number of stresses; there is a good
deal of rhyme and there are touches of alliteration.

Coghill goes on to say that a typical Everyman like passage in Murder in the
Cathedral might be:

Your thoughts have more power than Kings to compel you. (4)

You have also thought sometimes slat your prayers, (4) Sometimes hesitating
sat the angles of Stairs, (4) etc.

The "total effect" Coghill states, "is one of living movement and emphatic speech,
that tumbles as if by accident on to the happy rhythmical phrase and compulsive
rhyme, unforeseeably, and yet with gratification of a certain indefinable expectancy.
These effects of verse are greatly enhanced by the intercalation of the two great prose
scenes of the Sermon and the Knights' apology, which provide their reasoned
contrasts to the rest of the dialogue, where feeling predominates."

5.6 DIFFERENT READINGS OF ELIOT'S M U . IN

THE CATHEDRAL

Murder i.n the Cathedral as:

a) Poetic Drama
b) Christian Play
c) Integration of Eliot's Dramatic Theories
d) Biographical Play
e) Feminist Reading

(a) Murder in the Catlzedral as a POETIC DRAMA

Poetic form, Eliot felt, is the most apt form of expression in the theatre. In his vie
Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekov were true poets who felt hatnpered with the limits o
prose. In contrst to them are Yeats and Hofn~annsthal,who kept alive the ancient a
traditional affinity between drama and poetry.

In "The Music of Poetry" (1942) Eliot acknowledges his bias in favour of the poet
to which he was indebted as a poet, and says that the music of poetry is not
independent of the meaning. The meaning of poetiy is sometimes beyond the poet'
intentions. He saw possibilities of theme recurrence and transitions in poetry as in
music, and thought the concert hall more likely to quicken poetry than the opera
house. He said that without poets of unusual sensibility and command of language,
culture will deteriorate. "Poetry and Drama" is notable for the retrospective attentio
Eliot gives to his own developme~ltas a playwright, he fincls that he has been writin
variations on the theme of poetic drarna.tl~rougl~ont his career. For Eliot the l~ighest
aim of poetic drama is to bring us to the border of those feelings which ore
expressible only in music, without leaving the everyday world of dramatic action
 1

Murder in the Catltedral as a CHRISTIAN PLAY General

(b) Comments and
other readings
Stephen Spender's "Martyrdom and Motive" states that "The true theme of Eliot's
plays written after his conversion is the discovery by heroes .... of their religious
vocation. It is required of the hero that he perfect his will so as to make it conform
colnpletely with the will of God." In Murder in the Cathedral, according to Spender,
these aims are revealed in a very pure state."

Stevie Smith finds the play "a remarkable evocation of Christian fears." He adds that,
it should not be forgotten that Eliot had initially considered calling the play, Fear in
the Way. Smith argues that Murder in the Cathedral in "remarkable for the strength
of these fears and the horrible beauty in which they are dressed." According to
Smith, Eliot perceived inodern times as shallow and meaningless. The play with its
religious direction was perhaps written as an antidote to the times.

The entire play can be seen as based on the Christian notion of history, Unlike
I traditional history, Christian history is not linear. It can be described as
I
providentially oriented history of salvation. It stai-ts with the creation and nloves
towards the last day ofjudgeinent when God will come in all his power and glory to
sift the good from the bad. In Christ the eternal enters the temporal intersecting the
timeless with time, creating a paradox in time. This paradox will only be resolved in
God. The preference of Christian dramatists for paradoxical imagery draws its
justification froin this fact. Saints and martyrs are also like Christ, but on a different
scale. In this sense the History of Salvation confronts everyman with the sainc
religious duties to fulfill. Everyman becomes every man whose soul becomes a
battlefield for Good and Evil to gain supremacy. It is in the history of the salvation
of the world and the soul that Christian history unfolds itself.
I

The play has also been read as following the structure of a Catholic mass:

a. Introductory rites
b. Preparation for the gifts to the Eucharist
c. Eucharistic Prayer
d. Communion rite
e. Concluding rite

(c) Murder in the Cathedral as Eliot's most successful integration of his

DRAMATIC THEORIES.

I11 Poetry and Drama Eliot states that the subject matter of Murder in the Cathedral
was well suited for verse drama. Interestingly, though he states that a verse drama
should be entirely in verse, he justifies the two prose sections by saying that Becket's
sermon would not be convincing if it had been in verse. The Knights he said, were
made to speak prose to shock the audience out of their complacency.

Marianne Moore states: "one may merely mention the appropriateness of verse to
subject matter.. .. Mr. Eliot steps so reverently as the solemn ground he has essayed,
that austerity assumes the dignity of philosophy and the didacticism of the verities
incorporated in the play becomes impersonal and persuasive." Carol Y. Smith is also
of the opinion that Murder in the Cathedrnl integrates very effectively Eliot's
dramatic theories. She says, "the levels of the play are intrii~sicallyunified by the
skillf~llinterweaving of Thomas' story with the imagery of Christ's Temptation and
Passion and with the prototype formula of all religion and drama. 'The hierarchy of
characters within the play who perceive the meaning of Thomas' death on their
various levels helps to tighten the unity of the drama and to give it the stylized
quality Eliot admires . ... .. from a fear of spiritual realities and a disavowal of
respo~lsibilitiesto acceptance of and participation in both the sin and glory of
mai-tyrdom, Eliot has provided a highly effective vehicle for commentary on the
i action and participation in it."
t-
Murder in the
Cat11edral (4 Murder in the ~ d e d r aas
l BIOGRAPHICAL

In The Making of T.S. Eliot's Plays Martin Browne states that Eliot found in the
Becket story something eternal: "at the moment when he was called upon to write his
play, he found that the basic conflict of the twentieth centuly came very near to
. repeating that of the twelfth." Browne also sees the rise of fascism in the 1930s as a
serious form of social threat that Becket fights in his play. Such an approacll is also
corroborated by Ashley Dukes in "T.S. Eliot in the Theatre." He says, "Other things
conspired to remind us of the play's actuality; indeed it was never allowed to become
historical drama for a moment. Hitler had been Iong enough in power to ensure that
the four knightly murderess of Beckets would be recognized as figures of the day,
four perfect Nazis defending their act on the most orthodox totalitarian grounds.
Echoes of one war and forebodings of another resounded through the sultry
afternoon."

Interestingly, King Edward the VIII abdicated his throne during the play's West End
production which according to Dukes refer to the lines about the King's transient
power. .

Peter Ackroyd argues that the hero of Murder in the Cathedral, Becket, shares the
writers first name. This is not a mere coincidence. Lyndall Gordon, in his book
Eliot's New Life, focuses on the biographical study ofEliot from the late 1920s to the
end of Eliot's life, notes several autobiographical overtones in Murder in the
Cathedral. He says that Eliot found in Becket "a model who was not so different
from himself. Here was a man to all appearances not born for sainthood, a man of the
world ... . Who moved from wordly success into spiritual danger.. . Eliot said that a
bit of the author may by the germ of a character, but that, too, a certain character may
call out latent potentialities in the author. Murder in the Cathedral was a
biographical play that had its impact on Eliot in shifting the balance of his new life
from the shared course of love to the course of religious trial."

(e) A FEMINIST READING of Murder on the Cathedral

Such a reading would focus on Eliot's all women Chorus which comprises of the
"poor women" of Canterbury. Guilt and submissiveness which mark the growth of
the Chorus in the Christian framework of the play, are viewed as negative qualities
according to the feminist perspective. Feminists argue that women under patriarchy
have always suffered from a deep sense of guilt and it is this guilt that has stood in
the way of their having a sense of "self-worth." Similarly, with "submissiveness."
Under partriarchy, submissiveness implies surrendering to male domination which
feminists perceive as being inherently destructive to women. For another feminist
reading of the play, see Feminist theory and Modern Drama edited by Taisha
Abraham (Delhi: Pencrafi International, 1997)

In giving a feminist reading of Murder in the Cathedral, however, one should

remember that Eliot chose an all women Chorus for his play not keeping the gender
issu,e in mind, but because he wanted the best trained voices form Ms. Fogerty's
Central School of Speech and Drama.

5.7 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY WITH CRITICAL

COMMENTS

Abraham, Taisha. ed. Feminist theory andModern Drama. New Delhi: Pencraft
International, 1997.
 General Comments
(The essay on Murder in the Cathedral entitled, "Writing in Ourselves" by Zakia
and other readings
pathak discusses the pedagogical practice of teaching a text from the west in our
India11 universities. It highlights, in particular, the churchlstate conflict in the
~yodhyancontext and critically examines the position of women in this debate.)

Brooker, Spears Jewel. Ed. Approaches to Teaching Eliot's Poetry and Plays. NY:
MLA of America, 1988.

(The principle objective of this book is to put together different poiilts of view on
teaching a particular literary work. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral is discussed in
some detail pointing out to different philosophies and approaches to the text.)

--. The Placing of T.S. Eliot. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press,
1991.

(The essays in the volume originated as invited lectures for the T.S. Eliot society
' which has its headquarters in St. Louis, the poet's birthplace. Some essays in the
collection are historical while others focus on language. A few of the essays deal with
Eliot's eastward move from the slums of the turn-of-.the century river town in the
heart of the American midwest to the inore metropolitan river town of Boston and
then to river based urban capitals like London and Paris.)

Browne, E. Martin. The Making of T.S. Eliot's Plays. Cambridge: CUP, 1969.

(This book is very important in showing how Eliot's plays came to be written and of
their first stage appearance. Much of the contents are from Eliot's ow11 writings.)

Chiari, Joseph. T.S. Eliot Poet and Dramatist NY: Harper and Row, 1972.

(Eliot's artistic,and social background are traced in this book which also studies his
poeins and plays.)
I

Clark, R. David. Ed. Twentieth Century Interpretation of Murder in ilze Catlzerlml.

N.J,: Prentice-Hall; Inc. 1971.

(Divided, into two sections, the book deals with various aspects of Eliot's play,
Murder in the Cathedral. Written by well known scholars, the essays cover the notioil
of action and suffering in Christian terms, the notion of the stillpoint and Becket as
[he biblical character, Job.)

! Malamud, Randy. T.S. Eliot's Drama: A Research and Productio~zSource Book.

Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1992.

(The book provides a good background to his dramas. The introduction surveys
Eliot's literary works and maps his move from poetry to drama.)

Seed, David. "Eliot's use of Tennyson in Murder in the Cathedral." Yeats/Eliot

Review 7. 1-2 (1 982): 42-49.

(Does a coinparative study of Tennyson's Becket and Eliot's Murder in the

Cathedral,)

Sochaloff, A. Fred. "Four Variations on the Becket theme in Modren Drama" Modern
Drama 12,l * May 1969): 83-97-1.

(Compared to dramatizations of the same historical event by Fry, Anouilh and

Tennyson, Murder in the Cathedrul is the most austere and unified; Eliot
tollcentrates on Becket's state of mind and his martyrdom by excluding characters
such as King Henry 11.)
Murder ill the Williams, Pieter D. "The Function of the Chorus in T.S. Eliot's Murder in the
CathetZral Cathedral." American Benediction Review 23-4 (1972): 499-511.

(This book exhaustively explores the role of the Chorus in terms of its dramatic,
structural, visual and vocal contribution to Murder in the Cathedral, and the formal
and thematic contrast of its stasis compared to Becket's change and action.)

5.8 EXERCISES

I. Do you think that the development in the Chorus reflects the growth in
Becket?

2. Critically analyse the importance of the Knights speeches.

3. Briefly co~nmeilton Eliot's use of Greek and Medieval sources for his play,
Murder in the Cathedral.

4. Attempt a fenlinist reading of the play.

5. Discuss Murder in the Cathedral as a Christian play.

6 Trace the development of Becket's mai-tyrdom in the play.

UNIT 1 BACKGROUND TO THE PLAY
Structure

Objectives
Introd~~ction
Britain in tlie 1950s
1.2.1 Tlie Economy
1.2.2 Tlie Welfare Stale and Social Change
1.2.3 Political Clia~iges
1.2.4 Tlie Inteniational Scene
1.2.5 Reactions in literature and Drama
British Drama from 1890 to 1956
1.3.1 Two Lilies of Develop~ne~it
1.3.2 Realism/Naturalis~iion tlie Stage
1.3.3 Expressionistic Drama
1.3.4 Effects on Style and Characterization
1.3.5 Changing Subject Matter
1.3.6 Irish and Scottish Drama of tlie Period
1.3.7 American Drama and its Use of Tragedy
Osborne
1 -4.1 Biograpliy
1.4.2 Tlie Plays
Let Us Sum Up
Glossary
Questions
Suggested Reading

1.0 OBJECTIVES
Tlie objective of tliis unit is to provide an idea of the backgl.ound -- social, cultural
and political -- against wliicli LookBack in Anger was written, as well as a broad
outline of tlie immediately preceding and contemporary state of drama, leading LIPto
a first look at tlie play itself.

1 .I INTRODUCTION
Wliile studying this, or indeed ally play, a critical vocabulary with words such as
'theatre', 'drama', 'natul*aIist' and 'expressionist' (aniong others) is inevitably used.
The two such ternis tliat will recur most often tli~*oi~gliout these ilnits, 'theatre' and
'tlrama', are often ilsed interchangeably, but they need to be u~iderstoodas different
aspects or components of tlie performance of a play. The 'theatre' is the space used
for a performance (the stage, and by extension, tlie auditoriu~n)as well as tlie entire
system tliat makes it possible for tlik performance to be produced and to
com~iiiinicatemeaning to the audience. This 'system' lias visual and auditory
components such as lighting, music, props and costi~liiesand also includes the
conve~itionsaccording to wliicli tlie performers and the audience interact with each
otliel.. These conventions are practices rather than hard and fast rules -- for example,
one theatrical convention iiiay require tlie actors to behave as if tlie audience does not
exist and they are not aware of being watched, while another may il~volvetheir
addressing tlie spectators directly. 'Drama', on tlie other hand, refers to plays
the~iiselves,that is to say, to fictions written or designed to be perfor~nedon stage,
alld collectively to tlie elitire body of such fictions at any given time or place.

As yo11can see, the explanations given of both terms seem relevant only in tlie
colltext of performance. Tliis need !lot be limited to stage performance and could as
well be drama for tlie cinema, television or radio. Where then does the act of
Look Back irt Allger reading or studying a play, as we are doing in these units, fit in ? Sollie theorists of
drama answer tliat there are two kinds of dramatic text, the performance lest arid tlie
written or literary text, and tliat these are entirely separate, almost ~~nrclated entities.
(This does not, of course, apply to those kinds of drama which are not written at all,
snch as ~niineor i~nprovisedperformances). Witlio~it~iecessarilytaking such an
extreme position, we c o ~ ~seel d tlie two texts as different versions of tlie same play,
but -and this is important - since we shall only have to deal with the written
version, keep the other performative one in mind.

Drama is among tlie no st pitblic as well as tlie most immediate of the arts, since it is
usually experienced collectively rather than in solit~~de and ~111liketlie novel 01'even
the short story, it uses spatial represe~ltatio~i
instead of linear narrative. This means,
as Martin Esslin points out, that action is all-importaiit in drama, wliicli is an
interesting idea but might at first seem rather irrelevant when applied to a play like
Look Back in Anger (henceforth LBA ) wliere speech certa'inly appears to
predominate. This will be discussed in detail in Unit 3, so if we allow for the ~nolnelit
that a stress on action does make most drama an effective tool of co~nmunicatioii,and
if required of propaganda, we can appreciate tlie use made of d r a m by political
systems, by social workers and activists (street plays are c o ~ n ~ n o ~used
i l y thus in
India) and by religion (almost all drama originated in religious ritual).

The idea that the theatre, because of its self-consciously illusory nature, in sonle way
both reflects and sy~nbolizesthe 'real' world is a very old and widespread one.
However., the relation between drama and society is complex, and liieans tliat instead
of sirnply lnirrori~igor seeking to clia~igesocial conditions, plays are also shaped by
them, so~netitiiesin ways of wliicll the dramatist riiay be illlaware at the ti~ne.This
partly explairis wliy different forms of d r a m have been popular, and the content of
plays lias varied so widely, at different times. Look for instance at the way in wliicli
religious (in tlie specific sense of theological) concenis, though present in some of
Shakespeare's plays, are certainly not a cliief area of interest in them, while a celitury
earlier they llad forined tlie main subject matter of the ~noralityplays, and at the way
iu wliicli his choice of distant of imaginary places- Bohemia, a~icientEgypt, tlie
forest of Arden -as locales, changes with Restoration drama's usual setting in .
contemporal-y London. Or, for an example nearer home, think of how the figure of
the 'NRI' or the Indian brought up abroad, riow a co~n~no~iplace of Hindi cinema
(arguably a kind ofdrama), is largely absent fi-omthe fil~iisof the 1950s when
emigration was rarer.

There is of course always the objection to sucli an eniphasis on the social in tlie
treatment of drama with the argurnelit tliat a play is not some indepeudently occusring
phenori~enabut is created by one or more persons arid can be rlla~iipiilatedand
co~itrolledby them in a way that reality cannot be -- a fairly obvious point, but one
that we do tend to lose siglit ofwhile placing the play in its social context. Having
said that, however, I.tlii~ikit would be helpful to try and get some solet of picture of
the time and place in wllicl~Osbosne both wrote and set LookBackin Alger, before
we start our study of tlie play. Do fry and have the text read by the time you fi~iisli
this unit so that you can rmake the required connections but while doing so please
don't apply this extrinsic information too rigidly to tlie text by expectirlg tliat
everything i n the play will co~lforriito it.

1.2 BRITAIN IN THE 1950s

It might be ~ ~ s e ftoi ~begin
l with an observatiori whicli is interesting in that it conies
from an Indian visiting England in 1955, on the eve of a general election. Nirad
' Chaudliary in A Passnge to Eltglund writes-

For individuals, as for nations, doing well in life and doing sorilethi~igill life are
co~itradictoryaims. Tlie real test for tlie Welfare State will be whether it has beer1 able
 to liierge the two ends, so far as they can be merged. But it seems to me that this very Backgroui;'
i11ipo1-tantcondition oftlie Welfare State's success is diffic~lltof fulfilment in
contemporary England. Tliis difficulty is not due to an absence of men with a will to
do somethiog. The real trouble is that tliere is very little to do and it is very difficult
to arrive at a clear perception of what to do. On tliis point, ever since the end of the
war 1 liave liad a feeling that the E~iglisllpeople are in tlie closing stages of one qycle
of tlieir existence and have not as yet entered on another.
( A Passage to Englund , pp. 2 1 4-5)

Despite the rather vague gerieralizatioli of its opening statelnelit , I tllillk the passage
llelps to provide a sense oftlie ambivalence that came to prevail in British social atid
political life in tlie first decade after the country's victory in the Second World War.
This victory was followed by tlle coming to power in 1945 of a Labour government
under Cle~iielitAttlee and the establish~ile~lt of tlle Welfare State wliich aimed to
provide to its citizens social security and benefits such as health care, housing and old
age pensions. The idealism attendant on tliis socialist, utopia11vision also resulted, in
sollie quarters at least, from the perceptiori of Britain as beginning to leave beliilid ller
imperialist past ( starting with tlie independence of India in 1947) though this was
hardly as yet seen as an ongoing process. Tlie coronation of Queen Elizabeth 11 in
June 1953 served as tlie occasion for a national celebration, particularly since tlie
country saw itself as leaving behind the recent past of war, conflict, depression and
poverty. Tliis optimism is evident in tlie phrase 'the new Elizabethan age', widely
used at tlie time.

J.B Priestley in 1934 described what lie saw as the co-existence of three Englands ,
"Old England, tlie country of the catliedrals and ~ni~iistersand Inallor houses and inns,
of Parson arid Squire ... Nineteenth-Centi~ryEngland, the industrial .England of coal,
iron, steel, cotton, wool, railways ... and New E~igland",tlle last of these influenced
by American consumerism and egalitarianism and based on mass-production atid
I
I urbanization. The first two Englands, familiar to us from the ~lovelsof George Eliot
and Dickens, were probably anachronisms by the 1950s, tliougl~remembered and
mourned by people like Colo~lelRedfern wllotn Jilnlny compares to Priestley and
I
wlio ad~ilitsto being 'an old plant left over from tlie Edwardian wildenless' (LBA,
11,ii). But tliere remaiiied sollie uncertainty about where 'New England' was going.

1.2.1 Tlle Economy

Tlie late 1940s liad been a period of slow eco~iolnicrecovery for Britain, further
Iiampered by the fact that she was still using large sillns of money to retain her
military and political power in Inany parts of tlie world and spending beyond her
means on defence. Tlie United States, on tlie other hand, liad recently benefitted
ecolioliiically since tlie war liad acti~allyhelped to pi111the econolny out of
depression. Britain llad bee11duri~agtlie latter part of tlie war, and still was, heavily
dependant on A~iierica~l financial aid and ollly managed to pay off her debts to the
U~iitedStates by giving up all lier assets in that country. Under\tliese circumstances,
the arts and the theatre could not of c o ~ ~ r be
s eamong tlie country's most important
priorities, and they suffered from a lack of funds and of silpport from the state,

Tlie 1950s saw tlie eventual recovery of the British economy, with an elid to ratio~ling
and a general i~ii~rovemeht in living standards, At the time, liiost people began to see
the period as one of prosperity and in 1955 the Daily Express described this sense -- '
. . . higher pay packets, lower taxes, full shops and nice new homes' while in 1958,
Macliii l Ian was elected as Prime Minister on the strength of his slogan, "You never
liad it so good !"

Along with Britain's improved econoliiic condition canie state support for tlie arts,
sir~cegreater attention could now be given to the111and to leisure industries. One
irliporta~itdevelopment was tlie 'l\lational Theatre Act of 1949, wliich provided for a
B(,eK A,lgcr new theatre to be fi~iancedand built by tlie Labour gover~imeat.I n practise, however.
the implementation of such proposals took quite a long time.

State intervention iri tlie econoniy through planning or control -- such as bringing tlie
trade unions directly into the government -- saw to it tliat greater equality, both of
income and of oppo~t~uiities for employment, beca~iiethe most desired goal and was
in fact attained to an extent unp~.ecedentedin England. Beliind this cliange was tlie
experience of tlie war years, ~iotonly those of tlie recently ended war but also tlie
earlier one -- tlie First World War, wliicli had, in England at least, effectively done
away with tlie old nineteenth celitury concept of a Ii~issez-jbirseconomy.

Tlie ack~lowledgedneed for a new systelii went along witli tlie determination to avoid
the mistalces ofcontemporary Colilmunist and Fascist (ie. tlie extrenie Left and the
extreme Right) experiments in planning, and led to tlie adoptioli of ideas put forlvard
by liberals i n tlie inter-war years (contained in tlie Liberal Party's ma~iifestoof 1928,
Bri/ni~'.sInhnirinlFzrizn.e) which stressed state control with a commitment to social
justice tIi~.oi~gllwelfare. Interestingly, these changes were seen as desirable by all the
political parties and if there was any opposition, it caliie fsoui some among those --
tlie upper and middle classes -- who stood to lose by them. Even here, resistalice was
tempered by tlie realizatio~i(tlio11gl1it niay seem patronizirig) tliat some return was
due to the working classes for the way in which they had fouglit the war 011 behalf of
a syste~iithat liad been distinctly i~rikiiidto tliem.

Social conflicts however, remained arid were heightened by tliese economic

developments, partly because many were ~~nderstaudably sceptical of the
egalitarianis~iiprofessed by people wlio were themselves privileged. It is to this that
Jimmy Porter sarcastically refers in saying "I ouglit to send tlie Bishop a subscription
... He's upset because someone lias suggested tliat lie supports tlie rich against tlie
poor. He says lie denies tlie difference of class disti~ictio~~s."(Look
Buck in Anger, I)

1.2.2 The Welfare State and Social Change

The policies oftlie Welfare State, when put illto practice, resulted in a distinct cliange
ill tlie social structure of Britain. Greater economic equality, brought about partly
through disc\-iminatorytaxation, led to a further levelling of the classes, a process tliat
had begirt1 during tlie war. With tlie iricreasi~igprosperity and stability ( in material
ter~iis)of the working classes, tlie old 'condition of England' question resurfaced.
Tlie 'question' now was not, as earlier, one of tlie middle classes bringing 'cuIture' to I
S ~ in order for culture, in its
the masses, but of the idea that class differences I I ~ L Igo
new and extended sense as involving tlie wliole population, to exist. Ji~il~ny Porter is ,
not to be b~.ougIitto tlie 'redbrick' university (as Leonard Bast in Ho,vcrrci~E I I is~
'brought' to Beethoven) rather the impo~.tanceattached to tlie redbrick university is to ,
be undercut, and indeed, Ji~iitnydoes so effectively. The term 'working class' itself
became an increasingly nebulous category since more and better paid jobs liad !

resulted in increasing social mobility. Co~nmonstyles of living witli simila~~liousing.

food and clothing, as well as the common forms of ente~.tainmentprovided by tlie i
mass media, especially televisio~~, replaced tlie for~iierclear distinctions between tlie
classes -- a system where it liad been possible for an observer to place people
socially simply by a glance at their dress. A fi~rtlierblurring of society's old
classifications came about witli tlie begi~i~ii~ig of the imrnigration illto Britain of Illany
Asialis and West Indians, which carried on until tlie 1970s.

One ~ilajorchange that affected all levels of society in both private arid pi~blicsplieres
came about as a result of ~ n a n ywomen clioosi~igto retain the jobs they had liad to
take up d i ~ r i ~tlie
i g war, a~iclan increasing n~lmberclloosing to work in areas other
tha11 tlie traditional ones of teaching and nursilig, tl10~1g)iIioi~sewo~.k
did still reliiaill
the'woman's cliarge-notice tliat ill Look Backill Anger, Alisoli is sliow~ias
constantly busy either ironirig or making tea and is grateful for Iielp in tlie kitcliell
when Helena arrives.
 Tile arts now became, more than ever before, olie of the concems of the state , a Background
concern embodied in what had become an Englisli national institution duri~igtlie war,
tl~ougliI do not suppose it is still thougilt of as s~lcliby liiost people who watch or
listell to it today -- the BBC. State funding saw to it that a n~~mber of ~nunicipal
tlleatres were built as part of the reconstr~~ctio~i of city centres damaged during the
war. 1956, tlie year i n which Look Back in Anger appeared, also saw the arrival of
rock 'n roll music in Britain through tlie film Rock Around the Clock which actually
caused riots in some cinemas. 'Culture' clearly had begun to mean more than the
fine arts or 'good' literature, though there were those, like T.S.Eliot, who felt that
such de~nocratisationthreatened culture wliich they saw as tlie creation of an elite
group. The state provided, and made c o ~ PLI n lsory , free secondary education for
everyone up to tlie age of fifteen witli tlie result tliat people from any social
background could now go to university. In practise, of course, not everyone who
managed to go to Oxford or Cambridge fou~idlife easy there--one novel written
around this time that deals with the issue is Philip Larkin's ,Jill.

n e s e new realities and ideas resulted in a certain amount of class tension. Most
ordinary people were now better off than ever before, but at tlie expense of a
minority who saw t l ~ e ~asn a threat, in terliis SLICII as, Osborne says, "the monster on
the street cor~ier."Osborne goes on to state tliat his own sympathies are firmly witli
the 'monster', tl~ouglihe is clearly less concerned with social reform than witli tlie
idea of a cause and tlie character of the rebel. He is also sceptical about tlie success
of tlie Welfare State as a n enterprise, describing it as "everyone moping about, having
to bear the burden of everyone else." (Diary entry from 1955)

'The other contemporary problen~that Osborne deals witli at solne length is the
q~~estion of what place t h e traditional values of patriotism, loyalty to family, and
cliivalry to women had in the new social order. Tliere were always those, like
Ji~ii~ny Porter, who felt that tliese ideals, tl~ouglihighly prized, were at best
esse~itiallyirrelevant to the lives of most people and at worst an i~npositionon tlie rest
of tlie countl.y by tlie upper classes, almost a co~ispiracyto keep tlii~igsgoing the way
they wanted. What, for instance, could 'public service' mean to someone without a
.job atid no hope of getting one, except a polite abstraction ? And yet, as Jimmy
senses, it was tliese same loyalties - to country, falllily, 'tr~~tli'
and 'morality' -that
provided the causes people need :

Tliere aren't any good, brave causes left. If tlie big bang does come, and we
all get killed off, it won't be in aid of the old-fashioned, grand design. It'll
just be for tlie Brave New-notl3ng-very-11111cIi-thank-you. About as pointless
and inglorious as stepping in front of a bus. (LBA, Ill i)

I 1.2.3 Political Changes

The confi~sionsbetween a stated social agenda, the failure to know where and how it
was to be effectively put into practice, and tlie resentment it aroused in some quarters,
let to a gradual disillusionment with tlie co~npro~nises of tlie Labour government and
to the Co~iservativereturn to power under Churchill in 195 1.

Another reason for tlie Labour defeat was the increasing identification, in tlie eyes of
most people, of tlie pal-ty with those sections of the working classes who were poor
and labouring. his worked to their disadvantage because larger numbers of people
were nioving out of this category and because such class-based politics were now ,
beginning to be considered obsolete, Labour was even acci~sedof trying to keep
class tensions alive so as to preserve its ow11votes. But pi~blicunliappiness wit11
politicians continued since the Conservative gover~iment'sdecision to retain the
Welfare State programme was ~~nexpectedly seen as showing up the lack of a
co~isiste~it
policy of its own. This apparent moving together of the two major
political parties seemed to negate the integrity and political convictions of both,
 I...

Look B ~ c kirr Anger though the Co~iservativevictory was repeated in 1955 and again in 1959. Thc .
description of Alison's brother Nigel, though probably meant to be seen as motivateo
by personal dislike on Jimmy's part, does put across something of tliis suspicion of
politicians:

"He'll end up in tlie Cabinet one day, make no mistake. But somewliere at
tlie back of his mind is the vague knowledge that lie and Iiis pals Iiave been
plundering and fooli~igeverybody for generations." (LBA,l)

The general mood in Britain was therefore one of disillusionment witli tlie entire
political process, alo~igwitli a divided response to tlie fact of social change. The
dissatisfaction ~.emainedliowever largely aimless and undefined, taking no form of
direct political protest, and tliis inaction was in itself fi~rtliercause for cliscontent.

1.2.4 The International Scene

Plerity of events took place on this front tliat were conducive to public cynicism.
Tliis supposed 'time of peace' saw tlie development of the hydrogen bomb ant1 the
beginning of a race for arms tliat eve~iti~ally grew illto tlie Cold War. Soviet Russia
proved, by militarily crushing a revolution against tlie Russian-imposed govern~nent
in Hungary that a Commi~niststate c o ~ ~act l d in an i~nperialistmanner. At the same
time, Britain found herself, together with France, liolding onto her inlperial~st
interests by trying to prevent the Egyptian government from taking over tlie Suez .
Canal. Tlle United Nations eve~ituallyreti~riiedtlie Canal Zone to Egypt and tlie
failure of the atteillpt o~ilydeepened tlie sense of humiliation in England. This
humiliation existed on two levels- practical, since such politically aggressive
gcstilres were clearly no longer possible, and moral, since the failure to refrain from
making them was a reflection on tlie country. Tlie play (LBA) also refers to the
Spanisli Civil War (of tlie 193Os), which had bee11seen as a great cause by thc
previous generation, and in which Jimmy Porter's fntlier received the wounds that
killed Iiim.

1.2.5 Reactions in Literature and Drama

What then were tlie ways in which tliis general feeling of resentment expressed itself!
Jolin Russell Taylor suggests that tlie expression in literature (and later, in life) tool( i
two forms-cynicism and rededication. Tlie first is the positio~iof many characters in
tlie novels of Evelyn Waugli or of a character like Jim Dixon in Kingsley Amis'
Lucky Jim, who is irreverent and defiant but \vitIio~~t any serious aims or a dedication
to ally cause. Amis describes Dixon in Lzrcky Jini as often giving in to social
pressures and realities: "But economic necessity and tlie call of pity were a strong
combitlation; topped up by fear, as both were, they were invincible.

The sanie concerns could be seen as prese~itin Amis' poem Agnirtst Ro~t~~mticis~r~ a
kind of manifesto where a particular view-secular and rational--of tlie worltl is I

advocated for tlie age, tllrougli a rejection of the Romantic stress on passio~iand
rebellio~i:

Over all, a grand meaning fills the scene,

And sets tlie brain raging witli prophecy,
Raging to discard real time and place,
Raging to build a better time and place.. .

By showing LIP tlie Romantic zeal for reform as both irrational and impractical, the
poem could be leead as pilttirlg forward a certain kind of cynicism, or more correctly a
scepticism, about what is to be gained fro111radical tltought or action.

'Rededication', on tlie other hand, involves active and effective (usually political)
protest. Such clearcut distinctions are not quite sufficient to describe a character like
 Jimlny Porter. While expressing a cynical attitude, he reveals an anguish that is Inore Background
than cynical and yet does not lead h i m to action. 1 am also not sure how far Taylor's
idea can be applied to.the domestic, faniilial level on wliicli Osborne's play takes
place, an area that had itself rapidly changed in the post war years, largely due to the
cllange in women's lives when tliey began to work. 1 sliall return to this issue of tile
relations and cliangi~igequations between the sexes, in greater detail in the next unit
(see 2.4) but nieanwhile should like to stress tliat in Osborne's work at least, it seems
to fiaiction more as a space for tlie treatment of character and less as a cornlnerit on
the co~iteniporarystate of things. The issue of class might seein to be a relatively
,more explicit concerii, but is also subservient to Osborne's stated aitn--to give
'lessons in feeling'. I n both cases it becomes important, I think, to see the-plays of
the 1950s as not simply provoked by prevalent co~iditions,social or political, but
also as i~iforniedby them and thus as both reacting to, and reflecting, conte~nporary
'reality'.

1.3 BRITISH DRAMA FROM 1890 TO 1956

1.3.1 Two Lines of Development
It is not possible to see a single chronological line of develop~nentin early twentieth
celitury British drama, but I use the year 1890 as a convenient starting point,
following Cliristoplier Innes, who traces tlie beginning of modern drama in England
to the date of Shaw's lecture on 'The Quiiitessence of Ibsenism'. When tlie changes
in British drama are seen in stylistic and thematic (rather than chronological) terms,
we can identify tlie different genres of Realism, Comedy and Poetic drama. Another,
and for our purpose, perhaps Inore useful nietliod would be to trace two simultaneous
progressions in British drama - the Realist / Naturalist and the Expressionist, and
then to look at tlie areas where tliey overlap.

1.3.2 Realism/Naturalism on the Stage

To begin with a working definitioli of these terms, Realism here means the
reproGuction or representation of ordinary or 'real: life on the stage. The term is
often used interchangeably with Naturalism, a slightly inaccurate usage since
Naturalism nieans tlie use of realist methods to convey a certain pliilosophical belief
(that everything is a part of nature and can be explained by natural and material
causes) often doing this through tlie use of symbols. Naturalism does seek a realistic
representation of life on tlie stage, but at the same time rejects the idea that art should
try to show the most beautiful and ihspiring aspects of life. Realism as a category is
better used to define the focus, usually social, of certain plays rather than their form.

Sliaw's ideas about tlieatre and its social role remained very influential even after his
death in 1950, and some of Osborne's concerns can be traced to him. Shaw had
advocated a direct social fuliction for theatre, in saying tliat it ought to try and alter
public views and conduct -

Call you believe that tlie people whose coliceptions of society and conduct,
whose power of attention and scope of interest, are measured by the British
theatre as it is today, can either handle this colossal task themselves, or
understand and support the sort of mind and character that is (at least
comparatively) capable of handling it ? For remember : what our voters are
in the pit and gallery they are also in tlie polling booth.
(From the Epistle dedicatory to Man and superman)

Shaw was also influenced by Ibse~i'srejection of the earlier prevalent colicept of the
'well-made play' and of ~iielodramawith its exaggerated tlteatricality. His ideal was
.a 'rational' drama that dealt with, and perhaps offered solutiol~sto, social issues
such as those of poverty and the relatior1 ofecoliomics to religion, which are his chief
II
- -
Look Buck in Anger concerns in Major Barbaru. Abstract ideas such as those of heroism in Arnzs crndthe
Man are also dealt with only .in a specific social context.

- Dramatists like Oscar Wilde and later, Galswortliy and ~rintille-Barker,shared this
empliasis on tlie social, often using co~iiedyand working tlirough distortion to make
their points. W i lde's Lady Bracknel 1 (in The Importance ofBeing Earnest) to whom
Jimmy compares Helena, is almost a caricature of a certain social type, one example
of sucli distortion.

Naturalism on the stage was certainly helped along by the many technical i~i~lovations
ofthe time, tlie most important among which were realistic costumes, and the sound
effects and variable lighting t!lat became possible with the use of electricity. When it
is seen against the background 1 have described earlier, wliicli included war, the
gradual loss of empire, urba~iizatiouand tlie rise of socialism, it is not surprisi~lgthat
natural ism ajso brought ~iationalistconcerlis back to the British stage (from which
they had been largely absent since Elizabethan times) and theatre began to be used
for propaganda. The function of plays during each war became to provide
entertainment that was both escapist and patriotic. New playwrigl~tswlio dealt with
these developments satirically, emerged after both World Wars - Noel Coward in the
1920s and Christopher Fry in the 1950s. An indication ofthe importance these
nationalist colicerlis assumed for drama in wartime, is the fact that Shaw, who took
an ico~ioclasticattitude to the war of 19 14-18 was te~nporarilybanished from tlie
stage despite his status as a famous and popular playwright.

1.3.3 Expressionistic Drama

Expressionism, the other area ~nentionedabove, began in early tweritietll century
Ger~na~iy and was much more a European than a British movement, It substit~~ted, or
sougllt to substitute, the personal vision of the world for the representation of external
reality. Whep applied to the theatre it meant a reaction against realism, with a stress
on inner psychological states. Naturalis~nrelied on the cumulative effect of external
detail reproduced as closely as possible - this was discarded by. Expressionism, wli icli
instead sought maximum expressiveness. I use the term loosely to cover a whole set
of developments (known as avant-garde) in European drama. These were liiovernents
sucli as the Theatre of the Absurd, Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty and Brecht's Epic
Tlieatre. Except for the last ofthese (Brecht) the influence of these developments on
British drama was both narrow and short lived. Epic Theatre which exposes
theatricality and rejects stage illusion (the illusion that what happens on stage is real
and actual) became relevant to British drama mainly because of the social and
political perspectives it retained,wliicli otlier avant-garde movements did not.

1.3.4 Effects on Style and Characterization

What were the effects on style of Britisli drama's remaining largely Naturalistic
rather than Expressio~iistic? For one, it meant the rejection of the abstract in
preseritation and of mythical, allegorical or even historical characters. Tliese
survived only in the area of poetic drama which used verse and usually liad religious
tliemes - T.S kliqt's Murder in the Cathedral is one example. Image and metaphor,
on which most absurdist drama relied, also,took a back seat.

Nortllrop Frye has identified four levels of discourse which apply to drama as well as
to the novel : the realm of myth, wliere tlie audience looks at the characters as niuch
above them, as gods; the realm of tlie heroic, where the audie~icelooks up to the
characters as heroic; when the audience sees the characters as being on the same level
as themselves, this is the realistic style; and if the audience looks down on the
'
characters as contemptible w beneath them, the mode is ironic. Myths and heroic
pl&yswill obviously require Inore poetic, stylised or elevated language than the otlier
- .*"
i
catagries. Realistic drama, on the otlier hand, demands everyday prose, wliich tlius
'.
. = . c,,
3

-pea. bee@$& tlie most common style or form of expression of drama in Britain at tliis time.
%.*
r*Y' * ,
12
 Background
M~~ltidi~iie~isio~iaI and co~nplexcharacter, realistic siti~atio~is and conversatio~i,and
tile relation of tile individual to tlie group, all of wliicli are present in Osborne's work,
relnained tlie desired focus of post-war drama i n England.

I 1.3.5 Changing Subject Matter

;I Olle development which can be seen as relevant to tlie entire period we are looki~igat,
1 alld to al[for~iisof drama, was the everltual success in tlie 1960s of canipaig~isbegun
at the tilrli of tlie ce~itilryfor the abolition of censorship arid the founding of a
llatio~~al theatre. This meant the extension of subject matter in drama to areas that
%

I were earlier not considered proper for tlie stage, anlong tlie~ntlie details of domestic
7 life. Plays tliat concerned tlie~nselveswit11 such details were called 'kitchen sink
1 drama' by sollie critics wlio saw such matters as trivial, drab and too far removed
/ fro111die glalilour tbat they were used to associating wit11 tlie stage. Osbor~ie'searly
i plays, as well as those of Arnold Wesker, were included by many in this category,
1 since both depicted domestic tasks being carried out on stage - Alison's ironing in
I Look Back in Angerdand tlle wash ing-up tliat is carried on for most of Wesker 's play
I1
Roots, are two often-cited examples.

1 ,4l~otlierfeature of postwar Britisll drama was tlie effort to make itself once again
1 accessible and interesting to working class audiences, an effort that was required in
order to change the general perception of the theatre as tlie preserve of an educated,
I cultured elite, as well as to ensure the survival of plays as a form of entertainment in
the face of increasing co~ilpetitio~i from the cinema. Part of this effort was the
rediscovery by dramatists of popirlar culture, particularly of tlie use of music ( i n the
fosii~sof botli song and dance) as an allnost necessary part of drama, a common
enough device in Elizabetlia~itimes as well as in tlie nineteenth century, but one that
had beconle rare in the recent past. Surprisingly enough, tliese attempts at
! 'popularizing' drama coexisted with the writing and production of plays (for
example, those of Samuel Beckett) which do not seen1 to concern theniselves with
popular taste or with public demand, though of course tliese are both very generalized
) categories. But even tliese 'difficult' plays were largely free of the older ideas that
certain types of drama are inherently superior to others-for example, tragedy as
being 'better' than comedy-and of tlie ~ l o t i othat ~ ~all forins of entertainment are not
suitable for every social class.
I

I 1.3.6 Irish and Scottish Drama

Though both Shaw and Wilde were Irish, they belonged to the English tradition of
I

modern, realist, prose dmma. It was in Ireland, especially in tlie Abbey Theatre in
Dublin, that the begillni~lgsof ~noderilpoetic drama lay, with the verse dramas of
Yeats and Lady Gregory. Sy~ige(wlio wrote in prose) and O'Casey were two other
,
1

influential Irish playwriglits, and Samuel Beckett became the first Irish dramatist of
; international importance (though he was act~~ally part of the anti-realist European
j dramatic tradition.) J.M Barrie, a Scottish playwrigllt was extremely popi~laron the
[
Lolidoli stage, despite -or perliaps as a result of-liis tnovilig away fro111realist
conventions by tlie use of fantasy, something evident from Peter Pan, a non-dramatic
, work which is also his best remembered.

1 ~ilentionthese dramatists in order to qualify the idea of 'British' drama as a unified

whole, unaffected by regional differences. I n addition, if what we are looking at is a
i number of patterns and move~nentswith varied influences, rather than a line of
; progress, we also need to take into account tlie Alnerican drama o f tlie period.
1.3.7 American Drama and its Use of Tragedy
b .a

Ame~.icandrania coricerned itself with olie i~nportaritarea that the British theat&. I*'
neglected at this time - that of tragedy. Though a vexed term with a complex liistoky
of theory and practise, tragedy can be rather broadly defined as an interrogation of
Look Bitck iit Anger human nature, of its relation to the universe, and how these are affected by and giv
rise to disaster, as well as being a protest against the illexplicable nature and ilijusti
of suffering. It has been argued that the modern world (and by extension, the modt
stage) call provide a space that is only potentially tragic and falls short of actl~al
tragedy as present i n classical and Elizabethal~models. For example, does Arthur
Miller's play The Death of aSalesmarr co~itaintragedy or merely patlios ? I do not
think there is a clear answer, but the questiori could be considered in ternis of the 11
dimensio~~ provided by modern psychology, wliich was not present to classical
tragedy. This involves a 1.etl1inkingof the term itself, or at least a broadeni~igof its
critical usage. Rayliiond W illiams argues in Modern Tragedy that while tragedy an
bourgeois society might appear to be mutually exclusive, to say that tragic concertis
like those described above have disappeared fro111the modern stagr wo~lldbe to
ignore, in favour of an abstract theory, a large body of evidence to the contrary.
American drama at this time did seem to focus less on society arid more on the
iridividual, than did the work of British playwrigllts like Osborlie, Terence Rattigay
and Joe 01-ton. American dramatists like Miller, O'Neill and Tennessee Williams dl
not see tragedy as illco~npatiblewith realism, or for that matter with modernism, as
most British drama appeared to. It is interesting to consider the i~nplicationsof this
for Osborne. Coi~ldJi~llniyPorter be seen as a potentially tragic hero who remains
u~irealizeddue to co~~strai~its of time and place, of ( as he says himself) tlie lack of
causes ? Another British dramatist to think of in this connection is Harold Pinter will
does seen1 to use tragedy in a new way- through silence resulting from tlie
breakdown of speech, as happens in The Caretaker.

1.4 OSBORNE
1.41 Biography
John Osborne was born on 12 December 1929 into a working class family of pub
keepers. This was his ~notller'sfamily; his father Tllo~nasOsborne, who was a
colnrnercial artist, died of ti~bercolosiswliile Osborne was still a cliild. Osborne,
though very attached to his father, did not spare in his plays the 'genteel' middle-
class to wliich liis father's falllily belonged. Yet lie also mentions happy days spent
in his childhood with his paternal grandparents. He describes 11;s ~iiother'sfaliiily
thus:

My mother's parents were p~~blica~is ... and whenever they got together for
some celebration, there woi~ldbe plenty to drink, however hard things were:
tliat is something middle-class people find difficult to understand or forgive
... Tllere would be battling shrieks Lf laughter, yelling, ignoring, bawling,
everyone trying to get his piece in ... They talked about their troubles in a '
way that would embarrass ally middle-class observer. I've no doubt tliat they!
were often boring, but life still had meanilig for thern. Even if they did get
drunk and figlit, they were responding;.tliey were riot defeated.
(Drclcrrc/tion,ed. T. Mascliler, p.80)

This passage ~iiakesevident at least two points which are relevalit to tlie play we are
studying. Osborue clearly uses the 'middle-class' as a negative standard against
which to describe the family he grew up in, thus implicitly allying himself with tlie
'working class' to which sucli a fa~nilybelongs. Jimmy Porter's hatred of tlie
middle-classes - not in either case a particularly clearly defined category - is very
similar. Also, a statement like 'they were responding; tliey were riot defeated',
serves to romanticize the working class falllily, Ilowever true it may have been of the
particular individuals described in the passage.

After attending state schools and later a ~iii~ior

public school (from wliere he was
expelled for retaliating in kind when the lleadlnaster slapped him) Osborne worked at
various jobs, writing copy for trade journals and tutoring children in English and

14
 7
i Background
~ ~ i t h ~ i ~ eHet i tlierl
I c . became assistant stage manager to a repertory colnpany and
began to act in 194.8. A4 to the inevitable question of liow his writing might
"1
lei ~lillls~lf

31'
llave been influenced by his stage career, Osbome admitted,

Well, I always enjoy acting and if i were offered a really good part, I'd be
tempted. But I've never taken myself seriously as an actor, and neither has
anyone else. It w o ~ ~ be
l d i~ld~~lgerit
to do it any more ! Of c o ~ ~ rwhen
s e 1'1n
e\\ writing I see all the parts being played beautifi~llyby me, to perfection !
I
("That Awful Museum", interview with Joll~iFindlater. Twentieth Centi~ry,
February 196 1 ) ,
ld j
; ' 1951 , Osborne married the actrss Pamela Lane and tllougll they divorced in 1957,
111
[ it was while he was living with her that he wrote Look Back in Anger. The dramatic
, especially the portrayal of the married couple was, lie himself admitted -
1 sit~latio~~

i/
sayilig that the marriage cerelnony in the play was "a fairly accurate description of
our wedding."-+nore than sliglltly influenced by the experience of his own marriage.
id Like Alison, Osborne's wife left him while she was pregna~~t, only unlike Alison, she
1 did not return. Her parents' disapproval of Osborne was so strong that they actually
/ llad him followed by a detective during the couple's engagement, so Jimmy's
accusing Alison's parents of similar tactics is not as far-fetched as it might sound.
Pamela, when shown the ~na~iuscript
I
of Look Buck in Anger remarked that it was
0 "dull and boring", but when Osborne took it to the Royal Court Tl~eatre,the response
i a s t i c for him to note in his diary -
, was e ~ ~ t l ~ ~ ~ senough

- There was no questio~~in my mind on that muggy August day that withi~\less
- than a year - and on my father's birthday [8 May]-- Look Back in Anger
would have opened, in what still seems like an iriordinately long, sharp,
glittering sumlner.

1.4.2 The Plays

I 1 will here otlly list Osborne's plays (subsequent to LBA in 1956 ) in order of
I performance, A more detailed analysis of Osbonle's place in British drama will be
I found in Unit 5.

, The Entertainer
Epitaph for George Dillon ( this actually predates LBA )
'
The Worl~lof P o d Slickey
A Subject of Scundal and Concern
I

I Luther q

Pluj~sfor England
, A P~ltrioffor Me
! Itiadnii,ssible Evidence
I A Bor~dHoriourcd
I Tinie Present and The Hotel in Atlisterdanr
i 1.5 LET US SUM UP
1 The distinction between 'theatre' and 'drama' needs to be kept in mind in order lo
avoid co~ifi~sionin our use of the terms. This distinction is also necessary for the
1
i placing of a play in its social context, since it highlights the public aspect of the
1 theatre, as against the dramatic text wliicll can iel~ditself to private reading.
I
Ij A study of Look back- in Anger demands a consideration of the social, economic.
I cilallges that Britain underwent in the period iln~nediately
political and c~~lt~rral
/ followi~igthe Second World War. These changes include the establishment of the
I Welfare State, its functio~ii~lg ~ ~ n dsuccessive
er Labour and Co~lservative
1

-
Look Buck in Anger
goverllments, an econom,icoriris foll~wedby relative stabilization, a weakelling of
tlie rigid heirarchies or dass, and the beginnings ~f the diaintegratio~iof Empire.

Developments in drama at tlie time saw a predominallce of rehlist plays on the British
stage. The play under coasideratioli here remains true to this category in its form and
structure, and lnany of the changes mentioned above resurface in its treatment of
nationality, class and gender,

-
1.6 GLOSSARY

Ambivalence Uncertai~lty,si~liultaneousbut oppos~i~ig

respoase
to something
Anachronism Something that is out of date, more apprspriate to
an earlier period.

'Condition of England' A phrase first used by T h ~ ~ nCarlyle

as in the
nineteenth century, expressirig concern over the
poverty and misery
caused by the Industrial Revolution. A body of
fiction with sucli social colicerns appeared at tlie
time.

Contemporary Of the same time or period

Laissez-faire Literally, leave free to d o as tliouglit best.

Fril~cipleof laon-interference by govertiment in
trade and industry.

Theological Pertai~~ing to religious doctrine or dogma n!. to

the study of tlie precepts and beliefs of a
religious system. Tlie term is here used with
reference to Christianity.

The 'well-made play' Term applied to a neatly constructed play with

all tlie convetitional requireme~itsof plot and
structure. Such-plays were especially cornillon io
Britain in tlie 1930s. I

1.7 QUESTIONS

Q1. Differentiate between tlie ter~lls 'theatre' and 'drama'. Wliat are till
ilnplications of this difference for tlle stlldy of a play ?

42. Do the social and economic realities of Britain in the 1950s find expression, direct 01.
indirect, in Look Back in Anger ? If so, how ?

43. Indicate the ways in which Osborne tries to provide 'lessons in feeling' in tlie plfly.
Do you think the attempt is successful ?
I
 Baclcgrounti
1.8
-
SUGGESTED READING
Primary material

Osborne, 501111 . A Better Class ofPerson: An Autobiography 1929-1956,

London: Faber & Faber, 198 1
Secondary material

Bergonzi, Bernard Wartime and After~ilalh:English Literalure and its background

1939 - 60, Oxford: University Press, 1993.

Chambers, Colin Playwrights' Progress; Parterns of Postwar

and Mike Priors British Drama, Oxford: Amberlane Press, 1987.
UNIT 2 THE CHARACTERS
Structure
Objectives
Character in literature and drama
Differect ~nodelsfor character study
2.2.1 The Aristotelian model
2.2.2 The Theory of Humours
2.2.3 Character in Rolnaliticisr
2.2.4 Moder~iismand tlie Influence of Freud
2.2.5 Flat and round cliaracters
2.2.6 Souriau's Model
2.2.7 Character and critical theory
The Angry Youcg Man -reality or cfichC?
Class, gender and character
Let Us Sum Up
Glossary
Questions
Suggested Reading

2.0 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this unit is to offer one possible point of entry into Look Backin
Anger through the study of its characters, botli in terms of the various methods for
sucli an analysis offered by literary criticis111and tlieory and in terms of the issues of
class and gender that are raised in (and by) the play,

2.1 CHARACTER IN LITERATURE AND DRAMA

Do we speak of a character in a play or story as we would of one in life or does such
a cllaracter require special treatliient and if so, of what kind ? While co~isideri~ig
sirch
characters, should lifelike~iessor 'credibility' be a criterion ofj~ldgernentor not?
Here are some of the models for looking at literary and dramatic character, tliat
different critics and theorists have provided at different times.

2.2 DIFFERENT MODELS FOR CHARACTER STUDY

2.2.1 The Aristotelian Model

Aristotle's view of'lnan as a social animal informs his idea of the types of literary
character, eacli of wliicli lie saw as l~avi~iga definite fu11ctio11in the story or play in
which it appeared. Since tlie dramatic gelire lie was concerned with was tragedy lie
focused on cl~aracterssuitable for tragedy, wliom lie felt ouglit to be kings, rulers or
other 'great' men wliose fortune in some way affected tliat of society at large. Also,
since Aristotle lield plot or what lie calls 'action' to be the maill factor in tragedy,
character was give11a seco~~dary place, thougli he does say tliat action is important
(nai~ilybecanse imeveals character,

Clearly, rnodern drama is much Inore interested in tlie individual who does not
cllange the course of society but instead seeliis trapped in i t , as Jimmy does. Neither
does action have I ~ I L I place
C~ in this drama where 'nothing happens' as i n Becket's
Waiting for Godot. Tlie impo~.tatlceAristotle gives to tlie response of the audience by
identifying it as a crrlcial factor in determini~~g
the characteristics of tragedy, does
however have implications for modern theorists of literature and drama, who often
locate '~neaning'in tlie reader's or spectator's perception,
2.2.2 The Theory of Humours The Characters

A popular pliysiological tlieory in medieval and Renaissance times, this greatly

influenced the contemporary idea of character both in life and on the stage. Four
Iiumours of the body were identified, based on four bodily fluids: blood, plilegm,
yellow bile and black bile. Tlie varying co~nbinationsor mixtures of these fluids
present in each person were seen as determining individual characteristics,
temperament, mind and beliaviour, and tlie way in wliicli the Iiumours worked was to
release spirits or vapours which affected the brain. A persoli was sanguine,
phlegmatic, clioleric or melanclioly depending on wliich liumour with its distinctive
colour was predominant.

This theory is interesting today largely as the source of some of the [nost common
expressions in E~iglisli- 'good-humoured', 'black with ragey,green with envy' -and
because it was behind an idea of personality that in turn caused dramatists (Be11
Jonson the best known among them) to create cl~aracterswho were dominated by a
particular mood or temperament. Nor need SLIC~Icliaracters be as typical or one-sided
as would at first appear to result from the applicatio~iofthe theory - Hamlet is
among tlie most complex of cliaracters and has been convinci~~gly shown to be, if not
mela~icl~olic,then at least cleeply i~lfluel~ced by the idea of melancholy. Tlie
association of the word ' I i ~ ~ ~ n owith
u r ' laughter and wit did riot take place until tlie
eighteenth century and has in fact bee11traced to tlie common use of 'humoured'
characters in comedy.

All this rnigllt appear quite irrelevant to the play irnder consideration and indeed it is
extremely debatable wlietlier Osborne liad any thought of it in mind when creating his
characters in Look Bock in Anger. B L Ithe ~ theory has been important perhaps less for
tlie instances of its overt use than for tlie way in wliicli it sliapes our tlio~~ght
about all
cliaracter, not just dramatic cliaracter. Being influenced by humanism, it is based on
tlie idea of tlie human being as the most worthy subject of st~ldy.Even more
important, it essentializes, that is to say, sees cliaracter as inbor~iand therefore
beyond a point both inexplicable and unalterable. While taking no account-as tlie
play does at sonie length--of the role of upbringing, experience and background in
forming temperament, this theory makes it possible to see Jimmy's anger as just such
an inherent trait, one that neither the play nor tlie reader manages to account for in a
fi~llysatisfactol-yway.

2.2.3 Character in Romanticism

One of tlie defining traits of Ro~i-ranticismis its interest in tlie individual and its
tendency to exalt individual experielice and expression over tlie collective or the
social. In literature tliis Iiieans a strong - sometimes extreliie-stress on subjectivity
and on tlie internalising of all experience as well as perhaps leads to the ignoring of
realities like race, gender and class in favour of personal sensibility. Boundaries
between the inner (mind) and the outer (world) or between subjective and objective
reality then becollie blurred and interpreting any of these calls for taking tlie others
into account. Along with this interdepe~idencegoes an emphasis on tlie i ~ portance
n
of spontaneous expression, whether in word or action. The Romantic
Iierolprotagor~ist,Ilowever inexplicably cruel or wrong his behaviour, is always
presented as driven or co~npelledby a nature too extreme and forcefill for those
around him to understand, and consequently is seen as always isolated from his
world. Very much of this is true of Jimmy, at least in his own eyes -

"Was 1 really wrong to believe that there's a- a kind of- burning virility of
mind and spirit that looks for sornetliing as powerful as itself ? The b&iest,
strongest creatures in tliis world seem to be the loneliest." (LBA,lIl.ii)
Look Rlrck irt A11~r.r This has, to my mind, more tlia~ia touch of self-co~~scious posturing since surely onc
of the corlditio~isoTsucli a nature is tliat it does not see tlie need to explain itself,
and . I ~ ~ i i ~spe~ids
i i y a large part of tlie play doing just tliat. Helena's words about Iii~n,
" I feel he thinks he's still in the middle of tlie French Revol~~tion" co~lfir~ii
the sense
of .li~ii~ily's perceptiorl of himself as a Romantic hero. Tlie effect tliis lias on the
reader (or spectator) w o ~ k sin two ways. First it serves to provide, in a fairly
st~.aigl~tforward way, the picti~reof a man wlio cannot help himself and is to be
lool<edat with admiration, less for his nature than for the courage with wliicli lie faces
up to the truth about it. Tlien it goes on to demolish to a large extent this very picture
and we are made to see with Alison that he is "sliglitly conlic - in a way". 'rliough
tliis double view certainly is effective in adding to the complexity of tlie clia~acter,1
am not sure that it works to the adva~!tageof ihe play as a whole. What do you
tliinl<?

2.2.4 Modernism and the Influence of Freud

Modernism extends tlie Romantic idea of solitariness by seeing it as a condition of all
human existence, not just tliat of tlie liero or genius or artist. This means, along with
a continuation of the move away fro111tlie social (as far as the char.acter of tlie Iteso
goes) a questio~lingof tlie very colicept of tlie Iiero. One result ill literature was tlie
'anti-hero' wlio is a protagonist lacking tlle conventional heroic v i ~ t i ~of
e sstrengtli
and courage (tliougli he may possess, as Leopold Bloom i n Uly,s.sc,sdoes, the more
co~ii~iionplaceones of tliouglitfi~lnessand kindness) and wlio rarely does mi~cllmose
than speak and think, that is, does not provide physical 'action' of lie kind demanded
of earlier heroes.

Another result, which became a feature of ~iiodernis~~i, was all interrogation of the
difficulty of fomiing human ~.elationsllips~111der tlie condition o f solitariness. The
nlodernist liero is also usually co~ifi~ied within his-and, in rare cases, h e r - o w ~ ~
experience in tlie sense that his concerns are hardly ever social ones, as are those of
tlie protagonist in nlost earlier, realist literature, say Dorotllea Brooke in
hIzdd/elnc/~ch, or David in Dullid Copperfield.
b
A tliird way i n which tlie modernist concept of character differs fro111 the nineteenth-
century o ~ i eis that it no more looks for col~sisteilcyin character but accepts and even
celebrates the fact of Iiilman cliaugeability, illogicality and resistance to any system
of classification. Selfliood is no more seen as a fixed or complete state of being since
it changes and fluctuates almost every monienL. As you can see, tliis is a very
different way of considering cliaracter fro111tlie otliers described above, all of wliicli
believe in human nature as fixed and immutable.

Modernism also moved away fi-on?the idea, prevalent since the Enliglitenme~it,that
reason and emotion are strictly separate and mutually opposed categories, One factor
beliirld this Inove was the enormous influencebn literature of contemporary worlc ill
psycl~oanalysis,especially of the work of Freud, whose concept of 'ambivalence'
blurred tlie distinction between another pair of Iiitherto totally contrary ideas - love
and hate. Relationships in literature, whether between parent and child (as in Sons
nildLoveu) or between li~1sba11d and wife (as in LBA) were now not e s a ~ ~ i i n eind
terms o f either of these emotions alone. The other contribution psychoanalysis made
to literature was the idea that we live 011 two levels, tlie conscious and tlie
unconscious or subconscious and that the apparent incoherence of d r e a ~ n sis tlie
nlind's way o f putting across the latter. Criticism call then begin to read a text
looking for its latent (i.e i~ndeclal-ed,01. not made evident) meanings and to appreciate
their al-nbiguity. Such an e~npllasison in11er psychological conditions has alreacly
been m w i o n e d (in 1.3.3) as a feature of expressionistic drama. Try and apply it r101.v
to LnokBack i17 Ailgel. by asking whethel., for instance it co~ildhelp in pl-oviding a
valid readi~igof the relationship between Jimmy and 1-Ielena.
 j
i The Characters
I 2.2.5 Flat and round characters
Tile terlns 'flat' and 'round' were used by E. M. Forster in Aspects of the Nave/ to
describe two different kinds of literary cliaracter and two methods of characterization,
A flat character is one who does not change in the course of the fiction where he or
she is found and is a 'type' with a few (often only one) prominent features and
cliaracteristics. Such characters are llsually -though not exclusively-used in
caricature where comic effects are desired. A round cliaracter is one who changes
and develops as the story or play progresses. Two examples Forster gives are Mrs.
Micawber (in David Copperfield) as a flat cliaracter and Becky Sharp (in Vanity
FL,jy) as a round one.

One of the advantages of a classification such as this, is the way in which it forces LIS
to keep in sight the created nature of literary characters ancl to give solile thouglit to
the reasons behind their being made to be either round or flat. A flat character isn't
necessarily a failure in development, it is more often the resi~ltof the desire to f o c ~ ~ s
on a particular qi~alityor state of mind, such as affectedness (in tlie example cited
above) and results, when pushed to its extreme use, in tlie personification of vices and
virtues in allegory. The use of a round cliaracter, on tlie other hand could indicate all
effort to trace personal growth - as is done in tlie bi1dzmgsrot~~an-or show a
commitment to realism. Tlie disadvantage of tliis grouping tliat it reduces al~uostall
characters in literati~reor drama to one category or tlie other and may involve a one-
sided reading in order to make them fit in. Forster's consideration was of course the
novel, which is one reason for the reader to be wary while applyi~igthe terlns to
cI1aractel.s in a play or in narrative poetry. It isn't possible for me to say, for
example, whether the Host in Chaucer's Canterbzrrj) Tules is a flat character or a
round one.

If these ternis were to be used with regard to any of the characters in Look Bnck in
Anger., I would suggest looking at tlie way Colonel Redfern is spoken of ( by Ji~ii~iiy)
as if lie were a flat character irrespective of whether or not lie appears thus to tlie
reader or the audience - liis self-confessed nostalgia is seen as liis defini~igtrait and
lie is tlie type of tlie old English army officer committed to empire. When he does
~iiakean appearance, many t l ~ i ~ about
~ g s h i ~ nsurprise us by not being true to tlie
picture, and 1 think this si~rpriseis both expected and intended by tlie play. Not o~ily
has Colonel Red fern changed, as he Iiiniself adm its, but our perception lias also been
questioned.

2.2.6 ~ouriau'sModel
Two tlieorists of narrative, Vladimir Propp and Etienne Souriau suggest models
where tlie actor is seen to be an agent in a narrative that performs actions (drama) and
since the fi~nctionof the agent is only to cause or to experience an event, the word
'actor' when used in tliis special sense ~ieednot be restricted to individuals (or
characters ) but coi~ldbe any role, event, idea or principle that performs this fi~nction.
Propp, in an \i~iflue~~tial
study tliat lie made of Russian folk tales, identified seven such
\
roles or 'dran atis personae' which lie called 'actantial roles' -hero, false hero,
vil lain, donor, helper, sought-for person (usually female) and father/protector.

Souriau identi.fied six actants silnilar but not idelltical to Propp's and claimed that
they were valid for drama of all periods and genres. Tliese were the 'lion' or the
hero/protagonist in wlio~nis elnbodied all the dra~iiaticforce of tlie play; the 'suli' or
representative of tlie good which is sought by the lion (could be a person, or a
principle like liberty); the 'earth' the actilal receiver ( person, co~iimu~iity
or country)
on whose behalf the hero seeks tile good ; Mars or tlie antagonist wlio is the hero's
rival ; the 'scale' or the distributor ofji~stice(one or more gods, or the llurnall ruler);
and tlie 'moon' or tlie Iiero's helper, ~lsuallyhis friend. It should be interestilig to try
and see whetlies this nod el works wit11 regard to Osbome's play, though I tliillk its
usefi~lnessas a critical tool does not extend beyond sliowi~igthat i~~iiversal dramatic
Look Back in Anger types do il~fornithe formation of character in what might appear at first to be a play
concerned with the specifics of particular personalities.

The 'lion' in Look Back in Anger doesn't need any identification - remember that this
figure is not required to be virtuous,but only forceful. If indeed there is a 'good' or
'sun' tliat Jimmy seeks and suffers due to the lack of, it is something to believe in that
could give meaning and direction to liis life atid in liis view Iiis coutitry (the 'earth')
needs this as much as he does. It is possible to set up Alison's absent mother (the
'Mum~ny'whomJirn~nyabuses) as tlie hero's rival or at least one who has tried to
upset his plalis and also to extend this role to the entire upper class whom Jirnlny
clearly sees as tlie enemy. I would end tlie classification here, not because it is
inipossible to go on but because it would be a futile exercise to identify Cliffas the
Iiero's helper when he is actually cllaracterised by liis ineffectiveness. As for tlie
'scale', one of tlie most important themes of tlie play is, I feel, tlie absence of any
principle or scheme of justice that could ensure a cliange in the situation. Neither
God-who is not believed i ~anymore--nor
i tlie attempts of religion and society at
setting things right can work here because tlie problem is not one of circumstance.
Nevertheless, a systetii like tliis one offers an alternative-not a s~lbstit~~te-to our
thinking of the characters sin~plyas 'people'. They are also agents in tlie structure of
the play and if tliey are effective as agents perhaps one reason wliy is that they
perform these roles which are, very broadly, basic to all drama.

2.2.7 Character and Critical Theory

The notion of cliaracter as a stable and coherent entity was, as 1 said earlier, dispi~ted
by modernism (see 2.2.3). Recent critical theory goes further by disputing the notion
of cliaracter as an entity at all or even as a tenable concept. Some of tliis follows
from rnodets like Souriau's described above-the term 'cancelled character' was
coined by Brian McHale to describe a technique (notice tliat it is not tlie charactel.
\vIio is described) where a literary cliaracter is exposed as a 'textual filnctioll' atid
ceases to be seen as having self-identity. McHale says that this demonstrates ' tlie
absorption of character by text.' One reason for such a distrust of cliaracter as a
category is the anti-Iiunlanism of most recent literary theory. It prefers not to see tlie
human being as subject or human liat~lreas an essence whicli is what Iiumanisn~does
(see 2.2.2) and offers instead tlie idea of tlie human being as a site. Lyotard explains
tlie use of tliis term --

A self does not amount to m~~cli, but no self is an island; each exists in a
fabric of relations...one is always located at a post tlirougli whicli various
kinds of message pass.
(The Postmzodern Conciifion,p 1 5 )
Another phrase, 'cliaracter zone' is provided by Mikliail Baklitin to convey liis sense
of the character's identity being built up by the reader or audience, both from direct
descriptiolis of action and 'transcriptions' of speech i.e from the character's voice
overlapping with tlie author's voice. How much of tliis is relevant to Look Buck in
Anger? For one, it leads to tlie possibility tliat language liiiglit prove a more
important, or at least a more ~lseful,area of critical study than the concept of
cliaracter is. ( I sliall go illto this in detail in tlie next unit.) Tlien it is both possible
and useful to see all tlie characters in tlie play as sites wliese the vexed realities of
class atid gender play themselves out. (see 2.4)

2.3 THE ANGRY YOUNG MAN

Tliis term, coined to describe tlie condition of u~ifocussed,but all-pervasive
resentment and frustration that many saw as tlie defining characteristic of post-war
youtli, soot1 became a catch-phrase in its applicatio~inot just to Jim my but to all other-
subsequent cliar.acters like him in literature, dratna and cinema and was not restrictecl
to Britaiu - witness its being used of An~itabli&achIian in his film roles of tlie 1970s.
it was even extended to Osborne liimself by those wlio saw Jinilny as liis mouthpiece, The Characters
thougli tlie dramatist tried to shrug it off-

" It was rather tiresome. .. like being called tlie Walls Ice Cream Inall !"
( Interview in 1961 )

Tliere is no doubt liowever that Look Back in Anger was considered a revolutionary
play by its first audiences and reviewers, some of whom 1 quote here to give you
solne idea of the play's contelnporary impact-

Look Back in Anger presents post-war youth as it really is .... to have done it
in a first play is a minor miracle ... all tlie qualities are there, qualities one
liad despaired of ever seeing on tlie stage - tlie drift towards anarchy, tlie
instinctive leftisliness ... the casual promiscuity, tlie selise of lacking a
crusade wortli fighting for ...
(Kenneth 'rynan ,Observer, 1 3 May 1 956)
" The only moder~i,Englisli play" '

(AI-~IILI~
Miller)
Look Back in Anger was tlie event wliicli marked off 'then' from '~iow'
decisively although not in itself a startlingly novel event. c

(Jolin Russell Taylor, Anger and After, 1962)

Even at tlie time, some critics did think tlie play's title ~nisleading- Baiwir held that
tlie doniinant note was confi~sionnot anger and thought that "Bewildered You~ig
Man" would fit tlie case better. What exactly was tlie anger and against whom was it
directed? Kenneth Allsop suggests tliat it is a~iotlierway of describing 'dissentience',
preferring that tern1 to 'dissenter' because of tlie latter's connotations of organized
protest, and tlie former's more general applicability. '~issentience'; is I think, ~ ~ s e f i ~ l
in that it does away with the positive direction that 'angey' lniglit possibly be seen as
taking, since dissent, of whatever sort, is a purely negative feeling or action and
Jimlpy does not take any steps to cliange or remedy tlie siti~atio~is with wliich Ile
exp;esses sucli strong dissatisfactio~iand wliicli he sees as social, or at least as
brought about by social realities- lie attributes for exaniple, apathy or the lack of
feeling on the personal level; to tlie boi~rgeoisideals of reserve and politeness. At tile
saliie time, Jimmy's complaints against these situations are e~notionaland 1io1
material ones, wliicli is tlie reason beliitid tlie effect of general and in directed rage
that conies through in them. Tlie 'anger' is also directed by Jimmy at other people
(most evidently at Alison) for failing to live up to liis preconceived ideas and
expectations of tlie~n.

To now conce~itratefor a ~iio~nent on the word 'young' instead of on 'angry', you

will notice that all four of tlie principal characters are in their twenties, so youth is in
itself clearly an issue tlie play is interested in. Yet no easy generalisations can be
niade about it - if youth can be sullen or rebellious in the person of Jitnmy, it can also
be i~itrospectiveand self-analytical, as Alison is. Colonel Redfern, the o~ilyolder
person to appear, is sl~owlito be in no way free of the uncertainties and self-doubt
that the otliers are troubled by, and tlie two deatlis in the play- of Hugli's ~iiottierand
of Alison's baby - bring out the reality of ill~iessand deatli as somethi~igthat nobody
can escape facing in one form or another.

I would argue tliat Jimmy is not just a voice for Osborne's views since riglit fro111the
beginning of tlie play, he is presented with irony. Tliis is done through the lengtliy
and descriptive stage directions whicli serve as commentary, for example:
"To many, he may seem se~isitiveto the point of vulgarity. To others, he is
sirnply a loud~noutl~.
To be as vel~e~iie~it
as lie is is to be allliost non-
C O I I I I ~ittal."
( Stage directiol~to Act I).
Look Brick in Anger Tliis, along witli tlie subseq~~entstage directions, serves to indicate tliat a double view
of Jimmy -taking into account tlie discrepancy betwean his self-image and tlie
comments about him-is required by the play. It is because Jirnmy's rhetoric is so
powerfill tliat the audience instinctively reacts to it by identifying it as wliat the
dramatist wants to say. Tliis is perhaps even more true of tlie reader, for wllo~ntlie
play reads almost like a monologue-Jitnmy's centrality is reinforced by tlie way tlie
otlier characters constantly discuss him even in his absence. Yet in perfor~iiance,
Aliso~l'ssilent presence is probably very effective in ~lndercuttingthe force of
Jimmy's colistatit speech by showing it LIPas not ~nuclimore than invective. Cliff,
too is meant to provide, Osbor~iesays "a soothing, natural counterpoint to Jimmy".
'Natural' is tlie word I would immediately pick lip liere. Doesn't it effectively imply
that Jimmy's bellaviour is, compared to tliat of tlie otliers, a pose or tlie playirig out of
a role ? This is conscious at some times and not so at otliers. Turn to tlie ~ n o ~ i i e ~ i t
where he says "But plenty of tliem do seem to have a revolutiotiary fire about tliem,
wliich is more than you call say for the rest of LIS."(LBA, I) He is liere admitting,
with self awareness and even with self-mockery, that a 'revolutionary fire' is wliat lie
would like to liave, and his belia\;iour and long speeches certainly bear out such a
wish, as does his deliberate use of lotig words -'sycophantic', 'plilegrnatic' (see
2.2.2) and 'p~~sillanimous'.

I am not here suggesting tliat Ji~nti~y is a hypocrite or tliat his feelihgs are no more
than a desire for attention from tlle otlier characters and the audience, but rather that
an elelllent of posturing is inseparable from the very concept of the 'angry young
tnan'. If nothing else this makes such a character more human and fallible and
endears him to the spectators, since an essential co~iditiolifor tlie success of tlie
character is tliat lie be easily identified with, an aim that is part oftlre play's thn~st
toward 'feeling' as being both more honest and Inore difficult to attain to, than
thought is. Still, I tliink it would be a mistalce to judge this dramatic type as anything
other than tliat -however Inally young people in Britain in the 1950s felt as Jimmy
does about the establisl~ment,he does not, as Tynan implies, speak for all of tliem. I n
fact, llis is much less a collective voice tlian even that of Colonel Redfern. Tlii~
miglit seem to colltradict what 1 said in Unit I about drama giving voice to general,
*
public perceptions, but act~~ally reinforces the point tliat drama cannot successfi~lly
make social statenients wliich are not tempered by a view of what will work on the
stage. Here Jimmy's idiosyncracies are precisely what work well.

One of Jimmy's cliaracteristics is, I suggested earlier, a lack of awareness, partly liis
ignorance of Alison's pregnancy and partly tlie failure to realize how his own values
are subject to the CI-iticismlie makes of Colonel Redfern's and how wrong he is to
suppose Alison cold and impersonal. Self-pity is another evident trait, as in the scene
wliere Ile attempts to offer a crudely psyclioa~ialyticexplanation for his misogyny,
tracing it to his mother's neglect of Iiis dying father. All tlie same, Jilnliiy is far from
lacking i l l either sincerity (lie feels passionately wliat lie says, or rnakes himself feel
it) or in biting wit. Most of tlle Iiuniour in the play does come from Iiim. And yet, I
tliink, the play's excessive relia~lceon J i ~ n ~ nweakens
y all tlie otlier characters by
causing tliem to appear ~~ndeveloped, and also, as Taylor points out, reduccs the
scope of dramatic co~iflictby making tliem always subservie~itto tlie hero, whose
supremacy goes unchallenged. One critic, John Mander, goes so far as to say that tlie
other cllaracters in the play "despite the talk, are not 1n~1c1i Inore tlian stage-fun1iture"
with the result tliat tlie content of tlie play is reduced to Jimmy's 'views'. Do you
agree here ? And if so, do you tliink this a deliberate metliod of keeping our attelltion
foctlssed on Jimmy ? Try and find iristances froni the text to substantiate your
answer.
 The Characters
2.4 CLASS AND GENDER
8
To deal wit11 these two areas together is to acl~nowledgetliat tlie play brings into
some kind of elation witli eacli other issues such as sexuality, co~ii~iionly
considered an aspect of private life, and public factors like class. Stereotyping,
wIlicIi was not necessarily a negative device in dra~iiabefore tlie postwar period,
became during this time a failure to address social realities, including the reality of
celtain constuctions and perceptions o f women - their identity and experiences-and
of their role in tlie family.

Class and gender serve as neat dividing lines between tlie characters in tlie play. Two
oftlie three men in the play are from the worlting class wliile botli women belong to
tile upper class. I n addition, of the two women who do not make an appearance but
are spoken of by the others, Alison's ~notlierand Hugh's mother, one belongs to eacli
class. Marriage between tlie classes provides an arena for tlie ongoing conflict.
However nobody, witli the exception of the Colonel, seems,to display traits tliat
might be seen as characteristic of tlieir class. I do not know here wlietlier we are to
sick witli Ji~iimyin seeing Alison's restraint in tlie face of attack as typical of upper
class apathy and lack of commitment, or simply as her own personal tactic of self
defence. Probably a bit of botli - Alison is actually anything but unfeeling and her
self-control eventually turns out to be as mi~cliof a pose as Jimmy's beliaviour is,
wliile his own inconsistencies are evident in tlie way in wliicli lie alternates between
tl.ying to break lier self control and criticizing lier for being weak. Both she and her
father display a reliance on codes of beliaviour which ultimately fail them, but it is
unclear wlietlier or not this is a coliiment on upper class norms in general. The class
struggle is conflated witli tliat between tlie sexes so as to make it impossible to fi~lly
separate the two. An interesting perspective on tliis is provided by Allardyce Nicoll,
who locates Ilie main theme witli reference not to tlie character of Jimmy, but to tliat
of Alison, and also identifies tliis theme as a pre-existing literary one, arising from a
social reality:

Basically, Look Bc~ckin A~igerdeals witli tlie tlie~iicof'a gently nurtu~.edgirl

who is st~.angelymagnetised by a lower-class intellecti~al... Now all tlie
elements, or ingredients of tliis theme are exactly similar to Iliose wliicli \,,re
largely cultivated between 1900 and 1930... tlie fact tliat tliis play deais witli
a the~nefreely exploited during the first decades of tliis century and only
occasionally handled by dramatists oftlie forties and early fifties deserves t o
be noted, particularly since Look Back in Anger does not in this respect stand
alone.

The other area where the class struggle locates itself in the play is tliat of imperialism.
Tliougli not dealt with as a separate issue, the association oftlie Colonel's class with
tlie maintenance of ellipire hints that to the other classes, imperialism was ~ i oat
national, but o ~ i l yan upper class issue. Tile metaplior of dominance and violence that
empire evokes is applicable to both the area of class relatio~isand to that of the
relation between tlie sexes. On the other hand tlie aristocratic ideal of cliivalry has no
place liere-Jimniy says lie has no "public scliool scruples about hitting girls" and
indeed quite a lot of pliysical violence does go on in tlle play.

Jimmy is a self-confessedly working class man (as is Cliff) though perhaps not as low
down on tlie social ladder as lie likes to suggest. He is clearly well educated and in
affecting to despise liis edi~catio~iby disparaging tlie university lie went to and by
choosing to run a sweet-stall, he achieves tlie paradoxical effect of arousing curiosity
and drawing attention to it. Tlie Colonel at one point says, "Sweet-stall. It does seem
an extraordinary thing for an educated young liiali to be occupyi~ighilliself with.
Why should lie want to do tliat, of all things." Jimmy is also quite proud of liis
intellige~iceand education - notice tlie way lie taunts Cliff witli liis lack of learning-
and his pastimes i~icludeconcert-going. It is liis inability to find a worthwhile cause
Look B ~ c kin Anger that causes lli~nto.direct his energy towards piclting on Alison, thus focusing social
frustratiou onto a personal relationship. Besides effectively bringing together tlie
social and the personal, this also foregrounds the idea of marriage as an i~iesc:lpabl!
public relationship. Jimmy's relationsliip with Helena is different in this respec1 nut
o ~ i l ybecause, unlike Alison, slie stands up to Iiim, but because they are not under the
expectatio~isor tlie ties that marriage imposes. Helena has not, like Alison 'burnt Iler
boats' and this is what allows lier to leave in the end. Slie also, despite tlie clever
way she ~iia~lipi~lates the sit~~ationto get Jimmy to herself, does respect Alison's
position as his wife-anotlier i~ista~ice of her internalizatio~lo f bourgeois values or
si~nplyher excuse for getting out ?

A great deal of the play's action is centred around the relationsllip between Jimmy
and Alison, the chief cliaracteristic of which seems to be its a~nbivalence(see 2.2.3). 1
would see this as having the function of reveaIing, or even for~ningboth of them,
rather tlia~itrying to ascertain the con~plexitiesof tlie power equations involved. The
treatment of sex in tlie play, seems to be (on tlie wllole) one where it is seen as a site
for the exploration of tlie self rather than as indicative o f concerns about gender
idelltities and roles. Perhaps tliis is why, both here and in other Osborne plays, these
roles are not o111y left i~~lexploredand unquestioned, but are even reiterated-for
example, the allying of wo~iieiiwith marriage, domesticity and a family systelil, all o f
which are feared by the men in the plays as threats to their selfl~oodand
independence, This fear is behind the speeches that show hatred o f wolileli (and of
children) and which do offer scope for acriticisni of Osborne's plays, not as
niisogynist, but as centred in and oriented towards the male cliaracter(s) and the nlale
viewers wliose fears are being voiced. ( This is discussed more fi~llyin 4.2.2 )

2.5 LET US SUM UP

Various ways ofanalysing literary and dramatic character, have been used at different
times arid by different schools of criticism and theory. Tliese include Aristotle's view
of character in terms of tlie require~netitsof tragedy; character as formed by the
predominance of a particular ' I ~ u r n o ~ ~the
r ' ;Ro~nanticemphasis on individl~alityand
solitariness as part of the character of tlie Ilero; modernis~n'sdestabilization of earlier
views of character as fixed and coherent; Forster's nod el of 'flat' and 'round'
characters; narrative theories wliicll see character as playing out 'actantial roles'; and
tlie disputing o f character as an entity or concept, in recent literary theory.

The phrase 'angry young man', needs to be understood in terms o f tlie tre~iienclous
impact tliat Osborne's play, and partic~~larlytlie character of J i ~ n m ymade
, on its
appearance. Such a category should however be interrogated and i ~ s e das a critical
tool wliile dealing with the themes of dissent, rebellion and 'feeling' in the play.

Class and gender are categories that could be seen as defining character, or as issues
tliat play themselves out in the 'site' provided by character. At the same time, neither
category can be considered i~idepende~ltly of the other in Look Back in Ariger, since
each is presented in terms o f a struggle, and tlie two struggles are conflated.

2.6 GLOSSARY
An1 biguity Double or dubious meaning.

Bild ungsroman Literally,'~~ovel A novel tracing tlie

of edi~catio~i'.
develop~nelitand growth to maturity o f tlie protagonist.

Caricature Exaggerated portrait wliicli uses d istol-tion, i ~ s ~ly~for

ala
comic effect.

Dramatis personae Tlle cllaracters in a play.

 The Characters
Misogyny Dislike or hatred of women.

Physiological Belonging to natural science (the study of living things).

Subjectivity Preoccupation with tlie self and with personal experience and
vision.

Transcription Reproduction or copy.

2.7 QUESTIONS
Q I. Disci~ssthe way in which Romantic and Modernist conceptions of character
are combined in the presentation of Jimmy as tlie play's protagonist.

Q 2. Do you think of any character(s) in tlie play as being 'flat' ? If so, why?

Q 3. What is your i~nderstandingof tlie concept of the 'angry young man' and its
implications in the context of this play ?

Q 4. How do tlie characters in Look Back it7 Anger function as 'sites' for a
discussio~iof class andlor gender ?

2.8 , SUGGESTED READING

Carter, Alan John Osborne, Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyol, 1969

Haymau, Ronald John Osborne, Great Britain: Heinemann, 1968

 UNIT 3 LANGUAGE AND SPEECH IN LOOK
BACK rN ANGER
Structure

Objective
Language in Drama
3.1.1 Language as Action
3.1.2 Language as Protagonist
3.1.3 Osborne's Dramatic Language
Tlie Title of tlie Play
Kinds of Writing and Speech in tlie Text
3.3.1 Invdctive
3.3.2 Hyperbole
3.3.3 Parody
3.3.4 Mo~iologueand Dialogue
Imagery and Symbolism in the Play
Let Us Sum Up
Glossary
Questions
Suggested Reading

3.0
- -
OBJECTIVES
- - -

'The objective of this unit is to suggest a possible alter~iativeto the f o c ~ in

~ sthe
previous unit on the characters as the first point ofentry into Look Back in Anger., by
looking instead at its use of !anguage (and of sy~iibolsand images tlirougli language)
as well as at tlie impel-tance of speech in the play.

3.1 LANGUAGE IN DRAMA

3.1.1 Language as Action
I said earlier (in Unit I) that drama's chief characteristic is its reliance on action,
l ~ s ~ ~ aaction
l l y wliicli imitates or represents Iiuman behaviour. When we then come to
an analysis of language and speech ill a play, tlie question tliat inevitably arises is
whether action is an area that lies outside tlie words we are studying, or whether it
can be seen as inherent in these words, especially in a play like the one under ,
consideration, which does not have any very drastic pliysical action. Also, are .the
words of tlie play , when written down, a different form of 'literat~ire'from tlie same
words spoken on stage ? I think that tlie 'action' of Look Bock in A~igeris primarily
psychological i.e takes place in, and consists of, tlie fluctuating tiiouglits, emotions
and relationsliips of the characters and in tlie expression of these throi~gliword.
stance or gesture. Or, in otllel-words, in tlie interaction of the characters with each
other. Tlie torie of voice 01.expression is tl1erefo1.every important since in drama it
directly conveys shades of meaning (such as sarcasm or hostility) which in a novel
o miglit need a disc~~rsive description. (This distinction between 'diegesis' arid
'mimesis' wliicli mean respectively 'telling' and 'showing', is one tliat is very basic
to literary analysis). In addition, there are noises or sounds other than language
which help to convey the required atmosphere or ernotion in performance. An
example of this is tlie sound of the cliurcli bells ringing in the following passage,
wliicli when heard on tlie stage, very effectively bring out a selise of urgency:

''YoLI'T~ co~niligwith me, aren't you ? She ( he skntg.s ) hasn't got anyone else now.
I . .. need you ... to come with me."
 Language and Speech
HP looks into her eyes, but she turns away a n d stands zp. Outside the church hells
start ringing. (LBA, II, I / )

3.1.2 Language as Protagonist

111 Unit 2 we looked at the characters in the play as created entities with perso~ialities
wIlicI1 they expressed through language. Let 11snow go a step further and consider
- lallguage as itself playing the role of the protagonist in the play, a possibility
suggested by critics who see language as putting across its themes and concerns more
tllan any of the cjlaracters do. (To further complicate matters, one could also argue
tllat the only way of knowing the characters is itselfthrough language since they are
ellibodied in it.) One such critic, G. L Evans, goes.on to qualify tlle argument in
favour of language a s protagonist ih Look Back in Anger, by sqGng that two things
come in its way. l'he first ofthese is tlie use of melodrama, since language is at
many points being used obviously, even crudely, to appeal to emotions, whether
tllose of the cliaracters or of the spectators. The instatlce tliat i~n~nediately
comes to
IIIY mind in this connection is Alison's speech towards the end :

" I'm in the fire and I'm bur~iing,and all I wajit is to die ! ... But what does it
matter - this is what he wanted from me ! ... Don't you see ! 1'111 in the mud ,
at last ! I'm grovelling ! 1'111 crawling ! Oh, God ....." (LBA, 111, ii ) .

Alison's appeal is to J i ~ i i ~ as
n y well as to us and the fact tliat exaggerated and -
melodramatic emotion is a characteristic of tlie language hejae,shows LIPthe ;~seof
language as the means to an end, taking away its intrinsic i~rlporta~ice and role as
protagonist.

The second obstacle to language as protagonist is the doing away with of any
objectivity it might claim to have, and tllus tile ~~ndermining ofits credibility.
However impersonal it may seem, we cannot fi~llyt r ~ ~what s t the language of the play
states, or tells LIS,because it is always qualified by the emotional motives,
senti~nentalityor self-indulgence of the cllaracters. For example, take Jimmy's
description of his father's death :

"But, you see, 1 was the only one who cared, Elis family were embarrassed
by the whole business. Embarrassed and irritated ... We all of us waited for
him to die . .. Every time I sat on the edge of his bed, to listen to him talking
or reading to me, 1 had to fight back my tears. At the end of twelve montlis, I
was a veteran ... You see, I learnt at an early age what it was to be angry -
angry and I~elpless. And I call never forget it. I knew Illore about-love ...
betrayal ... and death, when I was ten years old than you will probably know
all your life."
(LBA, I I, I )

Clearly, the description concentrates far Inore on Jimmy than it does on his father,
wit11 a view to drawing attention both to his suffering and to his desire to be seen as a
sufferer. The language, though powerful, is again simply being treated as an
instrument to express sentiment and to arouse pity for the suffering expressed.

3.1.3 Osborne's Dramatic Language

One more diffet.entiation needs to be made here - between language' in the speecll of
the cllaracters and the l a ~ i g ~ ~ of
a gthe
e playwright. The playwright speaks directly
only througli the stage directions but it is possible to trace his voice at places in the
speech of a character. For example, look at the following passage:

" ... as far as the Michelangelo Brigade's concer~led,I must be a sort of right-
wing deviationist. lfthe Revolutio~lever comes, 1'11 be the first to put up
against the wall, with all the other poor old liberals." (LBA, 1)
Look B ~ c ilr
k Alrger Tlie view expressed [nay be Jimmy's owti but tlie reader gets the feeling that tile
nickname fol- liomosexuals (like the earlier one " the Greek Cliorus boys" it is clever
in a mildly derogatory way ) is Osborne's ratlier than his, partly since this was an
issue Osborlle was interested in and went on to explore in otlier plays, such as A
Potriotfir Me. However, tliis is too vague and limited a metliod of ~~nderstandin~
the language of tlie playwright, and when I propose to look at Osborne's dramatic
language, I mean tlie language of liis plays and his own view of it. Here are two
passages from his prose, tlie first of which expresses how much importance lie
accorded to language:

"Words are ilnpo~tatlt... When millions of people are unable to

commu~~icate with each otlier, it's vitally important tliat words are made to
work. It may be old-fashioned but they're- the only things we have left." ( 0 1 7
Critics and Criticisrli, The Stmdny Telegrapl~,28 Atigtut 1966)

Five years after Look Back in Anger was first perforriied, Osborne wrote:

"Althougl~LookBack in Anger was a formal, ratlier old-fashioned play, I

think it broke out by its use of language." ( Thut Awfiil Museziili, 196 1 )

Tliis claim to innovation has been contested (see Unit 5) but Osborne's self-confessed
concern witli language is evident from the play. It has been suggested tliat the exact
way in which tliis 'breaking out' takes place is by tlie introduction of a new theatrical
rlietoric into the old, realist form of drama. Osborne uses two kinds of stage language
for two distinct purposes, self-expression through monologue, and social debate
through dialogue ( see 3.3.4) He has. of course been criticized-with some reason , I
think-for liis language's being limited to a particular kind of voice , like Jimmy's,
mocking and passionate. Tliis does mean that the otlier voices i n tlie play are not as
well developed. Yet Osbosne's concern in tliis and otlier plays is less to allow each
character to develop a distinctive voice than to find a language tliat can express life
equally well on both the personal and the social front. Andrew Kennedy offers an
analysis of Osborne's dramatic language, where lie suggests that the playwright deals
with tliis problem in two ways. First, by treating language as simply one part of tlie
meaning of tlie characters' lives, as in the following series of questions:

" What is tlieir relationship witli one another and witli tlieir cliildren, witli the
neig1iboul.s , .. What are the tliings that are important to them, tliat make them
care, that give tliem hope and anxiety ? What kind of language do they use
to one another ? ... Where does tlie pain lie ... What rnoves tliem, brings
tliem together, makes tliem speak out ?"
(' TJ7e Writer in His Age ", London Mclgazinr IV, May 1957 )

Secondly, by achieving tlie opposite effect of organizing tlie speech around the
rlietoric of a central cliaracter. Tliis rlietoric uses for effect verbal excess (two
examples of which are described in 3.3.1 and 3.3.2 ) parody and changes in pace,
ilsually beginning in a declamatory style and ending witli reiterated questions. Tliis
second method supposedly balances tlie first by making sure tliat tlie language now
has filnctions otlier than just persolla1 communication. How Iielpfi~lan account of
Osborne's lia~idlingof language is tliis ? While 1 agree with tlie characteristics of tlie
language Kennedy outlines, 1 aln not persuaded tliat it works quite successfi~llyto
express both personal and public life in tlie play. ( Tliis is furtlier dealt witli under the
discussion of invective.) Sucll a stress on 'rlietoric' does, liowever make sure tliat
we see tlie language as needing analysis over and above its content or wliat it
conveys, and realize tliat often what a cliaracter says is secondary to what lie or she
does witli tlie words and tlie effect tliat they liave on tlie listener. For example,
Alison, in refusing to accolnpany Jimmy to visit Hugli's motlier, is actually doing
more tlian just tliat - slie is also tellilig him tliat she is breaking away from him in
some way.
 Language and Speech
3.2 THE TITLE OF THE PLAY
What is i~ii~nediately apparent about tlie title Look Back in Anger is that it reads like
an injuncti011telling one to perform a particular action---that of looking back.
~lleilierthis co~nmandis directed towards tlie audiencelreaders, the characters, or
indeed even towards the play as a whole, reliiai~is~~nclear. At tlie same time, it is
possible to read the title as descriptive, as telling 11swhat the play actnally does, or at
least sets out to do.

A third way of studying the title is to divide our attention between tlie two themes
elnbodied in it, tlie action of 'lookirig back', and tlie enlotion of 'anger'. Tlie latter
has been dealt with in the previous unit, so I will here conce~itrateon the former
1
aspect, that of a vision or a gaze that is retrospective. Sucli a gaze ~~sually has
implicit connotations of objectivity and of clear judgement made possible tllrough
I
perspective brought by time. Yet here it is allied with an intensely subjective
elllotion -can looking back in anger ever mean looking back objectively ? Unlikely
thougli it sounds, I think that this is precisely wliat Osborne is suggesting through the
play's title. We are here 1iieant to see that, contrary to the i~si~al
belief, it is strong
feeling tliat makes for clear vision and understanding. The play goes on to sliow tliat
there are numerous areas of private and public life that are inexplicable or hidden to
reason, but that remain accessible to emotion.

The next question tliat arises is what exactly is to be looked back at. One possible
answer points to tlie time immediately preceding that of the play - the war years as
well as the early post-war period. Everyone in tlle play does some amount of looking
back at these years , whether on a personal or a public level. Of tliese, Jimmy's gaze
is the ~iiostapparently angry and resentfill, both against tlie older social system and at
the (as he sees them) half-hearted attempts at refonii. Colonel Redfern looks at the
same period with nostalgia and a sense of loss. In fact, the ~iostalgicvision is itself a
minor theme in tlie play, and attention is paid to its power to beautify and transform
tlie past at tlie same t i ~ n etliat it is see11 as creating an esse~itiallyfalse picture. This
comes across strongly in tlle followiug passage:

"Tlie old Edwardian brigade do make their brief little world look pretty
tempting. All Iiome-made cakes and croquet, bright ideas, bright ~~niforms.
Always tlie same picture: high summer, tlie lorig days in tlie sun, slim
volumes of verse, crisp linen, tlie smell of starch. What a romantic picture.
Pliouey too, of course. It must have rained sometimes. Still, even I regret it
somehow, pllo~ieyor not." (LBA, I )

Alison also looks back at her past, at tlle years of her marriage to Jirnmy, usually witli
regret, or with a longing for missed llappiness but most of all with a sense of clarity at
being able to see things now tliat she could not earlier. She spends a good deal of
time recounting these memories to Cliff and I-Ielena (this serves to provide a lot of
relevant information to the audience) and in tlie process, revealing Iler present state of
mind :

"I keep looki~igback, as far as 1 remember, and 1 can't tlii~ikwliat it was to

feel young, really young." (LBA, I )
I

Another characteristic of a retrospective vision is that it is explanatory, it provides

(as well as seeks) answers of one sort or another, thoi~gl~ they need not be satisfactory
ones. 'The play doesn't actually offer any solutions to the personal misery of tlie
characters except tlie retreat illto a game for Jimmy and Aliso~l, r~ncleven here, we
are left wo~ideri~ighow long it will last. Cliff and Helena simply leave and are more
or less already forgotten by tlie time tlie play ends. I wou Id the11see the title as
referring not so niucli to ally particular period of time as, in a general sense, to the
Look B(rrk iri Anger riattlre of the past and to what people make of it tlirougli memory, or to be liiore
specific, tllrougli tlie acts of remem beririg and forgetting.

3.3 KINDS OF SPEECH AND WRITING I N THE TEXT

3.3.1 Invective
Invective Illearis an attack througli speecli which abuses, rails against and strongly
denunciates the object of tlie attack. Almost all the invective in Look Back in Anger.
is Jilii~lly's,directed at different times against tlie upper and middle classes,
Americans, tlie clergy, evangelists, imperialists, politicians, academics, ho~nosesuals,
women, the older generation arid everytlli~igthat is 'phoney'. Tlie effect of such a
wide range of targets - though of course they often overlap - is to focus attention on
tile invective itself rather than on its object, which is usually e~iibodiedin one or more
cliaracter(s) within the play. Alison, her parents, lier brother Nigel, lie1 fiiends
(Webster and Helena), in short what lie calls 'Dame Alison's Mob', provjde to
Jimmy examples of ~iiostof the above categories. His attack is full of violent,
deliberately crude images and sinliles, as wlien lie compares woliiell to "some dir-ty
old Arab, sticking liis fingers into some mess of lanib fat and gristle" or when lie
imagines Alison's ~iiotlierdying - "She will pass away, lily friends, leaving a trail of
worriis gasping for laxatives beliind lier - from purgatives to purgatory." He is being
more tlia~isi~iiplytasteless here, since tlle desired effect is mainly aillied at Alison
and his words are spoken chiefly to l i ~ ~her,r t which lie succeeds in doing.

Tlie rlietoric of Jimmy's lorig speeclies is not ~nearitto be taken as containing ally
message(s) tliat Osborne, or tlie play itself, intends to convey through them. Instead
they perfor111tlie f~~nctioii
of revealing a certain state of mind. Those who failed to
realize this and chose to read Jimmy's statement " There aren't ally good, brave
causes left" as the playwriglit's view, were criticized by Osbor~ie:
-
Tliey were incapable of recognizing tlie texture of ordinary despair, the way
it expresses itself in rlietoric and gestures tliat lilay perllaps loolc shabby, but
are seldorii simple."
(Declarations, op.cit.,p.69)

Nevertheless, Osborne.is here appare~itlyseeking goals that are, to my mind,

mutually irreco~iciliable.Of course this is proble~naticonly if we clioose to see this
as a failing, and do not read it as an attempt to make Jimmy's anger justifiable at tlie
same ti~iieas it is futile. If we are not to find easy expla~iatio~isby taking tlie
invective at face value, then our attention is also diverted from tlie social and other
concerns tliat Osbor~iewants tlie play to make us think about. For tlie invective to
function simultaneously on all these levels - bringing out issues, revealing character
as well as showing up its ow11'rlietoric' , is, 1 think, not entirely feasible. However,
do feel free to disagree with liie if you wish to. In your opinion, is tlie attempt a
s~~ccessfiilone ?

3.3.2 Hyperbole

Hyperbole is a figure of speech wllich contains exaggeration for emphasis. I n Look

Back in Anger, it usually fi~nctionsas a part of invective, and serves to strengthen it
but it is also used to convey a sense of emotional disturba~lceand to individualize the
speecli of tlie characters in tlie seiise of revealing tlieir varying degrees of articulation.
Jimmy's constant use of hyperbole makes his tlie most veliement speeclies in tile
play, and highligl~tstlie element of exaggeration in liis character. Alison uses it less
than lie does, but still quite often, for example in "1 want to be a lost cause! I want to
be corrupt and futile!" ; Helena and Cliff only use it occasio~ially,and Colonel
Redfern never. This is not to suggest tliat Colonel Redfern is inarticulate - on the
contrary he is+eveneloquent on occasion, as wlien describing "those long, cool
evelling~ in the hills . . ." - but that he is, by nature as well as training, more restrained Language and Speech
and less readily expressive of strong feeling than the others are.

I-lyperboleis also one oPtlie characteristics of dramatic language and when put into
mouili of a character, brings out tlie ltvel of performance in his or her behaviour.
Pretence or play-acting, both conscious and ~~nconscious, runs right tliro~~gli
Look
Back u7 Anger, from the mock play-acting of Jimmy and Cliff to tlie game tliat Jimmy
and Alison play, prctending to be a bear and a squirrel. At the level of this game,
wllicI~is close to mime, gestures and animal sou~idslike 'Oooooooli!' atid
.Wheeeeeeeeee!' replace language. Alisoli significantly describes tlie game as
I.esulti~igin "dumb, uncomplicated affection for each otlier. " It is when tlie c o ~ ~ pisl e
.dumb' , tliat is, when they have let go of ordinary speecli, that they come across as
[most intimate and affectionate with each other, wliile tlie rest oftlie time, words seem
to drive them apart.

3.3.3 Parody
The language of tlie play contains parodies of various vocabularies, among them tliat
of the pamphlet, tlie newspaper and the drama. Once again most instances of parody
are to be found in Jini~ny'sspeecli, tlio~~glioften when lie is talking to, or acting with
Cliff. I shall here outline tlieln through a listing based on wliether they are co~~scious
and deliberate parodies or not. Exa~ilplesare given in each'case.

There is conscious parody o f :

The eva~igelicalpreacher : "I want to liear a warin tlirillirig voice cry out Hallelujali !
.. .
Hallelujah ! Oh, brother, it's sucli a long time since I
was with anyone who got enthusiastic about anything."

Tlle salesman / auctioneer : "Reason and Progress, tlie old firm is selling out!
Everyorie get out wliile the going's good."

Tlie conversation of a social 'do' or polite upper-class gathering :

"Well, sliall we dance? ... Do you come here
often?... Do you think bosoms will be in or out, this
year ?"

Tlie comic sequence in a music-hall act:

"Ladies and gentlemen, a little recitation ... Will you
kindly stop interrupting perlease ! Can't you see I'm
trying to entertain these ladies and gentlemen ?"

The 'clever' academic: "Here it is. I quote: Pusillanimous. Adjective.

Wanting of firmness of mind ... From the Latin
pusillus, very little, and animus, tlie mind."

Jimmy unconsciously parod ies tlie stereotyped figure of the isolated, solitary
Romantic hero (see 2.2.2 above ). Another sucli parody is tliat of tlie witty
~lndergraduate'sspeech, non- literary but furl of literary references from Ulysses and
Elllily Bronte to WildeysLady Bracknell and quotations from Shakespeare (such as
'expense of spirit'). Alison also describes J i ~ ~ ~ mand
y ' sHugh's gatecrashing of
parties as parodying a military invasion :

"We'd set out from lieadquarters in Poplar, atid carry out our raids on tlie
enemy in W.1, S.W.I., S.W.3., and W.8."

In addition, there is a sort of parody of different local or regional accellts and idio~l~s,
for example Jimmy imitating a midlands accent :
Look Brick in A~lger "Well, it gives you something to do, doesn't it ? After all it wouldn't do if
*
we was all alike, would it ? It'd be a funny world if we was all the same,
that's what I always say ! "

Cliff is of course meant to provide a genuine example of Welsh idiom, by Iiis use of
terms like 'girlie', tliougli his 'not 'arf could as well be Cockney, Try and identify
further instances of parody that you might come across in the text.

3.3.4 Monologue and Dialogue

Monologue ~nealiso~ilyone person speaking or one voice being heard, while dialoglre
lneans speecii between two persons - I shall liere use tlle term loosely by extelidi~igit ,
to include co~lversationbetween more than two persons. Tlie lalig~~age o f Look Back
in Anger varies in a rhythm between tlie two to provide breaks and contrasts. Tlie
~nonologueconsists largely s f outbursts but does not serve, as tlie soliloquies in
Elizabethan drama do, to reveal tlie characters' inmost thoughts. ( The difference
I
between a monologue and a soliloquy is that in the latter case, the speaking character
is addressing either liiniself or the audience and his words are not to be heard by any
of the other characters, while the former doesn't have this requirement). 111
Osbor~ie'splay, the monologues contain a self-dramatizing rhetoric of which the
speaker is often aware but which lie or she doesn't rationalize. Self-awareness in
Look Back in Anger usually means awareness of being inadequate or of being
helpless to bring about desired change. There is not much consistent, logically
developed argument, with the stress being instead on elnotiolial appeal. Tlie
metaphor of play-acting is a repeated one and the characters ( not only Jimmy, but
also Alison, Helena and, tliougli rarely, even Cliff) watcli for the effect of tlieir words
while speaking, tliat is to say, they project themselves consciously as drariiatic beings,
even their silelices are deliberate and liave a dramatic purpose and their view of life is
that it is theatrical :

" I rage and shout my head off, and everyone tliinks "poor chap !" or "wliat
an objectioliable young man !" But tliat girl there can twist your arm off with
Iier silence ... I want to be tliere when you grovel. 1 want to be there, I want
to watcli it, 1 want tlie front seat."
(LBA, 11, i )

Tlie dialogue is, by contrast, mucli more neutral and punctuates tlie long nionologues
by its attempt at genuine personal communication. On the whole, it certailily takes a
back seat. The criticism most frequently levelled at Osborne's extensive use of
rno~~ologue and of tlie rhetoric in the lnonologues is that it ~.esultsi n the language
becoming over-externalized in its effect and hence incapable of expressing real
inwardness, since it lacks the necessary pauses and silences tliat s ~ ~ creflection
li
would ~ieed.

3.4 IMAGERY AND SYMBOLISM IN THE PLAY

Tlie symbol that seems to me to be tlie most important c.je in tlie play is that of tlie
animals and tlie gallie in which Jimmy and Alison impersoliate them. They even
have a toy bear and squirrel kept upon a chest of drawers, and Alison points tliern out
to Helena who thinks this is proof of Jimmy's being 'fey' or mad. An exte~isio~l of
tlie galne is tlie comparison of tlie couple's lio~iieto a zoo or a menagerie. 'This
ani~iialsylnbol works in two ways - first, as discussed above, it offers a refuge (the
only one available) from tlie ~niseryof the couple's daily married life, and provides
the only way for them to communicate with each other. Second, it implies that
marital love in tlieir case, seems to be based on not much more than tlie pliysical
attraction between the sexes, whicli functions at a level below the rational. Yet
Jimmy is tied to Alisoli by more colnplex ties than those that te~nporarilyattach him
 Language and Speech
to Helena. Tliese relatioriships refuse to fall illto or be categopized by tlie comrnoli
simplistic distiuction between 'love' and 'lust'. The play eventually closes with
a repetiti~~i
of the game:

Jillili~y: .. .There are cruel steel traps lying about everywllere, just waiting for
rather mad, sliglitly satanic and very timid little animals. Right ?
[ Alison nods]
[Pathetically]Poor squirrels !

Alisoll [withthe same conzic en~phasis]: Poor bears ! [She laz~ghsa little. Then
looks at him very tenderly, and adds very, very softly.]
Oh, poor, poor bears !
[Slides her arms around him]

(LBA,111, ii )

Tile reappearance of tlie animal sy~nbolsatid their complete takeover of the action
llligl~tappear to give tlie play a conventional, setitinlental happy ending. But wlieli
we keep in milid how ineffective tlie sy~nbolsor the game has been in the past, we
come to see that they, like tlie ending, are a contriva~icethat offers no real solution ,
01i1ya 'pretend' one.

I would also pick out as a minor structural symbol in tlie play, tlie newspaper Jimmy
reads, since all tliree acts open by sliowing I~imdoing so ( t l i ~ giving
~s contin~~ity to tlie
play's structure) and it repeatedly sl~rfacesin tlie conversation. Tlie newspaper llelps
to create a domestic at~ilosplierewith a rather boring but indispensable Sunday
after~ioonritual, as well as providing tlie starting point for tilost ofthe discussions or
speeclies about religion and politics. It brings tlie outside or public world into tlie
private, faniilial setting of tlie play, and its consta~itpresence ~nakesit, in effect,
inipossible to clearly separate the two worlds - one invades and informs tlie other
through the newspaper.

Tlie images in Look Back in Anger are mainly verbal and descriptive ones - words
that form pictures and evoke scenes. Sometimes these scenes are pleasant,
ro~nanticizedones, like tlie 'brief little world' of Edwardian England, but their
intention is Inore often to sliock or disgust - two sucli are described above in 3.3.1; a
third example is tlie picture of a baby as 'a Inass of indiarubber and wrinkles', made
all tlie more effective by the knowledge (whicli tlie audience has, but Jim~nydoesn't )
that Alison is pregnant. Animal imagery runs riglit tllrougli tlie play, arid is riot
restricted to tlie 'bear and squirrel game'. It is also used to convey tlie sense of
solitude, maybe even the grandeur of a fierce wild animal as in the passage (quoted
earlier in a~iotliercontext) wllel-e Jimmy speaks of "... the old bear, following his
own breath in tlie dark forest. There's no warni pack, no herd to conifort liim." This
is very different fro111tlie way ani~nalsare spoke11of earlier - 'very timid, little ...' --
as Ilelpless and diminutive.

3.5 ' LET US SUM UP

An exaniination of language, like that of character, offers a way of entry into tlie play.
Language could work to constitute 'action', or to function as a protagonist to convey
the play's themes and concerlis. However, with regard to 'language as protagonist' in
Look Back in Anger, two points have to be contended with - tlie use of melodrama
and tlie loss of objectivity by language here.
I
E Osborne's dramatic language call be seen to deal with the problem of fillding a
1
I
b
1I language equally effective on both personal and social fronts, by locating langilage as
Q
I
I
part of tlie meaning of the characters' lives, Another method - and a liiore easily
evident one--is to organize the play's speech around that of the central character.
D
l

.i 35 ,
Look Buck ill A~iger Solne of [Ile kitids of speech atid writing identifiable ill Look Back h~Auger are
invective, hyperbole, parody, monologue and dialog~ie,and there is , in addition, a set
of ilnages and syriibols which, through their recLlrrelice in the text, provide thematic
and structural continuity to it.

3.6 GLOSSARY
Ability to express (arliculate) one's tli~i~glits
ill
words

Derogatory Disparaging, lowering in value or esteem

Evangelist Person who pseaclies the gospel (evangel) ie tlie life

and message of Jesi~sClirist

Explanatory Containing an explanation or having tlie function of

explaining

Perspective View from a particular point or distance, ill regard to

tlie viewer's relative position, hence a clear view

Retrospective Directed towards the past

3.7 QUESTIONS
Q.1 What is the function of invective in the language of the play?

Q,2 What do YOLI u~iderstandby tlie term 'hyperbole' ? What purpose does its use
serve in the speeches of the various characters in Look Back in Anger?

Q.3 Identify instances in the the play where play-acting appears as a ~netaplior.

3.8 SUGGESTED READING

Kennedy, Andrew K. Six Drunlu/ists in Search of a Language,
Cambridge: University Press, 1975

Evans, Gareth I,loyd The Language of Modern Drumn,

Everyman, London: Everyman, ! 977

Brown, John Russell Theatre Language: A Dudy of Arden,

Osborne, Finter and I.v esker.
London: Allell Lane, 1972
UNIT 4 CRITICAL APPROACHES TO LOOK
BACK IN ANGER
Structure
4.0 Objectives
4.1 Different Critical Approaches to the Play
4.1.1 A Psychoanalytic Reading
4.1.2 Tlie Feminist Perspective
4.1.3 New Criticism
4.1.4 Historicist Criticisni
4.2 Let Us Sum Up
4.3 Glossary
4.4 Questions
4.5 Suggested Reading

4.0 OBJECTIVES
This unit aims to indicate sollie of tlie common critical approaches that 111iglit be
applied to tlie play and tlie consequent varying interpretations that would result from
such an exercise. Do remember that these approaches can overlap-for example it is
possible to have a feminist psychoanalytic reading or one that combines historicism
witli feminis~ii.Tlie aim is to indicate which aspects of tlie text these readings would
lay their emphasis on.

4.1 DIFFERENT CRITICAL APPROACHES TO THE-

PLAY

4.1.1 A psyclloanalytic Reading

Psychoanalytic criticis~iiuses the techniques and theories of psychoanalysis (therapy
wliicli works througli investigating tlie relation between, and tlie filnctioning df,
conscious and unconscious elements in tlie mind ) and applies them in literary
analysis. Such a reading would also entail considering in what way exactly a study of
the working of tlie mind is to be used while studying a literi~ryor dramatic text.

I shall follow Elizabetli Wright's outlining of the relationship between

psychoanalysis and literary criticism, which, she says, works in two ways. One, it
draws an a~ialogybetween mental and linguistic processes. Two, it involves a
consideration of the genetic origins of language. (Only tlie first of these need be used
with regard to Look Back in Anger). A psychoanalytic reading does not necessarily
require a rigid application of theories but does crucially involve paying nttention to
the presence of sexuality , atid an analysis of the unconscious (broadly, this means a
stress on tlie Iiu~iianmind's dark or hidden areas ) in connection witli the author, tlie
reader, tlie text and the points at which tlie boundaries between these begin to
dissolve.

Frendian criticislii sees the literary work as functioning like the dream lo secretly
gratify an infantile or forbidden wish. This idea of repression has proved very
convenient to critics when trying to explain why a literary work may have a tendency
opposed to the author's consciously expressed beliefs, The author's unconscious
then enters the text eitlier directly or tlirougli a character, and is either fillfilled or left
ungratified. Tliis makes sense o~ilyif the author is also seen as a reader, liis reading
determined by the Jiistory of hisllier life which provides a personal myth or
experience wliicli is then looked at in relation to tlie text.
If we now turn to tlie play, the no st apparent exa~nplethat strikes me is Ji~nmy's
tracing back llis ~iiisogy~iy to his motlier's treatment of his father. (The passage has
been quoted at le~igtlie a r l i c ~ill 3.1.2 ) This was an experience from Osbome's own
cllildliood, and one that clearly made a very deep impression 011him, since the theme
of fatherhood surfaces throughout liis plays and, like Jimmy, Ile mourns liis lost
father. Tlie drawback of sucli an approach is, of course, that it relies quite heavily on
biographical details. A more straiglitforward metliod of going about this exercise
would be simply to psychoanalyze tlie characters in tlie play. Jimmy's speeches haye
acti~allybeen seen as syniptomatic of an inferiority complex and of ~ c h i z o ~ l i r e n i a .
The first of these charges is based on the fact of his constant attention-seeking and tlie
second on tlie way in which lie rapidly moves between demonstrating kindness and
cruelty and praise and attack. I think sucli a reading rests largely on a ~nisperce~tion
of schizophrenia or. to tlie loose applicatio~iof tlie term to what is, more simply, the
coexistence in one person ofopposirig emotions and responses, somelliing not very
iIIicommon.

Freud also accords importance to the dream in seeing it as a space for the
manifestation of all the desires, fears or memories which tlie conscious mind
suppresses when awake. Two processes by which real events or feelings are
trarisforlned into dream images are displacement, wliere one person or event is
represented by another, and condensation, where many people, e'vents, wishes or
meanings combine to form a single dream image. The relevance of this for literary
studies, according to psycl~oanalyticcriticism, is that dreams are like literature in
r ~ l i ~ ~ rather
i ~ i gthan
' 'telling', so literature can be seen as using images, symbols and
metapliors tlirougli tlie same devices of condensation and displacement. Try and see
if you would like to incorporate tliis idea into the practice of analysing the language
of tlie play, which was done in the last unit.

Another set of coricepts (apart fr01~1 the subco~isciousand the unconscious discussed
above ) that psycl~oa~~alysis offers to literary analysis are those of the psyche which is
seen as having thl-ee groups of fi~nctions,id,ego and super-ego. This is a
topogl.aphica1 model of tlie human mind, that is to say, a model that represents tlie.
mind spatially in terms of different mental 'spaces'. Tlie i~Jco~isists of instinctual
drives arising from tlie body and the way in which these drives inform beliaviour.
Typically, taking account of these drives leads to a study of sexuality ancl sexual
beliaviour. Jimmy at one point explains liis irrational beliaviour ( he has first
apologized for Alison's arm being hurt, and then says that he did it on purpose-in
either case he cannot be taken to iinambigi~oi~sly speak the truth ) as resi~ltingfrom
tlie co~nplexitiesof liis feelings toward Aliso~iw1101ii lie desires in a way that lie
doesn't seein able to handle :

"There's hardly a 11101ne1itwlleti 1'111 not - watclli~lgand wanting you. I've

got to hit out somehow. Nearly four years of being in tlie same room witli
you, night and day, and I still can't stop my sweat breaking o i ~ wlie~i
t I see
you doing - something as ordinary as leaning over an ironing board."(LBA, I)
\
Tlie ego (that agelicy deriving from and regulating tlie id) here offers a
particular account of its own fi~nclioningundcr the influence of tlie id. The
slyer-ego wliicli is tlie mental transformation of social/parental influences on
the id, has already been identified in tliis pal-ticular case ie that of Jim~ny.
Tliese categories are applicable to all the characters and would atteliipt to
provide some kind of answer to qi~estio~is such as why Aliso11marries Jimmy
or wliy Cliff stays on in a s i t ~ ~ a t i he
o ~ professes
i to Iiate, But tlie use o f these
ideas in literary criticism need not be restricted to the analysis o f cliaracte~.~,
it has also bee11used to 'map' aspects of tlie reader's (or in tliis case, tlie
spectator's ) experience of a text, gradually bringing tlie reader into the focus
of interest which was earlier restricted to tlie text.
Lastly, another branch of psychoanalytic criticism, called 'scliizoanalysis' Critical Approaches
concentrates on tlie ~lnconscious,but in a way tliat sees it as constructed through
languagi. The instability of language syste~iistlien leads to the attempt to capture
pre-linguisti~experience, usually a regression to cliildliood beliavio~rr.This has
obvious i~iiplicationswlieli we are looking at tlie 'bear and squirrel' ganie wliicli
could tlien be seen as a sy~npto~nof tlie wish to retreat into childhood and a trouble-
free existence, away from ad~11Lresponsibilities.

Any kind.of psychoanalytic reading, therefore, first identifies, and tlien concentrates
on, aspects of tlie individual psyche, and in doing so privileges wliat is called
'psyclio-drama' above social drama (class conflict, for exaniple) as well as above a
social or historical context, such as was niapped out for Look Brrck in Anger in tlie
first unit of this block.

4.1.2 The Feminist Perspective

'Feminism' is a term with a very wide and varying liistory of sage and practice and
will liere be used only in the relatively liarrow sense of an interrogation of tlie
representation of wonien in tlie text and a questioning of the authority of sucli
representations and of tlie assumptions behind them. Tliis would mean looki~~g at
liow wornen are presented in tlie play, and at tlie way in which tlie male cliaracters
speak of and react to tlie female characters.

'The obvious starting point is Jimmy's often expressed misogyny, of wliicli the
following passage is an example: I

"Why, wliy, wliy do we let these wolnen bleed ~ls.todeath? Have you ever
liad a letter, and on it is franked 'Please Give Your Blood Generously'? Well,
tlie Postmaster-General does tliat on behalf of all the women in tlie
world.. .There aren't any good, brave causes left,.. No, there's nothing left
for it, me boy, but to let yourself be butchered by the women." (LBA,III.i)

He does see personal relationships as offering tlie only alternative to tlie lack of
causes in public life, but views sucli relationships as giving w o ~ n ea~ ichance to
'devour' and to destroy liis (and by implication, all mens' ) selfliood and autonomy.
Tliis goes Iiand in Iiand~withliis being co~iipletelytied to women in tlie sense of being
unable to break away from them sexually or e~iiotio~ially. The notion of female
sexuality as threatening is all old co~iimonplacein literature, and I tlii~ikthat Osborne,
far from endorsing wliat J i ~ i i ~ usays,
y is sliowing liow lie spouts tlie anti-woman
1.1ietoricof tlie typical lilisogyliist to wl~icliliis ow11dependalicy on women provides
an alniost comic contrast. Feini~iistcriticism would also contest this grouping of all
wolneli together ~111der wliat they see as the cultural construction of tlie 'fe~iii~iine'
-a
colicept which works to define wo111e11negatively-and would analyse language as
the means by wliicli sucli a grouping is effected. In tlie play under consideration, the
groi~pi~ig seems to work only at tlie level of language - no justification or evidence is
provided for it, but neitlier is it positively refi~ted.Tliis is wliy I would be wary of
tliose critical interpretations which see the play as embodying Osbor~ie'sviews
(whatever they are ) about wonien.

A more relevant focus would be on tlie way in wliicl~rebellion against tlie social
structures of class and family which are see11 as oppressive, does not include a view
of them as particulal-Iy oppressive to women. Jilnlny sees himself as suffering ~l~ider
tlie systeni of class wliicli privileges Alison atid her family. but does not see Alison's
suffering under tlie systelil of patriarchal marriage that privileges hiln over her.
Tliougl~liis ignorance, and to some extent, society's attitude to wolnen are sliow~iup
in the play, it could eqilally be argued that tliese are reinforced by tlie sequence of
events as well as by the cl~aracterizatio~i wliicli liiakes Alison and Helena share a
similar pattern of behaviour - fasci~iatio~i alter~iatingwith resentment and antipatliy-
with regard to Jimmy. Mary McCartliy poi~itsout in A NEM~ Word(1959),that the
Look Brick in Anger idea of women as all alike, as interchangeable and tllerefore by implicatiotl ultimately
dispensable, is most clearly present in Helena's replacing Alison in exactly the sa~iie
role, that of solneone who provides to the men a well r u n home, cooked meals, ironed
clothes, affection and sex :

'At the rise of the third-act curtain, months later, tile two male figures are still
enveloped in tlle Sunday papers, while a woman is silelltly ironing a shirt.
Same scene -different girl. Notliing really changes; ~iothillgcan cliatige . . .
Jimmy, a working-class intellectual, still has a hostage from the ruling class
doing the washing and tlie cooking, ancl his friend, Cliff, an uneducated
Welsh boy, who boards witli them, is still looking on. here has been a swap
of ~lpper-classwomen, like the swap of posh newspapers: yo11 p ~down ~ t tlie
Observer and pick LIPtlie Sunduy Tinies - same contents, different make-up."

To expose within a text, as the above passage does, tile social and cultllral
asswnptions which perpetuate illeq~lalitybetween nien and women, and tlie methods
used to do so, are the main ainls of one strand of fenlinist criticisin. One sucl~
assunlption exposed here is that Iiouseliold tasks are to be perfortiled by women. This
role is one from wllicli no woliian is exempt, irrespective of the social class slie
belongs to, sirlce even if other upper-class women do not fitid tliemselves in
situations wliere they liave to cook and clean as Alisoli and Helena do, they still liave
tlie responsibility of liiaintaining a colnfortable domestic environment for tlie meti.

Jimmy tries to win not ollly Alison's love, but also lier s~lbscriptio~i to liis views atid
vision of life. Tlle play does show Alison aba~ldo~iing Jiliitny or letting Iiim dow:~(by
refilsilig to go witli liim to visit Hugh's mother) at a moment when lie needs Ilel-, but
that lnolnent is, equally, a decisive one for lier - it is the first time slie is depicted as
making an independent decision for herself or consciously acting against Jimmy's
wishes. The question tliat arises is whether tlie liiolnelit of decisioli for the wolilan
must also fi111ctiolias her betrayal of the man. Tlie fact that it does seen1 to be so in
Look Back in Anger, and that it apparelitly goes unquestioned, is a problematic one.

Apart from tlie position that woliieli O C C L I ~tlie

~ , qilestion of whether or not we can
locate identity (especially feminine identity) in gender and in the social circuii~stances
of me11and women, is a crucial issue in feminism. For example, is it possible to see
Aliso~iand Jimmy in terms of esselitialized fe~iiiliilieand lnasci~lilienatures or would
doing so mean being taken in by a rhetoric that belorigs to tlie mati (Jimmy) atid is
anti-woman ? And does tlie similarity in Alison's alld Helena's bellaviour mean to
indicate that they sliare a co~iinio~ifeliiinine nature, or is it traceable to their siliiilar
backgrounds and ~lpbritigitlg? At a glance, tlie play's stress on individuality does
seem to be restricted to tile men, in fact to just one man. But it soori beconies evident
tliat the differences as well as the cornmon patterns i l l the wornens' roles arise eqitally
from tlie circu~iistances- both social and marital-in which they are placed.

4.1.3 New Criticism

This is tlie America11equivalent of Practical Criticism, a particular way of
approaching the critical reading of texts, especially of poems, advocated by
1.A.Ricllards in the 1920s which became, with some niodifications, the basis for a
new critical practice that is still extremely widespread.

As a method, this would mean looki~igat the particular text under co~isideration
witliout ally reference to extra-textual infor~natioliabout tlie author, date of
colnposition and socio-historical backgroil~idor context. In its applicatio~ito tlie
interpretation of the text, it would entail a 'close' reading, a study of tlie words on the
page (we will liave to teliiporarily let go of tlie 'performance text' liere ) witli tlie
reader's attention being closely foc~lsedon textual detai Is silcll as use of metaphor,
metrics (where relevant), imagery atid symbols, forni atid structure, anlong others. As
yoy will immediately see, this is exactly tlie method of analysis we have beell
 Critical Approacl~es
following in these llnits, except, of collrse that socio-historical context has been
stressed here. SucJ1an elnphasis on form, texture and structure makes the question of
belief expressed ill content a secondary one.
I A discussionof tlie structure of Look Back in Anger might serve to illustrate better
, tllis rnetIlod of criticism. Structure in a play lias the filnctions of the creation of
1, illterest and suspense, which is done t l l r ~ ~ ~presenting
gll the events of the plot at a
, sllitablepace. The play under consideration, it might be argued, does not offer any
:; drasticdevelopments as far as the plot is concerned, but the purpose is fillfilled all the
I
salne since there is an adequate level of suspense as to the end. We do not k~iownntil
he last lliolnetlt wl~etllerJimmy is going to stay with Alison or Helena. The play also
offessunexpected developments such as tlie affair between Jimmy and Helena, wliicli
seems to take even them by surprise, tllo~~gll a'psycl~oa~lalytic reading w o ~ ~ argue
ld
otllerwise,saying that Helena had been, conscio~~sly or subconscio~~sly, preparing for
it.
Maltin Esslin has traced the development of tlle conventional structure of drarna as
collsistitlgof--the statement of the theme and its first variation, a pattern of episodes
thro~lgllwllicll takes place the establishment of the play's main objective; the
espositioll of this objective, which relies on other factors SLICII as plot (incl~ldingthe
development of tlie story and the sequence of scenes), the casting of cllaracters, the
quality of dialogue and spatial and temporal elements( ie tlle time dimension
consisting of the concerns of a sense of timing and econolny), the comm~~nication of
tlieme(s), which requires a process of decoding, and the establishing of atmosphere.
The statement of the theme need not be in words - in Look Buck in Anger., I would
identify3 in Jimmy's behaviour, that is, in the very action of launching into long
speeches, rather than in the content of what he says. Two of the most impoltant
elements, namely character and language, have already been analysed. Now try and
locate tlie rest of these elements in tlie play, looking for instance, at the way in which
atmosphere is built up. Two examples, tliat of sound effects like tlie church bells, and
that of Alison's iron, were given in earlier iinits. See if you can find any others.
4.1.4 Historicist Criticism
,
To be more specific, tlie n~etliodconsidered here is actually called 'new historicism'
This refuses to privilege tlie literary test,,and is based on the parallel reading of the
, literary text and a non-literary text belonging to the same Ilistorical period. Ratlier
than seeing socio-historical context as providing a 'backgrownd' to tlie literary text
(as was done in the first unit of this block) this kind of analysis sees both texts as
informing each otller, alld of equal interest in a reading of either. 'The first kind of
reading (ie. the one that looks at 'background') coi~ldconveniently be termed 'old'
Iiistoricis~n,and it does clearly privilege the text over the historical context within
which it is placed. The view that 'human, social or cultural characteristics are
detelnined in an absolute sense by l~istoricalsituation', is iniplied by the term
'historicist', as is an interest in 'history as test'. Such a view has consequently been
criticized for reducing the ll~llnansubject into these non-human, or extra-human
factors.
This kind of criticis111coi~ldbe, and in practice, ~~suallyis, linked to the analysis of a
text's political implications and its handling of class. The Inore corvrectterm for such
an analysis is 'cultural materialism' and I give an extended quotation to help fillly
explain it :
". .. a strategy [which] repudiates the supposed transcendence of literature,
seeking rather to ~lnderstalidit as a cultural intervention produced initially
within a specific set of practices and tending to render persuasive a view of
reality; and seeing it also as re-produced subsequently in other llistorical
conditio~lsin the service of various views of reality, tllrougl~other practices,
including those of moderu literary study."
UIICIthe Politic's of Dissiliuill
(A Ian Sin field, Fl,ultljnes: Cu&ul+a/M~,tn.il~li,sm
Reding, Oxfol.d, 1992) +
Looli Brtck in A~rger It has also bee11pointed out by tl~eoristsof cultu~.al~naterialismthat such sti~dyis
i~ievitablybound up with the qi~estioriof ideological crisis and struggle. What are tlie
implicatio~isof this for tlie study of Osborne ? Tlie two following passages 111iglit
help to formi~latean answer, tlirougli a parallel reading of tlle play under
consideration with either or both of tllem. Tlie first of tllem is taken from a
collllnelitary on a study of the image of the Labour party alno~igdifferent groups of
voters, comn~issionedby the joul-nal Sociulisl C'on7n1cnt~tryand pi~blislledin 1960:

'Labour may "stand for the working class" but not for the increasing IILIIIIbel.
wlio feel rightly or wrongly tliat tliey liave outgrown tliat label... One lias
only to cast the i~iiagi~latio~i back to tliose days to appreciate tlie extent to
wllicll things have changed.. . Large gl-oupsof manual workers have higher
earllings than white-collar workers or than sections of the middle class. Tliey
are cushioned by tlie provisio~lsof tlie welfare state; tlieir cliildre~ihave
educational opportnuities beyotid tlie dreanls of their parents. Tliey now have
opportunities for leisure, for the enjoyment of most of tile good tlli~igsof
life.. . But this is not all. The manual workers liave not only vastly i~liproved
tlieir positio~ias ~nanualworkers, tliey have also cha17gedtlieir position; solile
are no longer ~ n a ~ l iworkers
~al at all. As a result of teclinological cliatiges
sollie blue-collar workers liave becorile white-collar worke-rs. .. more cross
over tlie line each day. Tliere is an increasing fluidity in our society. .. 'nie
day is gone wlieu workers n~ustregard tlieir station in life as fixed - for
tliemselves and for tlieir children.'

Taken fro111a piece of writing that is esselltially social documentation, this passage
can be read alo~igsideLookBuck ill Anger wit11 interesting results for tlie latter. To
consider only two of thenl-first, we liave to retliillk our response to the clioices
Jimmy makes regarding his occupation, and in view of tlie education he has received.
Secondly, tlie passage itself is to be subjected tb a critical scrutiny, wliicli miglit (for
example) qi~estioritlie assuri~ptipnsbehind the use of tlie ter~lls'white-collar' and
'blue-collar'.

Tlle second passage is from tlie London Mc~guzina,inviting ~ i i ~autllors,

ie includiny
Osborne, to answer the followi~igquestions:

'During tlie Thirties it was a widely-held view tliat poets, ~iovelistsand

playwriglits should be closely colicer~iedin tlieir wriling wit11 the
fi~~ida~lie~ltal political and social issues of tlieir time. Since tlie~i, tlie degree
of an i~iiagi~iative writer's necessary engagement with tlie age in wllicll lie
lives lias been tlie subject of colistalit debate wit11 very varied conclusions.
Do you think that today, in 1957, it is a valid criticis111of si~clla writer to say
that ( 1 ) lie appears illdifferelit to tlle immediate problems of Iiuman freedom
involved in, say, the Roseliberg case and tlie Hungarian revolution; (2) lie
shows no awareness (a) of tlie changes that have bee11caused in our social
structure and our way of life by, for instance, tlie develop~ne~lt of ato~iiic
weapons and tlie levelling dowu of classes tlirougli discri~iiinatorytaxation,
tior (b) of the clialle~lgesto our co~ice~tioli of Iiuman existence caused by
recent discoveries in st~clisciences as biology, astroliolliy and psychology;
(3) his novel, play or poelll could,jti~/gcdon internal evidence on!y have
bee11written at ally time during tlie last fifiy years ?'

Tliese questions (rather than Osborne's answers to them) have beeti cliose~las wol-thy
of independent exa~iii~iatio~ifor the things they tells us about tlie people. institution.
. class and period that asks them, and for tlie ideas and beliefs which underlie tlielil.
For example, a new Ilistoricist reading would q~~estioli tlie very existence of 'ititer~ial
eVidenceYin a literary work. The passage also appears to tells us of tlie expectations
of writers and of their work in tlie 1930s, but we need to keep in mitic1 that what we
actually have is the perception oftlle 1950s, aboul the 1930s. Do these expectations,
6
 UNIT 5 ANGER AND AFTER : THE PLAY'S
SUBSEQUENT IMPORTANCBE
Structure
5.0 Objectives
5.1 Osborne's Place in 20"' Century British Drama
5.1.1 His Other Plays
5.1.2 The Impact of Look Back in Anger
5:2 Common Themes in tlie Plays
5.3 Let Us Sum Up
5.4 Glossary
5.5 Questions
5.6 Suggested Reading

5.0 OBJECTIVES
The objective of this unit is to see Look Back in Anger in relation to Osborne's other
v
plays and to trace its impact on contemporary and subsequent Britis drama.

5.1 OSBORNE'S PLACE IN 20IHCENTURY BRITISH

DRAMA
5.1.1 His Other Plays

In the first unit I listed Osborne's plays (except Epitaph For George Dillon all were
subsequent to LBA ,) in the order of their perfoimance. The more important among
them will here be discussed briefly so that it becomes possible for us to draw ally
comparisions and/or contrasts that might be useful in our study of Look Back in
Anger. These discussions will not necessarily include descriptions o f plot and
character in tlie plays since their aim is rather to locate certain common themes and
concerns which are common to Osborne's work, and to trace tlie progression of liis
drama.

The play that followed Look Back in Anger was The Entertainer and liere Osborne
makes the music-hall, which had provided comic interludes in the previous play ('see
3.3.3 ) the basis for the play's entire structure. He retains the conventional, three-act
structure, but divides each act into short scenes wliicli are ni~~nbered like acts on a
music-hall bill. 'The action takes place on two main settings - the sea-side boarding
house where the Rice faniily live and a 'comedy spot' where Archie Rice (the
protagonist) performs solo scenes at a ~nicrophone.

The main difference between the monologues in this play and those in L w k Bock in
Anger is that they lack the same vehemence and level of invective, and consequently
had less immediate impact when the play first appeared. The Entertainer has two
distinct kinds of monologue, the monologues in tlie solo scenes and those in tlie
family scenes. Notice that Osborne here finds a way to introduce soliloquy ( which is
absent from the earlier play) through these solo scenes. Political and social co~n~nents
remain part of the monologues, except that since they are now in the form of rnusic-
hall songs and solos, they coexist with stories and wisecracks of a kind more light-
hearted and less abusive than Jimmy's are.

Osbor~iehad by now self-admittedly begun to be influenced by Brecht's Epic Theatre

( see 1.3.3 ) which meant that he concentrated Inore on bringing out the theatricality
of the play and on discarding dramatic illusion. Tliough a realistic structure is
, retained, the vaudeville sequences work against it. The play also makes much Inore
direct references to contemporary events ( like Suez and the Trafalgar Square rallies )
 Anger and After'
and persons, than are foiuid in Jimmy's rather vague alli~sions.Tliis serves to make
tlie language of The Entertainer less opaque, at least on the surface, than tliat of its
predecessor. Even when Archie does launch into a long speech like the one from
wliicli tlie following extract is taken, it is q ilalified by tlie audience's k~iowledgethat
tie has been drinking :

" But if ever I saw any hope or strength i11 the human race, it was in the face
o f tliat old fat negress getting up to sing about Jesus or something like tliat.
She was poor and lonely and oppressed like nobody you've ever known. Or
me, for that matter. I never even liked that kind of music, but to see that old
black whore singing her heart out to the whole world, you knew someliow in
your heart that it didn't matter liow much you kick people, the real people,
liow much you despise them, if they can stand up and make a pure, just
natural noise like that, there's notliiug wrong witli them, only with everybody
else."

When I say that the language is less opaque, I mean that while undoubtedly
rlietorical and self-dramatizing, it shows LIPthese words clearly for what tliey are -
drunken and sentimental. For this reason, this speech is in ~nucliless danger of being
identified as tlie voice of tlie playwright, than Jimmy's speeches are. Tlie gap
between tlie protagonist and the ~niliorcharacters is lessened here since tliey are given
Inore interest and impact than are Alison, Cliff, Helena and Colo~ielRedfern -
everyone besides Jiln~nyis a 'minor' character in tlie earlier play.

After a tnusical (The World of Puul Slickey) and a television play ( A Subject of
Scandal a n d Colzcern), neither of which was a pal-ticular success, Osborne wrote the
only one of liis plays to have a historical subject, Luther. Like Look Back in Anger, it
is a11nostentirely centred around the personality of one man, but the man in this case
doesn't emerge as clearly, partly because of the constraints of creating a character tlie
audience would already know something about and yet keeping l i i ~from i~ becolnitig
predictable. It is of course simplistic to see Osborne's Luther as a direct transcription
of the figure from history, particularly since the play's emphasis is on the
psycliological, and Luther's opposition of tlie Church is explai~iedin t e r m o f an
identity crisis, among other private conflicts. Tliis is a ilsefi~lpoint of contrast to the
play we are studying, which, though open to a reading that stresses the psycliological,
I
offers no such overt explanations.

Tlie language of Luther has been criticized for lacking a speech pattern tliat emerges
naturally from tlie characterization, another problem arising from the atte~ilptat
reconciling language tliat sounds appropriate to tlie setting with tlie 'tnodern' patterns
of speech atid the colloqi~iallanguage Osborne is accusto~nedto writing in. l'he r1;,
language therefore varies between passages of quotation, wliicli are recognisable a s '
and wliat one critic calls " passages of Osborne". How well tlie two fit together
SLICII,
is estre~nelydebatable, as you call see from tliis exaniple :

" .. ,011, thou my God, my God, help me against the reason and wisdom of
tlie world.. .For myself, I've no business to be dealing with the great lords o f
this world.. . my God, do you hear me ? Are you dead ? No, you can't die,
you can only hide yourself, can't you ? .. . in tlie name of Tliy Son, Jesus
Christ, who shall be tny protector and defender, yes, Iny miglity fortress,
breathe illto me. Give me life, oh Lord. Give me life."

The passage begins and ends in language appropriate to tlie period, witli quotes from
tlie real Luther, but in between becomes that of a disturbed, 'modern' voice. On tlie
other hand, Luther is not actually concerned witli history or witli tlie religious aspect
of the subject it deals with , and in that sense is not a historical play at all. It
concentrates on tlie individual rebellilig against all other human authority , and in tliis
case, one of tlie conditions of sucll a rebel is liis isolation. An obvious parallel with
Jilnmy comes to tilitid liere but there are importa~ntdifferences. Luther has a cause
Look Bock irr Arrger that he believes in a~ldhe also has religious faith, llowever tormented, both of whicll
are unavailable to the ~noder~i world of Jimmy Porter.

Osborne experimeuted filrther with different styles in two sliort plays, The Blood of'
the Banlbergs and Under. Pluin Cover which were produced together at the Royal
Court undea the title Plays for England. Tlie first contains the different styles of
vaudeville, satire, parody and farce, but since it also has o~llytwo acts, the effort to
19iakeall these styles effective doesn't really succeed. The second is a one-act play,
with similar experiments in style as well as the theme of incest which tlio~lgl~ a far
froin unprecedented one, was fairly uncommon on the stage at the time.

The next Osbor~~e play, A Patriotfor Me is, again, conventional in form a d has a
sequence of short scenes to show the hero Redl, in varying circumstances. The
departure fro111the earlier plays colnes in tlie depiction of the central character who is
this time seen more through other people's eyes than his own. The play's maill tlle~ne
is ho~nosexuality,and though Redl is presented as someone who is a member of not
one but two minorities, since lie is not o~llyhornosexual but also Jewish, the fact of
his Jewisliness is largely ignored. The social and professio~lalpressuresohefaces
because of his sexual identity eventually lead to liis death. For once Osborne
concerns lii~nselfwith dramatic atid st~spensefulexternal action along witli the inner
tensions he habitually explores, and does manage to a large extent to successf~~lly
bring together the private and the public in a way that I think Look Back in Anger
tries, but fails, to do. Neither does Red1 conform to any stereotypes of tlie
hotnosexual as someolle to whom society's values are unimportant, and though Ile
chooses in the end to betray liis country rather than his real self, this orily makes Ili~n,
for Osborne, a true patriot. Tlie chief co~lcer~l is ,once again, with tlie lilall who is
placed outside society (and is the target of its prejudices), someone a1011e and aware
of his isolation.

Of the remaining plays, In~m%RissibleEvidence, A Bond Honoured, Time Present and

The Hotel in Amsterdam, only the first mentioned requires to be looked at in ally
detail, though Time Present is significant in being the alone alnolig Osbor~le'splays
to have a wolnan ia the cerltraT role - the heroine, Pamela, who is an actress out of
work at the mome~lt,is strong and l~iglilyartic~~late and holds fort11 in speeches as full
of invective as Jimmy's on varioils subjects ( such as hippies and drug-taking) which
in themselves demonstrate tlie shift from the 1950s to tlie 1960s.

To return to Inadt~tissibleEvidence, tlie by ~iowfamiliar pattern of contrasting styles

is repeated, this time on the level of form rather than that of language. Naturalistic
scenes of office routine alternate with stylized ones showing night~naresequences, '
and at mo~nents,the action is viewed tllrough the distorting gaze of one of the
characters, called Bill, who is gradually losi~igtlie ability to focils on exterrlal reality.
This loss is depicted by a ~llovernentinto his mind, tllro~~gli the device of having three
differe~ltwomen (all divorce clients whom Bill i~iterviews) played by the saliie
actress.'rIle dialogue in the three interviews becomes progressively more unrealistic
and stylized to sl~owtlie increasing disintegration of Bill's subjective vision. The
dialogue thus takes over mucli of tlie task usually reserved for the monologues - to
reveal the consciousness of the cllaracters - and loses in tlie process sonle of its own
traditional function of effecting communication. The play has been criticized for
trying, like Look Back in Anger, to fi~llfiltwo co~itradictoryaims at tlie same ti~iie;
Bill sees other people as witlldrawing from him, he is himself meant to be seen as
losing perspective, and tlie play looks as if it is atte~iiptingnot just to give voice to
both points of view, but to be written eqi~allyf1.0111both.

5.1.2 The impact of Look Bnck in Anger

So~neof the more enthusiastic reviews of the play have already been quoted earlier
to have a fair idea of tlie way in wliicli it was greeted as a
(see 2.3) so you 0~1g11t
revolutionary and innovative development in Britisli theatre. These claims, however,
 do need to be interrogated. Why was tliis particular play ge~ierallythought of so Anger and After
I~ighly? More important, are the clai~iismade for i t - o f having changed the face of
the stage in Britain -- justifiable, especially in tlie light of its conventional, 'old-
fashioned' (to quote the playwriglit) formal structure ? 1 shall try to indicate a
possible ~iietliodof going about the question.

First, try and recapitulate something of the discussion on 'theatre' and 'drama' and of
drama's relation to society, given at tlie very start of this block. It will be
immediately clear from it that the success of a play depends on many factors besides
its intrinsic worth. In fact it is extremely difficult to guage exactly what such wortli
might be since it varies, and is a subjective judgement which can be defined only in
relation to the particular standards it is being judged by. One such standard, which is
not perliaps given much importa~~ce in classroom study, but whicii nevertheless
determines success, is stage effectiveness. Whatever valid criticism may (and has)
been levelled at Jimmy's long ~.hetoricalspeeches, they should be, if well delivered,
electrifying on tlle stage. The play also clearly met a certain need of the British stage
or of the British theatregoer at the time (see 4.2.3). The question is, were tliese needs
- whether for 'causes' or si~nplyfor the sympathetic expression oftheir feelings-
reflected in the play, or created by it as well ? Osborne, at least in his prose writing,
distanced himself from any conscious attempt to speak either to, or for, England :

" ... one consta~itlyfeels that discussions about this country like, for
example, the one published on this page two weeks ago ... cannot possibly
be England, your England. It may be that we each have our own, private,
inte~iselypersonal England so that it is always England, his England we hear
about." (Schoolmen of the Left, Observer, 30 October 1960)

Such a questioni~igof, and protest against the appropriatio~iof a country to one's

own needs is precisely what the play itself holds forth against. Yet doesn't it also feed
on, and hence further this appropriatio~i? And if we grant that it does not intend to
do so ( see the analysis of its rhetoric in 3.1.3 ), are we to accept that as altering the
fact that it was, as it happens, taken as voicing public grievances and that for its
immediate audiences and reviewers tliis lay beliind mucli of its power ? Altliough 1
do not think any one answer is possible, do keep in mind the vexed nature of the
question wl~etianalysing the play's impact.
I

The effect Look Back in Anger had in purely theatrical terms (as agaipst its social
impact ) is easier to judge. Along with others among Osborne's plays, it was
innovative in tlie use of language and also of situation. 'The domestic setting was not
entirely new but Osbor~iemade a distinctive use of it, combi~iil~g it with elements
borrowed fro~nEuropean drama such as tlie alienatio~iof the protagonist, and the
analysis of class, sex and play-acting in, for example, the plays of Ibsen. Shaw and
Wilde liad of course already put tliese problems on tlie British stage, but they had
used tlie form of social comedy, which Osbor~iedid not. Wlietlier or 11otthe use of
l a n g u a g e with its large co~nponentof exaggeration-in tlie play can be quite made
to fit illto the predetermined category of 'realis~n'is itself a debatable question.

5.2 COMMON THEMES IN THE PLAYS

All the plays outlined above share certain comlnoii themes or concerns. The most
important among them is tlie repeated interrogation of thesolitary individual and his
or lier relation (i~suallyrebellious) to various forms of authority. The nature of
authority, whether social, political, religious, familial, or that of a particular morality,
illvariably takes second place to the consideration of how it affects the individual. '

The idea of 'the autliority of a particular morality' needs some elaboration here and
opens up the colicerli with morality that I tliink is tlie other major colnlnon one i n
Osborne's work. Tliougli we have not paid much attentio~lto 'morality' as an issue in
 Look Brrck ill A~lger Look Bock in Anger, the play certai~ilydeals with it in tlie sense of trying to
I understand what in its particular context, 'right' or moral action is. Jinimy is
described as having his own 'private morality'. What this consists of is not spelt out
but tnay be inferred. It means the avoidance of all c o ~ i s c i o ~
hypocrisy
~s or of being in
any way 'phoney', as well as gratitude for love received. This last might not be
evident in liis behavio~~r with Alison, but is so in his relationship witli Cliff and with
l-lugli's mother. Morality here also rnearis the courage to face up to life, to what
Jimmy calls 'the pain of being alive', and this, like love, requires '~ni~scle and guts'
Love is seeti as overriding all of society's polite, 'rational' and abstract rules, and
means, as the end of the play shows, a readiness to accept tlie irrational, even give
oneself up to it. On tlie other hand, this depiction of love is not an uncritical one,
since investing oneself in a relationship witli anotlier human being also means
refi~singto fi~llyface tlie condition of human solitariness, of which Jimmy and Alison
are both aware. Yet on the whole, 'morality' appears to function more on tlie level of
personal relatio~isthan on that of the larger, abstract 'causes' whose lack Jimmy
lnourlis.
I n tlie.end, we rleed to note both the probletns in society and in tlie voice protesting
against those problems. Tlie play does not, however, offer any answers to tlie
question of the corlduct of the cllaracters and whether or not it fits into any scheme of
~norality.Is Alison riglit in leaving Ji~nmywitliout telling Ili~iithat she is pregnant,
arid having left him, in returning ? Is Helena right in engineering Alison's departure
and in herself leaving at the end ? Is Cliff right i n leaving at a point when Ilis
presence might be needed ? Are Alison and Jimmy right to retreat fro111reality and
responsibility into acliildisli game? There is no una~nbiguousway of knowing, but
the issue of morality itself is highlighted by sucli questions. And tlle issue tlien leads
back to that of autllority since right and wroug are defined by authority, a state of
things that I think Osbor~iecontests, but which he recognizes as inseparable from all
systems of cornniu~iallife. Tlie only way out tliat lie seems to indicate is tliat to react
with 'feeling' offers us a more honest answer than rational thought can provide.

5.3 LET US SUM UP

Though Look Back in Anger clearly had st greater i~lipactthan any of Osborne's other
plays (the reasons behind this have been looked at) it sliould not be seen entifely in
isolation, or without any reference to them.
A nunlber of themes can be seen to be coliimon to Osborne's work as a wliole, since
they recur here as well as in llis other plays. Tlie most important of tliese'tl~emesare
tlie relatiolisliip between tlie individual a~id'societywliicli seeks to impose its
autllority on him or her; the gaps and the common areas between private life (largely
defined in terms of personal relations) and pub1ic life; the search for an adequate
~l-roralitytliat can answer hu111an needs in both these areas; tlie discrepancy between
thouglit and action, and a questioning ofthe ability of either of the111to provide
meaning to life; and finally the location of such meaning in 'feeling' or emotion
rather than in the ilitellect or in rational thouglit.

5.4 GLOSSARY
Colloquial Everyday, infor~nalspeech.
Disintegration Breaking up, falling apart
Opaque Sonletliing that is not transparent, through which it
difficult to see clearly.
Vaudeville Form of light variety entertainment with skits, songs
and dances.
Vehemence Forcefi~lness
 Auger and After
5.5 QUESTIONS

Q 1. What do you think the term 'morality' means in the context of the play T

Q 2. Identify any other colnmon tlielnes nlnning through Osborne's work.

5.6 SUGGESTED READING

Osbome, John Danzn You, England: Collectell Prose, London: Faber &
Faber, 1994

Taylor, John Russell Anger and After: A guide to the new British Dl-un~a,
London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1962
 UNIT 1 WAITING FOR GODOT: AN AVANT
G A m E PLAY

Structure

1.0 Objectives

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Tragicomedy

1.3 Waiting for Godot and the Theatre of the Absurd

1.4 An avant garde play

1.4.1 The austere stage setting

1.4.2 Tramps as protagonists in Godot
1.4.3 Linguistic devices
1.4.4 Godot and performing arts
1.4.5 Static nature of the Play
1.4.6 Lack of coherent story, plot, etc. in Godot
1.4.7 Structure--Symmetrical or Asymmetrical?

1.5 Sammuel Backett (1906-1989): Life and Important Works

1.6 History of Godot : In Print and Performance

1.7 Different Artistic Forms of Godot

1.8 Godot in Indian Languages

I 1.9 Let Us Sum Up

1 I
1.0 OBJECTIVES

The objectives of this unit are to introduce you to the idea of tragicomedy, the theatre
of the Absurd, and to enable you to appreciate how waiting for Godot is different
from other plays prescribed in your syllabus.
I

1.1 INTRODUCTION

Waitingfor Godot was originally written in French entitled En attendant Godot in

1952. The play broke new ground in theatre history and is rightly called an ava~zt
garde play. There are certain distinct features of it, which make it markedly different
from other plays you may have read in this course. Some of the things which
distinguish it from other plays could be:

i) the austere stage-setting,

ii) tramps as protagonists,
iii) use of language and linguistic devices such as, speech-pace, pauses,
silences etc.,
 Waitingfor Godot iv) Beckett's incorporating elements from different performing arts like,
mime, music hall cross-talk, circus, stylized movements etc.,
v) static nature of the action,
vi) absence of conventional plot, and,
vii) asymmetrical structure of tlie play.

These features are meant to give you a sense of direction. You should try to apply
these ideas as you read and reread the text. The text referred to in the discussion on
Godot is Faber and Faber, London, 1979 edition.

1 1.2 TRAGICOMEDY

In order that you are able to appreciate the play better, especially in relation to
Beckett's use of the resources of the performing arts, and as a literary genre (i.e. as a
tragicomedy), I would urge upon you to read T.S. Eliot's essay, "Tradition and the
Individual Talent". The reading of this essay should enable you, in general, to see
how a writer draws from the tradition and at the same time enriches it. In the light of
Eliot's ideas of tradition and the individual talent, you should be able to see how the
tradition of tragicomedy is continued by Beckett and how it undergoes a change at his
hands.

Waitingfor Godot was originally written in French. The French version did not have
the subtitle underscoring its nature. Beckett translated the play himself into English
and gave it the subtitle: 'A Tragicomedy in Two Acts." We shall see how this play is
different from tragicomedies of the past.

Stated simply, tragicomedy is a blend of the elements of tragedy and comedy. To

quote the Seventeenth Century playwright John Fletcher from the preface to his play
The Faithfil Shepherdess (1608); a tragicomedy

is not so called in respect of mirth and killing, but in respect it wants deaths,
which is enough to make it no tragedy, yet brings some near it, which is
enough to make it no comedy.

In the 18th century Dr. Samuel Johnson defined tragicomedy as "drama compounded
of merry and serious events". Contrary to classical injunction against mixing the
tragic and the comic in one composition (as is insisted by Socrates at the end of
Plato's Symposium), Dr. Johnson praises Shakespeare's mixture of the two, when he
says, "Shakespeare has united the powers of exciting laughter and sorrow not only in
one mind, but in one composition." In Shakespeare's tragedies the comic element,
though a part of the play, nonetheless remains a distinct coilstituent in the sense that
whereas it intensifies the tragic effect, it doesn't threaten to influence the action of the
play. Porter in Macbeth, Fool in King Lear, and the grave digger in Hamlet, are a
case in point. In Shakespeare's tragicolnedies too, the tragic element constitutes a
significant part of the action of the play. But here too, tragedy is threatened, yet
avoided in time so that ultimately it doesn't affect the fortunes of the protagonists.
The two elements, the tragic and the comic, thus remain distinctly apart, as is the case
in Much Ado About Nothing and other tragicomedies.

Modern playwrights, on the other hand, mix the two elements differently and perhaps
far more effectively. The two elements interpenetrate within the same character and
the boundary between the two in a composition is blurred. This also projects their
conception of the human existence and the audience, accordingto Styan, "is treated to
the absurdity of human life inoculated first with laughter." So you will see that in
Waiting for Godot, Beckett has, to use Styan's words again, "filtered the niglihnare of
human existence through the screen of laughter," Or, shall we say, that the
protagonists in Waiting for G o b t laugh to save their tears?
 Waitingfor Godot: An
you will further note that Beckett uses various theatrical devices, such as mime,
Avant Grade Play
,nusic hall cross-talk, varying pace and rhythm of dialogue, etc., in an attempt at
cheerfulness in a world of weariness and despair, which the tramps inhabit. Beckett,
to quote Roger Blin (the first director of and also an actor in Waitingfor Godot, whell
it made its debut in Paris), "is unique in his ability to blend derision, humour and
comedy with tragedy : his words are simultaneously tragic and comic." Fletchers
; (Beryl S. and John), critics on Beckett, also speak of Beckett's ability to harmonize
tears and laughter.

1.3 WAITING FOR GODOT AND THE THEATRE OF THE

ABSURD

What is the theatre of the Absurd? The label Theatre of the Absurd is often applied
to the plays of Engene Ionesco, Jean Genet, Arthur Adamov, Samuel Beckett, and the
early plays of Edward Albee. Plays written by these playwrights flout all the
standards by which drama has been judged over the centuries. Structurally, in
contrast to a well made play with a beginning, a middle and a neatly tied up ending,
the plays by the absurdist playwrights often start at an arbitrary point and end just as
arbitrarily. The arbibary structure of the plays reflects the arbitrary and irrational
nature of life. To put it differently, the playwright of the absurd views life
existentially, he expresses the senselessness of the human condition by abandoning
rational devices. Most of the plays, thus, express a sense of wonder and
incomprehension, and at times despair at the meaninglessness of human existence.
Since they do not believe in a rational and well-meaning universe, they do not see
any possibility of resolution of the problems they present, either.

When you read Waitingfor Godot, try to see if the play has conventional structure. If
not, what are the points of difference?

i Do you see a definite ending or a conclusion? Can we call the play open-ended?

I
I 1.4 AN AVANT GARDE PLAY

Waitingfor Godot is a landniark in modem drama. ,When it premiered in Paris, its

originality-stunned audiences; no one had seen or heard anything like it before.
Initially, some were disgusted; some were puzzled; and some were wildly

I
i enthusiastic. Within a short time, audiences came to the theatre prepared for a wholly
new dramatic experience and went away with praises for Samuel Beckett. Let us now
1 have a look at the distinct aspects of Waitingfor Godot so as to highlight'the devices
I which made it an avant garde play.
I

1.4.1 The Austere Stage Setting

I Compared to the elaborate stage-setting in other plays in your course, you will notice
I
that in Waitingfor Godot, the stage is almost bare and shorn of stage properties. This
1 . is characteristic of Beckett's plays. See the stage-setting in plays like Endgame,
Happy Days, Krapp 's Last Tape, etc..
I

:
I
Compared to the stage-setting in some of his own plays the one in Waitingfor Godot,
is much barer : an open road, a mound of earth and a bare tree.
I
I Read other plays of BeckeR to get an idea of stage setting in them and their
/ significance for the theme, action and plot of the plays. Also, you will observe that
 Waitittgfor Godot the stage-setting in Shakespeare's, Marlowe's and other writers' plays creates the
ambience (in which the protagonists--Kings, Princes, heroes etc.--are placed), to
heighten the tragic effect.

Do you think the stage setting has necessarily to be in tune with the protagonists'
tragic situation?

1.4.2 Tramps as protagonists in Godot

Have a close look at the protagonists in the plays you have studied. Notice the
gradual transformation in the idea of the protagonist over centuries fiom Kings,
Princes, heroes to the common man and even tramps. For example, fiom Prince
Hamlet in the play by the same name, again, Dr. Faustus in Marlowe's Dr. Faustus,
to Professor Higgins and Flower Girl in Shaw's Pygmalion and finally, the two
tramps in Beckett's Waitingfor Godot,

Don't you think the tramps conform to the bare setting they are placed in? If so, what
purpose does Beckett wish to achieve thereby?

1.4.3 Linguistic Devices

The religio-political and socio-cultural developments from the late 19th century to the
middle of 20th century, brought about a profound sense of meaninglessness and
rootlessness in life. Such a sense of meaninglessness naturally led to a loss of faith in
a coherent and cohesive universe. This was further manifested in the breakdown of
communication, and the inability of language to communicate the illogicality of
human situations. Thus the language of the absurd is very often at variance with the
immediate action and is reduced to meaningless patter, to show the futility of
communication. Sometimes what happens on the stage transcends, and often
contradicts the words spoken by the characters. Have a look at the following
dialogue between Vladimir and Estragon in Godot:

Vladimir: Pull on your trousers.

Estragon: You want me to pull off my trousers? Again,
"Let's go". (They do not move) says the stage direction, at the end of Act 1

No wonder, at times, these tramps lapse into monologues and silences in much the
same manner as Beckett the playwright also lapsed in Breath (1966).

Thus, as is the case with the stage setting and the nature of the protagonists, there is
also a very close interrelation between these two and the language (used by the
protagonists),

While reading the tragedies of Shakespeare and Marlowe, you will find that the
poetic intensity of the language used by the protagonists not only expresses their
character but also intensifies their tragedy. Their language is also attended by a
certain degree of formality. They use imagery, rhythm, and other prosodic devices to
heighten the effect.

Contrasted with the above what significance do you see in the use of communicative
devices by Beckett, like, common idiom, the pauses, repetition, monologues, the
speech-pace, the silences etc.

1.4.4 Godot and Performing Arts

1

Closely related to the distinct communicative devices mentioned above are some of
the non-verbal acts, accompanying them in Godot. Beckett makes extensive use of
devices like gestures and mannerisms employed in various other performing arts.
Let's first look at
8
 Waitingfor Godot:
3) Mime:
An Avant Grade Play
Vladimir's mimiclu-y on pp.40, 89.
Pozzo mimicking a public speaker in Act I.
Estragon and Vladiillir playing Pozzo and Lucky in Act 11.

b) Banalities of mother and wife.

Boots must be talten off eve~yday
I'm tired telling you that - p. 10, and,
There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet - p.
10

c) Music Hall Cross-Talk : on pp. 18-19.

~ l s cross
o talk between a straight and a funny man, when they contemplate suicide,
on pp 17-18.

Estragon Let's hang ourselves immediately!

Vladimir From a bough? . . . I wouldn't trust it.
Estragon We can always try.
Vladimir Go ahead.
Estragon After you.
Vladimir No no, you first.
......,. Q . . .

Estragon If it hangs you, it will hang anything.

Does it remind you of the typical aristocratic etiquette and mannerism of the Nclwabs
of Lucknow--"Pahle Aap"--(You first!), giving precedence to the other person over
oneself. See how the two tramps give precedence to each other while suggesting
suicide! What effect would it have on the audience?

d) Elements of Circus: Clowning as is done in a circus,

In the beginning itself Eslragon struggling to take off his boot and panting as if it
involves great effort.

When they purposely misunderstand: ''Pull on you trousers." See the dialogue
between Estragon and Vladimir quoted on p.8 above. (iii) Linguistic devices.

e) Stylized movement;

1. Valdimir walking with stiff strides, legs apart, reminding readers of

the Chaplinsque gait.

2. Lucky sagging slowly and sleeping on his feet in Act I.

The list of examples given above, however, is not exhaustive. Please do look for
other examples in the text.

1.4.5 Static nature of the play

The last line of the play typifies the nature of action: "They don't move."

The entire action takes place at one place.

The only movement is from wings to the stage and vice versa.

The plot lacks'linear progression. There is no basic change in the protagonists'

situation.
Waitingfor Godot The wait seems endless. The curtain goes up on the two tramps waiting for the
elusive Godot and it comes down with the two tramps hinting to come the next day,
and wait for him all over again.

The only thing that really moves is time.

1.4.6 Lack of coherent story, plot, etc. in Godot

The static nature of the play is reinforced by the absence of a coherent story in it.

Please try to locate the primary movements of the play--movements which take the
action, if any, forward.

Do these movements cohere and form a chain, or are they logically linked up with
each other?

The plot of a conventional play has an opening leading to a climax and finally the
resolution. In a play with a deterministic conception, do you think Waitingfor Godot
follows this conventional pattern?

1.4.7 Structure--symmetrical or asymmetrical?

The play has two Acts. In both Acts, the two tramps meet, they are joined by Lucky
and Pozzo, who leave the two of them together after sometime. The tramps are
finally visited by the Boy who in both the Acts conveys an identical message.

Note the repetition of action in the two Acts.

Graph of 'action' follows identical path in the two Acts.

The structure is sustained by the refrain: "We are Waiting for Godot".

1
I

1.5 SAMUEL BACKETT (1906-1989): LIFE AND I

IMPORTANT WORKS
I

Beckett was not forthcoming in accepting that he was autobiographical in his

writings, yet one continuously hears echoes of certain incidents of his life in his
writings.

Samuel Barclay Beckett was born in Foxrock, in the Southern part of Dublin, Ireland
in a Protestant family on April 13, 1906--that happended to be Good Friday. He went
to Earlosfort House, a preparatory school, in Dublin, and fi-om 1920 to 1923, he
attended Portora Royal School, in Enniskillen, Northen Ireland. As a student he
showed a remarkable talent for cricket and swimming. In 1923, he joined Trinity
College, Dublin, where he did his graduation in 1927 with honours in French and
Italian, together with a sound knowledge of German and Spanish. His interest in
French language, life, and culture was stimulated by French lectuer, Alfred Peson, a
Surrealist poet who later became a good friend of his.

Beckett began his career as a school teacher, and after a few months in October 1928,
he was appointed to a prestigious position of Lecturer d'unglais at E'cole Normale
Superieure in Paris. In Paris Beckett moved in both French and Anglo-Irish
intellectual circles. In particular, he came in close contact with James Joyce. It was
during this period that Beckett began writing seriously--poems, short stories and
criticism. The poem Whoroscope (1930), and criticism, "Dante . . . Bruno, Vico,
Joyce" (1929) belong to this period, as does Proust (1931). On the expiry of his term
at E'cole Normale Superieure, Beckett was appointed as assistant Lecturer in modern
 Waiting for Godot: An
languages at Trinity College. Dublin, which he joined in October 1930 and resigned
Avant Grade Play
about 15 months later. He felt he was teaching something he knew nothing about.
That decision was the birth of a writer.

Beckett had always had a liking for the anti-academic jokes. At Trinity he
successfully lectured to the University Modem Languages Society on a non-existent
group of French poets called Les Convergistes. No one has exposed the follies of
pseudo-intellectualism more hilariously yet more ruthlessly.

Beclett came to London and took up a job as an attendant in a mental home for a
year. Jack Mac Gowran (an Irish actor) believed that Beclett's first novel Murphy
(1938), came out of his experiences as an attendant in the mental hospital, during
which period he had seen many people who were handicapped severely in some way.
Besides, there was a war pensioners' hospital very close to where he was born. When
he was young, he saw them regularly everyday, they were at various stages of
physical disability. No wonder many of Beckett's characters like Hamm, Clov, Nell,
Nagg, Pozzo, Lucky, etc., are damaged people. Speaking of his childhood to
MacGowran, though, Beckett stated: "People must think I had a very unhappy
childhood, but I hadn't really. I had a very good childhood, and a very normal
childhood as childhoods go. But I was more aware of unhappiness around me than
happiness."

Beckett thus grew to be very sensitive to his surroundings.

The next five years beginning end of 1934 Beckett moved from London to Dublin,
and from Paris to Kassel and Munich. In 1934 Beckett published his first volume of
stories More Pricks Than Kick. The book was banned by the Irish authorities and it
appears that thereafter Beckett decided to spend as little time as possible in his
country of birth. He took up residence in Paris in 1937. There on January 7, 1939,
an incident occurred that had a deep and lasting effect on his life in many ways.
While walking out at night he was accosted and stabbed by a pimp named Prudent.
He was administered the first aid by a passing conservatoire student, Suzanne
Deschevaux Dumesnil, who thus entered Beckett's life and after 22 years of live-in
relationship with him eventually became his wife in 1962.

In June 1940, when the German Army occupied Paris, Beckett and Suzanne moved to
Areachon, and returned to Pal-is. He was so disgusted with the Nazi's treatment of the
Jews, who were forced to wear a yellow star of David stitched onto their clothing,
that he felt compelled to act: "I couldn't stand withmy arms folded." And, he became
actively involved with a Resistance group with its agents spread out all over France
collecting information about enemy troop movement. But in August 1942 the group
was betrayed and out of about 82 members less than twenty survived. Beckett and
his 'wife' were alerted and they escaped barely half an hour before the Gestapo came
for them. For the next four months they were on the run and lived life dangerously.
At last they crossed into unoccupied France ending up at Roussillon, a village in high
mountains famous for its red clay. Here they remained in semi-hiding until the
German occupation collapsed. He worked as a farm labourer during the daytime,
while in the evening he wrote Watt (1953), a comic-novel. This, as Beckett put it,
helped to take his mind off the German occupation.

Between 1945 and 1952, in addition to Waitingfor Godot, Beckett wrote trilogy of
novels, Molloy (1951), Malone meurt (Malone Dies, 1951) and L'lnno~nrnable(Z%e
Unnameable, 1953), some short stories, the prose tale Mercier and Camier (1970) and
an unpublished play Eleutheria (1947) whose title is the Greek word for freedom.
Beckett's trilogy is a major achievement in the history of novel. In working on it he
turned his back on the realistic mode and instead chose to explore the boundaries of a
totally hermetic sphere. Beckett had abandoned witing in English. Ile belicved,
"perhaps oilly the French language can give you the thing you want. . . . It was more
exciting for me--writing in French." He felt that writing in English "you couldn't help
Waitingfor Godot writing poetry in it." Beckett thus became a "double expatriatew--first from his
country and then from his mother tongue.

In writing The Unnameable Beckett found himself meeting the wall. The work, he
said, "finished me or expressed my finishedness." He was, he observed, "not so
much bogged down as fogged out." It was during the interval between Malone Dies
and The U/znameable,that he turned to writing a play as a "relaxation, to get away
from the awful prose I was writing at the time." In 1985, he further remarked, "I
needed a habitable space, and I found it on the stage." That is how Wairing for Godot
was bom.

Beckett followed up Godot with Endgame (1958, English version) which Beckett
dedicated to Roger Blin, who you will recall directed and acted in the first stage
production of Godot in 1953, in Paris. The play which first appeared in French, Fin
De Partie (1956), borrows its title fiom the game of chess. In the same year, 1956,
Beckett also wrote, his first radio play on commission, AII That Fall and Actes Sans
Paroles I and 11, the latter two were subsequently translated as Act Without Worh I
(1958) and Act Without Words II(1959).

Fin De Partie (Endgame)

It is a play in one Act. It was originally written in French and Beckett himself
translated it into English in 1957. The play had its first production in French in
London in 1957, since no French management would put on the play in Paris.

.
Beckett himself called the play "rather difficult and elliptic . . more inhuman than
Godct," Jack Mac Gowran stated, "If Godot is the anguish of waiting, Endgame, is
the anguish of going." In Endgame Beckett recreates Dante's Purgatorj in a 20th
century claustrophobic setting--both literally and metaphorically. The room with two
eye shaped ventilators is inhabited by Hamm and Clov, besides the former's parents,
Nagg and Nell. Of the two protagonists, Hamrn and Clov, Hamrn is blind and is
confined to an arm chair on castors, while Clov is not able to sit. The Pozzo-Lucky
. relationship between authoritarian master and slave is continued in this play.

Krapp's Last Tape

Krapp's Lust Tape (1958) was written for the Irish actor Patrick Magee. In fact he
called the early draft "Magee Monologuet'. It is Beckett's first uninterrupted
monologue for the live theatre. Like other characters of Beckctt, Krapp, an old man,
too, is a marginalised human being with physical infirmities : he is nearsighted, and
hard of hearing. The "protagonists" in this play are two voices: one that of Krapp
himself on stage and the other recorded on audio-tape, which the same actor had
recorded at two points of time--when he was 39 (about 30 years ago) and the other 12
years prior to that. The tapes unfold Krapp's unhappy Iove affair, his intellectual
pursuits and his relationship with his parents. Listening to tapes, Krapp responds and
reacts to his past. Krapp's Last Tape, moves not only in time, but moves through
time. In this play Be~kettdramatizes listening. Pierre Chabert, who played Krapp
under Beckett's directions in Paris explained it thus: "Listening is here
communicated, by the look. It is literally the eye which is listening." Hindi film
Anupama, played in the lead role by Sharmila Tagore, is one such film in which
listening and speaking are communicated by the eyes by her.

Happy Days:

Happy Days (1961), the next important play brings to a close the first great period of
Becketttswritings for the stage. Alan Schneider directed its world premiere in New
York on September 17, 1961. Happy Days is scenographic, in'that the set and the
characters coalesce. It has a couple as the protagonist. Willia, about 60 can move on
all fours; he passes his day reading newspaper or looking at a naughty postcard.
Willie lives at the back of the mound, in the exact centreof which stands buried his
12
 Waitingfor Godot: An
wife, Winnie, a woman of about 50. She can move her arms and handle her few Avant Grade Play
possessions: a tooth brush, a tube of toothpaste, a small mirror, a revolver, a
handkerchief and spectacles, Since there is no night in her life, her waking and
sleeping are governed by a bell off stage. In Act 11, she is buried to the neck and can't
even move her head. She can't use her possessions, but can only talk about them.
She whiles away her time inventing stories. Willie, with great difficulty, crawls upto
her, and is "dressed to kill," but Winnie can no longer give him a hand. Willie also
falls back twice - but Winnie finds in his visit matter good enough to make it "one
more happy day! "

Beck& continued with experimentation to create and remake the playwright's space,
with plays like Play (1962-63), Come and Go (1965) and Breath. Beckett
communicated by progressively diminishing presence of the protagonist on the stage.
In Breath a curtaifi rises and falls interrupted by an infant cry. In Not I(1972)
Beckett achieves new height in stage technology: there is a gaping Mouth and
opposing it is the Auditor, which is larger than life figure. Mouth's words pass by
quickly and are intelligible. To the furious monologue of Mouth, Auditor responds
four times in the play with "a gesture of helpless compassion." Beckett told Jessica
Tandy who played Mouth in the world premiere directed by Schneider, at Lincoln
Centre in New York in 1972, "I hope the piece may work the nerves of audience, not
its intellect."

Tltat Time (1975) which Beckett called "a brother to Not I," is similarly concerned
with theatrical form. A disembodied head hangs suspended in a frame 10 feet above
st-pge level and the face is its own auditor. Once again Beckett fills the void with
language, Three prerecorded Voices A, B, and C, broadcast memories fkom three
fixed positions, "both sides and above.'' Each Voice is the same voice. yet each
narrates different story. In Footfalls (1 975) the presence of the character is felt
through the sound of steps falling through space in time.

In his later writings for the theatre Beckett brought his experiences in radio, film and
television to bear on the contingencies of the stage. This is amply demonstrated in
new ideas Beckett introduced in theatricality of A Piece ofMonologue (1980),
Rockaby (1981), Ohio Impromptu (198 1) etc.

1.6 HISTORY OF GODOT: IN PRIM' AND

PERFORMANCE

Written in the 1940s and published in text form in 1952 in French, Waiting for Godot.
received fair to mild reviews on its stage debut directed by Roger Blin in Paris in
1953. Gradually it gained acceptance and ran for more than four hundred
performances. While some critics objected to Beckett's disregard for such
dramaturgical elements as plot, scenery, and dramatic action, others argued that the
play's strength lay in its opposition to rules of convention. The play had, despite
numerous successful runs in major cities in Europe, including a highly acclaimed
German-language version performed in Berlin, encountered opposition. These
included a ban on reviews and advertisements of the play in Spain, where its message
was considered pessimistic, and also its threatened cancellation in the Netherlands.

Prior to the first London production of the play in 1955, Beckett rerised and
tightened the play's dialogue in the second Act and translated it into English. The
original French title of the play En Attendant Godof translates more literally as While
Waiting for Godot. However, Beckett while giving the title in English opted for a
phrase as easy for the English tongue as the original is for the French. Beckett didn't
do the German translation--it was made by Elnler Tophoven. Here too the audience
response was a mixed one. Some dismissed it as pretentious, while others praised its
power to disturb and disquiet audiences. Encouraged by the London production
FVaiti~tgforGodot American producer Michael Myerberg presented the play first in Miami, Florida in
1956. The play failed due to its misleading billing in area newspapers, which called
it: "the laugh hit of four continents." Myerberg attempted to correct the wrong,
before attempting a second production in New York city, by giving a statement in
New York's most prominent newspapers which read:

Waitingfor Godot is a play for the thoughtful and discriminating theatergoer.

. . . I respectfully suggest that those who come to the theater for casual
entertainment do not buy ticket to this attraction.

American critic Walcott Gibb came heavily on the play, stating "All I can say, in a
critical sense, is that I have seldom seen such meagre moonshine stated with such
inordinate fuss." Most people, however, acknowledge Wuitingfor Godol, as an
enduring and important contribution to world drama. American dramatists Thornton
Wilder and Tennessee Williams endorsed the play, while William Saroyan remarked:
"It will make it easier for me and everyone to write freely in the theater." Thomton
Wilder called the play "a picture of total nihilism and a very admirable work; and also
added, "I don't try to work out detailed symbolism. I don't think you're supposed to."

Nonnan Mailer in a public advertisement in The Village Voice of May 7, 1956,

apologised for his initial reaction on Waitingfor Godot, published in its preceding
issue. In his remarks he had stated that Bcckett's play was "a poem to impotence and
appealed precisely to those who were most impotent." Subsequent reading of the
play, watching its performance at Broadway, and again reading it struck him with a
sense of guilt for his harsh initial response. He in the abovementioned apology
stated: ". . . I was most unfair to Beckett. Because Waitingfor Godot is a play about
impotence rather than an ode to it, and while its view of life is indeed hopeless, it is
an art work, and therefore, I believe it is good."

On Broadway Waitingfor Godot also created extraordinary phenomena in American

show business. For, after the final curtain on many nights, the audience remained
and, joined by interested literary figures and laymen, debated the play's meaning and
merit. In these debates clergymen were sometimes pitted against each other on
whether Godot was religious or atheistic. The strategy has since been used by many
feminist women playwrights also, but for a limited purpose of highlighting and
discussing woman-issues, to create awareness among women.

The play kept generating a lot of interest and enthusiasm among theatergoers. The
play was revived in September 19.58 in New York by San Francisco Actors'
Workshop, which took the play to Brussels the same month. At many of the
performances spectators were asked to write comments on Godot. At least one
quarter of over 200 returns were unfavourable, another third bewildered or
undecided, and the rest favourable (Contemporary Literary Crilicism, Vo1.57, p. 74).

As often happens with many popular plays, they are tinkered with by the Directors or
the playwright-director himself, and the focus of the play and its scenario changes in
different peiformances. Godot was no exception.

"One thing interesting about Beckett and Waitingfor Goclot is that whenever Beckett
took interest in a particular production of the play, he tinkered with the references to
time and place. . . . In any strict sense;" says Denis Donoghue, "there is no
established text of the play. The New York production, used "a text provided by
Samuel Beckett in August, 1988, which will be published soon by Faber and Faber."
(Beckett died in December 1989, and to date the revised version does not appear to
have been published). Certain details from the current published text of 1954
probably cannot survive. When Pozzo says "I've lost my Kapp and Peterson!" the
reference must be obscure to anyone who doesn't know that Kapp and Peterson is a '
distinguished Dublin pipe making firm. For the play's first several years, such local
references as the play had were French : the Eiffel Tower, the Macon country, the
14 Rhone, Rousillon, etc. In the Dublin production, the Macon country became the
 Waiting for Godot: An
Napa Valley, thereby facilitating a bout of rage--"the Crappa Count@"'-from Avant Grade Play
Estragon.

In the new version staged in California, the scene is "somewhere in the United States-
-badlands, a bit of desert, a waste patch littered with a few stones, rusty detritus of
trucks, hubcaps, a truck tire, bumper, a broken spring, a buffalo skull, a sheep skull.
It is theater in the round, befitting a rigmarole in which Estragon and Vladimir,
agreeing to go somewhere, do not move. . . ." About California setting, Robert
Brustein finds it difficult to believe that Beckett himself could have authorized such a
radical shift in geography. Beckett intended Godot to be situated in a generalized
purgatory.

Godot has been made into an opera, a television movie, and has also been adapted to
two dance recitals--one called May By performed by the French troupe Maguy Marin,
and another called La Espera, choreographed by Rolando Beattie and performed in
1987 at the Teatro de Bellas Artes in Mexico city.
There is even an unauthorized sequel called Godot Came, written in 1966 by the
Yogoslav playwright Miodrag Bulatovie. Further, in an Israeli production in Tel
Aviv, Pozzo and Lucky were cast as a Jew and an Arab respectively. Brecht, the
German playwright wanted to change them into landowner and peasant in the Marxist
counterplay he thought of writing before he died.
Writers like Harold Pinter, Alain Robbe, Grillet, Athol Fugard, Sam Shepard, David
Mamet, Eugene Ionesco, Tom Stoppard, Vaclav Havel, Caryl Churchill, and Maria
Irene Fomes have expressed their indebtedness to Godot in various ways. Lillian
Hellman, American woman playwright when asked in 1972 about which plays she
liked to follow, replied: "Everything by Beckett."

1.8 GODQT IN INDIAN LANGUAGES

Godot has been translated into several Indian languages. Notable nmong them are:

a) Waiting for Godot (Hindi) translated by A.N. Prasanna, pub. by Anuvad

Sagar, Akshara Prakashan, 1974.

b) Godo di Udik (Punjabi) translated by Surender Mohan, pub. by Sanket

Prakashan, Jullunder, 1971.

c) Godo Pratikhaye (Bengali) translated by Kabir Chowdhury, pub. by

Muktadhara, Dacca.

d) Waiting for Godot (Bengali) translated by Ashok Sen, Calcutta.

Besides Waiting for Godot is also available on video-cassette produced by E.M.R.C.
Poona University, Poona.

1.9 LET US SUM UP

The information in this Unit is of two kinds: material that is not directly about the
play but deepens our understanding of it which includes information about
tragicomedy, theatre of the Absurd and life and works of Beckett, and material
directly about the play such as an avant grade play, history of the play in print and
performance, and different artistic forms. Our purpose has been to familiarize you
with the play as also sharpen your wits to examine it critically.
UNIT 2 GODOT :A CRITICAL ANALYSIS-I

Structure

2.0 Objectives

2.1 , Introduction

2.2 Brief Comments and Key Questions

2.3 Critical Analysis : Act I

2.0 OBJECTIVES

To analyse the text of the play in the background of the distinct aspects of the play
discussed briefly in Unit 1.

2.1 INTRODUCTION

We will raise some key questions here, which you should bear in mind when you
start reading the play along with the critical analysis. As you look for answers to
these questions, you will get to understand the play better.

2.2 BRIEF COMMENTS AND KEY QUESTIONS

Let us first look at the stage decor in Waitingfor Godot: Compare it with the
elaborate stage decor in other plays you have studied.

In this play it is an open country road with a leafless tree--a tree if we can call it.
Beckett has not placed his characters in a 'specific' place or time. By refusing to
mention the specifics, is Beckett trying,

i) to decontextualize the play and lend it, simultaneously, a 'universal' .

dimension in terms of time and space?

ii) Do you think this dramatic device makes the play an open-ended play which,
in turn, reinforces (i) above?

iii) Further, can we take the road as an emblem of movement, future, and
progress, where other people might come along?

iv) Do you think a positive answer to (iii) above will possibly make the play, a
play of hope which the word "waiting" in the title seems to denote?
However, if read ironically, will "waitin>' acquire different connotations? If
so, what?

In case of the dramatis personae too, Beckett strips them of their genealogy and
renders them rootless. We are not told anything about the two .main characters,
Estragon and Vladimir. We are left to hazard a guess about their nationalities as also
 Godot: A Critical
about their background only by their names. Beckett, tllus, takes away man's Analysis-I
individuality, identity, his property, his family, his place and fbnction in society, and
then begins to strip man of his normal 'human equipment' also as is seen in Endgame,
where the main characters are deprived of their legs and mobility.

It is not just that the two tramps, Estragon and Vladimir, have no home and no locale,
&hat is worse, they seem unaware that they have neither.

We will talk about the significance of these aspects in the later units. Please first try
and find out the significance of the 'names' of the dramatispersonae as you attempt
to find answers to the questions that follow.

As stated above, Beckett does not give the nationality, history or past life of the
characters. So,

i) What, in your view, is Beckett trying to convey through this device?

ii) Do their names hint at their possible nationality?

iii) Does he wish to make the play cross-cultural in its content and intent,
although Beckett denied any attempt to "internationalize" the play by giving
the characters French (Estragon), Russian (Vladimir), English (Lucky), and
Italian (Pozzo, pronounced Podzo) names?

2.3 CRITICAL ANALYSIS: ACT I

The play starts with the reunion of two trampsvladimir and Estragon. You will note
that in beginning of Act I, Vladiinir says, "I am glad to see you back . . . . Together
again at last" (p. 9). The use of the word "again" shows that they have been here
earlier also. Compare Vladimir's remark in Act I1 "You again!" (p.58)

There is a lot of exaggerated physical action in the play, which provokes laughter.
Note how Estrogon pulls at his boots "with both hands panting" and is "exhausted."

Beckett believes, that "the first words should introduce the theme of the play, The
opening words in Godot 'Wothing to be done1' do precisely that. These words will
echo again and again during the course of the play.

In line with the exaggerated action we observe that Vladimir moves with "Short, stiff
strides, with legs apart" as he suffers from the enlargement of the prostate gland--a
complaint common m old age. His gait reminds us of the king of comedy, Charlie
Chaplin.

On their meeting the two tramps embrace each other; whenever they meet they go
through the same nlotions of greeting.

Also, you will note the mock-heroic manner in which Vladimir addresses Estragon,
"May one enquire . , .?" The latter's response to it, "In a ditch" instantly pricks the air
bu6ble of the heightened style.

Eastragon informs that he had been beaten by some people whom he identifies only
ah "They". What "they" refers to remains a mystery, much like the malevolent
cosmic forces, the tormenters of humanity. "They" are as mysterious as Godot is to
be later. Beating here signifies human suffering. So when Vladimir remarks that
"We should have thought of ~t[the human suffering] a million years ago'' Beckett
attempts to historicize it an6 also brings it closer to our times ("in the nineties").
Waiting fot Godot How do human beings cope with their suffering? Estragon and Vladirnir had, during
their younger days, together planned to commit suicide by jumping off the Eiffel
Tower. But, Vladimir thinks, in their present condition, they would not be allowed to
go up the Eiffel Tower and will thus be denied even the most despairing choice (of
committing suicide).

Eastragon, however, remains occupied with his personal "suffering" caused by his
hurting shoes. Aghast when asked by Vladimir if his shoes hurt, Estragon addresses
the audience directly, "Hurts! He wants to lmow if it hurts!" He, thus, draws the
audience into the play -- an instance of Brechtian iilfluence on Beckett, who through
such theatrical devices, breaks the illusion of being in a theatre.

A little before this Vladimir mimics maternal scolding to a child: "Shoes should be
taken off everyday. I'm tired telling you that." (p.10). Such a characterstic feminine
banality is further repeated in a conjugal tone: "There is a man all over for you.. ..
Fault of his feet." (p.11). Vladimir suddenly has an urge to pass water - his kind of
suffering due to the prostate problem. The play introduces a more sombre note,
which, with the tramps' comic manner in the background is further accentuated.
When Vladimir plays upon the Proverb, "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick," and
uses the word 'something' in place of 'heart' Beckett introduces 'uncertainty' as a
theme.

Both, remain preoccupied with their respective problem, Estragon with his boot and
Vladimir with his intense urge to pass water. He feels it coming and yet it doesn't.
So he is "Relieved and at the same time appalled. Estragon in order to even up withe
Vladimir asks if his difficulty in urinating hurts, Vladimir's response to it is identical
to Estragon's. He too addresses the audience directly: "Hurts... ". Vladimir keeps
examining his hat for some foreign body-in it and Estragon, in the meanwhile,
succeeds in taking off his shoe. The play once again moves from banality to the
bibilical plane when Vladimir refers to the story of the two thieves and Christ.
Beckett himself referred to St. Augustine's words about the two thieves: "Do not
despair, one of the thieves was saved; do not presume, one of the thieves was
damned." Beckett claimed that he had always been impressed by the symmetry of St.
Augustine's words

You will observe that such a symmetry works at different levels in the play: it
corresponds to Estragon's feet, one of which is 'damned', the other is 'saved'. Later, of
the two tramps, Estsagon is 'beaten', the other, Vladimir 'saves' him and is 'saved'
himself.

Vladimir, ever resilient, finds the percentage of being saved 'reasonable1-- as chances
are fifty-fifty.

Also, it is interesting to note that only in the list of characters are the tramps named
Estragon and Vladimir. Right through the play the two address each other by their
nicknames, Gogo and Didi. Could we say that with passage of time their eight-
lettered names (Vladimir and Estragon) have been reduced to four-lettered each
(Gogo and Didi), which falls in line with what, Lucky later says about man "that man
inspite of the strides of physical culture the practice of sports . . , shrinks and
dwindles ."

Eastragon's proposal to "repent" for the sin of their being born, which brought about
their respective suffering, evokes a hearty laugh from Vladimir which he stifles
immediately as laughter revives his pain (due to prostate gland enlargement).

Beckett quoted Calderon who said, 'Man's greatest sin is to have been born.' It seems
to be Beckett's one of the most deeply felt convictions.

Having stifled his laughter suddenly Vladimir shiles as suddenly from ear to ear.
Laughing and smiling mechanically highlight Vladimir's clownish antics. On being
 Godot: A Critical
asked'if he had read the Bible, Estragon's reply, "I must have taken a look at it" is Analysis-I
characteristic of his inconsistency", since later in the play he affirms that all his life
he has "compared himself to Christ" (p. 5 1). Estragon goes on to speak graphically
about the maps of the Holy Land, and his deep desire to go to the Dead Sea. Since
there is "Nothing to be done" Vladimir offers to tell the story of two thieves in the
Bible to pass time. Eastragon, however, is disinterested in the story and declares: I am
doing. Yet he doesn't move. Such a dichotomy between proposal and action
underlines element of the absurd in the play, which will be repeated several times.

The story of two thieves was used by Beckett in Murphy also, where Neary says,
"Remember also one thief was saved". In the Bible three Evangelists speak of the
thieves: St. Luke 23:43 speaks of a thief being saved. Of the other three Evangelists,
St. Matthew 27:38 and 27:44, and St. Mark 15:27, contrary to Vladimir's assertion,
do mention the thieves. Thus, an inaccuracy is committed by Vladimir when he says,
"Only one speaks of a thief being saved . . . of the other three two don't mention any
thieves." This inaccuracy can be attributed to the theme of "uncertainties" in the
play. Besides, Vladimir is not a student of theology.

Vladimir maintains that people believe the kindlier version of the story because they,
possibly, hope that they too shall be saved if they have the faith even of one of the
malefactors.

After some feverish movement Estragon alternately turning his back to the
auditorium and then facing it, is appreciative of the "Inspiring psopects" and suggests
they leave. Vadimir, however, reminds him: We are waitingfor Gadot. This, like"
Nothing to be done," is one of the leitmotifs that run through the play and give it
cohesion. The two &amps, however, are not sure about the place and day they were
to meet Godot. As they stand by the leafless tree near which they were to meet
Godot, Vladimir tries to guess about the species of the tree. Perhaps it is a willow, a
weeping-willow. With its leaves now dead, there will be no more weeping.
Suffering, in case of human beings too, ends with death. In the existentialist view
living is suffering.

Gogo and Didi keep contradicting each other about time and place of their
appointment with Godot, Vladimir, finally, turns towards the auditorium, which
alongwith the tree, should be the the place to meet Godot. Vladimir calls the
auditorium "that bog". Vladimir draws the audience too, into the absurd situation in
which the tramps themselves are. Here is another example of Brechtian influence.

Further, bog is a wet, muddy area, or, a toilet in informal British English. Look how
Beckett is reductive of the auditorium and audience. If Estragon slept in a ditch,
audience is in "the bog". Would you say that Beckett is, thus, trying to universalize
the absurd situation,

Estragon and Vladimir's uncertainly about their appointment further reinforces the
elusive and shadowy nature of Godot. Finally, Estragon falls asleep and has a dream,
during which Vladimir feels lonely, which shows that the two tramps need each
other's company very badly, This is further reinforced when they plan to commit
suicide together later in the play.

Estragon desires to narrate his dream to Vladimir, who declines to share his
nightmares. The intellectual, rational mind, Vladimir recoils in horror from the
fantasies of the creative mind, Estragon. Their conversation leads Estragon to an
obscene French joke which turns on the alleged preference of the English for
sodomy. Estragon invites Vladimir to embrace him which the latter does
relunctantly. Estragon, however, recoils since Vladimir stinks of garlics. So, if
Estragon has stinking shoes, Vladimir has stinking breath. Such paralellisms are a
pervasive feature of the play.
 for Godot
W~itittg Since they have nothing to do, Est~agonand Vladimir think of hanging themselves.
They, by mentioning "mandrakes", (p. 16) give an evidence of their love for
knowledge. An ancient fertility symbol, mandrake, is believed to grow below the
gallows. Note that death and birth being two facets of the same coin, Gallows, a
symbol of death, is put side by side with mandrakes, fertility symbol.

Also see the humorous situation how each is urging the other to commit suicide first,
They in the end decide not to do anything but wait for Godot to see what he has to
offer them.

Estragon's question: What exactly did we ask him for? sets off the first music-hall
type cross talk between the two tramps at the end of which the two sink into abrupt,
temporary silence. After a while they adopt a grotesquely rigid posture, remain
frozen in this posture as they hear some indiscernible voices or shouts. These give
them a scare and also a hope--hope about Godot's arrival.

Eastragon asks Vladimir whether they are tied. They are tied to "waiting" for Godot,
They cannot get away from it as doing so would mean giving up hope, howsoever
illusory that hope may be? Notice how Vladimir does not reply and the question is
dropped and then picked up again. In doing so Beckett replicates the
inconsequentiality of every day conversation in which the subject of discussion gets
dropped, and then is either lost sight of completely or picked up again much later.
Estragon's remark about the carrot, which he is eating, that "the more you eat the
worse it gets", elicits a sick response from Vladimir: "I get used to the muck as I go
along." His concluding remark that "The essential doesn't change" is an expression
of despondency about human condition. Or, may be of the futility of human struggle.
Or, further still, a belief that, at one level, change changes nothing, essentially
speaking. Or, as Pozzo would state: "The tears of the world are a constant quantity.

The tramps once again hear a terrible cry. They feel threatened and also wait
expectantly for the human source of cry to emerge on the stage. Their response to it is
a mixture of the comic and the pathetic. It also underlines their vulnerability and
need for each other.

Lucky enters, driven by Pozzo by means of a rope. Though Pozzo drives Lucky, he is
no less bound to Lucky himself. There is complementarity in the master-slave
relationship, which gets further reinforced in the Second Act, where Pozzo's
dependence on Lucky, as he goes blind, increases.

Beckett's "drama of inaction" does not really lack in action and suspense. See how
suspense is created about Pozzo's appearance on the stage. The audience too is
wondering, like the two tramps, whether this isn't Godot at last.

Pozzo, a local landlord introduces himself in a highly dramatic manner, which,

reflects his pride, his loudness and the pompous attitude. His arrogance and
pompousness are further reinforced, when he is peeved to find that his name does not
stir them. The two tramps on their part put on an act of not recognizing him in order
either to deflate Pozzo of his pompousness, or to make fin of him.

Pozzo on the other hand, is condescending in his attitude towards the two tramps,
who, he grants, belong to the same species as he (Pozzo), and have been made in
God's image Pozzo, thus is not only self-elevating, but is also, on the other hand,
undercutting God's image.

Estragon and Vladimir make statements in which they contradict themselves, about
their initial reaction to Pozzo and instantly create a comic situation.

The question, "Why doesn't he put down his bags?" asked on p.25 too is dropped, and
is not answered until p. 31, by Pozzo. Pozzo's exaggerated behaviour is quite comic
and in this backdrop his treatment of Lucky as a beast of burden underscores human
 Godot: A Critical
I
tragedy, Lucky, in order to impress Pozzo, doesn't put down his bags. In the Analysis-I
1 meanwhile they have a close look at Luclq and describe him by themselves lapsing
into a music hall cross talk. POZZO feasts on chicken and wine and Estragon craves
for the discarded bones, which Pozzo maintains should go to the carrier (Lucky).
I{owever, in face of Lucky's silence, they are offered to Estragon, who, to Vladimir's
embarrassment, darts at them and gnaws them.

Writing about Lucky, Professor Duckworth while making two suggestions about the
source of his name, says (i) Lucky is 'lucky' because he gets the bones or (ii) he is
lucky because he has no expectations, hence he'll not be disappointed in life. cf.
"Blessed are those who do not hope, for they shall not be disappointed." Is Estragon,
in usuiping Lucky's role as a taker of discarded bones, identifiable with him, in a
I
limited sense?
I
I

I
Pozzols speech on pp. 29-30 is noteworthy for its monologic'quality. Besides he
mimics a nervous public speaker, as Pozzo himself admits: 'You're making me
nervous." Before starting to answer the question, he "Sprays his throat . . . clears his
throat, spits". His exaggerated action heightens the comic effect.

There is drama with in drama, when Pozzo forgets the question he was asked and,
Vladimir and Estragon hct as prompters. The former prompts by mimicking Lucky
and the latter by uttering monosyllabic words and half sentences to help him recall
the question, which he finally does and gives his own explanation for this, ridiculing
"Lucky, son of Atlas" trying to impress him [Pozzo] in vain.

I Pozzo nonetheless realizes the blind freakish nature of fate. He could have been in
Lucky's position, if fate had so willed.

Lucky begins to cry when he learns that his master wishes to get rid of him. There is
an instance of black humour as black humour as Lucky's suffering affords Pozzo an
opportunity to poke fun at him and playfully suggest to Estragon to wipe away his
tears before he stops crying. As soon as Estragon approaches Lucky, the latter kicks
him violently in the shins. Estragon starts bleeding, and howls with pain. He, as if,
has replaced the weeping Lucky.

"Pozzo suddenly turns very philosophical, when he says: "The tears of the world are
a constant quantity: for each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops.
That is, human suffering remains unmitigated, Luclq, Pozzo acknowledges, taught
him all beautiful things.
1
I
The intellectual barrenness of Pozzo is symbolized by his baldness, in contrast to
! Lucky's abundant white hair. Pozzo's baldness fits well in the scheme of things.
I
There is all round barrenness! The subject of turning Lucky out of job is resumed and
I
we have the two tramps mockingly sympathizing with Lucky and Pozzo by turns. On
his part, Pozzo too acts as an aggrieved person at the hands of Luclq, He, however,
puts on a brave face when he asserts, I' Do look like a man that can be made to suffert'
I (34). The tramps are having a charming evening..
i
Here is an example of drama within drama, in which the two tramps now play the
role of audience to Pozzo's performance, It is made more apparent a little later. On
the next page (P.35) when Vladimir compares it [Pozzo's role] to the pantomime, the
music hall, and the circus. The idea of drama-within-drama reaches a climax when
Vladimir wishes to relieve himself of full bladder and asks to Estragon to 'Keep my
seat' (p. 35). In an immediate reverseal of roles Eastragon hurries Pozzo (to be a
spectator and) to watch Vladimir urinating.

Beckett, thus, breaks the illusion of the world of drama, which, paradoxically, at one
level, gets accentuated, In the meanwhile Pozzo loses his smoking pipe, of Kapp and
Peterson make, 'which he had smoked after eating chicken. Another comic situation
arises when Pozo who had got up to leave wants to sit for a while but wishes
 rr vrrrng j u r UoaOr Estrragon to request him to take a seat with all the formality attending it. The latter
in a rather comic and circumlocutory way asks him "to take weight off your feet. I
implore you, you'll catch your death" When asked by Pozzo, Estragon gives his name
as dams". Either Estragon assumes "Adams" to be (i) a character in the game he
plays with Pozzo, when he requests him to be seated, or (ii) Beckett thereby attempts
to add to the symbolic meaning of tile play representing the entire mankind.

Pozzo's indulges in a harangue about night; where it becomes synon)mous with

death, with Vladimir longing for night, "Will night never come?" - which will bring
relief, albeit temporary, from their long Waitingfor Godot. Pozzo has found the two
of them quite civil to him and wonders if he could do something for them, whereon
Estragon grabs the opportunity and says," Even ten francs would be welcome." A
comedy of error ensues when Vladimir is outraged at Estragon's lowering himself to a
beggar's level. Estragon, however, interprets Vladimir's angry words, "That is
enough," to mean that five fiancs would be sufficient, and is quick to declare that he
wouldn't settle for anything less than that.

Desiring to do something for the two, Pozo wishes to know what they would want
Lucky to do for them: dance, or going, or recite, or think. Vladimir, the intellectual
wishes to "hear him [Lucky] think but later on goes along with Estragon's preference
for 'dance' first and 'think' afterwards.

Lucky dances, which is another example of 'performance' within drama. As this

point Estragon playing the 'critic', attempts to dance like Lucky but fails.and almost
falls Beckett,thus, under scores the big hiatus between 'creativity' and 'criticism'. A
little later Vladimir too feels called upon to make some critical comment on Lucky's
dance. His "squiriming like an aesthete" only reveals his pretentiousness. Thus
Vladimir fails as a critic while Estragon fails as a performer.
I

.Footnote
Beckett mentions a numbel: of dances here which are as follows:

Farandole French dance performed in a long string.

, the fling Scottish impetuous dance.
a the brawl old French dance: mentioned in
Love's Labour Lost, 111, i, 5-6.
the jig a lively ('jerky) dance.
the fandango : 'lively Spanish dance.
the horn pipe : Sailor's dance.
Caper(ed) : danced in a frolicsome manner.

Lucky calls his dance variously, 'Thqscapegoat's Agony,' ' ~ h Hard

k Stool' and 'The
Net' a trap, Lucky's dance is supposed to convey agony, strain and entrapment. It
calls up the sehse-of being hunted, . . . having no escape in much the same way as
Estragon and Vladimir remain on stage (they da not move - p. 54 and p. 94); as there
is no other world for them.
.
When Estragon says "My left lung is very weak! But my right lung is as sound as
bell" it echoes the motif: One thief was saved the other was damned! Chances of our
, . being saved are fifty-fifty.

Reflecting on the basic situation of their life, Estragon notes: "Nothing happens
nobody comes, nobody goes, it is awful!" It applies, in. a limited way, to the play as
well.

After watching Lucky's dance the two of them want him to think. Pozzo tells them
that Lucky can't think without his hat on. This is comic, because the other three
22 cannot think with their hats on. You will see how in order to terminate Lucky's
 Godot: A Critical
thinking they have to remove his hat, as if an energizer has been removed from a Analysis-I
machme. Thinking, thus, becomes mechanical. This is in line with "thinking" later,
as a command performance. Lucky stops suddenly after commencing "thinking"
when he is commanded to "stop," and resumes when asked to "think" by Pozzo

MacGowran is of the opinion that Lucky's speech is really one long sentence.

General points from Lucky's speech a r e enumerated herebelow:

1. We are told God exists and loves us, yet we cannot be sure;
0

I We work, play, apply our rationale, yet none of these activities is able
2.
!
i
indefinitely to avert decay;

I 3. The physical world of water, earth, air and fire (or the elemental forces are)
is indifferent to man;

4. We must face the incapacity of our reason to make sense of life and the
inevitability o f our extinction.

5. Lucky's speech is a monologue of non-sequitur. Beckett has modified a

specific form of dramatic convention. He has altered the stream of
consciousness device to jar coherence at every level.

6. Lucky's attempt at thought stands as a brilliant monument to man's

entanglement in uncertainties.

Ruby Cohn has stated that "the repetitive passages summarize or parody several of
the play's themes: the erosive effect of time, the relativity of facts, the futility of
human activity, faith in God, and proof through reason" Samuel Beckett: The Comic
Gamut, p. 217.

"Lucky's speech is, thus, more than a continuous run-on of unpunctuated idiotic
words and phrases; there is a latent intelligibility" (Open University Lesson, p. ).

Lucky's speech begins with "Given the." We know "Given that" is a traditional way
of introducing a rational argument and a basis of deductive logic. Parody of
rationality in one sense, Lucky's speech is, in another sen'se, the ultimate in
rationality, because it makes the overall point that the faults of existence and the
surrounding universe do not submit to reasoned exposition or,rational explanation.

Lucky invents names like, Puncher and Wathnann which literally mean, ticket
puncher and tram-driver. Here they are supposed to be authors of theological works.
And in his in corntation of "Quaquaquaqua," theological jargon is mimicked.

When Lucky speaks of "divine apathia, divine athambia divine aphasia loves us
dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown ,".. .: he highlights a God who is
insensitive to human suffering, God whose existence too is questioned.'

Beckett, it seems, is being ironical when he refers toGod's heights of divine apathia:
which means freedom from or insensibility to suffering, or athambia, that is,
'imperturbability' or unsurprisability; or, aphasia, which means muteness, or
inability to communicate. In addition, the unsyrnpathatic universe is convyed by the
stage decor, and the futility of life through the sand that Lucky carries.

Acacacacademy of Anthropopopometry: Academy of man measurement.

Anthropometry is measurement of the human body, distortion of spellings by adding

'caca' and 'popo' to academy and anthropometry respectively.
WaitingJor Godot caca and popo: Childish words for excrement and chamberpot respectively.

Crowned: awarded (a prize).

Essy-in-Possy: Lat. esse, to be, and posse, to be able, being able, potential existence:
are terms from medieval scholastic jargon, here conveying parody of university
training in philosophy and theology.

Testew, Cunard: Names coined after private human parts. Testicle: male
reproductive gland. Cunt: a very rude and offensive word that refers to a woman's
vagina.

Fartov, Belcher: Names of vulgar origin. Fartov: derived fro~n'to fart', 'Belcher1--
from 'to belch.'

In Lucky's speech, Beckett wishes to underline that inspite of the shrinking and
dwindling over ages and the knowledge of the decline of man and his unmitigated
suffering, the labours of Testew and Cunard (i.e. procreation) continue.

Fletcher calls Luclq, "senile professor, decayed scholar and degraded man of
reason," who makes a kind of statement that in spite of the existence of a loving God
(of sorts) and progress of various kinds, man is in full decline." Science offers no
more consolation than does theology.

Human activity is summarized, in brief, as alimentation and defecation.

Does Beckett, through Lucky's surface gibberish, demonstrate his irreverence for
logically connected thought?

It is interesting to note that Wellwotth in The Theatre of Protest and Paradox,

identifies this parody of stream of consciousness monologue as the clearest statement
of Beckett's belief in the uselessness of thought.

Feckham: Invented name of a fictitious London district.

Peckham, Fulham: Possibly two places where the poet Blake had visions.

Clapham: an area in London district.

Per caput: per head

Bishop Berkeley: The French version reads Voltaire; an earlier English version reads
Samuel Johnson. All these thinkers are of the 18th century, called the age of Reason
and Enlightenment. Berkeley, an Irish philosopher (1685-1753), was one of the great
empiricists and a leading representative of the brand of philosophy lcnpwn as
idealism. According to Berkeley, things which cannot be perceived cannot be I

supposed to exist; since God perceives everything, this, thus ensures its existence.
Perhaps Beckett introduced Berkeley into Lucky's speech to link with Estragon's
question: 'Do you think God sees me?' (Fletcher, p. 76) i.e. Estragon while seeking
reassurance of God's existence seeks his own.

Lucky's thinking aloud is a "command perfom~ance".The torrent of his incoherent

speech is a paraody of stream of consciousness monologue and is clearest statement
of Beckett's belief in the uselesness of thought. Lucky's thougl~tcan be terminated
by taking his hat off his head.

Thinking thus, becomes a mechanicd process, as do the subsequent movements of

Lucky, who appears cornpletely~exhausted.
 Godot: A Critical
TO ensure that there is no possibility of Luclcy going into his 'fit' of thinking again, Analysis-I
pozzo crushcs Lucly's hat under his feet.

I
1
pozzo who had earlier lost his dudeen and, vapourizer, finally loses his watch too. It
sen,ains a mystery as to how and where they are gone!

Half-hunter: Hunter: a watch whose face is protected with a metal case (a

half-hunter, if that case has a small circle of glass let in).

Dead-beat: Quite overcome, exhausted, tired.

Escapement: An escape: part of a time piece connecting the wheel work with
the pendulum or balance, and allowing a tooth to escape at each vibration.
The 'dead-beat escapement', connects up with the theme of exhaustedness of
the tramps, Pozzo and Lucky.

Instead of searching his fob (a small watch poclcet in the waistband of trousers) for
watcl~,Pozzo doubles up, and tries to apply his ear to his stomach, to hear its
(watch's) tick-tock rather than feel it and see whether it is there or not. The play is full
of such clowning or coinic actions, which in the present case is made funnier by
Estragon and Vladimir's joining Pozzo to hear the watch's ticking.

When told that tic1 -lock is not of the watch but of his beating heart, Pozzo's response
is: "(disappointed) Damnation!" His response raises many questions: Is Pozzo
disappointed wit11 life ticking away? Or, with life continuing like this7 Or, with not
being able to locate his watch? Does his response not take the play off to
existentialist level? The comic situation is carried further as Pozzo's interest right
now seems to be more in his watch than in his heart. Pozzo who got ready to depart
on a couple of occasioils but did not, appears to feel tied down to the situation as do
Estragon and Vladimir.

Further, Estragon's response: 'Such is life', shows that it is difficult to depart both
from the 'situation' one is in, and also from 'life'; as has been shown by the failed
attempts of thc tramps to commit 'suicide' and thus depart from it. Finally, the two of
them leave and Vladiinir, with a sense of satisfaction remarks: "That passed the
time". Estrogen's reaction to it that "It would have passed in any case'' brings into
sharp focus a sense of inevitability, and acceptance of the reality of life.
I Vladirnir and Estragon's talk about the change, both, Pozzo and Lucky have
I undergone, shows that they have met them before.
i

For Vladimir, this encounter has happened before and will happen again, in Act 11,
when the two have "changedu--Pozzo having gone blind and Lucky dumb. Estragon
seems to have forgotten about their earlier meeting, but he questions Vladimir why
I did they not recognize them'? Vladimir with a sense of self-importance says: "I too
pretended not to recognize them" It shows not only the hurt 'self-esteem' of the tramp,
I but simultaneously such reactions, comic in nature, evoke laughter too.

The appearance of the Boy (Godot's messenger's) towards the end of Act I does many
things simultaneously. In the first instance his words assure us that Godot exists.
The Boy's appearance brings hope and terminates it in the same breath. He,
however, regenerates hope when he holds out promise for Godot's arrival the next
day. He introduces some mystery, and also establishes connection between Godot
and the God of the Bible by disclosing the work which he and his brother are engaged
in: looking after the sheep and the goats, a familiar biblical image. And, finally, the
word "again" in Vladimir's "Off we go again", shows that the boy has been here
before,
Wnititzgfor Godot The Boy addresses Vladimir as Mr. Albert and Vladimir responds to it. He is lcind
and more humane towards the Boy, whereas, Estragon is harsh in tone, and behaves
like a bully.

Vladimir attempts to pacify Estragon by indirectly reminding him of his [Estragon's]

own plight at the hands of his tormentors. Estragon's attitude towards the Boy shows
that the victimized don't hesitate in victimizing others, as is seen in Lucky's kicking
of Estragon earlier in the play. In the course of their conversation we are informed
that Godot beats the Boy's brother; and thus the play's leitmotif, "one thief was
saved, the other damned" in repeated. One brother is beaten, the other is not.

When the Boy states that he does not know whether he is happy or unhappy living
with Godot, Vladimir includes: You are as bad as myself. Suddenly the light fails
and in a moment it is night which brings a sense of relief to him, as that will put an
end to their futile wait for Godot, and will, possibly, bring rest and sleep to them.
This also provokes Estragon, the poet, to quote from P.B. Shelley's poem "To the
Moon": "Art thou pale for wearinesslof climbing heaven and gazing on the earth."

Eastrogon leaves his boots at the edge of the stage and intends to leave barefoot. To
Vladimir's suggestion that he can't go barefoot, Estragon, who has all his life
compared himself to Christ, replies: Christ did.

Estragon wishes to be reminded to bring a bit of rope to commit suicide the next day,
and also recalls an abortive attempt at suicide he had made earlier in his life by
jumping into the IRhone. He was, then, fished out by Vladimir. Twice did he try to
'depart' from life, but could not. Having stayed together for about fifty years
Estragon, wonders if they wouldn't have been better off alone. The two are different
in character and in action, yet at some level they are so very similar, and
complementary that they realize that separting now from each other is not worth its
while. Together they decide to leave but do not move, and remain frozen in their
situation.

The fact that they do not move after suggesting so underscores the disjuilction
between language and its meaning, besides highlighting the static n'ature of the play
1 UNIT 3 CRITICAL ANALYSIS-I1

( Structure
I

3.0 , Objective

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Brief Comments and Important Questions

J
3.3 Critical Analysis : Act I1

3.4 Let.Us Sum Up

1
I

I 3.5 Glossary
3.6 Questions

3.0 OBJECTIVE

The objective of this Unit is to complete the critical analysis of the play and relate the
Second Act of the play to Act I.

1 3.1 INTRODUCTION

Before we resume analysis of the text, we will raise some questions, which you will
do well to answer so that you can follow the discussion of the play later in Units 4
and 5 better.

1
I

I
3.2 BRIEF COMMENTS AND IMPORTANT POINTS TO
PONDER OVER: ACT 11

As the curtain goes down on Act I, we find the two tramps frozen in their situation.
Going by your experience of reading plays by other playwrights, what expectation do
you have in this play when the curtain goes up in the second Act?

In the first Act we found Estragori and Vladimir waiting for the elusive Godot. Do
you think the two tramps would not be Waiting for Godot as expectantly as they did
in the first Act? You would recall that in the first Act, the two tramps do not state
exactly what they expect Godot to do for them. Can you make a guess about their
expecation?

Do they expect him to improve their life in any specific manner? Is there any
indication about it in the play?

Or, do you think they will give up their wait for him?

If they terminate their wait, where would they go? Do they have anywhere to go?
IVoitittgfor Gotlot As noted earlier, Beclcett presents a starltly austere setting and deprives his characters
of any antecedents, and gives them little huinan dignity. In view of this existentialist
situation do you think the tramps will achieve anything even if Godot came? To put
it differently, would their waiting or not-waiting for Godot make any difference to
their life?

And, in the baclcground of this existentialist situation, is any fulfilment possible in the
life of Estragon and Vladirnir?

We will discuss various aspects of the play in later units of the study material,
However, to understand the structure of the play, please make note of repetitions and
differences at all levels in the play, especially keeping in mind the situatioil of the
two tramps and their relationship with each other.

Towards the end of both the Acts the two tramps propose to move and yet dorz't and
the curtain in both cases, falls with the stage directions: "They don't move."

Is there any finality in the ends of the two Acts? Why or why not?

3.3 CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF ACT I1

When the curtain goes up at the bepinning of Act 11, we see that the tree, which was
leafless in the first Act, has four or five leaves. Vladimir, however, exaggerates on p.
60 and says "It's covered with leaves." The swift leafing keeps the tree at the centre
of attention and speculation. Beckett gets a great deal from this visual image: it can
stand for spring, as Estragon comments; for renewals, and the cycle of life. The
leafing can stand for hope as well. Yet the tree is associated with death, since the two
planed to hang themselves from it, and reminds us of Christ's crucifixion.

Vladimir moves about feverishly on the stage and suddenly begins to sign a dog
song-- an old Gelman ballad.

When we go through the seemingly circular dog song, it appears we could go on and
on with it; it seems never-ending, but Vladimir's brooding repetition of the word
"tomb" "tomb" "tomb" gives that idea a conclusiveness, a finality; the word itself
conveys a final destination. The song is circular, but the effect is linear. Its syntax,
using so simple a vocabulary, with its repetition and its emphasis on death, brings to
mind Lucky's very different speech in Act I. The dog song ends with "tomb", Lucky's
speech ends with 'I the labors abandoned left unfinished . . . so calm . . . cunard . . .
unfinished . . ,." We thus see presentation of balance and antithesis throughout the
play

Meeting of the two tramps in Act 11 begins on a note identical to the one we have at
the beginning of Act I.

In Act I, Estragon was joined by Vladimir, it is vice-versa here. Also, Vladimir's

. invitation to embrace in Act I1 is slightly differently worded. At the end of the
embrace Estragon who is no longer supported by Vladimir, almost falls. This
manifests the complementary nature of their relationship, Nonetheless, their nagging
continues and each claims to be better off without the other. Vladimir also questions
Estragon about his tormentors and whether they beat him again. Their beating of
Estragon defies all reason.

Both the tramps, nonetheless, feel happy having come together, and would wait for
Godot. Things also seem changed since the previous day. But Estrogen's statement:
It's never the same pus is a sick remark about living and the passage of time; it hints
28
 Critical Analysis-I1
also at its (life and time's) irreversibility/irreversiblemovement/unidirectional
movement.

Estragoil has forgotten everything which took place the previous day. Vladimir's
to remind him end up with another sick remark about his life condition. He
has, he states, crawled about in the mud all his lousy life, and never stirred from the
muck heap of lit. Vladimir uns~~ccessfully attempts to calm him down, but Estragon
expresses his disgust at his failed life saying, "I've puked my puke of a life" (p.62).
He also echoes Pozzo's words about Lucky (p.32) and wishes. "The best thing would
be to kill me, like the other." Vladimir, however, reminds him of the Biblical saying,
"To every man his little cross . . . Till he dies . . ... And is forgotten."

The two are inexhaustible in inventing new ways of passing time (see discussion of
the play). They once again lapse into music hall cross talk wherein they speak of the
dead voices, which according to Martin Esslin are "the rustling, murmuring voices of
the past, are the voices we hear in the three novels of his trilogy; they are the voices
that explore the mysteries of being and self to the limits of anguish and suffering.
Vladinlir and Estragon are trying to escape hearing them."

The cross talk here stresses that death is as inadequate as life, and at the end of it they
once again fall back on Godot.

AS a means of passing time they propose different things: to sing, to think or to

contradict each other, or ask each other questions. They also agree that if they
thought less, there will be that much less misery, since "to think is to be full of
sorrow" - as Keats would have us believe.

To the two tramps the audience and the auditorium assume metaphorical and
existeiltialist propoi-tion. In another example of Brechtian influence, their remark,
"Where are these corpses . . , skeletons . . . A charnel house! A charnel house"
embraces the audience and the auditorium (wherein copses/skeleton and charnel
house refer to audience and auditorium respectively).

Lucky's speech in Act I emphasized the failure of religion and science to help
inankind in such a world, Estragon now suggests that they turn to Nature for
'succour'. But Vladimir knows that that too has failed.

Looking at the tree "covered with leaves" they become unsure about the place of their
\ last visit. Their inability to recall the past truthfully is compounded by the fact that
nothing has happened in their life for over half a ckntury. Besides, there is-nothing
certain in Beckett's world. Estragon, by association; tries to recall their earlier visit
through the kick Lucky gave him; he, however, does not remember the bones given
by Pozzo. Vladimir wishes to confirm it by showing the wound Estragon had
received, which has begun to fester in a day's time--so fast is the process of
degenaration. The idea of the uncertainty is further underlined by Estragon's
unsureness about the colour of his boots.

Throughout this exchange Vladimir has been patiently leading his friend towards
what he hopes (vainly, as it turns out) will be an incontrovertible demonstration of the
fact that they were in very truth at the same spot the previous evening. Such small
insignificant and absurd situations in their life enable the two to have the
"impression" that they exist, The use of the word 'impression' gives a feeling of
vagueness about their existence; "the impression" means we believe that something is
the case, often when it is not actually so. Such is their life,

In line with the motif of uncertainty (and vagueness about the identity of Godot, the
exact time and place of their appointment with Godot) is their indefiniteness about
' the boots which Estragon had left behind when the curtain went down on the first

Act. Further, the boots, which Estragon now finds "too big," reinforce what Lucky's
speech had stated about human life. About the boots Beckett wrote +oDuckworth:
. Waitiitgfor Godor 'The second day boots are no doubt the same as first and Estragon's feet wasted,
pined, shrunk and dwindled in interval;' as Lucky's speech had warned. This evokes
further questions. How does it happen overnight? Is there a longer interval between
the two Acts than is indicated in the play? Is the 'Next Day' being used
metaphorically rather than literally?

Desiring to rest now Estragon angrily puts an end to discussion about the boots. He
soon falls asleep in a foetal posture while Vladimir sings lullaby in a loud voice.
whole sequence brings out mother-child relationship between the two tramps, (cf.
Shoes should be aired.) This is reinforced by Vladimir's laying his coat across
sleeping Estragon's shoulder and his maternal assurance to the scared 'child'
(Estragon), when the latter "wakes with a start,'' and, "casts about wildly." (p.70).

Tired, Estragon suggests they leave, but is reminded by Vladimir that they are
Waitingfor Godot. He also complains about the night that does not fall. Night
which will bring only temportary relief followed by a long period of despair, the next
day.

Vladimir rebukes him for always complaining about things. To be able to pass time
and fill the void, the two, now, decide to re-enact the Pozzo-Lucky drama, with
Vladimir choosing to play Lucky. He asks Estragon to curse him, as Pozzo cursed
Lucky earlier in the play. Estragon begins with mild one and later calls him
"Gonococcus! Spirochaete!" (p.73). In a huff Estragon exits left but rushes back to
Vladimir fearing the arrival of his tormentors. He, however, is uncertain about their
identity and their number. Vladimir, nonetheless, assures Estragon that it is Godot,
and that they are saved. Estragon next rushes to the right and finds them coming
there too. It is a "no exit" situation for him when Vladimir tells him: There is no way
out there.

Beckett thus humorously exploits the fact of being in a theatre. Fletcher remarks,
- "the stage, in Beckett, has a particular reality, It is not a facsimile of a middle class
living room as in a 'drawing room comedy', but a place in its own right . . . . The
stage is an emblem of the notion of imprisonment."

In yet another example of Brechtian influence, Vladimir gestures towards the

audience and remarks: There! Not a soul in sight! The statement further brings into
focus the existentialist theme in the play.

Vladimir suggests Estragon to disappear, whereon the latter attempts to hide himself
behind the tree, but fails. They now stand back to back to watch out for the 'coming'
people. Once again they suggest to play game to pass time. Now they decide to
abuse each other.

They call each other moron, vermin, abortion, sewer-rat, morpion, curate, etc.
' Estragon calls Vladimir "Crritic" and silence's him. Beckett, the creative writer
seems censorious of critic, using the term opprobriously. Udng "critic" as an abuse
seems the ultimate. Besides, from a highly formal note, their banter degenerates into
personal abuse.

Soon they make it up. Vladimir acts maternally once again and invites him to his
'breast'. They, once again, lapse into a music hall cross talk, and then decide to do
their exercises, including deep brcathing. Estragon however is tired breathing. A
seemingly innocuous remark, once more, points at the existentialist dimensions of the
play and expresses Estragon's sense of futility of living. He shouts for God's pity and
is joined in by Vladimir.

Pozzo and Lucky enter, Pozzo is blind and is now led by the latter Lucky. Rope has
become much shorter. This too fits well in the scheme of things where humans
shrink and dwindle. With distance between the two reduced, they seem to have come
30
, .
closer to each other, existentially, too. One may ask: Has Pozzo, the master, become Critical Analysis-11
his dependent? Are the roles reversed?

Pozzo-Lucky couple here seems to illustrate Gloucester's line in King Lear, "'Tis the
time's plague, when mad men lead the blind."

~ u c k yand Pozzo fall and shout for help. With their arrival, Vladimir hopes, they
will be able to see the evening out. While these two discuss whether to help the
fallen Pozzo or not, the latter keeps shouting for it. Vladimir does not wish to waste
time in idle discourse and wishes the two of them to avail of the chance to help
pozzo, as a representative of "manltind", the "foul brood to which a cruel fate has
consigned us". (p.79).

Lost in diatribe against fate and humanity, Vladimir, goes tangential and does not
hear Pozzo's cries for help. In this ''immense confusion", that the world is, he finds
only one thing certain that they are Waiting for Godot.

Vladimir is conscious of the unavailing nature of the games they play to fill the void
while Waiting for Godot. It's a sort of self-deception.Vladimir looks at the chance to
help Pozzo as a "diversion" in the midst of immense confusion, in the midst of
nothingness.

Vladimir, finally, tries to pull Pozzo to feet, but fails and himself falls. He too shouts
for help now. After a long dilly dallying Estragon extends a helping hand to
Vladimir, but he falls on the "sweet mother earth," where he wants to have a little
nap. "This multiple fall Beckett sees as 'the visual expression of their common
situation and as being related to the threat in the play of everything fallingt' (Fletcher,
p. 68).

Disturbed by Pozzo's cries, Estragon suggests Vladimir to silence him by kicking

him in the crotch, which he does. Crying with paill Pozzo crawls away. Once again
they invite Pozzo, who does not respond. They call him Abel, and Lucky Cain, and
imagine the blind Pozzo to have the power to see into the future.

Together they hoist Pozzo, his anns around their necks. They cart him around, for a
while. Vladimir uses Latin Memoriapraeteritorum bonorum to describe Pozzo
thinking of his past happiness. The two tramps, you will observe, can quote the
Bible and Shakespeare, and speak Latin. How lightly they carry their erudition! Is
Beckett ridiculing scholarly pursuit in much the same way as he ridicules a critic's
vocation in Godot?

Speaking of his blindness Pozzo informs them that he "woke up one fine day as blind
as fortune" (86). Pozzo questions them about their whereabouts and asks, "isn't by
any chance the place known as the Boardw--a humorous reference to theatre. .
Vladimir's faithful description of the stage and its properties, and Pozzo's response
thereto on p. 87: "Then it's not the Board," is reminiscent critics' initial reactions to
Beckett's avant garde theatre. It also shows how Beckett was able to anticipate
critics' response to Godot.

Pozzo enquires about his menial and suggests ways of awakening him from his sleep,
which will provide Estragon an opportunity to "revenge" himself, Finding Lucky
breathing, Estragon begins to kick him, but in turn he hurts himself and comes
limping and groaning. Pozzo who had till now not recognized Vladimir and Estragon
does so now, and gets ready to leave. Lucky we learn carries sand, a symbol of
burden and of time (in hour glass), in his bag.

Pozzo, in his blindness, has acquired a new insight into the meaning of life and
human existence, which underlines the absurdity of life, Life is a mere series of
meaningless repetitious activities. Journey from womb to tomb is full of miseries.
Delivery is no deliverance.
Waitingfor Godot Pozzo's last word "On!" as he leaves the stage, (on p. 88) now closely tied to Lucky,
is leading them both to death. That "On!" is itself tied to Pozzo's most important last
words: "They give us birth astride of a grave .. .", which make the first significant
existentialist statement on human life.

After Pozzo and Lucky leave Vladimir makes comments on his own condition, on the
cries of tormented man and innocent babe, on watchers and watched, on those awake
and those asleep. A series of seeming balances and anti-theses, and
complementarities, but again the emphasis is on death. He repeats Pozzo's words,
"Astride of a grave . . . puts on the forceps" (p.89). He uses the imagery of a child
birth by forceps: Obstetrician becomes grave digger, and forceps correspond to
shovel. Vladimir's journey is slower than Pozzo's; the crucial word is "lingeringly".
His is a long day's journey into night--so painful that he says, "I can't go on!"

In a repeat of the first Act we have the Boy. Vladimir, unlike in Act I, asks the Boy
no questions. Instead he makes statements. For the first time Vladimir asks him
about Godot, and if he has a beard. The Boy replies, "I think it is white Sir"
According to Beckett, the whiteness shows that Godot is very old: if he were less
experienced there might be some hope" (Fletcher, p. 70).

Under theke circumstances, Vladimir asks for God's pity for both, and possibly for the
entire humanity. Disappointed with Godot's non-arrival and the fbtility of wait they
think of leaving, bowing they can't go far away from here as they will have to come
back to wait for Godot the next day. Estragon proposes 'Let's go," but "they do not
move." The pattern is repeated. It further reinforces the static nature of action in the
play. They have nowhere to move to. It is all a landscape of barrenness and despair,
of Dr. Faustus:

Faustus: Where are you damn'd?

Mephostopheles: In hell.
Faustus: How comes it then that thou art out of hell?
Mephostopheles: Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it. (I, iii, 75-78).

Nor are the two tramps out of their hopeless situation in life.

3.4 LET US SUM UP

Waitingfor Godot is a play with a difference and so it has been called an avant garde
play. In units 2 and 3 we have analysed the play covering both the acts, highlighting
scenes, sequences, characters, language and issues that the play raises.

3.5 GLOSSARY

Music Hall:

Variety entertainment of songs and comic turns at which the audience could buy
drink. It developed from the tavern entertainments. Gradually with changes in the
theatrical licensing laws, the pub connection vanished though it was normal for there
to be bars around the main music hall so that the entertainment could be combined
with alcoholic refreshment. The programmes of the music hall in its heyday were
really 'variety' shows in nature. Songs and comedy were accompanied by acrobats,
animal acts, and even interludes by legitimate actors, ballet dancers etc. The 1960s
have seen something of a revival, however, starting, just where music hall did
originally, as free entertainment in bars of working class public houses.
 Cross Talk: Critical Analysis-I1
In 'cross-talk' two comedians swap gags or fail comically to understand each other.
Nowadays it is no longer a living form of entertainment. Usually, of the two
comedians,one is a 'straight' man and the other a 'funny' man. The comedy arises out
of comedian 'A' trying, for instance, to explain to 'B', the complexities of the traffic
system or income-tax rules, and feign exasperations at the latter's comic propensity
for getting the wrong end of the stick. An echo of this sort of comedy can be heard
frequentlyin the quickfire exchanges between Vladimir and Estragon in this play.

I Myth of Sisyphus:

In Greek mythology son of Aeolus whence he is called Aeolides. He was mamed to

Merope, a daughter of Atlas, became by her the father of Glaucus, Ornytion,
Thersander and Halmus. In later accounts he is called a son of Autolycus, and the
father of Ulysses by Anticlea; whence we find Ulysses sometimes called Sisyphides.
He is said to have built the town of Epl~yra,afterwards Corinth. As king of Corinth
he promoted navigation and commerce, but he was fraudulent and avaricious. His
wickedness was punished in the lower world, where he was condemned forever to
roll uphill a marble block, which as soon as it reached the top always rolled down
again.

1 Vaudeville:

More or less the American equivalent of British music hall, vaudeville consists of a
series of comic, musical, acrobatic actions, deriving from the rough vulgar beer. hall
entertainments of the middle 19th century. The heyday of vaudeville was almost
exactly contetnporary with that of music hall, from the early 1890s to the mid 1920s;
and in America as in Britain, it was ousted mainly by the cinema, particularly the
talkies.

Existentialism -

May be defined as a school of thought based on the conception of the absurdity of the
universe and the consequent meaninglessness and futility of human life and action; as
.
Sarlre has put it--all human activities are equivalent, all are destined. . . to defeat.
One of the basic tenets of Sartre's existentialism, is that man can shape his own
I
destiny by the exercise of his will in the face of the given set of potentialities which is
his life. The main premiss is the concrete fact that man exists; predetermination is
i denied. Man has freedom of choice and action; and each man's actions, while
I
subjectively inspired, influence other people, so every individual is responsible to
humanity as a whole. No dogmatic solutions of the eternal questions of ultimate
origins or endings are offered. A man can choose his faith. An existentialist, says
I
Sartre, can be Christian or atheist.
, (From Everyman's Encyclopaedia)
I 1

I
Adamov, Arthur (1908-70) French playwright of Armenian origin. Adamov's
I twenties and thirties, were marked by loneliness and neurosis, chronicled in L'Aveu
I (The Confusion, 1946) and L'liomnzie et L'Enfant (Man and Child, 1968). He began
' 1

I writing plays after the Second World War. The masterpiece of this period is
1 Professor Taranne (1953). In 1955 when the theatre of the Absurd, with which his
name had been linked, was becoming well known, Adamov's Ping Pong heralded a
move towards a more politicized theatre. His other plays are Paolo Paoli (1957) Off
Limits (1969) Ifsummer Returned (1970).

Balzac, Honorefde (1799-1 850) depicted French society with utmost realism. His
greatness lies in his ability to transcend mere representation and to infuse his novels
with a kind of "suprarealism". Another aspect of Balzac's extreme realism lies in his
attentJon to the prosaic exigencies of everyday life.
Waiting for Godot
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956). During his early period in his career Brecht trained
actors and began to develop theory of dramatic technique known as epic theatre.
Rejecting the methods of traditional realistic drama, he preferred a loose narrative
form in which he used distancing devices such as asides and masks to create a
historical frame around the action. The technique prevents the spectator from
identifying with the characters on stage. This is known as alienation effect.

Camus, Albert (b. Mondovi, French Algeria, 1913, died France, 1960). He was a
philosopher, novelist, and playwright. He believed human beings are not absurd and
the world is not absurd, but for humans to be in the world is absurd. Attracted by the
theatre, he organized the avant-garde drama group Theatre de Equipe in 1935 and
worked with it until 1938. Among his important plays are The Adisunderstanding,
Caligula, State of Siege, 1948, The Just Assassins 1950. His Tlze Myth of Sisyphus,
1955, brought immediate recognition to him. In 1957, Camus was awarded the
Nobel Prize for literature, no mean achievement for a person born of humble parents -
- an itinerant agricultural labourer for father and a charwoman for mother.
Heidegger, Martin (1889-1 976), German philosopher, who developed existential
phenomenology.

In Sein und Zeit (Being and Time, 1927), Heidegger was concerned with the
philosophical question: What is it, to be? What kind of "being" human beings are?
They are, he said, thrown into a world that they have not made, but that consists of
potentially useful things, including cultural as well as natural objects. Heidegger
posited a fundamental relation between the mode of being of objects, of humanity,
and of the structure of time. The injividual, according to him, is however, always in
danger ofbeing submerged in the world of objects. The feeling of dread (Angst)
brings the individual to a confrontation with death and the ultimate meaninglessness
of life, but only in this confrontation can an authentic sense of Being and of freedom
be attained.

Ionesco, Eugene @.Romania, 1912, naturalised French citizen). At a performance of

an Ionesco play, there is a considerable laughter in the audience: it is man laughing at
his own emptiness, his own triviality. Ionesco's first few plays are The Bold Soprano
and La Lecon (The Lessons, 1950), Rhinoceros and Anedee 1953. He calls his plays
"comic dramas" or "tragic farces," because the elements of the comic and tragic are
not fused. For Ionesco they co-exist, and each stands as a criticism of the other. In
198 1, a new play Voyages Chez Les Adorts (Jot,rneys to the Hornes of the Dead)
recaptured the hallucinatory quality of early work.

Kierkegaard, Soren Aabye (1813-1 855), Danish religious philosopher, whose

concern with individual existence, choice, and commitment profoundly influenced
modem theology and philosophy, ezpecially existentialism. He applied the term
existential to his philosophy because he regarded philosophy as the expression of an
Intensely examined individual life. Kierkegaard stressed the ambiguity and
paradoxical nature of the human situation. The fundamental problems of life, he
contended, were to defy rational, objective explanation; the highest truth is
subjective.
.I.
Kierkegaard maintained that systematic philosophy not only imposes a false
perspective on human existence, but that, it also, by explaining life in terms of logical
necessity, becomes a means of avoiding choice and responsibility. Individuals, he
believed, create their own natures through their choices, which must be made in the
absence of universal, objective standards. The validity of a choice can only be
determined subjectively.

Sartre, Jean Paul. First gave the term existentialism general currency by using it for
his own philosophy. Sartre's philosophy is atheistic and pessimistic. He declared that
human life is a "fut~lepassion." Sartre, nevertheless, insisted that his exislentialism is
 form of humanism, and he strongly emphasised human freedom, choice and Critical ' ~ n a l ~ s i s - 1 1
responsibility. Much of Sartre's work focuses on the dilemma of choice faced by free
indivld~alsand on the challenge of creating meaning by acting responsibly in an
indifferent world. In stating that "man is condemned to be free,'' Sartre reminds us
' of the responsibility that accompailies human decisions.

3.6 QUESTIONS

1 1. What changes have Pozzo and Lucky undergone during the course of the
I play?

2. Do you observe any difference in Pozzo's demeanour in Act II? Does he

seem to be more serlous and more philosophical than he is in Act I? What do
you think is the reason for it, and what is its significance?

1 3. Do you see any change in the language of Pozzo compared to that he uses in
r
the first Act?

, 4. Does the language used in Act I1 express the sense of metaphysical anguish
I
I
more explicitly than it did in the first Act?

5. What difference do you see in the relationship between Lucky and Pozzo? Is
there a reversal of roles in Act II?

I 6. How far, do you think, is Act 11a repeat of Act I? Do you see any
development in terms of plot, theme and characters in Act II?
I
I
i 7. How does the ending of Act I1 compare with the ending of Act I? Do you
1 find the end of Act I1 more optimistic or pessimistic than that of Act I? If so
t why? Give examples.
 UNIT 4: THEMES AND ISSUES-I

Structure

4.0 Objectives

4.1 Introduction

4.2 Godot as a Tragicomedy

4.3 Tragic, Comic, Absurdist and Godot

4.3.1 Godot and the theatre of the Absurd

4.3.2. Theatre of the Absurd and the audience response

4.4 Godot as an Existentialist play

4.4.1 Estragon and Vladimir Existentialist Characters

4,s Structure of Godot

4.6 Let Us Sum Up

I! 4.0 OBJECTIVES

The objectives of this Unit are to discuss in detail various aspects of Waiting for
Godot.

4.1 INTRODUCTION

A reading of the first three Units should have by now given you an idea of what the
play is about. In this Unit we propose to discuss Godot (i) as a tragicomedy, (ii) as an
absurd play, (iii) as an existentialist play, and finally, (iv) its structure.

4.2 GODOT AS A TRAGICOMEDY

As we pointed out earlier, Beckett, in his English translation, calls Godot a

tragicomedy, while in the original French it is merely a "piece en deux actes."
Waiting for Godot is a tragicomedy because it combines tragic and comic elements.

~acobsenand Mueller point out the "constant simultaneity of tragedy and comedy" in
Godot. If according to them, its barrenness situates the tragedy, then its construct
makes possible the comedy. David Grossvogel speaks of "part-tragedy, part comedy"
in the play.
I

li Let us first see why Waiting for Godot is not a tragedy, in spite of undertones of
tragedy in it.
 1 waiting for Godot cannot be called tragic in the traditional or any other sense because
it lacks the kind of sublimity which is believed to be the common attribute of most
Themes and Issues-I
I
tragedies. Yet we observe that Godot depicts a despair which in view of the
of hope in it, is nothing short of "heroic," heroic in the manner of "robust
I
optimism." Estragon and Vladimir will come back and wait for Godot day after day,
! although through their daily experience, they should know in their heart of hearts
(See Vladimir's response to the Boy's arrival on the second day--he seems to be able
to anticipate the message from Godot "Here we go again") that Godot will never
come, there is really little hope which they can look forward to. Besides, it won't
help even if he comes and is willing to grant their request, for they did not ask him to
do anything tangible for them. What they said to him was only "a sort of prayer, a
vngue supplication" (p. ).

h e r e is also something very moving in the plight of Estragon, who sleeps, as the
BOY tells Vladimir that Godot won't come even that day. His being beaten by the
; mysterious persons, in Act I, in addition to the kick from Lucky undefscores his
unenviable position fate has consigned him to.
I
In the second Act Pozzo has all but disintegrated. He, thus, acquires a near tragic
status. His pitiable cries in the second act are in stark contrast to his demeanour in
~ cI. t His cries of "help" however, do not remain specific but also symbolize human
suffering. a l e tragic element is more explicit in Pozzo-Lucky relationship. Pozzo,
like Marlowe's Tamburlaine is, in Act I, arrogant and domineering, treating Lucky as
beast of burden. (Tamburlaine too yokes his vanquished Asian potentates, to chariot,
and compels them to pull it.)

All through the play Vladimir has behaved as a sober, level-headed person capable of
enduring hopeless agony patiently. In the second Act even his pain seems beyond
endurance, as we see in his soliloquy in which he repeats a sentence of Pozzo,
elaborating it so as to give it an altogether new significance: .

Astride of a grave and difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the
grave-digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full
of our cries (he listens). But habit is a great deadener.

I Vladimir and Estragon create a situation of pathos. It is their dissimilarities--and also

their deep sense of mutuality--which bind them together, The relation between them
is so profound that it evokes in the spectators and readers a sympathy for them.

Waiting for Godot is also a dramatic statement of the human situation itself. The play
is a metaphor of one's tragic awareness of one's own self. The self that is caught up
in the endless process of decay and destruction.

In spite of a tragic scenario building up, the play successfully avoids being a tragedy.
How is it achieved by Beckett? Let us see.

Beckett deals with such a tragic situation of human life comically, and thus offers us
a subdued form of comedy to illustrate Nell's profound dictum in Endgame;

To (be'able to) laugh at our misery is the only way we have found of coming
to terms with'it.
I
YOUmust have observed that the two tramps invent various games to fill the "void"
that their life is. This is amply illustrated by Vladimir and Estragon when they make
".
such statements: , . we are inexhaustible" (62) and "We always find something. . .
to give us the impression we exist?" (p.69). This innovative skill of theirs keeps them
going in a world which otherwise is very stifling.

I
I
Further, Beckett uses various devices to camouflage the tragic nature of their
I situation. Lawrence Graner is of the opinion that Waiting for Goclot is a resolutely
I
Waiting for Godot comic play, its comedy is borrowed from the most direct of all forms of humour, the
circus. As has already been pointed out in Unit 1 Section 'Distinct features of the
play,' Waiting for Godot has many touches which are genuinely comic, whether
because of wit of the dialogue or the humour of character or situation or mime. There
is also comedy on the lower plane, comedy of the type seen on the music hall stage.
Quite understandably this occasionally degenerates into the farcical, or it would be
more correct to say that it assumes the aspect of the Absurd. Often, of course, the
comedy is not unalloyed with more serious implications, SO that the total atmosphere
is closer to "dark-comedy." The wit is at times a cover for a more profound response,

Estragon's mime when he struggles to take off his shoes and gives up in frustration, is I
soon followed by Vladimir's Chaplinesque gait and his cry of pleasure. The two
emotional states are at variance. Either the two do not feel together or they
misunderstand each other, at times deliberately. Again, Vladimir utters characteristic
feminine banalities "Boots must be . . . ," and "There's man all over for you, . . ." The
two statements, .we note are maternal and "wifely," respectively. The question that
needs to be asked is whether these lines are solely pathetic, comic, or a mixture of the
two. It appears they are both. The pieces of mime are funny, but moving too.

Throughout the play there is a sort of tragi-comic double vision--in a single utterance
and action. Tragic and comic feelings are visually underscored by mime. For
example, Vladimir is determined not to hear Estragon's nightmares. The latter pleads
with him in vain to listen to him, saying that there is nobody else to whom he may
communicate his private nightmares. When Vladimir is umelenting, EStragon turns
the tables on him by implying that Vladimir is afraid of listening to his dreams
because he finds it impossible to cope with another nightmare,. the Universe, in which
he himself is placed:

Estragon I had a dream.

Vladimir Don't tell me!
Estragon I dreamt that . . .
Vladimir Don't tell me!
Estragon (gesture towards the universe) : This one is enough
for you?

Here, Estragon's buttonholing of Vladimir is quite comic; his dream is tragic; and,
reference to the Universe makes it existentialist, simultaneously. Notice how the
three elements interpenetrate each other.

Further, sometimes the wit arises from the fact that one of the speakers, either really
mistakes the meaning of the other, or pretends to do so; i.e., the speaker puts a
construction on the words of the other. Thus, when Vladilnir wishes to tell Estragon
that he has done "enough" of begging and must stop it now; the latter applies the
word to the five francs he has asked for from Pozzo, rather than to his own beggar
like behaviour, which is actually intended by Vladimir. Look at the exchange
between Estragon, Pozzo and Vladimir:

Estragon Even ten francs could be welcome.

Vladimir We are not beggars.
Pozzo . . . But is it enough, that is what tortures me, is it
enough?
Estragon Even five.
Vladimir (To Estragon, indignantly) : That is enough!
Estragon I couldn't accept less.
Pozzo Is it enough?

See how Estragon deliberately misunderstands the word "enough" and adds to the
comic effect of the situation.
 Themes and Issues-I
Another example of farcical situation is wken Pozzo, not knowing the reason why
Vladimir has gone away, says to Estragon that Vladimir ought to have waited.
Estragon, who knows why Vladimir couldn't have waited longer (since he was feeling
the pressure of a full bladder), makes a witty comment on it.

Estragon He would have burst.

The use of the word 'burst' combines, both the farcical and the pathetic elements--as
Vladirnir suffers fi-om enlarged prostate gland.

During the course of the play the ways by which the two tramps pass time seem
funny at first sight, yet we feel that all of us at some time or the other, pass our life in
such transparent deceptions. We, thus, see that Beckett uses various devices to
subsume the tragedy of life by interlacing it with comedy.

4.3 TRAGIC. COMIC, ABSURDIST AND GODOT

Let us see to what purpose Beckett uses the tragic and comic elements in the play,
and how effective is their "commingling" in portraying Man's valiant attempts to face
up to the absurdity of life.

Explaining the absurdists' resistance to "the traditional separation of farce and

tragedy," Oliver I. William states that "the subject of the farce is the same as that of
tragedy: the terrible or comic discovery of rna~l'sabsurdity, ignorance and impotence.
The essential difference between the two forms is one of quality: farce arouses
laughter and tragedy draws out tears--tragedy awakens our sympathy, while farce
dispels our sympathy and frees our cruelty.'.' William goes on to add that the
absurdists, as Euripides once did, "commingle the qualities of farce and tragedy,
making us laugh at that which hurts us most, making us weep at that which is most
foolish in our nature." Most absurdists are best described as "ironists."

The absurdists' picture of life--reasonable though it is--is not a very popular view. A
confrontation with the absurdity of one's condition is an inescapable prerequisite if
one hopes to live sanely. William asks how then to administer this view to an
audience optimistically rooted in the certainty of faith--be it a God, or culture, or
even in potency of their own individuality. The answer, according to him, is simple:
pretend to give them something else. Make the play as amusing and sensational and
surprising as possible but bury the message in symbols. The ironic approach to life
and dramatic action is justified rhetorically since most of the audience finds it
difficult to equate the farcical cavorting with anything as disturbing as absurdity.
Furthem~ore,this approach is also justified thematically since the absurdist thinks of
life in the light of a tragic joke or comic tragedy.

4.3.1 Godot and the Theatre of the Absurd

In section (ii) Unit 1, 'Waiting for Godot and the Theatre of the Absurd' we have said
that an absurd play reflects the arbitrary and irrational nature of life, usually through
an arbitrary structure. Let us look at Godot as a play written in the "tradition" of the
Theatre of the Absurd.

What do we mean by absurd?

In philosophy, the tenn absurd means out of hannony with reason, or plainly opposed
to reason. The word is a compound of the Latin prefix ab meaning 'from' and the
Latin adjective surdus meaning irrational. Thus, philosophically the tenn applies to a
vlsion of the condition and existence of man, his place and function in the world, and
h ~ relationship
s with the universe. The idea of the absurd condition of man has arisen
 ' Waitingfor Godot mainly from the need to provide an explanation of rpan's purposeless existence in a
world which seems to be devoid of any meaning.

~ c c o r d i to
n ~William, "The absurdist playwrights believe that our existence is absurd
because we are born without asklng to be born, we die without seeking to die. We
live between birth and death trapped within our body and reason, unable to conceive
of a time in which we were not, or a time in which we will not be--for, nothingness is
I
very much the concept of infinity: something we perceive only in so far as we cannot
experience it. Thrust into life, armed with our senses, will and reason, we feel
ourselves to be potent beings. Yet our senses give the lie to our thought and om
thought defies our senses. There, ultimately, comes a sense of l~elplessnessand
impotei~ce--something,which the plays of Beckett also deal with.

The Absurdist playwrights deal with purposelessness of life and human existence
whlch they find out of harmony with its surroundings. The Absurd Drama as a genre
is based on the tenets summarised by Albert Camus in his essay "The Myth of
Sisyphus" (1942). The situation of Sisyphus (see Notes Unit III), for ever rolling a
stone up a hill, for ever aware that it will never reach the top is a perfect metaphor for
the play Waiting for Goclot too.

Such a futile action synlbolises all human effort on earth. Awareness of this lack of
purpose in all we do produces a state of metaphysical anguish which is the theme of
writers in thc Theatre of the Absurd. This idea is allowed to shape the form as well
as the content of the plays; all semblance of logical construction of the rational
linking of ideas in an intellectually viable argument, is abandoned, and instead the
irrationality of experience is transferred to the stage.

So, in Waiting for Godot everything can be looked up as a metaphor for the human
situation at its most 'absurd.' Godot could be talcen for anything or nothing.
Similarly with regard to Vladimir's and Estragon's journey through time, it is
pointless to consider whether it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive, because
arrival is never seriously in question and even hope is scarcely possible.

Just as we quizzically question the purpose of life, so do we question the plays of

Beckett and what they are about. Usually they leave the audience with a vague sense
of uncertainty about the theme of the play. Indeed, Beckett himself has made gentle
fun of spectators eager to know what his plays mean or who is Gorlot? In his third
full length play Happy Days, he has his heroine Winnie (who is throughout the play
largely buried in a mound of earth, first up to her waist, then up to her neck) take
exception to the comments of a couple of passers-by who want to know 'What's the
idea? . . . stuck up to her diddles in the bleeding ground? What does it mean? What
is it meant to mean? To herself obviously, she does not mean anything. she just is.
And in all of Beckett's plays we find a similar avoidance of exact definition. It is
because either Beckett himself does not know, or is not willing to define for himself,
who Godot is, what Winnie means, what is the significance of master-servant
relationship in Waiting for Godot and in E~zclgame,or any other of the questions
which arise while watching his plays. Beckett's attitude to the sense of uncertainty
that he sees around himself is reflected in a remark that he made about himself: ". . . I
have never in my life been on my way anywhere, but simply on my way." His life
seemed open-ended, as are his plays.

We will discuss the structure of Godot later. Here, however, let us see how the
structure of the play and the idea of 'absurd' form the warp and woof of the play.

Beckett rejects the received logic of fonn and conventional structurc, so that both
form and content support the representation of what may be called absurd
predicaments. In fact, as Beckett reminds us, in art matter and form must be the same
thing. The structure.of Lucky's discourse, for example, disjointed and incoherent as it
 may seem, is representative of irrationality and the mess called life. That is why it Thenies and Issues-I
makes sense or has a logic of its own in the ultimate analysis.

But one must ask whether the writer of the absurdist play does believe in the total
meaningless of life and huinan existence. If the author were totally convinced of the
meaninglessness of life, why would he go on living? Also, wouldn't it be pointless to
go on writing about the act of living? The mere fact of writing is an expression of
meaning by imposing some kind of an order or value on experience. As Eric Bentley
remarks, "Artistic activity is itself a transcendence of despair, and for unusually
despairing artists that is no doubt chiefly what art is: a therapy, a faith."

Tl~erefore,paradoxical as it inay seem the very act of writing about despair or the
mess of life, is an attempt by the absurdist witer to impose an order on 'disorder.'

4.3.2 Theatre of the Absurd and the Audience Response

Writing about the absurdity of life and theatre Martin Esslin states that the theatre of
the,Absurd has renounced arguing about the absurdity of human conditions; it merely
presents it in 'beingt--that is, in terms of concrete stage images of the absurdity of
experience. Besides, the audience is often confronted with characters whose motives
and actions largely remain incomprehensible and ridiculous, hence it is almost
impossible to identify with them, even when the subject matter itself is of a serious
nature. Then, how does the playwright elicit empathic response from the audience?

The playwright uses various devices to achieve it: it is done by actual separation of
the speaker from his words, by burking and hiccuping to defeat heroic proportions the
character may assume, by direct address to the audience breaking the illusion of
being in a theatre, and by use of asides, etc. These make emotional identification with
the characters difiicult. Instead, a new form of empathic response is produced--one
through direct experience and through the metaphor of direct expression. The
dramatists of the absurd, Beckett, Ionesco, Genet and Adamov seek not so much to
create an initiation of absurdity as to conceive a work of art which @henheard or read
will transport the audience into the very sense of absurdity--will draw them into the
very experience itself.

Hence, communicating an experience of being sums up the purpose of absurdist

drama.

4.4 GODOT AS AN EXISTENTIALIST PLAY

1

What is existentialism?

Existentialist thought starts from the view that in our age man no longer knows what
he essentially is. Existentialism portrays man as thrown into this world as a diseased
animal. The very fact of his being conscious is his disease. Existentialism is opposed
to all forms of utopian thinking. It constantly underlines human finitude, and the
misery and despair that dog human life from cradle to the grave.

What is valuable in the existentialist thought is not the exaltation of the antirational-
' fhis is a negative feature of the thought. Rather, what is of great value is the
passionate insistence that human existence has many elements that cannot be fitted
into the tidy logic of philosophy. Or as Ernest Hemingway states: "there isn't always
explanation for everything." Existentialism, however, has founded a logic of persons
in addition to the logic of things.

According to Katharine M. Wilson:

 Waitingfor Godot W~itingfor~ o d oexactly
t fulfils Sartre's definition of an existentialist play as
one which sets out to present the contemporary situation in its full honor so
that the audience, finding it unendurable, may feel forced to remedy it.

Eric Bentley talking about man's hopeless position in a universe devoid of meaning
and purpose, as reflected in Godot observes that:
Samuel Beckettfspoint of view seems close to that of Anouilh or Sartre.
Waitingfor Godot is, so to speak, a play that one of them ought to have
written. It is the quintessence of "existentialism" in the popular, and most
relevant sense of the term--a philosophy which underscores the
incomprehensibility,and, therefore, the meaninglessness of the universe, the
nausea which man feels upon being confronted with the fact of existence, the
praiseworthiness of the act of defiance man may perform--acts which are
taken, on faith, as self-justifying, while, rationally speaking they have no
justification because they have no possibility of success.

Waiting for Godot is also about the emptiness of modern world that does not know
that it is empty. What is incomparable in this great solitary play is its insistence upon
sending us back to the darkest part of the spirit that created it and upon permitting
illuminations only through darkness. In Godot the characters like Vladimir,
Estragon, Lucky and Pozzo are seen struggling with the irrationality of experience.

Charles McCog urges that we distinguish between "nihilistic existentialism" of Sartre

and Christian existentialism of Kierkegaard, and insists that the latter offers one of
the essential keys to Beckett's play. Martin Esslin also leans strongly towards
Kierkegaard as a shaping influence on Beckett. Yet he insists elsewhere on the
Sartrean (nihilistic existentialism) side of Godot. Although Beckett himself is not
aware of any such influence, his writings might be described as a literary exposition
of Sartre's existentialism. In the play there is a perpetual series of rebounds, in which
man is constantly thrown back into his solitude. All of Beckett's characters are in
essence solitaries: for Beckett, man is not or never willingly, a social animal.

In Waiting for Godot the non-action of futile waiting by the two tramps is enacted
twice. In the play we are not told who Godot is and what the two characters really
expect him to do for them. They keep on Waiting for Godot, but Godot never comes
to meet them. The play, therefore, shows how man is thrown back into solitude and
I
non-action. The two tramps waiting for Godot may be representing human beings
whose waiting may thus be humanity's vain hope of salvation or as others call it
I "hopelessly hoping."

The final night makes all waiting unnecessary. The way the two tramps pass time is
indication of boredom and triviality of human activities, the lack of significance in
1
life and the constant suffering which existence is. Suffering, as per existentialism is
an inseparable part of human condition. It remains unmitigated: "The tears of the
'I
I world are a constant quantity" (p.33), or, mark, "No use struggling . . . the essential
I
I
doesn't changet' (p.21). Vladimir and Estragon suffer intensely and incessantly.
/I
Vladimir cannot laugh without suffering excruciating pain "One dare not even laugh"
I (p.5). In Act 11both P o v o and Lucky have suffered great physical affliction. ,There
doesn't seem to be any reason for it all.

L
$
' The hope of salvation may be merely an evasion of the suffering and anguish that has
< ,
I sprung from facing the reality of the human condition. Martin Esslin is of the view . ,
that "there is here a truly astonishing parallel between the existentialist philosophy of
Sartre and the creative intuition of Beckett. If, for Beckett as for Sartre, man has the
duty of facing the human condition as a recognition that at the root o f our being there
is nothingness, liberty, and the need of constantly creating ourselves in a succession
of choices, then Godot might become an image of what Sartre calls "bad faith."
42
11, . "
I

iI 1
 Themes and Issues-I
4.4.1 Estragon and Vladiinir as Existentialist Characters

Writing about Existentialism and Waitingfor Godot Andre Gunthers has given a
somewhat hopeful and positive interpretation of man's existentialist existence. In the
twentieth century there appears to be nothing to do any longer since "actions" have
become more and more questionable . . . because millions and millions of people who
are in fact still active, increasingly feel that they are acted upon: that they are active
without themselves deciding on the objective of their action, without even being able
to discern the nature of their objective or because they are aware that their activity is
suicidal in its objective. In short, action has lost so much of its independence that it
itself has become a form of passivity, and even where action is deadly strenuous or
actually deadly, it has assumed the character of futile action or inaction. That
Estragon and Vladimir, who do absolutely nothing, aye representative of millions of
people, is undeniable.

In addition, Estragon and Vladimir lack firm outline about their character and
personality and we have only the scantiest biographical data. They are defined not in
relation to time, place, or social circumstance, but in relation to eternity and to human
longings for a sense of purpose. The problem of Vladimir and Estragon is that they
are alive.. Like everyone and like Everyman, they are trapped between birth and
death. What is happening to them does not seem to be consequent either on a specific
set of circumstances (situations) or on their behaviour patterns (characters).

But they are so f ~ ~ lrepresentative

ly only because in spite of their inaction, and
pointlessness of their existence, they still want to go on, and thus do not belong to the
Lragic class of those who consider suicide. And it is not despite the pointlessness of
their life that Estragons and Vladimirs wish to go on living, but, on the contrary, just
because their life has become pointless, ruined by their habit of inaction or of acting
without their own initiative, they have lost their will power to decide not to go on,
their freedom to end it all, to terminate it.

It is with this kind of life, with man who continues existing because he happens to
exist, that Beckett's Godot deals. But it deals with it in a manner basically different
from all previous literary treatment of despair. Estragon and Vladimir seem to be
saying, "We remain, therefore we must be waiting for something." And: "We are
waiting, therefore there must be something we are waiting for."

To characterize this mode of life in which man continues to wait merely because he
happens to be, French commentators have used Heidegger's term "Geworfenheit" (the
fact and state of having been "thrown" into the world). Quite wrongly. For while
Heidegger, in using this term, designates the contingency of each individual's being
just himself (and demands that each take possession of his contingent being in order
to make it the basis of his own "design") the two heroes of Beckett's play do neither,
like the millions whom they represent. They neither recognize their own existence as
contingent, nor think of abolishing this contingency, transforming it into something
positive with which they can identify themselves. Their existence is far less heroic
than that meant by Heidegger, far more trustful, far more "realistic."

Vladimir and Estragon conclude from the fact of their existence that there must be
something for which they are waiting; they are champions of the doctrine that life
must have meaning even in a manifestly meaningless situation. To say that they
represent "nihilists" is, therefore not only incorrect, but the exact reverse of what
Beckett wants to show. As they do not lose hope, are even incapable of losing hope,
they are naive, incurably optimistic ideologists. What Beckett presents is not
nihilism, but the inability of man to be a nihilist even in a situation of utter
hopelessness. Part of the compassionate sadness conveyed by the play springs not so
'much from the hopeless situation as much as from the fact that the two heroes,
through their waiting, show that they are not nihilists. It is this defect which makes
them so incredibly funny.
Wnitirigfor Goriot
4.5 STRUCTURE OF GODOT

The play seems to have been constructed primarily on sets of binaries. Beclcett once
said, "It is the shape that matters." He was referring to a remark of St. Augustine's
"Do not despair one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume: one of the thieves
was damned," but it applies to his own play more aptly. Referring to the two acts of
the play, Beckett maintained, "One Act would have been too little . . . and three Acts
would have been too much.'' The two Acts purport to dramatize two consecutive
evenings in the life of its central characters. The play has a symmetrical structure like
a mathematical fornlula in which one side balances the other. This symmetry is
evident in the manner Beckett conceives things in pairs: two Acts, two messenger
boys and two sets of characters, and each set a pair again--pairs of apparently
disparate constituents, yet complementary.

As stated earlier the play has a 'symmetrical' structure. The apparent symmetry of the
play is like the order that every human being attempts to impose on the constant flux
of discrete phenomena around him. You'll notice that everyday routine of a human is
apparently the same--but scratch a bit and the differences come to the surface.
Let us compare the opening and ending of each Act, the sequence of events like the
entry of Pozzo and Lucky and the Boy, and the stage directions in the two Acts as
also the dialogues.
Do you find a symmetry--a similarity-in the two acts?
You will observe that both acts start with the union of the two tramps. Similarly the
ending of each act is almost identical. Further there is a repetition of certain incidents
in the second act; arrival of Pozzo and Lucky, coming of the messenger Boy towards
the end to announce that Godot will not come that day etc. Such a repetition strikes a
balance between two acts.
Similarly in both acts Estragon handles food (p. 20, p. 68),plays with his boots (p.
11, 69), sleeps (p. 15, 70), in both acts the two central figures contemplate suicide
(pp. 17-18, pp. 93-94), etc. The comparison of the events in the two Acts shows there
is repetition, but a closer reading will bring out the difference, which underscores the
asymmetrical nature of the structure of the play.
The following table will further illustrate the asymmetrical nature of the play's
structure:

In Act I In Act TI
Estragon accepts a carrot Estragon rejects a radish
Takes off his shoes Finds his boots too big
Nibbles a chicken bone Recalls it as a fish bone
Estragon rejects suicide Defers suicide for want of a
as the survivor will be suitable rope
solitary
Tree - bare Has sprouted 4-5 leaves
Lucky is Pozzo's slave Symbolically, Pozzo is slave to Lucky
Boy arrives Boy denies he is the same who came the day
before
 Themes and Issues-I
Besides, we notice that the events and stage-directions, dialogues, etc. in the second
Act do not exactly repeat those of Act I. You must also have noticed that the
punctuation of the last spoken lines of each act is different and the lines are switched
from one tramp to the other. You may try to find more examples showing similarities
and dissimilarities in the two Acts.

Beckett was impressed by the syntactical balance of St. Augustine's statement

mentioned earlier. He is reported to have told MacGowran that St. Augustine's
remark is the key to the whole play. Further, Beckett told Harold Hobson that the
production of the play should bring out stylized movement--a movement which relies
heavily on asymmetry.

The asymmetrical structure of the play helps achieve a disparity between the two time
scales: the human and the natural. Look at the stage direction that precedes
Vladimir's song at the beginning of Act 11. It reads: ".. . the tree has four or five
leavesM--which denote cyclical phenomenon in nature, although we have just read in
the beginning of Act 11: "Next day. Same time. Saine place." Does Beckett, thus,
seek to remove the play from its temporal locations? He has also stripped the stage
of physical details other than a mound and a tree. Does Beckett underline the
difference between human and natural time scales?

It is these stage directions that initially connect the two acts.

Duckworth is critical of Vivian Mercier who described Godot as a play in which

"nothing happens twice."

Duckworth highlights the circularity of the whole slructure; "the return to zero leaves
us with an overall impression of the monotony and futility of the eternally repeated
ritual enacted on that deserted road. The symmetry, and the differences between the
two Acts--by which our interest has been kept alive--are quietly subordinated.
Beckett thus solves the immense problem of how to create repetitious inonotony
without being repetitious and monotonous."

Going a step further Duckworth also discerns the Aristotelian elements o r the
conventional structure in the play when he says that it is not really true to say that
"the categories of exposition, inciting moment, rising actions, turning point, falling
action, climax and conclusion are not observed in any strict sense" in Godot. These
categories do exist in each act--with the notable and inevitable exceptions of the
inciting moment (i.e. incitement to action), for, this is theatre of situation, of inaction.
The order in which they (the categories) appear is changed, however: exposition (of
underlying themes), rising action (in the sense of increased activity, especially in Act
11,climax (arrival of Pozzo and Lucky), turning point (the boy, announcement that
Godot is not coming), falling action. (IXXXFX - XC, Duckworth).

How does the choice of two acts help in achieving dramatic interest in spite of
repetition?

It would be pertinent t o recall here Beckett's statement that "One Act would have
been too little. . . . and three Acts would have been too much."

According to Duckworth, the situation in Godot is one of monotonous sameness, and

Beckett had to suggest this perpetual recurrence in the most economical way possible.
Surely, one act would have been too little, three too much. Two is the magic number
denoting continuous repetition--not just a single repetition, explains Duckworth. In
our everyday vocabulary (we use or repeat a word to convey a sense of continuous
repetition), it went on and on, it grew smaller and smaller, it went round and round
. . . for ever and ever, etc, In Act I, it is hinted that exactly the same thing happened
before the beginning o f the play; by the end of Act I1 we realize that the cyclic pattern
will continue like an unbroken circle until the end of time.
Wrriri~ig,forGodat Duckworth finds the structure of Waiting for Godot "tight and economical" and is
critical of Hugh Hunt who opined that "Samuel Beckett in Waiting for Codot . . .
symbolizes that chaotic state of existence by a corresponding anarchy in the
construction of the play itself, Play archtecture as it was understood by the writer of
the well made play . . . has given place to a seemingly abstract void in which plot, or
dramatic story telling, is almost non-existent." Duckworth fiuther quotes M. A. Scott
wlzo found "absolute clarity of form" (in Godot) that is possessed by such modem
masterpieces as Kafka's Das Sclzloss (The Castle), Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Camus'
La Peste, and William Golding's'Lord of the Flies," in spite of its meaning being
obscure and ambiguous.

The structure, as stated earlier, appears symmetrical, but is asymmetrical at one level,
too. "Within the symmetrical, circular structure of each act there are smaller circles
represented by

Vladimir's repetition, .pantomime, taking off his hat and knocking out
an invisible foreign object

- Estragon's repeated fussing with his boots

- Lucky's recurrent acts of picking up and putting down the luggage

- the hat-exchanging routine

- Vladirnir's endlessly repeatat& round-song at the beginning of Act

11."

Besides, "We are Waitingfor Godot" recurs in the play like a refiain. It occurs three
times in the first Act and a dozen times in Act II, indicating an increasing impatience
as time goes on. The monotony becomes imperceptibIy cumulative and more
unbearabIe for the two tramps as the play progresses.

One thing that has to be borne in mind is that the structure of the play is sustained by
the themes which keep recurring both in Act I and Act II.

Both Acts continue with reference to the tree and "to the capriciousness of memory.''
In Act I it is Estragon who remarks that they were by the tree the day before; in Act IF
it is Vladimir, and Estragon remembers nothing, a little diversity within the repeated
pattern, such dissimilarities and variations within the seeming similarities make the
structure a~ym~metrical as has already been pointed out.

Further, the structural balance of two acts is subtly varied by the relation of Pozzo-
Lucky scene to the structure of each act. .The dominant factor in Act I is the Pozzo-
Lucky scene, whereas in Act II the first half is taken up by the two tramps preceding
the return of Pozzo and Lucky from the fair. This happens in the middle of the Act.
Note how the two of them contribute to the theme of the play in each Act.

In Act I it is hinted that exactly the same things happened before. By the end of Act
I1 we realize that the cyclic pattem will continue like an unbroken circle until the end
of time.

Cyclic pattern notwithstanding there is an accompanying "down movement" and the

shadow of the first Act gets darker as the play progresses. The darker side is
explicitly articulated by Pozzo and further expanded by Vladimir' in the statement
about human life and birth. ("They gave us birth astride of a grave. . , .") It is further
suggested in various ways: Lucky has degenerated and has worsened in Act 11, Pozzo
has lost his possessions one by one, besides he has gone blind and cannot stand up in
Act 11. Vladimir and Estragon too have degenerated-earlier they were presentable
enough to be admitted to Eiffel Tower but not now. In Act I1 Pozzo has nothing to
eat at all; the more Estragon eats of the carrot, the worse it gets--the two tramps find
cominunication more difficult in Act 11. In addition there is a greater lack of Themes and Issues-I
coherence; the pauses are longer and often there is a painfully strained effort to keep
up the dialogues. Estragon is more sulky and depressed and Vladimir agrees at the
end of the play to the idea of suicide. The structure of Godot thus achieves the rare
quality of being both static and dynamic--a quality which is defined at the beginning
of Act II'with Vladimir's round song.

4.6 LET US SUM UP

In this unit we have discussed Godot (i) as a tragicomedy, (ii) as an absurd play, (iii)
as an existentialist play, and also its structure. The play states metaphysical anguish
of the Theatre of the Absurd. We are left to dwell in the irrationality of experience
that is transferred to the stage.
UNIT 5 THEMES AND ISSUES-I1

Structure

5.0 Objectives

5.1 ' Introduction

5.2 Waiting for Godot and time

5.3 Godof as a Christian Play

5.4 Godot and Use of Language

5.4.1 Language and TheaticaIity

5.5 Godot and TheatricaIity

5.6 Contribution of Godot to Theatre and Drama

5.6.1 Godot's AppeaI to Modern Times

5.7 Let Us Sum Up

5.8 Select Bibliography with Critical Comments

5.0 OBJECTIVES

Continuing our discussion from Unit 4 we will be focussing on more technical

aspects of the play. We will aIso touch up Godot's contribution to modern theatre.

5.1 INTRODUCTION

You are by now familiar with the new ground Waitingfor Godot broke in the history
of theatre and the rzasons why it is rightly called an avant garde play. We shall
further continue our discussion on Godot by taking up aspects such as:,

1. Godot and the Theme of Time

2. Godot as a Christian Play
3. Godot and the Use of Language
4. Language and Theatricality
5. Godot and Theatricality and
6. Contribution of Godot to Theatre and Drama

5.2 GODOT AND THE THEME OF TIME

Relating the theme of 'waiting' to timejn Godot, Eric Bentley states:

The subject of the play is not Godot but waiting, the act of waiting as an
essential and characteristic aspect of the human condition. *Throughoutour
 Themes and Issues-11
lives we always wait for something, and Godot simply represents the
objective of our waiting--an event, a thin'g, a person, death. Moreover, it is
the act of waiting that we experience the flow of time in its purest, most
evident form. If we are active, we tend to forget the passage of time, we pass
the time, but if we are merely passively waiting, we are confronted with the
action of time itself. . . The flow of time confronts us with the basic problem
of being--the problem of the nature of self, which being subject to constant
change in time, is in constant flux and therefore ever outside our grasp . . .

Being subject to this process of time flowing through us and changing us in doing so,
vGe are, at no single moment in our lives, identical with ourselves. . . . It is significant
that the Boy who acts as go-between in Godot fails to recognize the pair from day to
day.

Similarly, when Pozzo and Lucky first appear, neither Vladimir nor Estragon seems
to recognize them; Estragon even talces Pozzo for Godot. But after they have gone,
Vladimir comments that they have changed since their last appearance. In the second
Act, Pozzo and Lucky are cruelly deformed by the action of time. Waiting is thus to
experience the action of time, which is constant change. And yet,'as nothing real
ever happens, that change is in itself an illusion. The ceaseless activity of time is
self-defeating, purposeless, and therefore null and void. The more things change, the
more they are the same. That is a terrible stability of the world. One day is like
another, and when we die we might never have existed. As Pozzo exclaims in his
great outburst:

Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time? . . . One day, is
that not enough for you, one day like any other day: one day he went dumb. .
. . one day we are born, one day we'll die, the same day, the same second. . . .
Still Vladimir and Estragon live in hope: they wait for Godot, whose coming will
bring the flow of time to a stop. In the French version Beckett wrote: "Tonight
perhaps we shall sleep in his place, in the warmth, dry, our bellies full, on the straw.
It is worth waiting for that, is it not?" This passage, omitted in the English version,
clearly suggests the peace, the rest from waiting, the sense of having arrived in a
haven, that Godot represents to the two tramps.

Alvarez relates time to memory and functioning of the memory. Frequent

forgetfulness brings about the invalidity of time--as is borne out by Vladimir and
Estragon's uncertainty about the time, place and human beings. Boredom hangs over
every word and Estragon's constant forgetfulness is answered by Vladimir's "Try and
remember." One goes through life, its boredom and pain by force of habit - "the great
deadener," - absurdly and hoping for an elusive rescue.

Ruby Colm compares the effect of time on the two pairs, Vladimir-Estragon and
Pozzo-Lucky, who represent antithetical attitudes to infinity--wait and wander
respectively. Waiting for Godot, or nothingness or infinity, Vladimlr and Estragon
are ageless with only the haziest past and a hazier future, tied to Godot. Ignorant of
Godot, Pozzo and Lucky live in time. Pozzo's watch tells hours and years, but Pozzo
loses his watch, and considers his heart a poor substitute, changed and changeless,
each couple lives by its own compulsions.

5.3 GODOT AS A CHRISTIAN PLAY

Many commentators have interpreted Godot as a religious parable, altl~oughBeckett

himself disclaimed it saying, "If by Godot I had meant God, I would have said God,
not Godot." As for the presence of Christian elements in his works he maintains,
'Christianity is a mythology with which I am familiar, so I naturally use it." Beckett
 ..

, , ~ / ~is ~interested in mythologies for their own sake, without any commitment to them
~ ~ i ~ i~~h~
whatsoever. Speaking in a characteristic Beckettian manner, he stated: 'I'm not
interested in any system. I can't see any trace of any system anywhere."

Beckett, according to Fletchers, is the complete agnostic. He is simply not interested

in whether the Christian Church is telling fairy stories or not. Beckett is essentially
interested in probing into the state of man in this Universe. Even were God to exist
he would make no difference, maintained Beckett. He (God himself) would be as
lonely, and as enslaved and isolated and ridiculous as man is, in a cold, silent,
indifferent universe.

But, "trust the tale and not the tellei" goes the saying. Critics would like to judge the
play on ~ t own
s merits, rather than on the basis of what its author says about it. Those
commentators who have viewed Godot as Beckett's reaction to his Roman Catholic
background consider Vladimir and Estragon as representatives of the fallen state of
humanity faithfully awaiting the arrival of an elusive God who promises salvation but
never arrives. Despite their inability to thoroughly explain Godot, most critics agree
that the play's religious associations enliven and enrich its sense of fluidity and
ambiguity.

As Beckett himself has admitted the fundamental imagery of Godot is drawn from
Christian mythology. There aie numerous references to the Bible, ChrisffGod, to the
"two thieves" and the four Evangelists (pp. 1I, 13), as also to certain Christian beliefs,
as you will see from the list.

1. Suppose we repented "Our being born" (p.4)

2, I must have taken a look at it [The Bible] (p.12):
3. Estragon has all his life compared himself to Christ" (p. 12).
4. Pozzois"made"in"God'simage"(p.23).
5. References to Adam, Abel and Cain, p.83, etc.

The protagonists have come from nowhere in particular and have nowhere in
particular to go. Their life is a state of apparently fruitless expectation. Their attitude
towards Godot is one partly of hope, partly of fear. The orthodoxy of this
synlbolism, from a Christian point of view, is obvious. The tramps with their rags
I
and their misery as already stated, represent the fallen state of-man. The squalor of
their surroundings, their lack of a "stake in the world," represent the idea that here in
this world we can build no abiding city. The ambiguity of their attitude towards
Godot, their mingled hope and fear, the doubtful tone of the boy's me'ssages,
represents the state of tension and uncertainty in which the average Christian must I

live in this world, aveiding presumption, and also avoiding despair.

I

Finally, the tree, as has already been explained in some detail in Unit 3, can variously
symbolize death, the crucifixion, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and when it
puts on green leaves, the Tree of Life.

5.4 GODOT AND USE OF LANGUAGE

You would recall that in Unit 1 we pointed out the inability of language to be an
effective means of communication in modem times. Besides, we also brought into
focus how tHis "breakdown of language" successfully conforms to the "absurdity of
life" as is portrayed in Godot. Ironically, the writer must use language itself to be
able to show its inadequacy as a medium of communication. That is why we said that
Lucky's speech which on surface is a mere barrage of words and appears illogical
does have a logic of its own.
 Themes and Issues-I1
During the course of the play you have noticed that the tramps lapse into silences, or
into monologues; besides, there are often pauses, too. All these further reinforce the
idea of the inability of language to communicate effectively. If 'silences' connote
difficulty in expressing one's thoughts, leading to withdrawing within oneself, the
monologues signify their inability to understand each other. That language fails both
at the encoding and decoding levels, is to be further seen in the great deal of 'verbal
repetition' and 'echoing' in the play. These theatrical devices, used by Beckett, also
serve the dramatic purpose of emphasizing the existentialist situation of the two
tramps, in which they are essentially lonely and cannot communicate with each other.

We have earlier also referred to the heightened use of language to communicate the
emotional intensity in plays by Marlowe, Shakespeare, Webster, etc., and attempted
in the present times by T.S. Eliot in his poetic drama. Beckett, however, inverts the
conventional use of language. There is little imagery or figurative language in the
speeches of the characters. You will find that much of the dialogue consists of
studied banality and cliches interspersed with silences. Some of the examples of such
usage have been pointed out in the annotations to the play and in the first Unit.

Also, there is a spectrum of usage ranging from the highly colloquial, including
Irishisms, to the self-portraying formality (e.g. "All my life I've tried to put it from
me), and "And I resumed the struggle," respectively, and again to mock-heroic
formality "May one enquire where His Highness spent the night?" and "Your
Worship wishes to assert his prerogatives?" (p.19).

With all this the dialogue comes to span the earthy and realistic at one end And the
mysterious and disturbing at the other.

Esslin rightly observes that the disintegration of language is central in Beckett's

drama, and there is a steady progression until in the later plays the a~dienceis
fortunate to be able to make anything out of what is said on stage. Niklaus .Gessner
points out ten different modes of disintegration of language in the play. They are
misunderstandings, double entendre, monologues, dialogues, cliches, repetition,
inability to find the right word, telegraphic style (loss of grammatical structure,
communication by shortened commands, etc.) culminating in Lucky's speech. In his
speech there is a complete breakdown of syntax. This reflects Beckett's inability to
see "any trace of any system anywhere" ("I am not interested in any system. I can't
see any trace of any system anywhere.") Such a lack of coherence, system, and
'stnicture' in language in the play, implicitly becomes a fitting vehicle to convey the
playwright's sense of uncertainty, meai~inglessnessand absurdity in the universe
surrounding us. As Eliopolus observes, "the esseritial purpose in relating the general
breakdown of language is to demonstrate its relationship to one of the main themes in
Beckett's plays - "where there is no certainty there can be no definite meanings."

5.4.1 Language and Theatricality

Underscoring the complementarity between language and theatrical&y,.Morris

Freedman suggests that "language is far too straightforward an instrument to express
the multiple complex and multi-dimensional aspects of reality. Reality can only be
conveyed by being acted out in all its complexity. Hence it is the theatre which is the
only instrument to express the bewildering complexity of the human condition."

What language, thus, fails to convey is sought to be communicated by effective use

of techniques borrowed from various performing arts such as music, circus, music
hall cross talk, vaudeville, stylized movements and gestures etc. Together they take
on the role which language does not or cannot. Where one language has broken
down, a new one has been devised to take its place.

Ostensibly, language may have lost its conventional role and communicability--as has
been brought out by the foregoing discussion, yet, paradoxically the play makes its
profoundest statements in truly evocative language - which exploits the traditional
Wnitittgfor Godot stylistic devices llke, metaphors, images, connotations, etc. "From the play of
contradictory hypotheses down to the most gritty, concrete images of human
functions, the words swirl about embracing all the nuances of existences." When
Vladimir says, "one of the thieves was saved" or gives his name as "Adam," Beckett
has, in one sweep, historicized and compressed millenia of human existence,
something which language alone could have achieved.

5.5 GODOT AND THEATRICALITY

We have in Unit 1 hinted at the uncharacteristically bare stage in Godot, and how it
forms the fitting backdrop to the meaningless existence of the protagonists. The
empty stage is, thus, a device to magnify theatricality. The stage itself becomes a
character undergoing a change as the play progresses. One can go to the extent of
saying that the two protagonists (Estrogan and Vladimir) do not undergo so mucll
transformation as does the stage during the course of the play.

The emptiness of the stage, highlighted and filled by a mound and a bare tree, is
further filled with words, actions, and images, such as the moon rising at the end of
Act I; interestingly, the words themselves match the stage-setting in "emptiness."

During the course of the play the stage becomes an extension of the auditorium as
does the auditorium become an extension of the stage. Besides, the tramps assume
the role of audience vis-a-vis Pozzo-Lucky. What Beckett is doing is to consciously
construct a "play within a play" in the form of Pozzo-Lucky episodes. The
protagonists are 'entertained by the master slave pair and they find that they are
having "charming evening." They tl~usassume the role of an audience, as also of
critics.

In the middle of the first Act Pozzo-Lucky episode when Pozzo is speaking in his
most histrionic manner, the two of them are aware of the spectacle they are enjoying:

Vladimir. Charming evening we are having.

Estragon. Unforgettable
Vladimir. And it's not over
Es tragon, Apparently not
...
Estragon. It's awful.
Vladimir. Worse than mime.
Estragon. The circus.

Their remarks do not confine themselves to the Pozzo-Lucky performance but are
also a pointed reference to the play itself which has incorporated elements from these
performing arts.

The two protagonists thus, during the performance of Pozo-Lucky, identify

themselves with the audience, and alternate their roles as audience and characters.
Beckett, according to June Schlueter, endows his tramps with a duality of which the
audience is constantly aware - they are not only characters but also participants in
theatre. The tramps' running commentaiy on the progress of the play reflects their
awareness of the presence of an audience. Soine of their comments reflect their
consciousness of themselves in relation to the audience: upon Pozzo's and Lucky's
second entrance, for example, Vladimir assures anyone who feels the play is
dragging, "We were beginning to weaken. Now we're sure to see the evening out."
And as we approach the end of the play, we are agaln comforted by Vladimir, who
assures us. "It is very near the end of its repertory."
 In the Seco*ndAct, the stage, more specially, becomes a microcosm of the Universe in Themes and Issues-11
which the two tramps are trapped. Such inward-pointing theatre metaphors are
intensified when the two find themselves surrounded and realize there are no exits:
"We are surrounded--There s no way out there. There! Not a soul in sight." The
f

latter reference to the audience in the auditorium brings to mind the earlier references
to the auditorium as a "C'hamel house!" and "a bog1' and the audience as "corposes"
and "skeletons." So Beckett uses c,lowntsjests for effect. Thus, throughout the
performance of Godot, the spectator watches "from without": he finds no opportunity
of identify~nghimself with the characters or projecting his own personality on to the
play or living through their tragedy as if it were his own. And it is this very
detachment which produces a catharsis in the audience. Since the spectator doesn't
get emotionally involved in the play, he can enjoy the acting jests and admire the
literary and artistic skill of the play very objectively.

You will observe that in Waitingfor Godot the audience is never allowed to settle
down. There is always "uncertainty" and questioning - be it "the tree," the 'shoe or
f

Pozzo himself. Their understanding is being questioned a!: every step. In all this
question;ng the tramps are compelling the audience to question the reality--to which
they and the audience have together been a witness to. By extension, they question
the very nature of existence--hence they are not sure whether they were here
yesterday or day before. Particularly the shoe which earlier was very tight in the
beginning of Act I, on Estragon's feet, is now too big for him. Has Estragon
"dwindled" or the 'shoe' grown in size'? Either way the reality is at stake: Pozzo
doubling up to search for his watc) in his fob, Estragon's trousers slipping down,
Estragon going through the motion of civility giving precedence to Vladimir to
commit suicide, are all farcical gesrures which by their theatricality underline the
absurdity of human life.

5.6 CONTRIBUTION OF GODOT TO THEATRE &

DRAMA

Ruby Cohn in "Growing up? with Godot," maintains that Waitingfor Godot is
Beckett's most resonant play. After Godot it was theatrically viable to perform a
deeply serious and playful play. After Godot plots could be minimal; expositions,
expendable; characters, contradictory, settings, unlocalized; and dialogue,
unpredictable. Blatant farce could jostle tragedy; obscenity could pun on the sacred.
One actor could recite a ten-minute monologue, and other be mute, or the same actor
could be both monologuist and mute. Delicate verse lines could mourn the humanist
tradition-l~keleaves, like ashes - while the stage showed the cruelty of that tradition -
a charnel house! (p.23).

Beckett's unique contribution also lies in giving a new idea of drama which focussed
on situation rather than on story and also on direct experience than indirect
description. He is an innovative dramatist who does imaginative things with old
ideas. Besides, Beckett while rejecting didacticism, strikes a universal note with his
concept of impotence and its subsequent implications for morality, society, and
communication. And finally, Beckett imaginatively creates situations which
demonstrate rather than rhetoric which describe.

5.6.1 Godot's Appeal to Modern Times

Writing a bout the contemporaneous appeal of Waitingfor Gocfot Enoch Brater

writes:

In Waiting for Godot, Beckett succeeded in writing a lyrical play for an age
that had almost nothing poetic to say for itself. The scene in which 'nothing
happens, twice' was somehow not merely diagnostic, but prophetic: it was
W~iriirgfor Godot
suddenly mankind, not just any poor player, who was waiting for something
to arrive which never comes. The lines echoed recent European history, but
they also had at their core the substance of myth. Beckett was with the
empyrean. Godot, in Alan Schneider's words was something more than a
play. It had become, he wmte, 'a condition of life.'

5.7 LET US SUM UP

In this unit besides discussing the themes of time, ~ b d o as

t a Christian play and
Beckett's use of language, we have deliberated on Godot and theatricality to ascertain
Godot's contribution to modem drama.

5.8 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY WITH CRITICAL

COMMENTS

Duckworth, Colin. Angels of Darkness: Dramatic Effect in Samuel Beckett with

Special Reference to Eugene Ionesco. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 153
pp. (1972).

Studies Beckett's plays and attempts to explain their effectiveness. Duckworth

compares Beckett's plays to those of Ionesco because they frequently elicit similar
kinds of response from empathic spectators. The author tries to discover and describe I
the fbnction and effect of dramatic structures of these two dramatists as a form of
inner exploration leading to deepet self-howledge. The problems of dramatic
impact and intensity are examined to find out how and why people react to
performanyes, and to account for the degree and kind of tension created by plays
written with a minimum of conscious control. Duckworth illustrates his theory
through the results ofa survey of audience reaction to performances of Waiting for
Godot and Endgame that he compiled in 1971.

Cohn, Ruby. Samuel Beckett: The Comic Gamut. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers
University Press, 1962.

Connects Beckett's use of the term tragicomedy with Sir Philip Sidney's mungrell
Tragy-Comedie" of his Defense ofloesie.

Duckworth, Colin. Ed. SamuelBeckett: En attendant Godot Piece en deun acres.

Nelson, 1966.

A detailed analysis of the play dealing with its genesis, composition, structure and
style, symbolism, characterization etc. Interestingly Duckworth views the structure
of the play assimilating the conventional and the unorthodox elements. Duckworth
makes a detailed study of the structure and attempts to show how the play achieves a
rare quality of being both static and dynamic.

Eliopulos, James. Samuel Beckett's Dramatic Language. The Hague and Paris: -.
Mouton, pp. 131, (1975).
,
This concise description of Beckett's dramatic style is developed through three
phases: (1) an examination of the rhetorical poetic elements (author, purpose,
audience and occasion, method, medium, and subject matter); (2) a portrait of
Beckett's literary development followed by an interpretation of the modern theatre
movement; and (3) an analysis of Beckett's dramatic language from a structural
approach. In conclusion these stylistic qualities are assessed as they impose upon Themes and Issues-I1 /'
dramatic situation, ideas, and characters.

McCary, Judith D. and Ronald G. McCary. "Why Wait for Godot?" Southern
Quarterly 14, no.2 (Jan): 109- 15. (1 976).

Studying the audience reaction to Waitingfor Godot, demonstrates how Beckett

forces the spectator to become an integral part of the play: "Beckett supplied the
theme, waiting, and each spectator must wait, in his own way and on his own terms."
The study analyzes various reactions to the play's premier performance and illustrates
the effectiveness of the play in its lack of conventional dramatic structure by the
play's performance at San Quentin Penitentiary in 1957.

Bair, Deirdre. Satnuel Beckett: A Biography. London: Cape, 1978.

Exhaustive life history of Beckett, which received a controversial reception. While

some thought it authoritative, others did not think so.

Esslin, Martin. Theatre of the Absurd. Re. & enlarged edition. 1961;
Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1968.

Attempts to link Albert Camus' term "absurd" to the theatre of Beckett, Ionesco,
Adamov, Genet etc. Esslin accepts the philosophies of Sartre and Camus as the basis
of Godot, but he is careful to indicate that the plays of these two dramatists are
markedly different from Beckett's plays; the difference is in the form. The texture of
Waiti~~g
for Godot, with all its dramatic irregularities mirrors its metaphysical basis.
While the theatre of Sartre and Camus remains formally traditional.